My surgery was one year ago this morning. The last 365 days have been full of fear and wonder, discomfort and joy. I have been transformed, both inside and out. If the self of that day met the self of today, we would not recognize each other.
That's not entirely true. Some things remain the same. I am still driven to do too much. I am still, I think, basically me. But sometimes I wonder. I have a new impatience, a new bite to my thoughts. My measure of everything is whether it will waste my time or not. Time is everything to me these days. I mark my days between mammograms and thyroid tests as the sweet spots in which life must be lived to the fullest. I don't know when the party will end, but -- for a long while at least -- I suspect I will remember the way that a single doctor's visit turned everything upside down. Point to point, mammogram to mammogram, I now live, six months at a time.
What wastes my time varies. Certainly I'm spending huge chunks of it with the opera company these days. Unpaid, as usual, and on projects that I am firmly convinced will bear fruit but, of course, are not guaranteed. Still, I'm full bore on these things. Working on grants, writing a new show. I am working 14 hours a day these days, either at the day job or at home, writing, writing, writing. It's a good thing that's what I do, I think, as I tackle whatever the next project is. This would sure be a drag if I hated to write.
Weeknights for the rest of the month are grant nights. Weekends are for the show. Last weekend I holed up in an Embassy Suites in El Segundo and did nothing but breathe, eat, and write Gilbert and Sullivan. This weekend I may do it again. I take my breaks at work scanning Expedia and weighing the costs and benefits of pure solitude. The Embassy Suites tour... where for less than $200, I can buy myself quiet, a desktop, and a bowl of rather gluey oatmeal. How much am I willing to spend for the luxury to think nothing but my own thoughts for 24 hours? A lot, as it turns out.
I have not yet hit my stride. I have an intense amount of inner energy, which is contained in a still somewhat fragile exterior. By this I mean I'm not Ironman on the outside, even though I feel like him on the inside. The fragility is rapidly falling away (in all areas except work where I fatigue rapidly and often). Outside of the office I am riding my bike more and more miles, with increasing elevations, and feeling stronger daily. Yesterday I brought home my first set of cleated shoes, and am both excited and dismayed at the prospect of learning (basically) how to re-learn to ride my bike. I spent a half hour by the washing machine, propped up, just clipping in and out, fifty times each side, hoping to build up the muscle memory so I don't topple over the second I get on the road.
So yes, the fragility is falling away, at least in terms of physical stamina. But I do not suffer fools gladly these days. Irritation factors are high. (I asked my oncologist: "Is it the tamoxifen, or is everyone in the world just basically really annoying?") Give me something meaningful to do, or talk about, or watch, or enjoy... and I'm fine. But don't waste my time. I have too many things I want to do, whether it's just sleep or ride the bike, or continue with the myriad projects. I don't have time to kill these days. I want to be out there breathing the air, stretching my body, engaging my brain with creative and productive thoughts.
Quite a year. Transformative. Being back in the trenches is both exhilarating and frustrating. I deeply want and need six more hours to each day. I deeply want and need my brain to be able to relax into the new groove enough to enable me to find the pause button a bit more frequently. Biking is the thing that keeps me settled down, the anxiety at bay. It is a form of active meditation that forces focus on the present moment. When I'm done with a ride I'm in my body and mind and soul again fully. Ready to tackle the projects I've set out for myself once again.
To the Kathy of 4/14/14, I send my greetings and my best wishes. I am glad we made it through. I would not want to be you again, for anything. But it was a good year in so many ways, laced through with such grace and laughter and compassion and love. I am deeply and tearfully grateful to be on this side of that year... and at the same time I would not trade it for anything.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Beyond Redondo
In the mid-eighties I did a lot of bike riding. I was in great shape, loved the exercise, and it made me oh so happy.
That was awhile ago. But I'm getting my juice back. I'm at the same weight I was back then, I'm gradually building up my miles and endurance, and it still makes me oh so very happy.
One of the greatest things about LA is the Santa Monica bike path. If you could vaporize the yahoos with their selfies and their three abreast entitlement issues, it would be the best thing ever, anywhere. (And speaking of entitlement issues. Like, why does being a cute young female absolutely grant you total dispensation to ride, slowly, down the middle of the bike lane, sometimes veering over into oncoming cyclists, sometimes veering back in front of approaching cyclists, always looking so terribly perfect and expressionless? With your little hat and your postage stamp little shorts and your hair blowing in the wind just so. It's always the sweet young things, sometimes riding with some dumb young hunk... and... they just ride in the middle of the road. Like it's their right. Their god damn right.)
Where were we? Oh, vaporizing. Did I mention there are a lot more stupid people these days than there were thirty years ago? For starters, there were no smart phones that you could use to capture yourself riding along the bike path with (while riding, of course... I want to make it absolutely clear that the big deal out there these days is riding, sometimes with all of your friends, through the middle of Venice, with the breakdancers on one side and the body builders on the other, and the smell of pot in the air, three people abreast on both sides of the path, sand under the wheels, Asian jersey clad bombers whipsawing through the crowd at 17 MPH, while you hold up your phone so you can take a picture of you and everyone else right before everyone collapses in a pile of gears and bike chains and water bottles and iPhones right there on Muscle Beach. Seriously people?)
Let's try this again.
One of the greatest things about LA is the Santa Monica bike path. Going south, surfers on the right, dotting the waves like dolphins. The smoke stacks on the left, tall and eerie and wonderful. Planes from LAX casting rippling shadows over parked cars and sand berms as they head out to see the world, probably drenching us all in exhaust particulates, but who cares because the beach weaves a magical timeless spell over all who visit, harkening back to when we were kids and you could immerse yourself in an endless afternoon of bliss with just a plastic bucket and a shovel. The din of voices and laughter and crashing surf, the tang of salt in the breeze, the radiating heat of the sand... who could possibly ever feel old at the beach?
Riding through the beach scene, dodging sunbathers and strollers, zipping past piers and through parking structures, keeping pace with the surfers catching their long breaks... it's pretty much perfect. And today I found out something that made it even more perfect than I remembered it.
The top of the path is north of Santa Monica. A usual used to go from Santa Monica just across from the California Incline, down through the Venice boardwalk, up Washington to the Marina, through the parking lots of the Marina and then up the spine of the breakwater. You can stop and rest on the bridge that spans Ballona Creek just sound of the entry point to the Marina, and smell the guano on the rocks, released by the sun's heat, an intensely specific odor to a very unique spot in the world.
In the old days I would turn around there most of the time, and make it a 15 mile loop. Occasionally, though, I would keep going and go all the way down to the terminus of the bike path at Redondo Beach. Dockweiller State Beach, Manhanttan Beach, Hermosa, and then Redondo. At Redondo I'd turn around at the parking lot and then slog back up north, into the afternoon headwind, watching the drum circles form in the park by Santa Monica as the sun started to set.
Today I went back to Redondo, and discovered the bike path had been extended way past the parking lot, at least a mile past where I used to turn around. It opened up in front of me like a delightful new portal, beckoning me to vistas never seen before.
This blog came to me then, and it really is a very simple point I'm trying to make. Things change. Things always change. But sometimes you can visit your past and make it your present once again. And sometimes when you revisit something that you did many years ago, the addition of time and experience makes it so much more sweeter, or so much more special, or so so much more precious.
All things change. Even in the timelessness of the beach, technology has brought great changes such as iPhones and selfies and pileups of very expensive bicycles. But sometimes things change for the better, too. Sometimes you find things you never found before. And sometimes the thing you've remembered has stayed exactly the same but you have changed, and the world is a whole new place as a result.
That was awhile ago. But I'm getting my juice back. I'm at the same weight I was back then, I'm gradually building up my miles and endurance, and it still makes me oh so very happy.
One of the greatest things about LA is the Santa Monica bike path. If you could vaporize the yahoos with their selfies and their three abreast entitlement issues, it would be the best thing ever, anywhere. (And speaking of entitlement issues. Like, why does being a cute young female absolutely grant you total dispensation to ride, slowly, down the middle of the bike lane, sometimes veering over into oncoming cyclists, sometimes veering back in front of approaching cyclists, always looking so terribly perfect and expressionless? With your little hat and your postage stamp little shorts and your hair blowing in the wind just so. It's always the sweet young things, sometimes riding with some dumb young hunk... and... they just ride in the middle of the road. Like it's their right. Their god damn right.)
Where were we? Oh, vaporizing. Did I mention there are a lot more stupid people these days than there were thirty years ago? For starters, there were no smart phones that you could use to capture yourself riding along the bike path with (while riding, of course... I want to make it absolutely clear that the big deal out there these days is riding, sometimes with all of your friends, through the middle of Venice, with the breakdancers on one side and the body builders on the other, and the smell of pot in the air, three people abreast on both sides of the path, sand under the wheels, Asian jersey clad bombers whipsawing through the crowd at 17 MPH, while you hold up your phone so you can take a picture of you and everyone else right before everyone collapses in a pile of gears and bike chains and water bottles and iPhones right there on Muscle Beach. Seriously people?)
Let's try this again.
One of the greatest things about LA is the Santa Monica bike path. Going south, surfers on the right, dotting the waves like dolphins. The smoke stacks on the left, tall and eerie and wonderful. Planes from LAX casting rippling shadows over parked cars and sand berms as they head out to see the world, probably drenching us all in exhaust particulates, but who cares because the beach weaves a magical timeless spell over all who visit, harkening back to when we were kids and you could immerse yourself in an endless afternoon of bliss with just a plastic bucket and a shovel. The din of voices and laughter and crashing surf, the tang of salt in the breeze, the radiating heat of the sand... who could possibly ever feel old at the beach?
Riding through the beach scene, dodging sunbathers and strollers, zipping past piers and through parking structures, keeping pace with the surfers catching their long breaks... it's pretty much perfect. And today I found out something that made it even more perfect than I remembered it.
The top of the path is north of Santa Monica. A usual used to go from Santa Monica just across from the California Incline, down through the Venice boardwalk, up Washington to the Marina, through the parking lots of the Marina and then up the spine of the breakwater. You can stop and rest on the bridge that spans Ballona Creek just sound of the entry point to the Marina, and smell the guano on the rocks, released by the sun's heat, an intensely specific odor to a very unique spot in the world.
In the old days I would turn around there most of the time, and make it a 15 mile loop. Occasionally, though, I would keep going and go all the way down to the terminus of the bike path at Redondo Beach. Dockweiller State Beach, Manhanttan Beach, Hermosa, and then Redondo. At Redondo I'd turn around at the parking lot and then slog back up north, into the afternoon headwind, watching the drum circles form in the park by Santa Monica as the sun started to set.
Today I went back to Redondo, and discovered the bike path had been extended way past the parking lot, at least a mile past where I used to turn around. It opened up in front of me like a delightful new portal, beckoning me to vistas never seen before.
This blog came to me then, and it really is a very simple point I'm trying to make. Things change. Things always change. But sometimes you can visit your past and make it your present once again. And sometimes when you revisit something that you did many years ago, the addition of time and experience makes it so much more sweeter, or so much more special, or so so much more precious.
All things change. Even in the timelessness of the beach, technology has brought great changes such as iPhones and selfies and pileups of very expensive bicycles. But sometimes things change for the better, too. Sometimes you find things you never found before. And sometimes the thing you've remembered has stayed exactly the same but you have changed, and the world is a whole new place as a result.
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