I have never felt the presence of God and so I must take salvation into my own hands.

I do this by accentuating pleasures of the body. Pleasures of the body lead to spiritual redemption. The redemption may be empty but so is the redemption offered by God. Choose your illusion ; mine is more fun.

David Mamet has said that the absence of the urge to create is decadence but I disagree. Decadence is a creative act; self destruction is necessary before self reinvention.

Decadence is my God.

I was happy on my birthday, surrounded by 30 or so friends. I honestly felt stretched a bit too thin as I couldn't pay attention to any one person as much as I would have liked.

It is strange and fun to see friends from different parts of your life interact and even hook up (Ken and Joe) .

I leaned back and saw among them the threads of drama, sexual tension and some tittering but the main thing was fun. It seemed organic and right and it occurred to me that if I had died earlier this year, I would not have seen that moment.

I've read a lot of cancer survivor stories and I haven't been able to relate to any of them. Besides the unending God bullshit, one common thread is to say that after 'beating' cancer, every day is filled with promise and that little things don't bother you anymore. Not so here. Mounting post-cancer problems threaten to break me and I still get mad at the little things, like when Dr. Phil 'tells it like it is' on Oprah.

That said, the moment took me last night and I had a taste of what these other cancer kids must be talking about. The moment would not have existed had I not lived, and had I never gotten sick, I never would have paid attention to that moment. I resent these Hallmark drops of revelation as much as I appreciate them. I do hope that one day I can take more good out of the C experience but until then I remain dazed and shellshocked and spit in the face of it.


What a year.

I don't like being in physical pain and nor do I want my mind to leave me, but both happened to great extremes earlier this year. The sleep and food depravation along with cancer pain, chemo and pain medications often made me physically incapable of rational thought, like being on bad acid or too much K. One night HAL's famous speech from 2001 feverishly replayed over and over in my delirious mind for hours as I tossed and turned and sweated and wondered where the walls came from.

My mind is going. I can feel it.



Although the thoughts wouldn't leave me, I found it comforting compared to the chaotic lethargy of my days.

After these sorts of episodes I'd feel embarrassed and afraid I'd lose it again.

During one of the earliest onsets of confusion (brought on by tumors melting into my bloodstream and days of eating only Jello) I couldn't quite tell what was going on and whispered with what energy I had that I felt like I was dying. My friend leaning in close to hear me said very sternly that I was not dying; that it was not death I was feeling but rebirth.

I dismissed his statement as a corny fraud.

In the end doctors and scientists tortured me back to life but not my own life. Instead I've been given a bizarro-world life where my brown hair is blond, certain friends are strangers and 6000 people are murdered a mile away from where I live.



But amongst this insanity are moments of clarity like the silly moment last night when I realized that I am the center of my universe after all, just as you are of yours. And so maybe it was and maybe it is, and I also treat turning 30 as such an event - as a rebirth.