It started with an afternoon trip to the pumpkin patch with friends, as expected. This was a prelude to tomorrow’s 4th Annual (1st on the East Coast) Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza. We were preparing to acquire a bunch of pumpkins and then head out to do party shopping and come home to decorate.

Everything was going pretty well up through being on our way to go shopping. We had plenty of pumpkins and had really enjoyed our time at the pumpkin patch/farm/market place where we’d gone. We were in high spirits and already anticipating the day to come.

I stopped at the first red light after the patch, and was looking to my left to see when I might have an opening to make a right turn. I thought there might be enough of an opening, then hesitated and decided to wait for the next cars to pass. A black pickup truck was coming toward me and then threw on its turn signal to go right. I thought this would possibly make an opening, so I looked behind the pickup to make sure the trailing car was slowing down enough to give me time. I noted with alarm that they were actually accelerating toward the truck. I expected them to start to veer left around the truck at their increasing speed, but instead they drifted right, picking up speed while climbing the grassy shoulder. Then they suddenly took out the corner street sign and I turned away to brace for impact.

It came.

They smashed into the back part of the right side of the pickup, which had almost fully completed its turn, sending the pickup straight into the front corner of our car. I didn’t see what happened to the out-of-control car next, but it somehow ended up crossing the opposite lane of traffic, taking out a mailbox, and winding up crashed into a tree.

I felt for any major damage to myself and noted none, then turned to Emily and asked “Are you alive?” She was, and largely unhurt, and then I looked up to the driver of the pickup. He opened his eyes and looked at me dazedly. Emily and I discussed what had just transpired and I explained it to her since she had seen none of it coming. We left the vehicle, talked to the pickup driver, who proved to be mostly all right, then tried to assess what had happened. A couple of bystanders went over to see if the person in the out-of-control car was okay.

She attested to blacking out and having no memory from seeing a green light in front of her to seeing the tree in front of her on the other side of the road. Somehow she too was generally unharmed. All three vehicles were in really bad shape and everyone had some neck pain and such, but it was a generally amazing survival of the worst situation I’ve ever faced in a motor vehicle.

The thing that’ll stay with me most, assuming that the negative x-rays were accurate and my soreness eventually fades, is that split-second between seeing the street sign go down and the cessation of the impact. In that moment, which was both slow and fast just like you’ve heard (or felt) such moments to be, I had to prepare to die. That feeling of resigning, of yielding the fate of one’s life, is not one I’ll forget soon, or perhaps ever. I was completely out of options – there were cars behind, on my left, and in front. There was no where to go that would not increase the danger of the situation. There was no time to react. All I could do was cede control to the forces already in motion and hope for the best.

There’s no telling the fate of the car, which was towed and will be dealt with by insurance companies and the dealership. I was surprised at how late I got concerned with and upset about the fate of the car – it had been several minutes before I thought about it being unfortunate that our car may be totaled. I was probably more concerned with it catching fire or blowing up and creating a new round of jeopardy well before I thought to be upset that the car was wrecked. It was enough to have spent a second preparing to leave the planet and reopening my eyes to find I was still here.

I have a feeling this pumpkin-carving party is going to be even sweeter than normal.

I have just rattled off over 3,000 words (~12 pages) tonight, in a remarkably fast and focused session that has yielded what I am convinced is some of the best work of the whole novel so far. This brings American Dream On over the 70,000 word threshold (71,408 words/~285 pages) with just under two months to go and helps offset the fact that there will be no writing tomorrow night. It’s kind of too bad, because I’m in one of those grooves where baseball players find the ball looks as big as a grapefruit. Suddenly, after a week of angst, the dam has burst and things are flowing once more. (Though it probably doesn’t hurt that I’m on to a different chapter entirely, one that did not carry with it some consternating problems from the get-go.)

And Vassar pulled back on their threat to only break to semis, once again going with quarters, joining the ranks of virtually all modern tournaments. And it looks like I will be participating in the APDA Cup, thus getting a chance to compete in rounds that are adjudicated and are not demo rounds for the first time since 2006. (Yeah, I guess I thanked the BU Finals panel for judging my “last round ever”. Oops. We all know I’d debate professionally for a lifetime if I could.) And while I knew that this time yesterday too, it seems a lot more exciting today for some reason. Probably because the whole world does. And I’m almost short of breath and insanely full of energy for quarter till five in the morning, when I should be lapsing and a little tired. And given that the alarm’s set for 9:00 tomorrow, the earliest I’ve been up in weeks, to get ready to go to Vassar, this is all looking a little problematic.

But I don’t care that much, mostly because I’m in the throes of a manic phase of the sine-curve lifestyle. And the mania may be seen as problematic for some people, but I don’t know who those people could be. Being on the upswing of a roller-coaster, sailing upward on a high-energy high-productivity euphoria, this is about as good as it gets in this lifetime. I mean, yeah, the super-contemplative revelations are perhaps a little better, but this is a darn fine second place. I feel like running out into the middle of the early morning rain, whooping with joy at the fact that I get to be alive to see this kind of mood. I wish everyone could be here to feel this. I feel I’ve known people who never get this excited their whole lives.

I don’t know how I’m possibly going to sleep. It may end up an all-nighter and I’ll crash hard after round three at the tournament. But I should try all the same. Try to walk away from the euphoria to get a little shut-eye that’ll ultimately serve me well tomorrow. In the meantime, I leave you with this:

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

It all makes sense. All of it. What happens, what doesn’t, when, why, how. We are all so blessed and so privileged to be able to participate, to take part in this experiment with free will and this existence that is at once driven by our own whims and yet interminably destined to make itself work. It is punctuated by tremendous pain, yes, and tremendous anxiety, but it is all so very worth it. And I can see the pain and see the past and I know that every bit of it is worth it for everything.

To have a planet so well designed as to bless us not only with our own will, but others’ perspectives, with the discourse and dialogue that distill into reasoned perspective and more holistic understanding – this is all amazing. That we can spend so much time lamenting our various fates is at once a testament to our urges to push forward and improve what we have been given and yet also an unfortunate lack of full appreciation. I think the sacrifice of appreciation is often worth the spurs of exhortation to future greatness, but I wonder sometimes if we (I) temper ourselves (myself) sufficiently with sheer appreciation.

Tonight, I have it. I feel it. I have traveled and talked and walked and watched and I am aware of it all and it is overwhelming and beautiful and perfect and in need of appreciation.

This is not the first time I have felt this way, nor, God willing, will it be the last. But it seems, at a point where so much of my life is coming together in ways that I have made for myself, among the most important. It feels like this time around, the profundity has a greater likelihood to infiltrate the rest of daily life, for daily life itself is more deliberate and attuned to the realities that matter.

Ultimately, all I can really say is that I’m happy. Without reservation or qualification, I bask in the offerings of life. And that, my friends, is not something I say or feel very often.

There are two ways I can make this trip that are almost identical in mileage:

One is to take US Route 1, a literal straight line road that hearkens back to legends of the tsar drawing plans for a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. While straight as an arrow, the route runs south of both my origin and my destination, adding a bit of time. More importantly, Route 1 (in Jersey, at least) is perhaps the worst four-lane road in America, a bizarre combination of highway lane structures and traffic with endless stoplights. Despite the lights, left turns are strictly forbidden, requiring “jug-handles” where one exits to the right to then turn onto a crossover lane. There are no conventional exits, just jug-handles. And the thing is filled with trucks and Jersey drivers, who remain the only people worse than drunk New Mexicans, murderous Manhattanites, and raging Massachusetts drivers, somehow blending the worst aspects of all three.

The alternative is NJ Route 27, a pastoral winding road whose frequent elevation shifts are outnumbered only by the number of times the speed limit changes between Princeton and New Brunswick. If Route 1 is the express (or tries to be), Route 27 is the local, plowing through the center of random townships and dropping the limit from 50 to 25 with almost no warning. This is a two-laner (one in each direction) and is frequented by these aging gray buses that seem to run local routes in this thickly settled part of the state. There are no trucks, however, and very little traffic at all late at night, when all the lights are green. There are lights, but probably fewer than on the “highway” counterpart.

After doing round-trips on each, I’ve settled into a vague pattern of taking Route 1 up to New Brunswick in the evening and returning on Route 27 in the middle of the night. Route 1 seems to have a stagnant amount of traffic 24/7, which is more palatable in comparison to the fairly heavy traffic on 27 at around 8:30, but less palatable compared to the emptiness of same past midnight. But more than anything, there’s just something peaceful and rewarding about taking 27 home, soaring through empty silent communities like a high-schooler the night after graduation.

Tonight, however, the road was deader than ever. It was ghostly, the kind of night that inspired Ray Bradbury’s story “Night Meeting”, where a Martian and an Earthling colonist cross paths through the midst of time on desolate night roads. The first leaves were covering the road in some places, sent sailing as I would race through in an effort to stay ever 5 miles an hour above the mercurial legal maximum. I think I passed all of two cars going my direction the whole time, both fairly close to New Brunswick, and maybe 5-7 in the other direction the whole way. In 25 minutes.

There is much time to ponder in such settings, though they have a way of dominating the mental space with their own unique offering. We spend so much time surrounded by people, their structures, the possibility of interaction. To be moving swiftly through a voided landscape is at once solipsistic and comforting, calling attention to one’s place in the universe and focus to the significance of each passing minute. The more I noticed my aloneness, the more I felt both isolated and somehow unified with a larger presence and could feel the awareness of the moment pile upon itself.

I had a CD to keep me company, but its significance was only to underscore the larger reality around, not to take center stage. Like Kitaro on a road to Jewell that suddenly became endless and transcendent, with my Dad so many years ago. The songs were like leaves, like the occasional droplet collected on the windshield, to be considered and passed like most days on the wind.

And then, as Princeton approached faster than normal, and cars six and seven northbound, Dave Matthews Band’s “Christmas Song” came on the disc. And the world of silence, of sleepy village churches and big box brand name signs illuminated for overnight advertising of empty stores, shifted. It transformed to a seventeen-year-old kid who made the decision to buy his first-ever CD (after years of accumulating cassette tapes) because it was the only way he could acquire this song he’d heard just once on the radio that had captivated his feelings about Christmas in a way he could handle as a no-longer-Christian. Who had looked everywhere for a tape, knowing that he already had one DMB tape, finally settling ironically for the older album on CD only and wondering how to deal with the technological shift. Who came home and skipped right to the last track, wondered at the trail of lightning sounds that followed the track, played it on repeat most of the night. It was a cold night, beckoning to Christmas still a couple months out, a night not unlike this one. Then there was a play to direct, a year to get through, somehow, colleges and a future to seek (up). Tonight, not so different perhaps, a novel in place of a play, colleges behind but not forgotten, a year to be savored instead of endured. Perhaps life really does get easier over time, after all.

I listened to the last three recitations of the closing chorus in the stopped car in front of my current residence, smiling at the yellow porch light and the barely visible Christmas lights within, decking the top corner of the living room walls. “And the blood of our children all around.” The last fade of notes, the car switched off, and a gathering of paper for the trek inside. Crossing the threshold, I felt the wind swirl behind me and wondered what message it carried from what past or future self. I am never (and always) alone. But tonight, oh tonight, it all seems to make sense.

I went inside to find Pandora staring at me as though she’d been waiting this whole time.

• Took delivery on a flat-screen television, which will hopefully never have network or cable TV thereon.
• Spoke to my parents on the phone.
• Listened to Barack Obama’s speech and…
• …Decided that I am against the current incarnation of “healthcare reform”.  (More on this later!)
• Spoke to Em’s mom in person.
• Welcomed Pandora back into our home.
• Ate a bunch of fried food.
• Had a soda for the first time in weeks.
• Wrote Chapter 21 of American Dream On, weighing in around that magic 2,000 words.
• Played “Hero” by Regina Spektor on repeat for some time.

The only difference between these days and the old days is that these days matter. I am writing and that changes everything. My whole outlook on life can be determined through the filter of how much control I have over what I do on a given day and how much of that links to what I feel I was put here to do.

Daily fulfillment is not about the space in between, the margins, even most of the time spent. It’s about intentionality, living deliberately, and whether what is done is part of what should be done. Not on the path there, or some esoteric larger vision of being there, but actually a PART of what is intended overall.

This makes all the difference. And I am grateful, eternally grateful, for every day on this side of things.

Today, they tell us that the oceans are so full of garbage that there are spare airplane seats in the flight-paths of missing jets that are not from those jets. That it’s perfectly reasonable to expect all kinds of discarded material to show up in the sea, since we’ve been leaving it there as long as we can remember. Our species has so blatantly disregarded the gifts we have been given that we don’t consider them gifts anymore – the only gifts we can accept are those we give ourselves. We have lost a sense of perspective, of balance, of harmony. We don’t sit in pastures anymore, trying to describe what we’re missing. We think everything we’re missing is on the Internet.

And yes, I’m aware of how both (1) unoriginal my comments are and (2) how ironic it is that they are appearing on the Internet. The Internet offers us wonderful things as well, like the ability to connect with others from a field with just the minimum of time-delay.

Nonetheless, I have to think that we lost our way, collectively, when science split from religion. Or vice versa. Surely there were crimes committed on both sides, as there always are in human disputes. Conflict is nothing if not mutually assured on my home planet. But when the scientists stopped being interested in God and the religious stopped being interested in solving mysteries, then surely something was irrevocably torn asunder. How anyone can accept the answers offered by one group in total ignorance of the other eludes me daily.

(As though to taunt me, a wireless network has just been found by this laptop. Or maybe a metaphor about ability to make connections from remoteness or the seeming lack of connection? You decide.)

In any event, we can all look to extreme examples and see the absurdity. Science reducing all human existence to a collapse of uncontrolled synapses, eliminating free will and indicating that all human existence and creation is a lie, while pleading endless randomness in the face of the most wondrously perfect system ever built or discovered. Religion claiming that God will decide all and answer all, that those who die are meant to, while those who are afflicted should not fight but simply resign themselves to a fate larger than themself. A similar abdication of free will, a similar destruction of meaning, a similar breakdown in the purpose that ought drive human existence, both on a macro scale and the individual level. How are these examples not sufficient to get everyone to attempt to strike a middle-ground? Even atheist scientist friends are uncomfortable with the elimination of free will altogether, and certainly don’t live their lives like they believe it’s true. Even religious zealots seem to assert themselves as though they have the ability to change something around them. So why all the trouble seeing across the divide?

Surely the closest society to holding these interests in balance was the first society to settle on my home continent. Or series of societies. There was wide-scale recognition of higher powers behind every aspect of the universe they saw, as well as interest in developing and advancing to higher levels of understanding of that universe. The respect that was afforded each of these concepts led to the development of a minimally invasive culture, with much time for contemplation and communion.

But it was not a culture designed to particularly assert control or dominion, and it is a telling lesson about my species that this is one of the few cultures upon which an all-but-complete genocide has been visited in recorded history. The very idea of trying to learn more from the land than one was taught was so reprehensible that its adherants were forced to either change or die.

My wife, Emily, is not particularly spiritual, not much of a believer. About half of our conflicts for the more recent half of our marriage so far have evolved from some sort of discussion about this topic. I struggle with reconciling my love of Emily and my respect for her intellect with the fact that she not only doesn’t overtly believe in God, but finds the question to not be fundamental to existence on the planet. It should be noted that most of my friends feel this way as well, and while this also concerns me, one’s identity is far more wrapped up in a spouse than a friend. It feels like more of a reflection of oneself when one’s own life partner rejects something so fundamental to one’s own perspective.

And yet, Emily says that she feels something whenever she is isolated out in nature. That connecting with animals, with the basic forces of the natural world (wind, water, flora), simply being “out there” is enough to get her thinking about the bigger picture and often feeling some conviction that there is something greater afoot. She often remarks, either in nature or when confronted by amazing constructions of human hand that she finds less impressive, that she has never seen something made by humanity that can measure up to the lowliest product of nature. While this sometimes surprises me, grandson of an engineer who learned about bridge-building and to differentiate styles of columns before most anything, I think she has a telling route map to those who are otherwise disinclined to believe. What makes us (collectively, as a species) think we’re so great? Why do we even bother scarring the Earth’s surface with our contributions when nearly everything impressive is already there?

It’s a competition, in part, or even an offering as an aprentice. That we have something to contribute which can hope to allude to the grandeur and beauty of what we already found when we first opened our eyes. Look ma, no nature. I did it all by myself. Like a crude reflection of the world around us for taping on the refrigerator with a quietly pitying love. And just as high-quality, just as worthwhile in the face of the real thing, as a four-year-old’s lazy finger-painting.

Which is not to say that there’s nothing worthwhile in the Pyramids, the Internet, language, or art. But compared to the systems and understanding implicit in your average field, your average patch of non-garbage-infested ocean, your average rainforest? I think the metaphor flies.

Part of what I’ve never understood about the pitched battle between science and religion is the respect that each have for order. Science even calls the discoveries it makes about the universe’s order of operations “laws”, the same word religion uses to indicate its principles and guidelines for living. Science interprets the world around it with a presumption towards order, towards compacting what it finds into a series of laws that are never abridged, or at least never contravened except where another identifiable law overrides. And indeed this bears out – we hardly see gravity working some of the time in Iowa and then failing to at random times. But somehow, science is disinterested in a source of all this order and law and perfectly behaved matter, insisting that all order came from one moment of complete chaos. This theory itself fails to stand up to science’s own presumptions and policies of rigorous study – were it about anything other than something in impenetrable pre-history, it would be rejected on face. But because there’s no other explanation available without resorting to the three-letter no-no, it is offered as fact. How can science not feel that every additional law that holds up, every extra consistency and element of order that is found, how are these not evidence for God?

The only explanation is that religion has mangled God into seeming arbitrary, somehow the opposite of order. Because in its rejection of scientific practice, many religions have tried to ascribe unending magic and mystery to the figure of God. Mysterious ways, inexplicable methods, something that cannot and should not be known. This idea is just as dangerous and worthless as atheism. Perhaps moreso, for it rends people’s conception of the most important aspect of the universe from the reality of that aspect, thus nullifying it for the interpreter far more thoroughly than mere denial would. This resorting to inexplicability is just as senseless as resorting to the Big Bang – for wont of explanations, those who expect themselves to seamlessly explain everything appeal to something wholly inconsistent with the rest of their theory. And then wave the crutch of paradox or the rest of their intellect about to try to fend off naysayers.

The truth, of course, is that science can prove God with all of its order, and thus God is knowable. God is not mysterious and inaccessible and hopelessly oblique – God is in the systems that work every day to maintain life in its countless manifestations. God is the laws and rules and policies and structures that keep it all just so in ways that humanity fails laughably to imitate. How is it that humans have never made a computer that can’t break down, and yet life on the planet persists from well before humanity to (likely) long after it?

But perhaps this would rend the people who pursue science and religion from what they’re really after – power. If they were not maintaining some sort of supremacy in their ability to properly interpret God or the laws of the universe (truly the same thing), what use would there be in the respect they are accorded in our hierarchies? And if they did not do battle, how could they build their power by tearing each other’s down, by fighting for followers, by bringing the urgency of a following and extreme loyalty out because of the urgency of a false conflict? You think nation-states are the only ones that can raise a false-flag to ask unthinkable sacrifices of their minions? No, only by mystifying and cloaking the fundamental and simple realities of their alleged domains can scienctists and religious leaders exert their authority over those they attempt to mislead.

Perhaps not always with such a nefarious intent, I’ll grant. But certainly with that level of nefarious effect.

So what is to be done? How do we get to a place where people recognize the order in the universe as the signifier of something greater than themselves rather than the converse? How do we make peace between scientist and religious leader before it is too late to fish the garbage from the ocean, or worse, before it is after anyone cares about such things? Like all of the important realizations, it cannot be forced or likely even persuaded. It must be found within each person, of their own volition.

In the meantime, I spend time in the pasture, contemplating a day I have long dubbed Mortality Day, a reflection of a larger scientific/religious order I find in the planet’s course of movement through the same space every 365 days. A day laden with symbols (6), the memory of an unbelievably significant mass-murder (D-Day), the steady approach of a day when the planet is held in balanced opposition to itself. It is vital to neither dwell in the anticipation of death nor to ignore its daily possibility, but for me, setting aside a holiday of sorts to recognize the mortality of myself and others, has worked well. Eighteen years to the day after the death of my mother’s father, I continue this personal tradition, sometimes to the fear of those around me. But fear not for me in the context of death, for I have conviction that it would be merely a step, and probably ultimately a relieving one. I have not felt less that way than now for some time (about the relief), and yet I still can recognize that no matter how much I personally desire to cling to this planet and help it out, there are wonders beyond my imagining ahead, other planets and other learning to be had.

And whenever this faith wavers in the slightest, as it sometimes trembles like the trees in the wind, bending with the difficulty of a given circumstance or a cold black fear, I come back out to nature. And the wind itself reassures me, reminds me of what I know even in the worst challenging moments. How can you look upon the world, upon an “ecosystem” or a “valley” (whichever you prefer to call the same thing) and not be awed by the presence of God? How can you understand the depths of human understanding and think this is all for the purpose of one isolated planet, 60 or 80 years only?

Go out into the fields. Walk. And then come tell me it’s all random, happened for no reason, that there’s no purpose to anything we do or try or contemplate. Tell me all these rules are either figments or coincidence. And tell me that, somehow, the pursuit of a means of exchange or sheer hubris is worth destroying it all.

A plane tears through the sky, close enough to hear but not to see. Through the clouds that are darkening the sky and escalating the threat of rain. Rain that will not be enough to wash it all away.

In the dream, it was the fifth or seventh year of all of us coming together for some unofficial but very expected regular gathering, that was basically a big pajama party of everyone running around this crazy lodge and hanging out for a long weekend. And while the dream eventually insisted on becoming a bit of a nightmare (I got into some major argument with a stranger in the lobby restaurant, was threatened, and eventually had to leave in fear), the message of the heart of the dream was all too clear. I’m going to miss these people and I am adding to the tally of scattered people who I will be missing in the future. Deep in my heart, I just want us all to hang out somewhere relaxed and without responsibility where we can just be.

Life affords us few chances like this (my dream was clearly partially referencing my wedding, the last time when so many from so many walks of life were so assembled) and they are profoundly important to treasure. In the meantime, all we can do is say meaningful goodbyes and promise to not lose sight of these people. Ironically, of course, I attribute much of my trouble with staying in touch with people to working. But working has brought me more people. Such is the way of the world, the nature of life in an age that has advanced beyond the feudal farm.

This morning, waking from that dream and starting my typical morning routine that will be exceptional from here on out, everything really started to hit me broadside. This is it. After counting down and contemplating, planning a transition and carefully ensuring that my work goes on, it all ends today. Freedom and loss. Joy and sadness. The old emotional gobstopper, more moving for all I’ve been too busy to notice it creeping up on me. Glide is one of the very few places (college debate is the only other I can think of for sure) where I have felt thoroughly in my element, where I have felt at home and comfortable in the environment, among the people, navigating through its twists and turns. Where I feel I’ve “figured it out” and been able to capitalize on that to be successful, to make friends, to find a home. (And what does it say about this phenomenon that I’m returning to a college debate setting, coaching at Rutgers for the next two years?)

Walking away from that home is incredibly difficult. I don’t even realize how much so yet. The crazy place on the corner of Ellis and Taylor with the throngs of people in need has been my place. And starting tomorrow, it won’t be anymore. It will be a place that I was, where I loved and worked and tried. It will be a place of memory and the past. I am tearing up as I write this, for the second time in a young morning. This is life. And it’s all worth it, if only for the departures and losses that make one understand how important the pieces of one’s life really are.

This is it. This is it.

Give me a moment to hang on to, to hold forever, plunging into the future.

The next day, we got a phone call which revealed that the routine colonoscopy she’d been scheduled for had justified the practice of getting periodic colonoscopies. She had colon cancer.

We reeled. For a long time, we had little or no information – not because anyone was concealing anything, but because the information would simply take time to discern. How long had she had cancer? What stage was it in? Had it metastasized? Would she need chemo? What was the general outlook?

We chose not to share most of these questions and dilemmas with others outside the family, mostly because we daily dealt with how miserable it was to wonder and not to know. By roughly half-weekly installments from additional doctor’s visits, we got a few tiles to throw into our mostly empty mosaic. About two years. Probably not metastasized, but inconclusive. Surgery was the immediate course of action and then we’ll see.

More waiting. An effort to keep life on an even keel, to not cower in the wake of this visceral confronting of mortality and larger questions and something that, in cliché but nevertheless essential fashion, eviscerated all the importance that had illusorily appeared in prior concerns.

Emily went down to Fresno last Monday night.

A week ago today, her mother went into surgery to remove the cancer. The surgery took about 90 minutes and a third of her large intestine. And apparently, as a two-day wait revealed thereafter, all of the cancer. The biopsy was clean. There will be routine monitoring and she had to spend a week in the hospital, but it looks like not even a little chemo will be necessary. Early detection saves lives.

The relief at such a diagnosis is indescribable. Guarded, surely, because nothing is ever 100%, but guarded euphoria is euphoria nonetheless. The surgery recovery has gone smoothly and all indications are that something like normal life will be back very soon.

One month later.

As someone who years ago started predicting that everyone in my generation who makes it to sixty will get several cancers, representing massive increases in both the incidence and survival rates of the disease, I guess this whole experience shouldn’t be as stunning as it feels. But even for someone living on a sine curve, this kind of roller coaster is overwhelming. There may be no more widely feared word in the language than “cancer” (perhaps “terrorist”) – the word seems to connote a death sentence no matter what the options wind up being. And to get cancer without needing any chemo at all is transcendently remarkable.

Of course the initial fear was tempered with a little hope, just as the current relief is tempered with a little concern. Such is how quickly things change these days and how much of every emotion and experience seems to be mixed. It’s hard to find a more unassailably positive thing to cling to than a wildly successful cancer surgery, though.

May this relief last. And may all your cancers go as well.

I almost actually paused mid-stride, no doubt causing a chain-reaction of commuters walking inattentively ahead, already trying to dodge conical orange obstacles. But I proceeded, while craning my neck and trying to figure out if that had really been what it looked like.

Someone had taken the time and energy to place not one, but two cones over the top of a large coffee spill, but not to make any effort to clean it up.

Sure, I may have been watching it in a twenty-second window between placement of the cones and running to the janitorial closet to procure a mop and bucket. I considered sticking around atop the second escalator to determine whether this was an especially inopportune period of time or really a telling phenomenon. The fact that I considered such a dalliance would (or might) make me late for work (and I was about 10 minutes ahead of schedule) was sufficient answer in my own mind to the possibility that this was just a brief phenomenon.

Besides, wouldn’t one normally keep the cones and the mop in the same place?

It struck me, of course, that this whole incident was The Metaphor for the current state of things, at least in America and possibly on a larger scale. There’s only time, energy, inclination to throw up caution flags, to do the absolute minimum to warn people of the danger without the slightest effort at containment. You have been warned. But no one is even going to attempt to actually ameliorate the harms. Navigating is only safer by the slimmest of technical margins, in that you know that you’re navigating something dangerous.

Don’t fall.

———

Postscript — I write an awful lot about BART and situations that take place on the trains and in the stations. To the point where it’s sort of amazing that I have yet to create an official category for posts about BART. I should do that, but that would require retroactive categorization, which is sort of a gargantuan pain (especially when I’m so far behind on other, seemingly more meaningful projects).

It does make me wonder, though, about what I would have to post about if I didn’t take a train regularly. My ideal life involves writing full-time, but I’ve always been very aware of how crazily isolating that could become, to the point where inspiration and life events were much less available, thus diminishing much of the point of writing full-time in the first place. The paradox never troubles me so much as when I think about my observations on public transportation and how I would rarely be on it without this kind of routine. I think the summation remains that a full-time writing life would require enough small, enjoyable trappings of routine (e.g. clubs/activities, volunteering, etc.) as to keep a finger on the pulse of the “real world.”