Posting less

The Nine Muses

I have been posting less.

This does not mean that trouble is afoot and I am waiting for the tide to turn before I can sanitized the news to safely share it.

There are three common reasons these pages go blank for days.

The first is that nothing worth reporting is happening.

Boring is good when you have cancer, very very good, but boring is also boring. Today my platelets were a wonderful 325,000, slightly higher than it was 2 weeks ago, and the first time since last May that I have gone without a weekly visit to the infusion center. Things are clearly going well.

The second reason is that at times I don't feel much like writing. The muses don't show up. This is most often because I am out of kilter, lost in direction, distracted, overwhelmed, or over tired.

The third is that I am busy writing and editing stuff with due dates.

With the the blog, I have no due dates, but that does not mean I have no responsibilities.

There is much happening when nothing is happening, much to learn when time slows down, when I have no news, good or bad, and no desire to write. It is a time to be most aware.

Thus this is precisely the time I must reconnect. As my favorite novelist, Tom Robbbins says about his writing style, I show up whether the muses do or not.

So expect me to get back to a more robust reporting.

Expect more soon on BP (not the oil company, but blood pressure), on the bats of Austin, the muses, and the considerable risks and downside of "looking good" and being inspirational.

Battle Plans and Diversions

Botero

My failure to post has not been due to lack of news, but rather lack of focus.

On the CLL front, after some advanced noodling, my battle plans are being drawn up for what I am certain will be the final successful struggle with this deadly foe.

Sun Tzu will be my general.

He orders:

Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

And,

In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.

And finally,

Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

What does this means?

It means on to chemo, likely in the next 60 days, likely FCR or PCR, then on to a second transplant.

Honestly, I sense all these forces moving at a distant, they are not in focus yet.

Why not?

I have been having too much fun is why.

Let me share as best I can an emotionally towering experience. Hearing and seeing John Adams at the Disney Hall, sitting behind the orchestra, right above the tympani for THE DHARMA AT BIG SUR.

Magical to watch the conductor/composer moving the giant engine of the orchestra together as a transcendent unit, to a place unique in time. From our unusual vantage point we saw when JA had called for one of the percussionists to slap his stool with a wooden stick or draw a violin bow across his xylophone. There is music is everything. The sounds and sights are lingering still.

Then another trip back to the 60s, this time aboard the PIRATE RADIO battleship moored off the coast of an uptight England, in a wonderful period piece with revolutionary music, reminiscent characters, and rad clothes. This must see movie captures much of the joy and some of the sickness of a time that seems so far out, it is hard to believe it really happened. Did it happen?

Did I mention our second trip to be thrilled and tutored at the same time by the neo-Baroque art of Botero and the Latin American exhibit at the Bowers? Botero sees it all and tells it like it is.

And the cultural pinnacle: Two King's game, where my battered team wins both in shootouts. And one of them was a gift to two sweet suite seats. (Say that fast three times) And at the other, every fan in attendance received a bobble-head Luc Robitaille doll. Life doesn't get much better. Go, Kings, go.

Add to that a raw holiday food prep class, numerous walks on the beach, Balboa Island, and the back bay, home visits with dear friends recovering from various hospital adventures, shopping for Hanukkah, and finishing SKINNY LEGS AND ALL, a slap in the face book of what I though I knew about the root of Judaism by my favorite author, Tom Robbins.

You can see why my focus on CLLL has been blurred.