I hope to have some sort of focus, an organizing principle for each blog post. Sometimes during the week I take a few photos I’m pretty sure I’ll use. Sometimes something has happened that I know I’ll want to talk about. And do you want more cancer-recovery reports? How much of that do you want? People read this blog for different reasons. Sometimes, like today, I don’t have a clue what I’ll write until I sit down to do it.
Writing is writing, as I’ve said many times before. No matter what we say, poem or prose, we always sense a lurking audience. We know what we’ve been praised for in the past, and we’re likely to lean in that direction. But then we have this internal rudder we hope is still stronger than that. It’s like sailing. Ah ha! I get to use one of my photos. This is my sister Michelle on the boat our father built for her when she was 12 because she was afraid of his big boats, the way they lurched and leaned. He figured she would respond better to one she could manage herself. This one has a cute little lateen sail—you just hold the line in your hand and let the sail out and pull it in that way. The boat’s been newly refurbished this year.
What sailing has to do with writing this blog: I’ll try not to turn this into a silly allegory. There’s the wind, which we can’t control. We have to attend to it in exquisite detail. We don’t want to miss a gust coming or fail to anticipate a shift. We head into the wind as closely as we can without luffing the sail. We have this object, this boat we want to move forward, but the moving forward is only a game. If we thought we needed to GET somewhere, we’d buy a monster motor. What we really want is to use our wits and attentiveness to move through the water as efficiently as possible. It’s the art we’re concerned with.
We’re not doing the moving. But we’re not passive either. We’re using what comes up the best we can. We’re both working and having a good time. When a big wind catches our sail and the center board's humming, we’re flying almost out of control, but not quite. Not unlike my experience of writing poems or essays or blog posts. I can hope for that kind of wind, that kind of attentiveness. 
This week I saw the radiation oncologist for the LAST time, it is fervently hoped. All’s well. He confirmed what my regular oncologist said—it would be very bad news indeed if the cancer returned. The visit and his words left my heart, for lack of a better metaphor, in a sinking dark place, but that’s no more permanent than anything is. Frankly, the feeling in my gut is no different from the times that I’ve had other disappointments, big blows to my ego. There’s a deep sense of terror, if I let myself acknowledge it. If I examine it closely, I see that it’s my very self that feels at stake. Then gradually that feeling lightens and dissipates and I feel cheerful again.
What is this “self” that needs protection? What is it made of? Where did it come from? Where will it go? I can no more “protect” it than I can direct the wind to blow the way I want. But, meanwhile, I can have a heck of a good time, in concert with it.
This other photo I wanted to show you is of me and my two sisters. We have spring and summer birthdays, and we tend to celebrate them on one day close to my birthday in July. My sister Melinda, three years younger than I, is lucky to be alive. She had a brain tumor and stroke nine years ago and has had multiple serious health problems ever since. She’s using a walker. So each year there’s a poignancy, this year more so since my cancer.
Someone interviewed me for a story on me and my cancer for the local newspaper. She asked me what good has come out of all this. I thought of how we tend to want to balance the scales—well, this bad thing happened but I gained this good thing. I didn’t know how to answer. Things are, finally, just what they are. Is the cancer “bad”? Remember the story of the Chinese farmer I told a few weeks ago? (MWB #28). How do we know what’s “good” or “bad.” Our sight is short, our awareness limited. The wind (Ruach/Spirit/Holy Spirit) bloweth where it listeth.