Enormous relief!

Either the drugs haven’t worn off, or the treatment has made an enormous difference already. My posture was wonky and my gait was off. Now I’m balanced and my gait is smooth. I was hunched, and now I can lift my heart and walk tall. I couldn’t move my neck, but it wasn’t because of my neck; it was that my back was locked up in pain. Now I can swivel. I put on an album of Satchmo and Ella Fitzgerald, and I actually did a little hip-swinging dance in the kitchen while I was chopping chilis and ginger, and I didn’t have to sit on the kitchen stool to do the chopping. Honestly, I didn’t know how affected I was—I had forgotten what freedom felt like. What astonishment. I have deep compassion for all who live with pain: may we know as much freedom as our bodies will allow.

To test things, I went down to Powell’s City of Books in search of a book by  Tacita Dean, after I came across her while doing some research on a trip Sue and I may make in November, if the world doesn’t blow up before then and nobody gets a terrible diagnosis. I’m almost afraid to admit there might be one more trip in my life, lest something stop it. But maybe. I love the research almost as much as the actuality of the trip. 

So there I was, browsing among books, not desperately searching for a bench. In fact to test it, I stood for nearly 2 hours. There was no Tacita Dean, but I found a Joshua Rivkin book on Twombly, so now it’s sitting in my house waiting with the other unread books while I finish up Kelvyn James’ Walking Out of the Dark. I’m nearing the end, coasting downhill toward the light, and he’s singing praises of Blipfoto: “the vast majority of the wonderful people who’ve encouraged and  supported me are people I’ll never meet spread across the globe…. The default setting for  strangers was good rather than the media-driven concept of bad…. It made me lift my head up and look, really look, out into the world.” 

Well-said. Your generous, encouraging, compassionate response to my procedure yesterday touches my heart. I’ve watched how we come together in comments to celebrate a marriage, to en-courage each other through chemo or dialysis, to pray for a loved one in hospital, to welcome a newborn, to mourn a death, to oooh and awww over a new  puppy, and to sit vigil with a troubled world and do what we can to ease the suffering of bees. We are so much to love.