Everything Must Go

Picture the event horizon on a black hole, suckin in events, like solar implosions, people (your favorite politicians) objects (the contents of the garage and now you never have to clean it out!) and light.  Everything gets sucked in.  It's perfect equality.  Death is.

I've been snuggling up to this lately.  

When I did green reports on the air I expounded a time or two upon the theme that you never really throw anything away because there is no away. Not in this tiny, closed planetary system. 

But there is an away.  And suddenly it's comforting to me.  There has to be an away.  Things, events, energy, can't just clog up the universal drain.  They have to go away.  We have to go away.  It's one duty of existence.  It's one of the conditions of existence itself (I know, I know, this is one raggedy overused concept).  

But it is the truth for everything and everyone.  That's what made the event horizon seem so snuggly compared to the maw that knows my name; because the event horizon knows more than just my name; everyone's name is on there, and everythings name.  Every noun, and even every verb.  Every world.  Every era.  Every solar system.  Every event.  It alll gets sucked in because we allll gotta go.  

Not just me.  All on my own.

Not even.

And it's just a natural thing that's going to happen.  

Doesn't mean I won't fight and scrap for more time to embarass myself further with more creative projects and love my people as much as I can while I'm here.  But when I move off out of here, it won't be into a hostile, lonely nothingness.  It will be away to the amazing swirly off-ramp where everyone else has gone, and will go.

We must.  So we're not in charge of that. 

So.  I'm not alone, and I'm not responsible for this.

Ahhhhhhhhhh.  

Snuggly. 

  

Finally We Like You!

I've lost fifty pounds since January.  It's not deliberate; it's not even good.  My oncologist takes an anxious tone when I step off the scale and it still makes me laugh, because like most First World women, or even people, for my entire life I've stepped off to very different sounds of disapproval.

Watching the weight struggle from this new perspective is fascinating.  I had never noticed how much of it was concentrated on the magical Cinderella reveal.  Reality TV is rife with it.  The curtains pull back....glitter falls from the rafters, the chimes tinkle.....you walk proudly out, obediently transformed and probably hungry, aaand.....Finally We Like You!

It never struck me exactly how sick the whole thing really is.  Not the weight thing.  Weight, food....right now to me they are practically meaningless to me. I've mostly lost my taste for food. I have no appetite.  I have to keep track of chemo, my other meds, the side effects of both, my Optune machine and MRIs and appointments wih onoloists and surgeons, and the intracacies of insurance paperwork.  I'm busy staying alive.  My size has little to do with that. I do know that the parading of the "improved" self for approval is codependent beggery.  I know because I've done it, on the fucking radio.  But I got more than approval.  I got several thousands of dollars that floated me for well over a year when I was fired, stretching my unemployment. At the time my younger boss had me in the cross-hairs with his oft-touted philosophy that "nodody over 40 belongs in radio".  I wasn't long for that world and I knew it, so I sold my dignity up the river on a leaky raft.  I don't regret it, because it helped me to survive.  My inhalers, which I  cannot breathe without, had gone up to three hundred dollars a month out of pocket.  I sold my dignity for air. Worse trades have been made.  And bad trades teach you a lot.  They teach you to appreciate people who actually struggle.  It was shortly after this that I  fell in love with Loretta Lynne's spoken word masterpiece  Little Red Shoes.

Cancer casts long shadows and contrasts.  But they're not all horror-movie shadows, Some are just in nice, clear black-and-white relief so you can really see the contrasts.

The contrast between fighting for your life by trying to order your chemo from an indifferent bureaucrat and agonizing over a gain of three pounds and how that will make me look is sharp and clear for me right about now. 

As is the sickness. Because the illusion is that the overeating, the over weightness, is the sickness.  The real sickness is in the crowd cheering or booing someone about their worthiness depending on a few pounds.  The real sickness is not in us.  It's in what we choose to believe about judging other people and having the right to judge other people.  That's the sickness we need to be looking at.

The Big Pinata

 I've had this discussion often with my friend Lev, also my storytelling mentor.  He's a legend in the art, known for over 30 years as Grandbear.  Lev has had Parkinson's for several years and as he told me, he could feel himself "being pulled slowly into the dark" but he's noticed, as I have, that when a true crisis hits your life, a shower of little blessings falls around you.

I've been too supersitious to officially write a thank you note to cancer for giving me early retirement, relative financial ease (after making the out-of pocket maximum my insurance actually did pay out for everything with my critical illness claim and short and long-term claims) and support.  I never dreamed of the kind of support you get from palliative care, but that says nothing of the kind my friends have shown, like JD, who stayed with us for a month after my surgery and talked me off every proverbial ledge, and who has always been in touch since and Kimmy, who has called me EVERY DAY to just yack and BE THERE, which is thee most important way to show up, by the way, to literally just show up), my neighbor, Deb, who's been amazing company and support, and most of all Jim, my Emotional Support Viking, who's support is -*ahem* none of your damned business.  I'm leaning on all my flying buttresses of support like a billion-ton mideaval cathedral.  Also, when it comes to a just barely finished raggedy little novella, I've got ridiculous support behind that, too.  And all of this support is given casually, warmly, with shrugs and I love yous.

When the universe breaks The Big Pinata over your head, the little gifts shower around you like reduced-price candy, but treat each crackly little treasure as a gem wrapped in cellophane; each is precious, even if packaged as common.

Among Us

Take heed of the illustration, because it was created by my friend Sarah Walker, and because it says everything I can't say.  Cue Grace Slick's jackhammer vibrato:  "Feed Your Hea-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-d-!"

And, in the interest of saving us both a thousand words, please watch this video:

Annie's experience

The only clinical trials being held presently are in Connecticut, Holland and Denmark, so I'm on my own.  But I'm good at that.   Plus I live in a very safe, harmonious home environment with my loving and indulgent Emotional Support Viking.  To my great fortune, there is also a growing number of therapists who specialize in psychedellic therapy.  The science is also piling up. on the side of the fungus.

I'm grateful to my fellow Colorodans who voted on the measure, like I did, to decriminalize the fungus (which shall henceorth be calld the medicine) we're discussing here.

Speaking of, it's not legal.  Just decriminalized.  If you use it responsibly, it's not dangerous.  But of course anything can be dangerous if you're wreckless or stupid. 

If you're naturally paranoid like me, you use a scale and you journal meticulously.  You also source from someone who loves you and has your best interests at heart (nope, I'm never telling.  Not really legal, remember?).  

I plan to be an outright advocate for this ancient, natural medicine that can give people so much comfort and solace.  I can tell you when you realize you're terminal, that cold maw opens at your feet, and it knows your name, and there isn't any escape, and not much comfort or solace to be found.  What I noticed after my first microdose (.010 grams, or 1 tenth of one gram) was a lifting of both depression and anxiety in the days following.  However, during the the hours dosing, there was a concentrated processing of dark material that can be very challenging if you haven't done that kind of work before.  I'm a therapy veteran; I never bought a house, but I've easily spent a mortgage on therapy.  I've done a lot of work in that arena, so I've got the chops to cope with the dense waves of negativity, which are common in micro and moderate dosing, but you get the payback in the following days when the little joy bombs hit and you find yourself in a dopamine haze, watching your cat's whiskers twitching in the morning breeze with a near-worshipful euphoria as you sip your coffee.  Some of us are appreciation-prone anyway, especially when it comes to the people and animals we love, but it' nice to have a reduction in the dark intrusive thoughts that can really wreck those moments, and the medicine to give that kind of lift to the general perspective.

People need comfort and solace, and deserve qualiy of life while they still have life.  So get ready to hear from the caterpillar with the hookah.  I NEVER thought that would be me, the big lightweight who gets  a migraine from more than one beer.

The first time I micro-dosed,  I carefully weighed 0.10 grams (which henceforth will be referred to as "gs") as I listened to a playlist of select world fusion and meditated deep.  

I noticed nothing that day, which is not uncommon, except release of many uncomfortable feelings including shame, grief, loss, sadness and regret; this is also common with lower and moderate doses.

I did realize that I woke up in a better mood the next day, and several days afterward. The anxiety and depression had moved off like wrung-out storm clouds.

I had my sites on a Big Dose in my future;  I was hoping for transcendance, or the lift and 180 degree turn, or shift, in world view, that the lady in that video got.