My Wobbly Bicycle, 4

December 26 and coasting. My appointment with the surgeon is Jan. 3. I suppose we’ll start chemo soon after that. Meanwhile, my poor body is recovering from the sudden extraction of its heretofore valuable parts. I still want a nap in the afternoons, but I can walk or stay on the treadmill for 30 minutes, no problem.Susan Sontag, in her book, Illness as Metaphor, railed against the “blame the victim” idea that our illnesses “fit” our psychology, that our repressions make themselves known in the body in appropriate areas. She insisted that it’s all straight physiology, nothing to do with our minds. I knew her a little before her cancer and I can see why she wanted to say that. It does seem natural for us to want to find reasons. If we didn’t look for reasons, we would have no effective drugs, no science at all.  But reasons are found by looking at select blocks of information. It isn’t possible to see everything at once, as it’s all interacting. Heisenberg demonstrated that as soon as we think we’ve “found” something, we’ve skewed the evidence.What if I knew “why” I have this cancer? I can look back: I’ve had a very stressful life, but the last 20 years have been pretty wonderful. I’ve done some serious psychotherapy in the past: I don’t think I’m repressed. I’ve had a steady and dedicated meditation practice for over 25 years. I’m a poster child of eating well and living well.I will never know why I have this cancer any more than I will know why I have an allergy to leaf mold. I’m a conglomeration of causes and conditions from the near- and long-past, as well as the present.I can’t see this cancer, I can’t smell it or taste it. I have no symptoms. I only know it’s there because machines have told my doctors this is the case.  It may be all gone, along with my various organs, but it’s doubtful, since it was found in the lymph nodes. Likely there are stray cells waiting to bloom and spread if they aren’t nuked.Actually, they’re like most other things. I can’t see any of the x’s and o’s that turn my tapping into words on the page. I can’t see germs or love or oxygen or gravity or the choral music I’m listening to, or what my face looks like to others.Ted Kooser, our former U.S. poet laureate, is one of my touchstones for weathering the storm. He wrote to me, “When my doctor told me that cancer had spread to the lymph nodes . . . .he said, ‘You are about to enter one of the great life-affirming experiences,’ and he was right. You'll come through your chemo more in love with life than you can even imagine right now.”Okay, Ted.Ted wrote a series of poems as post cards to Jim Harrison as Ted was recovering from his chemo. The book is  Winter Morning Walks (Carnegie-Mellon U. Press, 2000). Here’s one poem I feel as if I’m writing, myself, at the moment.Feb 21   Sunny and ClearFate, here I stand, hat in hand,in my fifty-ninth year,a man of able body and a merry spirit.I’ll take whatever work you have.     .