Me and Fernand Leger: Pre and Post diagnosis of CLL

November 2011: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

March 2005: MOMA, NYC,NY

The bottom picture was taken when my son Ben and I were on the east coast looking at colleges, and well before my cancer was even a glint in my eye

The second was shot when I was lecturing this week in Motown, after more than six years of fighting my CLL and ITP and after the very recent challenge of nodes pushing 10 centimeters in my gut.

Have I changed much? You be the judge.

I still have my grey hair and mustache. I still wear dark sweat shirts and grey scarves, though the new scarf is from my visit to Egypt and not from a mall.

I still visit art museums wherever I travel, even when it is too cold and too difficult and makes no sense. What did art ever have to do with sense?

I still gravitate to the modern art, and still love what Leger can teach us about being human souls in an increasingly mechanized and alienating world.

I am still pushing for more. To touch and to feel more: longer, deeper, harder, and softer, much softer. To learn. I am still so hungry,

Tomorrow I consult Dr. Forman about how a second transplant, still the only cure for my CLL. I will ask him when and how that fits into my treatment mix.

All that is missing is a third photo of me beside another painting by Leger, perhaps next time in Biot, France where his national museum is to be found.

But that photo is at least five years off.

That picture will be of me post CLL. Cured. Or at a minimum in a very long term deep remission.

That picture will not be hiding any internal nodes or diseased marrow. You could zoom in using a billion pixels and never find a trace of my evil clone ready to explode again. because there will be no rogue sleeper cells.

In that picture my hair may be thinner, I may be thinner, but my smile with be broader and my eyes brighter.

In that photo I will be in my 70s, but I guarantee I will still be hungry for more art by Leger to delight in and more life to share.

Stay with me until I share that photo. I guarantee a wild, informative and entertaining ride before and for many years after that next snapshot is posted.