Absurdity Gardening.
IT’S CLOWN WORLD OUT THERE GOING TO HELL ON A GREASED RAIL. I want more and more to do what Hunter did, buy some land and fuck off up a mountain while the world burns. I increasingly feel less a part of things all the time; perhaps a childhood struggle exacerbated by an incomprehensible zeitgeist. People tell me the world needs my gonzo spirit, but I always have a hard time taking that notion seriously, because no one seems to listen. So many people just nod, smile a shit-eating grin, and tell me I make a good case moments before ploughing headlong into the concrete barrier at 90mph. Recently, I have allowed myself the freedom to write candidly here and there, even though when I started this project I swore I would avoid that style, lest I degenerate to the "dear diary" musings that were fashionable in the bad old days of Livejournal 20 years ago. There exists a danger in thinking of writing as product, although admitting to a certain embarrassment at the candid tone present in these writings of late, a return to form is right around the corner with IV:Anima / Animus and a new Memoir & Motif on the near horizon, if I can keep my focus.
My commitment to consistency and quality herein is, to an extent, influenced by a life-long perfectionism. There is a degree to which a pursuit of quality in everything is healthy–I value being tidy and well-presented, however as I came to realise in the disquieting hours after publishing Naked, my intense perfectionism also exists as a trauma response: To perfect as a verb (lit. per-fect) denotes a process, a thing in a state of transition to completion, whereas to say perfect as a noun (lit. per-fect) is to connect a present, completed state of a thing with a past process. "Perfect" is a Janus word; any word with two meanings that seem inherently contradictory. Named for the two-faced Roman God Janus who guarded doorways, transitions between spaces and states, beginnings and endings (and by association, birth and death–life itself being a transitionary period between opposing states) Janus words encapsulate our intrinsic recognition of contradiction permeating our experience of the world.
What of perfectionism as a trauma response? To attain perfection as a noun, a state of completion brought about by following a process, is an assurance of quality bestowed by external forces. It's the ultimate hedge against rejection by the tribe. Tribal inclusion is deeply tied into our survival instincts, humans lacking the teeth, claws and brute strength of other animals. Without the tribe's acceptance we don't "make it." Hence the tremendous pressure in many Human Cultures 1 to "make it" whatever that means by an arbitrary expiry date–determined by unseen yet pervasive forces; a sort of collective madness that sees people scrambling after status and acclaim, often at the expense of their own natural inclinations. Who among us hasn't thought, "I have to make it by 25, 35, or it'll never happen for me!" What is it and why is it so important? I have passed both arbitrary benchmarks and have yet to make it, assuming I can even tell you what it is. If I had to guess it is one of those things you can only identify when you have it. Arising out of a sense of inceptive recognition that you are in alignment with something that feels distinct from any other feeling in its Moirai. For me the dream was to capture the light, harness it to weave stories, to be a guardian of what passes for the mythical in this postmodern morass: Cinema. Now I shun the owners of the world, while I pry my dreams from their lies of light.
The past few days have been bewildering and writing is where I go to reflect in outré times. The title Absurdity Gardening came to me while on the phone with Phoebe. She was describing a recent realisation of her subconscious magnetic attraction to markers of past relational cycles manifested in people; completely aware of the absurdity of it all, yet finding the fruit succulent and scrumptious nonetheless. Absurdity accumulates in my own life completely differently; a sense of entanglement in wicker synchronicity–Vera is diagnosed with the same cancer that I have (adenocarcinoma) on the exact same day that I was, one year apart, one the same day her father passed away from cancer. Perhaps there is a mathematician reading who can calculate the statistical probability of that occurrence. For now, suffice it to say: Chance has its place, but that place isn't here now. I'm just humbled to be in a position to help. Whatever is calling me forth to do thus, I heed its words.
Vera's diagnostic procedure went, apparently, like clockwork. The medical aspects of managing and treating cancer do have an aspect of the mechanical. There is a bureaucratic systemisation present in the experience that can be profoundly impersonal; Every cancer diagnosis has its pamphlet, its protocol, its prognostication. You are assessed, confronted with a mountain of disclaimers and legal releases cobbled together by a platoon of lawyers in some far-flung boardroom, then released back into the world, with the weight of an 800lb gorilla on your back–if you're lucky. Questions of mortality, logistics, and relationship abound. Even the mundane, grocery shopping, showering, talking with friends… all tainted by an unassailable guarantee of mortality, twiddling his long, cold fingers in your periphery. It's the very worst variety of certainty. Stage 1B Adenocarcinoma in a 34 year old woman; sounds rather fortunate to the layman, except that Adenocarcinoma is an extremely aggressive form of cancer and the treatment she faces–a hysterectomy and bilateral salpingectomy followed, probably by radiation–is roughly equivalent to what someone with Stage IV Adenocarcinoma such as myself would face. Stage 1b. A 4cm tumour in her female organ. A 4cm mass is equivalent to four-million cancer cells. They caught it early. Does she consider herself lucky? Compared to what? In roughly three weeks, in a room full of perfect strangers, she will be opened up like a sardine can and her Uterus will be removed. She has the good fortune of having the surgery performed by human hands, instead of the customary robotics. To me it sounds like anything but luck.
Helping Vera navigate her diagnosis has set me near-at-hand to my own. I'm reliving it again beat-for-beat, almost in real-time and to the day from where I was last December. In a haze of causality, vis-à-vis the gelid specter of my own mortality, the world and everyone in it fell away. I missed so many opportunities to fulfill E.M. Forster's urgings, "only connect!" My old professor and mentor Phil Solomon slipped away and yesterday I became aware that another friend of mine, Eryn Domke Murrie, died last year while I was in hospital recovering from a massive haemorrhage caused by my tumour. One of a short list of people in the local industry who really went to bat for me over the years, I remember Eryn always complimenting me on my attire, or putting me forward for key roles at the Agency we both worked for. While Brad and his sycophants did their best to pee in my cornflakes, Eryn was the one true ally I had in my first years here. She was alive and well in Early December of 2018, then suddenly gone–as if some arcane hand of God switched out a light. I don't know the circumstances of her passing. I may never know. It haunts me today, the finality of it all, her cremated remains apparently in some cemetery in Webster, New York where I drove past in a different life, oblivious to the notion that, in some possible future, I would know someone interred there. I wrote to Phoebe and Vera:
I found this out when I wished her a happy birthday and some chap pointed it out. It’s a testament to the degree to which, when dealing with the exigencies of life—especially cancer, we can grow myopic in our focus. She had been very supportive of me at the agency and in the years since, now she’s just gone. Also disturbing is that none of our mutual associates ever mentioned it or told me; probably owing to the fact that we rely so much on social media it’s easy to assume I’d be aware. There’s a lesson in that somewhere. I’m not on social media much—for my health, so that won’t change, but makes me wonder just how frequent an occurrence this could be going forward. Also with regards to social bonds, maintaining them without relying on the trap of digital convenience. A lot to sit with. One of the last memories I have of her is her crying in the stairwell, she’d just been fired. I held her and she cried her guts out on my shirt. I was fired the next day. Life is strange.
Things keep happening. I saw something last night I have never seen before in my 37 years of life: My Dad, a 68 year-old bear of a man, sobbing alone in the dark. Even recovering from emergency spinal surgery, where ten-inches of vertebrae were removed from his back in mid-February of 2018, he never let a solitary tear loose in front of me. Divorce. A word often bandied about in my childhood; a deterrence tactic, mutually assured destruction keeping both marital superpowers in-line. This time, they really mean business. I have no other family, my attempts to start one of my own frustrated by material shortcomings, my lack of social viability. I’m just trying to survive cancer, get through treatment and recurrences, recover, rebuild a life worth living. I didn't force myself to endure treatment–when I could have surrendered to the relief of death's embrace at any time–just to return to a life devoid of meaning. I can't help but want something to hold on to, some star to navigate by; whether a person, thing, or state-of-being. Risky business even at the best of times. Recalling Thufir Hawat's dictum, "The first step in evading a trap, is being aware of its existence," If I am setting a trap for myself, how can I not be aware of its existence?
Time was I was clamoring for another who was going through what I was going through–my friends were invaluable, but I had no one to sit with me in those long days of chemo, or hold my trembling hand after weeks of radiation. I hid so much of the reality from others. No one witnessed the grim reality of it all; the falls, the pain, the blood, my dying skin, Diarrhea all over the bathroom floor at 2:00 am. Not arising from a desire to protect my dignity, I just didn't want to frighten any one. Justine may as well have been on another planet in the weeks leading up to her quiet departure from my life. It came down that my friend Mar was facing a similar situation; loss of self-sufficiency, brushes with death, constant pain and bodily deterioration. We talk constantly, helping each other feel less alone with the beasts of our respective diseases. Mar flew back to LA last night, her beast identified (Lupus) and now it can be battled. I wish I hadn't taken her stay in Portland for granted, dragged myself out of my hermit's hideaway to walk in the park with her just once. Solitude is my vice; perhaps not as immediately deadly as Heroin, but a slow killer of the spirit nonetheless.
Penciled in for 7 January 2020, a follow up on my recent MRI may or may not impact my choices in the light of these new goings on. All I can do for now is sit in uncertainty, trying to remain calm and productive, planning, me and my shadow keeping the yawl afloat before the wind, on the truest course I can, questing for a distant lighthouse.
1. It has become fashionable to cite Western Culture as the Great Satan responsible for all the world's problems. While I give credit where credit it due, I deliberately refrain from placing the blame entirely on the shoulders of Western Culture as some things are universal Human problems. Status-seeking and materialism are certainly not behaviours limited to The West. Philosophers such as Neil Kramer postulate there could exist a pervasive "Imperial Culture" wherein an elite, parasitic power-structure "farms" human material/hierarchical nature for power and treasure; manifestly weaponising a consumerist mindset to drive populations towards certain mass behaviours, but it’s reasonable to assert that, in the digital age, such an Imperial Culture would not limit itself to any single geographic or economic region.