Jay Lake: Writer

[cancer] Not so morbid as all that

Based on some of the emails and blog comments I received, I want to clear something up. I’m not actually being all that morbid right now. Though I have my feelings I’m not going to survive this cancer, I do not have anything like a terminal diagnosis, nor am I behaving as if my death is imminent. The remarks about having my own funeral were a ‘what if’, or perhaps a ‘when if’, remark.

As I said yesterday in a blog comment, the most likely next steps for me in this cancer are about an even split between a respite in which I can recover to normal health for a while as I wait to see if I am in remission, or another round of surgery and chemo much like the one I’m currently going through. The only things that would lead to a mortality diagnosis would be either a metastatic bloom, or a single-site metastasis in an inoperable location that proves unresponsive to my narrowing list of chemotherapy options. Neither of those things has happened, though of course either of them are possible.

I have a scan forthcoming on November 7th which will set the course of my life through next March or so. If I’m clean, then chemo wins up the weekend of December 16th, and I spend the winter recovering from its ravages. If I’m not clean, then we set the treatment plans for 2012, which would presumably be more surgery (if possible) and more chemo (almost for certain). As it happens, I have an inner, emotional conviction that I’m not clean, that a new metastasis is developing, but I recognize this as pessimism drawn from my current chemo-reduced mental and emotional state. Other than the iffiness of the CEA levels, which do not concern my oncology team, there is no medical evidence of this other than my own hard feelings.

So while in a very real sense I am experiencing morbid thoughts and feelings about cancer, I’m not planning my own funeral just yet. Making think-ahead notes, yes. But it’s not the reality I’m living in just now.

Tags: Cancer, health, Personal

Posted: 7:50 am Sun October 23 2011 | Comments(2) |

[photos] Your Sunday moment of zen

Your Sunday moment of zen.

Cell block exterior at Alcatraz © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Photos, zen

Posted: 7:39 am Sun October 23 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad won’t do much this Sunday

Check all boxes — Language Log rants (at length) about the that/which idiocy in US copy editing. Including identifying the original source of the problem. Ultimately, language is how you use it, not what some dead guy with an illogical grammar peeve said.

Gresham Gator Still At Large — Gresham is just a little east of here. I’ll have to watch for alligators in the sewers now.

Kinect Turns Any Surface Into a Touch Screen — Researchers combine a Kinect sensor with a pico projector to expand the possibilities for interactive screens. Headline is slightly misleading, but the story is still cool.

Science Fiction-Style Sabotage a Fear in New Hacks — Not sure it’s SFnal, but it’s relevant to the world we live in.

Happy 6015th Birthday to Earth! — (Greeting offer valid only to the wilfully ignorant.)

Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal? — Surely it was not legal, in the context of its moment?

Bill Maher Explains Why the GOP Fails to Understand OWS — This is worth it.

The GOP Wins by Bruising — The debates have been an unexpected success. The Wall Street Journal with a conservative analysis of the Republican primary debates. They focus on the candidates, not on the bizarre audience reactions.

Programmer under oath admits computers rig elections — A video of some congressional testimony that will have you thinking again about the 2000 and 2004 elections. This on top of the Brooks Brother Riot, the John Ellis call, the rigged Supreme Court “this is no precedent” vote in Bush v. Gore, the successful move to destroy the disputed Florida ballots so there will never, ever be a full hand count. History is going to judge the GOP very, very harshly. Unless they get to write it, of course. (Thanks to danjite.)

?otD: Is Sunday your day of rest?

10/23/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 215.8
Currently (re)reading: The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Cool, Florida, history, Language, Links, Occupy Wall Street, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Religion, Tech

Posted: 7:37 am Sun October 23 2011 | Comments(0) |

[personal|child] Deaths and births

Yesterday I attended the funeral of kenscholes‘s father-in-law. The event wasn’t about me in any way, I was there to support Ken and his wife Jen and their family with my presence, but as one might imagine, it instilled considerable reflection in me at a time when I’m very conscious of my own mortality. The service was very appropriate and I’m glad I went. For my own part, I did confirm two conclusions I’d previously reached. One, funerals are bad for me personally and emotionally in my current frame of mind. Two, if this cancer goes terminal, I’m having my funeral before I die so I can damned well enjoy it.

Another event yesterday that was only tangentially more about me was the_child‘s thirteenth birthday party. Today is her actual birthday, but one of the kids in her class is having a blowout Halloween party tonight, so we scheduled her kid-friends party for last night. Her extended family birthday dinner is tomorrow. I had six teenagers in my house eating pizza, cake and candy for an hour and a half, then Mother of the Child and lillypond (a/k/a my sister and therefore Aunt of the Child) hauled them off to Fright Town, where a spookily wonderful time was had by all. Best as I can determine, she had a terrific birthday blast of her own: we had a brief conversation last night after the final guests had departed in which the_child quite elated and pleased with herself.

All that made a nice end cap on the day for me, even if my enjoyment of the birthday celebration was almost entirely by osmosis. Today I am mostly sitting still, though a friend will be coming by this afternoon for some visiting. Me, a book and a glass of water. The brain isn’t up to writing, and I don’t have much if any householding to do. Just waiting to see when the Neulasta pain comes back, and how dreadful it will be when it does.

Tags: Cancer, Child, family, friends, health, Personal

Posted: 9:07 am Sat October 22 2011 | Comments(4) |

[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen

Your Saturday moment of zen.

Cellars of Alcatraz © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Photos, zen

Posted: 8:54 am Sat October 22 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad says Happy Birthday to the Child

Daring to Delve Deep Into Emotion — Urban Fantasy author J.A. Pitts on writers and emotion.

The Moon, waxing poetic — A gorgeous orbital photo of the Moon over the limb of the Earth.

The Falling German Satellite ROSAT: Biggest Questions & Answers

Amusing Burger King Billboard Hack

What English sounds like if you have Wernicke’s aphasia — This is very strange to watch and listen to.

Dear Anonymous: Keep on Shining — A librarian talks very kindly to a narrow-minded Christianist loon.

Bible warning sticker — Hahahahah. For people who, you know, actually read it. As I have several times through over the years. (Via someone who would probably prefer to remain nameless.)

‘In American history, the monsters are real’

Why Rush Limbaugh Is Freaking Out About Occupy Wall Street — Mostly because it isn’t a wholly owned creation and subsidiary of GOP-FOX like the Tea Party. This is a control issue for a man who in many ways has been setting the terms of the national political discourse for the better part of two decades, and finally finds something he can’t readily mock and distort into submission.

Is Occupy Wall Street Changing The Discourse?

What Are the Wall St Protestors So Angry About? — A beautiful, simple graph that tells the story. (Hint: American income inequality is worse than Burkina Fasso’s.)

How News Media and Blogs Have Eyed the Presidential Contenders During the First Phase of the 2012 Race — Note the numbers for Obama’s negative coverage. The truly great victory of conservative political discourse over the past twenty or thirty years has been the pernicious ‘liberal media’ meme. Combined with the wholesale rejection of evidence-based thinking on the American Right, it has brilliantly inoculated the Republican base against any idea, concept or factual information that doesn’t conform to their ideology. Brilliant political strategy for their party, cultural and social disaster for the country as a whole.

Marco Rubio: Son of Cuban Exiles — The GOP’s great brown hope is a son of immigrants who’s lied about his family history to valorize his biography. Cognitive dissonance much?

Why Republicans don’t trust Romney

?otD: Got any birthday girls in your life lately?

10/22/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.75 hours (solid)
Weight: 215.6
Currently (re)reading: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Christianists, Culture, Food, healthcare, history, Language, Links, media, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, Religion, Science, Videos, Writing

Posted: 8:52 am Sat October 22 2011 | Comments(0) |

[cancer|writing] And inexorably, ever more is stolen from me

I spent much of yesterday being angry and depressed. A whole host of frustrations are simply my daily lot here in cancerland, but this week’s been a bit extra cruel.

A couple of days ago, I posted about hitting the wall [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. That’s a transition point I’ve been expecting for a while, and in fact I got some extra time that I didn’t expect, to be productive on Little Dog and some other, smaller projects.

Still, hitting the wall means Sunspin is definitely sidelined until early 2012. This in turn has implications for when I can go to market, when the book might be contracted, whether I’ll have a trade book out in 2013 (2012 will see Kalimpura in print), whether I’ll have the money for an active con schedule in 2012 (probably not). In other words, I will stumble over a whole basket of career and financial consequences for not being able to get the book trimmed up and out the door this fall as originally planned. That’s been in the wind for a while, so it’s not exactly a shock, but I’m definitely disappointed, frustrated and daunted.

Then yesterday Viable Paradise and I came to a regretful parting of the ways. The workshop needs to confirm instructor availability about ten months in advance, for planning purposes. There’s at least even odds I’ll be in treatment again next year. Given my four month scan-and-hold cycle, even if I end this chemo cycle clear, I can’t firmly commit anything to anyone more than four months out. So having missed being an instructor this year due to this metastasis, I’m now out for the indefinite future. Even if I stay clean for the time being, it will be five years before I can commit to long range plans without the ever-present caveat about me possibly going back into treatment.

I am bitterly disappointed about this. Not at the VP folks, they need to run the workshop with some stability, and I’m completely on board with their reasoning. But I am disappointed with myself. Just as cancer has stolen so much from me emotionally and socially, just as cancer has stolen almost half my writing time these past two years, just as cancer has stolen my Sunspin deadlines, now cancer has stolen an instructing gig I was very excited about and highly committed to. Maybe in five years I can try again if I’m still alive, but I wanted to do it now, at this time in my life, at this point in my career.

I’ve realized that my most basic problem is that I still think of myself as a healthy person. My self-image is that of someone whose life permits him to make long-range plans and keep commitments. That hasn’t been true for over three and a half years now, but I have not internalized myself as the sick man that I very demonstrably am. That the world keeps forcefully reminding me I am by stripping me of opportunities.

In it’s way, that’s an odd form of privilege. The fact that I can even hold the illusion of being normal and healthy is a function of the way cancer works. If I had any number of other major diseases, I wouldn’t have the hope of respite to keep touching back on.

On top of that (or perhaps underneath), I’ve really lost my optimism this year. I made it through the first two cancers convinced everything was going to turn out fine. I don’t believe that any more. Not down in my bones. These days I’m pretty sure I’m going to die of this in the next few years. The things I aspire to, the things I’ve worked hard for, the things I’ve wanted to do — they’re being taken away, piece by piece.

Cancer is a fucking thief. It starts and ends with stealing the heart out of me. Along the way it steals my love life, my writing career, my daughter’s childhood and everything else it can get its bloody hands on.

Take care of yourselves. Do the preventative things you can do for your lifestyle, your genetic history, your age cohort. Trust me, you never want to go down this road.

Tags: Books, Cancer, Child, health, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 5:49 am Fri October 21 2011 | Comments(5) |

[personal] Dreaming of transformation, and transitions

I had a series of linked dreams last night involving transformative magic. There was a lot of mind-of-Jay metaphor with old pickup trucks in the woods, and open bags of Oreos, as well as search-and-rescue teams in New Mexico, but I knew what it meant. Which is amusing, given my own hard-headed empiricism when it comes to New Age topics and such like. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone out there was performing a Working for me.

At any rate, I woke feeling a bit better about things than I have the past few days. It seems odd to take comfort from something I don’t believe in to start with, especially through the fragmented lens of dreaming, but there you have it.

Back in the waking world, the_child turns fourteen tomorrow. Her kid party is tonight, including a trip to Fright Town for her and some of her friends. She’s got a Halloween party to go to tomorrow on her actual birthday. Sunday is her family party.

So I dream of pickup trucks while my daughter turns her personal odometer. Life does go on.

Tags: Child, dreams, family, Personal

Posted: 5:40 am Fri October 21 2011 | Comments(2) |

[photos] Your Friday moment of zen

Your Friday moment of zen.

Cell door at Alcatraz © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Photos, zen

Posted: 5:32 am Fri October 21 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad reaches the end of a tiring week

A reader reacts to Green — Somewhat with the liking.

Anthologizing: The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities — A review with kind words about my story therein.

Subterranean Chronicles — A cool new Web comic.

IQ changes in teens as brain changes, study finds — Heh. Anybody with a teen in the house could have told you this.

Old American theory is ‘speared’ — An ancient bone with a projectile point lodged within it appears to up-end – once and for all – a long-held idea of how the Americas were first populated. I don’t pretend to understand the politics of Clovis vs pre-Clovis North American anthropology, but I know they’ve been weird for years.

Worm Offspring Inherit Longevity Even without the Genes — Worms given life-span-enhancing mutations produce offspring that lack the responsible genes but live longer anyway. Welcome to epigenetics.

A skeptical physicist ends up confirming climate data — Oops. A Koch-sponsored study seeking to overturn climate change data confirms it. Darn those facts biased against the conservative position. (Via danjite.)

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world — The real Illuminati. (Via danjite.)

Misportraying the Occupy Wall Street Protesters — Some Democratic political idiocy for a change. Tools.

Occupy Wall Street Demographic Survey Results Will Surprise You

Cain: ‘If You Don’t Have A Job And You Are Not Rich, Blame Yourself!’ — Ah, compassionate conservatism. It’s views like this that ensure I’ll never be a conservative. I believe in compassion and opportunity, unlike citizen Cain and the millions in the GOP base who applaud sentiments like this. Are you proud of your Republican party?

The orange standard — Sheer political lunacy of a delightful sort. Paging Herman “9-9-9″ Cain to the produce section. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

‘They’ve turned the world inside out’ — Some sobering analysis of Republican obstructionism on the president’s jobs bill. The saddest part is how routine this insanity has become.

?otD: What’s on your Friday plate?

10/21/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (some WRPA despite chemo fatigue)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (interrupted)
Weight: 216.2
Currently reading: Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cool, Culture, Green, Links, Occupy Wall Street, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science

Posted: 5:31 am Fri October 21 2011 | Comments(0) |