Kelly, swimming with pigs in the Bahamas. Some floatings are more strange than others.
Ever since the day over ten years ago when I got the phone call that my biopsy was positive, I’ve carried the weight of uncertainty. No, weight’s the wrong word. It’s more like floating. The float of uncertainty. It’s always been there, of course. I don’t remember being born. I don’t know when I’ll die. In between, like all of us, I’m on a raft going somewhere, going nowhere in particular. You might say uncertainty and I have become friends. At least, we kind of understand each other.
We’ve worked together through poems and essays. We haven’t known what’s next, ever-ever. However, my attention has been well-trained through years of meditation (thank you dear Shinzen, dear Sokuzan). My brain is ready to travel in any direction. Not poised with weapon in hand, but curious.
Not a thread of preparation is involved. You know that feeling, staring into space, unable to grab hold of anything? Rebecca Solnit calls this the “spaciousness of uncertainty,” a realm of possibility. The only place possibility lives. The door is open. Actually, there’s no door.
You might say I’m afraid of the next election. Terrified, actually, as Michelle Obama said. I’m afraid of another world war. You might say I’m afraid my cancer might return. Or that Jerry might die first. Oh my, the list of fears, including my fear of not writing another worthy poem. There they are, the building blocks of fears like the teetering tower of Legos my grandson built many years ago, that reached almost to the ceiling. How amazing!
Back up. Are they all really fears? Maybe they’re simply uncertainties. One can cause the other, but not necessarily so. Truth is, I have a lot of back and leg pain, but I don’t have much in the way of fear.
It’s called Pig Beach. You can swim with the pigs. Kelly sent these. They take my mind off back pain.
The mystery of what’s wrong with my back has been solved. Next month I’m having a lamination and fusion of my lower spine. I’ve exhausted every alternative. I’ve read enough to feel relatively okay with this. There comes a time when anything is better than this pain. When I had my big cancer surgery, I think I went numb for a short while. That’s how I lived with the fear. This time—and I do equate those events, a little—I feel curious. Not afraid.
It's hard to feel afraid, taking these PILLS. These zombie-making opioids! Please excuse the floatingness of my thoughts. I am putting the top Legos on the tower, watching them waver. I am not at all myself.
To shift metaphors, my fingers are on the keys, their home base, but my mind hasn’t come along. I have to get this written by tomorrow. I promised you I would, every two weeks. I promised myself I would.
You might figure I’d read everything I can about this surgery, since Jerry’s back is the awful wreck it is, owing to surgeries. Necessary surgeries. And you’d be right. I don’t expect my surgery to be so dire. I expect to recover. To be “myself” again.
Taking inventory.
Meanwhile, I’m borrowing a walker. That’s the only way I can get around. The moral of this ridiculously disjointed blog post is that one does what’s necessary. I’ve been doing that all my life, through a raft (another usage) of physical and emotional troubles. Tragedies, sometimes, but they seem more like events, one after the other, to work through. My life so far has been really interesting! Painful, sad, joyful, fearful—the gamut. Hooray for the gamut! I picture myself lying in my final bed, taking inventory, if one does that. It’s been a roller coaster ride. It still is.
P.S. If you’d like to hear a more sane version of me, here’s a link to the Boise Radio show, hosted by Rebecca Evans, their “Writer to Writer Series.” https://soundcloud.com/radioboise/writer-to-writer-january-7-2024-fleda-brown?in=radioboise/sets/writer-to-writer&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing