saison en enfer

one night, i sat beauty on my knees
and i found her bitter
and i hurt her
(rimbaud)


well, as this annus horribilius (not to be confused with anus horribilus, and don't even get started with "rim"baud...) draws to a shuddering, cranking, lurching, spastic, drool, crap and poison infused close, it is time to reflect on what has not gone wrong this year. Ooops, wait, i think it's too soon for that. After all, we've still got 29 more days in the year, so i'd better wait before i count my cancer-free cells. At any rate, i have got to say that the past couple of weeks since the end of chemo have not been the pleasant garden path that i though i deserved to walk now, after enduring such unpleasantude, and, i have been quite surprised and displeased to find that i am now vulnerable, and seemingly doubly so, to all the nasty viscissitudes of "real" as in employed and 21st century and eastern seabord, life.

Thusly, I am tired, and crazed, and feeling a bit like a bull in the ring after the picadors get thru with him, tormented, maddened and freaked by the constant parade of sharp things coming at me, both literally (needles and surgery) and figuratively (i think i'm gonna get fired. now how does that look? a top 5% law student who can't keep a job? ah me.) I wonder, and keep wondering, what the hell went wrong? Then I remembered. All through chemo I thought, oh well, I can endure this because, after chemo i will get back to normal. Yes, it became my internal mantra. I will get back to normal. Things will get back to normal. The world will get back to normal.

Now I realize that "normal" for me is dark and dismal, I am congenitally that way. Did i really think cancer would change that? Sheesh if it did, i'd have signed up long ago. Well it didn't.

Cancer does change one thing tho. It gives one a sense of urgency that is hard to take. I mean, i've always felt a sort of internal push to keep moving, but now, when, by rights i should be settling down, now, i feel it more and more. There's so much to know, so much to do, so many things to put right, so many things to fuck up royally. And i'm on borrowed time. I mean, i've been shot, i've had pneumonia, and i've had cancer. I'm definitely on borrowed time here. I'm not supposed to even BE here.

So, no, i will not get back to normal. I will continue to burn inside for something, for some way to help, some way to love this poor world... and I'll probably continue to move towards whatever it is, stumbling, hobbling, lurching, ...till death finally does catch me...

Let's hope that's not for a while yet...