burning

When I write, I bid farewell to myself.

---Jimmy Santiago Baca, Poet

In setting down the words, the heat dissipates.  This is why any hack can pull off a sex scene, but love's the challenge.  The first may be hot, but its purpose is focused and the goal is clear.  Love, however, is a landscape shot that goes on and on, diffuse and multi-dimensional.

Okay.  I'm a hot bowl of gumbo soup, a chocolate biscotti, and a cafe au lait (yum)away from the fire of a few hours ago.

"Yikes!" is Rich's e-mail message.

We were all set to go to New York for radiation, reservations made, when Rich learns that, by the way, his first session is scheduled for tomorrow, not Wednesday.

"We never do first-time patients on Wednesday," he is told.

Since when?  Four days ago?

What to do?  

What is the choice?

Rich can be in New York in time if we get up at 4:30 a.m.  He makes reservations on the bus, cancels the other.

For some reason, I got angry.  But for another unknown reason, it didn't stick.  I went for a walk, I sat for an hour with a neighbor's dogs and appreciated their wagging tails, nuzzles, whimpers. I stroked Thunder, our cat, and reminded him to record the karma incurred by the schedule-makers at Sloan Kettering...

But pain is a lot like love.  Get enough of it, and each pinprick dissolves into its vastness. That's why I write about it.  Because I lose the angry part of myself, laugh at its absurdity, and know that life, too, is much greater than all of its parts.

Off to New York!

Candace