Thanatos: coming for my companero Anthony, for his lover Janice, invading her brain with tumor, coming for her life.
I can't concentrate. I could say stuff about the presidential campaigns and all of that, or medical cannabis or nuclear power or our local goofs or even meditation or love or tolerance or consciousness or forgiveness, except when I try to formulate a thought, let alone a sentence, I remember how sick Janice is. Sick doesn't begin to describe her experience. After tens of thousands of dollars, ours and yours, she's in constant pain, and the tumor in her brain is starting to affect her vision.
When Janice first fell ill, I thought about coming to this site, to pan for dollars, because she and Anthony so needed them.
But there are so many people here, here on this site, who so need money; and money, it is so stretched, among the people here, it just didn't seem right.
But now Anthony, and Janice, they don't need money. They need something the people here can provide, without opening a pocketbook.
At the cancer clinic in Arizona I was with her most of the time. During our second stay I'd sometimes find something to do—often involving Thai food or a thrift store—while she was getting some therapy or other, but mostly I was with her. I just wanted to be there—and still do—although there's precious little I can do to help her and nothing I can do to make a big difference. I can't fix her. I've never felt more helpless than I do now. I can't do shit.
Well, not exactly. I can drive her around and carry stuff and run errands and wash dishes and make her alkalizing juice and flush her IV and tell her that I love her, so I do. Big deal. What she needs is a miracle. I'm working on that one.
Anthony shouldn't have to work on that miracle all by himself. It's hard, one human, pulling off a miracle, all by himself.
People here can do miracles. I know it. I've seen it. I'd like if they, you, could try one for Janice. And for Anthony.
Because she's not ready to go. And he's not ready to let her.
Anthony and I, we've worked for the same newspaper. But that is not our bond. Our bond is this:
We exchanged business cards, and on hers [Janice] wrote “Call me anytime.” For two months I looked at that every day on my cork board at work, knowing that calling her wasn’t gonna be like calling anybody else.
That is exactly what happened with me. When my love arrived, I, like Anthony, for two full months, was a chickenshit. Sat in silence. Knowing that if I responded, I would be committing all of my life, to all of a woman, all and far beyond and around me. I would be committing, all of my life, just like
The Fool, to all of my life. To where it should be.
Like Anthony, eventually i uncurled out of my quivering little boy-ball. Did it. Responded. Reached, back, out. And so: am complete.
And so: here we I.
from far, from eve and morning
and yon twelve-winded sky,
the stuff of life to knit me
blew hither: here am I
now: for a breath I tarry
nor yet disperse apart
take my hand quick and tell me
what have you in your heart
I know what I would feel like, if my lover were where Janice is.
I don't ever want to feel that.
And so I don't want Anthony, or any other human being, to feel that.
I want a miracle.
I want a miracle.
So let it be written.
So let it be done.
See—good, strong, powerful, healing people—what you can do.
I don't pay much attention to politics anymore. I don't care who wins the presidential election. Politics is just a story. Reality is at home.