I've been trying to write a post about the power of positive thought.  It was to be an in-depth look at some of the arguments for and against.  It was supposed to be a way for me to become clear about what I thought.  Positivity has been coming up a lot lately - on a blog I follow, in Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, in all the media attention thereto.  (BTW, I haven't read Ms. Eherenreich's book.  I did see her interviewed on The Daily Show, though.)  Then, last night I got more bad news.  I am positive I don't like that.

There are now four people in my life who have been diagnosed with life-threaghtening things.  And many more who are affected by these diagnoses, as I am.  I feel as though the wind has been knocked out of me.  Four times. 

And to keep myself from sinking down underneath the sadness and the fear, and setting up residence there, I need to list some things I am grateful for, and which are going well.

1.  I have a loving husband who is with me in all of this.

2.  I am healthy.

3.  I have two adorable dogs who make me smile - sometimes in spite of myself.

4.  I have a job.

5.  I have a new knitting group, where I get to just sit in the company of like-minded people and ply my craft.

6.  I have great friends, who will listen when I need to talk, and let me be silent when that's what I want.

7.  I am a Reiki Master.  There is something I can do.

It does help to write this list.  If this is what is meant by positive thinking, then yes, I subscribe.  I'll leave the science, the cause and effect, the blaming-the-victim arguments for later.  Thinking about good things, positive things, in the midst of all of this helps.

Tomorrow, ranting and screaming and punching inanimate objects may be what I need.  We'll see.

Yes.  Both curious as in wondering about things and curious as in odd.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so curious.  I could glide through my day, only encountering what I expect, never wondering what's behind door number 2, not attracting any attention.  Having received the memo that everyone else seems to know about. 

To be curious means, I think, in part, to be dissatisfied with the status quo.  To want more. 

It's also exciting, adventurous, glamorous even.  We'd still be grunting at each other in caves if humans weren't curious.

Besides, being curious gives me something with which to occupy myself while I sit at a desk in a too-cold office all day with nothing much interesting to do.  So being curious keeps me sane.

Okay, I'm glad I'm a curious person.  And I have a curious dog, too.  Meet Curi (Curious) Quinoa Hoppy Rabbit:

There seems to some kind of biological imperative whereby my brain must take a vacation every six months.  It happened in January, and now July.  It just refused to make things happen.  Only wanted to be fed with stories.  Simple stories - all plot, action, very little else.  The kind of books I want to hide in brown paper and not admit to reading.  Me, whose favorite authors are A.S. Byatt and Doris Lessing and Joyce Carol Oates.  Updike.  Dickens.  Tolstoy.  Suddenly I'm shopping in the mystery aisle.  Something I haven't done since I was in my teens.  What is that about? 

If I look at it deeply, maybe it's about rebellion.  My brain rebelling against having to work a day job.  Rebelling against atrophy.  Against constant interuption and boring, computerized tasks. 

Or maybe it's just hormones.  You can blame most things on hormones, can't you?

Knitting garter stitch shawls is also good right now.  I've put the fiddley, lacey scarf away.

The sun.

He had the biopsy.  The tumor in his lung.  Afterwards, I called.  He couldn't breathe, and collapsed into coughing that felt like sobbing and my eyes began to water automatically.  My throat began to close around a sob of my own.  I hung up quickly, so he wouldn't have to talk.

Yesterday, I called again.  There's been good news.  The lung tumor is benign.  Although there are still three more to think of.  And the diabetes.  He said he'd rather have cancer than that.  He's his angry self now.  Which is reassuring, if hard.  But I still don't know what to do.  He's 3,000 miles away.  He's my brother.  He's a stranger.  He's sick.  What do I do?  With any of that?

Pieces of news of late:

Friend 1, two weeks ago:  Hi, just calling to tell you I was in a horrible skiing accident.  I broke my leg in the worst way possible.  They have to rebuild my knee.  I'll be in a cast for months.  So, how are you?

Friend 2, the next day:  Hi there.  How's it going?  I got hit by a bus.  My boyfriend then left to go play soccer in Canada.

Parents, this evening:  Your brother is in the hospital with diabetes and 3 tumors.  They can't biopsy because the machine is broken.  So how is everything in New York?  Did you get snowed in?

I thought I only had two shoes, but apparently, there's another pair.  Does that mean there's another one waiting to fall?  Not sure I can handle that.

I'm going to be writing a novel in the month of November. Yikes and yee-ha!

I also have a birthday coming up, and this is my favorite time of year - when the darkness closes everything in snug and tight and we can turn inwards ourselves and nest and keep house.  I feel a shift coming, and it makes me happy.

When I was 20 years old, I had surgery on both knees at once. 

After years of figure skating, cheerleading, dancing, I'd done enough damage to cause chronic pain.  Stairs were hard for me.  Walking was hard for me.  Sitting for too long was hard for me, too.  I was living in Boston, going to school, living in a third-floor walk-up, and so this was not acceptable.  I flew home for winter break and went to see the doctor.

My surgeon used the "newfangled" arthroscopic technique, and I was out of bed that very day - briefly.  (At least I was spared the bed pan experience.)  But recovery was slow.  I ended up taking a semester off, and hobbling around with a walker.  We were living in Palm Springs at the time, so I fit right in with the octagenarians.  (Although my walker was standard issue and some of theirs were quite spiffy.)  I remember being very frustrated at first, and then, since I couldn't change it, settling in to my immobility.

Eventually, I graduated to a cane, and then to walking unassisted.  But I never forgot how it felt to be that slow, and that dependent on support.  I got to walk in someone else's shoes for a few miles.  It was eye-opening.

My cat, Gleeson, was with me for most of my adult life so far. 

When I was 23 and living with my best friend in our first apartment, we weren't supposed to have pets.  But we were pretty sure this wouldn't be a problem, since the caretakers had just adopted a cat.  We also didn't do anything about it, as we went about the business of beginning our post-college lives.  Then one day one of the caretakers knocked on our door.  "Is this your cat?" she asked, indicating the black and white bit of fur in her arms.  "I found it wandering the halls."  She got us some food , some litter and a cardboard box and we fostered the poor thing for the night to keep it in from the cold.  Then we put him outside and told him to go home.

I figured that was that, but an hour or so after I got home the next day there was a scratching at my door.  I opened it and in pranced the cat, as if he owned the place.  So he spent another night (you can see where this is going).  We put up signs, we did our best to find an owner, but Gleeson was had already found his home.  He stayed with me as my friend went off to graduate school, moved around Minneapolis with me, spent most of a year with another friend when I went on tour, and then came to graduate school and then New York with me.  In all, I think he moved 12 times with me.  Each time he adapted - found his new napping spots, figured out his new favorite channels on the kitty tv (i.e., the windows) and made sure he knew where his human was.  As long as I was a constant, he was fine.

People look at me funny when I say my cat was one of my greatest teachers, but he was.  He taught me patience.  He taught me to be wherever I was.  He taught me how to take care of another living being.  He taught me about love.  He taught me more than I can list here.  In the end, he taught me how to let him go. 

I'm still working on that last lesson.  Gleeson has been an angel kitty for a year and a half now, after gracing my life for over 19 years.  I still miss him every day.

 

I noticed today that email- and text-speak resemble telegram language.  Short.  To the point.  Almost rude-seeming, at times.  But telegrams seem romantic and important to me, in a way that emails never could.  They come during times of change.  They mark an occassion.  Births, deaths, marraiges.  Bar Mitzvahs.  Someone traveling. 

Do people send telegrams anymore?

My father once sent one to me, when I was studying in London.  It said "Please call home."  I rushed to the phone, of course.  Turns out, it was his way of playing Made You Look.  Or in this case, Made You Call.  I hadn't been phoning home regularly...  But the telegram got my attention.  They do that.  Also something emails aren't really capable of.

In this age of attention-grabbing chaos flashing and pulling and shouting at us wherever we turn, it's hard to believe that a simple piece of yellow paper with a few words on it could cause any emotion.  I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

What gets your attention?  How do you tune the rest out?