Fortnights form a familiar pattern: attack, fatigue, isolation, then a brief respite between.
Fatigued, we act as novice Buddhists, eating when we are hungry, sleeping when we are tired. Simple actions assume an air of meditation: walking, sitting, learning just to be. We study enlightened felines, Zen masters who practice napping as an art.
In isolation, we train as elite soldiers: when not actually in battle, we constantly prepare to fight. We review strategies, discuss tactics, war-game scenarios, map out operational details. Like artists perfecting our craft, we draw units as colorful blocks, tracing their movement in Japanese calligraphy with bold, broad, individual strokes.
In the lull insufficient time conspires with suppressed energy to plot a frenzy. A backlog of routine maintenance must be tended lest a minor blemish erupt in ulceration, a disruption at some critical moment. There are breaches to mason, gates to reinforce, walls to shore with timber. Larders to restock, animals husband. Wells to dig and clean. Logistics, the inglorious tedium of war.
The lull transforms exhaustion into activity with an animation of diversions. It is the time we feast before returning to the simple rations of the wall. The time we open our gate to visitors and ride out to meet them. The time we celebrate, even belatedly, lest we never celebrate at all. At time life drums a tempo and we dance to the melody unheard by onlookers who likely think us mad.
We spend winter-short days each lull franticly crossing items from a list on a continually unfurling scroll freshly smudged by newly inked replacements, our only surplus in this siege.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
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Every two weeks had begun to take on a routine. Karen would go for chemo on Monday morning. The rest of that day, she’d usually be wiped out. Over the next 2-3 days, she’d recover and be able to go into the office. Friday evening, the fatigue would set in, just in time for the weekend. It usually cleared sometime Monday or Tuesday. From the Saturday after treatment to the next Friday, she was in isolation at the house because her blood counts were so low. That meant the next week she had to work from home. But the weekend before her next treatment, she usually had some energy and her counts were good enough that she could go out, so that was when we usually met friends for coffee. We’d go out shopping for anything we needed, or just to get out, at least on the weeks she felt up for it. Otherwise, I’d go to the grocery store.
There is a Zen teaching that says something like eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired and in between learn just to be. I’m still convinced our cats are Zen masters in disguise. Throughout this experience, all three of them provided us with good examples on how to live.
Picture notes: These are a set of metal prayer flags that Karen gave me one Christmas after her treatment. For whatever reason, in the middle of her treatment I received two sets of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags in the mail from a charity I don’t remember contributing to. We hung them on the porch, where they remain, much more faded then they started (which is the way they are supposed to be). Just one of those synchronous moments that really ended up meaning something to both of us.
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