Jay Lake: Writer

[child] Basketball, in which a parent on the sidelines sustains a game-related injury

Yesterday afternoon, the_child‘s basketball team won their game 38-22.

The teams were pretty evenly matched, and the game was a lot better than that somewhat lopsided score implies. And she slammed in two three point shots, for a 100% completion rate in this game. So good on my kiddo!

However, I sustained a game-related injury during the course of play. Go figure.

The gym at her school has regulation sized basketball court, but not much sideline. The bleachers are against the north wall, and if you’re sitting on the bottom row, your feet are about twelve inches from the north boundary of the court. Our little group — me, Mother of the Child, Dad, (step)Mom and tillyjane a/k/a my Mom — were seated almost perpendicular to the basketball goal at the east end of the court, in effect to the left of the backboard and just a few feet toward the center.

For whatever reason, play of game kept running right up into our faces. Dad caught several balls that had gone out of bounds. We all flinched back more than once when charged by a player from one team or the other. But the coup de grace came when a knot of defense and offense careened right toward me and I had to lean back avoid feet and elbows, and slid right off the bleacher bench and into the footwell of the row behind me.

I got stuck there and had to be pulled out. My back hurts, I’m pretty sure I bruised it right on one of my lower spinal knobs, and my left hip aches.

It’s all part of the business of being a dad, and a price I’ll cheerfully pay. But really, when did watching middle school girls play sports become so dangerous?

Photos © 2012, 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: Child, family, Funny, Personal

Posted: 6:37 am Fri February 03 2012 | Comments(1) |

[personal] Dreaming of Japan, and other updates

Sometime in the last few days, in conversation with someone (I cannot recall who now) I made the observation that I am very rarely lost. I don’t always know where I am when walking or driving in a strange-to-me place, but I always know how I got there and how to get back to wherever I started from. I really do have a very good sense of direction.

So naturally last night my subconscious decided to serve me up some humble pie. I dreamt that Mother of the Child and I were in Japan, walking through a Tokyo neighborhood that looked suspiciously like Portland’s West Hills, admiring the classical architecture. We wound up being invited into one of the houses, which was the home of an absent yakuza crime lord. For some reason, I borrowed one of the yak’s cars — a tiny, ancient Subaru — to head back to our hotel to pick something up, leaving Mother of the Child behind. I got to the hotel, a Best Western in a location that looked suspiciously like Nebraska, and realized I had no idea how to get back to the yakuza mansion. Not only had I lost the_child‘s mother, but I had in effect stolen a car from the Japanese mafia. I had a rented Japanese cellphone, but no matter what I did with it, I couldn’t seem to make an outgoing call. Panic ensued.

Anxiety much? I don’t find that dream so hard to interpret.

In other news, the_child‘s basketball team lost last night 43-28. It was only their second loss of the season, and they fought hard, but the other squad were demon shooters, not to mention quite a bit taller.

Also, I’m making a lot of progress on Sunspin. I expect to have Calamity of So Long a Life out to my last few first readers in another week or so, well ahead of schedule. This will give me time to work on Little Dog, I think, given my production scheduling.

This evening, the_child and I are going to the SFWA Northwest Reading Series. David Levine, J.A. Pitts and Ken Scholes are reading:

Tuesday, January 31
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211

Note they’re also reprising, with a slightly different cast, in Seattle tomorrow night.

Wednesday, February 1
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

If you’re in the area, turn out and support live, local literature!

Tags: Books, Calamity, Child, Conventions, dreams, family, friends, Japan, Personal, Sunspin, Writing

Posted: 6:27 am Tue January 31 2012 | Comments(1) |

[personal] Weekend update, a bit of mortality

Yesterday was fairly good in some ways. I got another 2,500 words in on “You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens”. the_child made substantial if rocky progress on homework with an assist from me at several key junctures. She and I had lunch with my parents, as well. We also wound up rewatching the first Harry Potter movie on DVD last night. As an added bonus, my overnight dreaming included kylecassidy talking at me from a television, his head shaven and horky black hipster glasses on his face.

At the same time, my dinner date cancelled due to the flu, which was a mild bummer for me and a much bigger bummer for her. More importantly, yesterday I learned of two recent deaths. An old friend of the family — of my parents’ generation — died of complications from a severe stroke. And a young writer friend of mine died of complications from metastatic breast cancer, leaving behind her infant daughter. In neither case was the death especially surprising in a larger sense, but in both cases it was unexpected by me.

I don’t walk around in a depressive fugue or anything like that, but I find myself a lot more sensitive to mortality issues these days. As I said to another friend recently, talking about personality changes under extreme stress, the biggest change I see in myself over these past 3.75 years of dealing with cancer is that I’ve utterly lost my once boundless optimism. I don’t think I’ve become sour or withdrawn, I just have no faith in my future. I’ve been shot down way too hard too many times in the past few years to feel like flying high any more. Neither of these deaths are about me in any way, and I wasn’t especially close to either of the women who passed away, but I still feel them like a leaden cloak upon my bent shoulders.

Tags: Cancer, Child, family, health, Personal, stories, Writing

Posted: 7:52 am Sun January 15 2012 | Comments(3) |

[cancer] More detailed thoughts on mortality

Recently I observed:

It occurred to me recently that one way to think about my cancer risks is that we’re all dying, I’m just probably dying a little faster than most of my peers.

Somewhat in parallel to that and a few days later, klwilliams remarked in comments to another post of mine:

I realized what mortality *meant*: you don’t get to find out how all the stories end.

She really struck a chord for me with that observation.

the_child and I have occasionally discussed the hypothetical of whether one would choose to live forever, if one could. (These conversations began even before my initial cancer presentation, and have recurred from time to time since.) She and I both think we would choose that, even at the obvious emotional costs, simply because we both want to see what happens next, next and next after that. We want to know how the stories come out, in short. Where the new ones come from, how the current ones evolve, how they all end. Or not, for stories don’t really end. They just turn into new stories.

For my own part, I made it through the first round of cancer in 2008 so quickly and with so much surprise that I’m not sure I ever took it truly to heart. My oncologist at the time told me my cancer was unusual and very unlikely to recur — I was given 99% odds of not experiencing any metastasis. I went on with my life, happy and confident that we’d beaten it.

When my lung metastasis was detected in 2009, we spent months dealing with and arguing the diagnosis. The oncology team literally didn’t believe their own clinical evidence both at first, and for quite some time after as we pursued additional tests. The recurrence was very much a surprise to every one. Still, I went through the lung surgery and the subsequent non-adjuvant chemotherapy in the first half of 2010 convinced we were going to beat it, and I’d be fine.

The upset and emotional disaster of the departure of calendula_witch from my life at the end of 2010, followed a few months later by the diagnosis of the liver metastasis I’ve just concluded chemotherapy for, finally broke my already battered optimism. At a fundamental level, I’ve gone from believing that I would beat this to believing that this disease is going to claim me in the not very distant future.

I’m not talking about depression, or a difficult emotional reaction. More like a baseline conviction that I’ve already lost the game and we’re just playing for time. To be clear, this is neither my clinical diagnosis nor prognosis. At the moment, I am considered to have “no evidence of disease following resection.” That’s the clinical diagnosis. My prognosis is a 70% chance of recurrent metastasis.

It’s probably coming back.

And deep in my heart, I believe it will get me.

This is why I flash on stuff like being irritated because I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to see both halves of The Hobbit movie. Whenever this comes back, if the metastasis is in the ‘right’ place, we can treat with resection and chemotherapy, but I’ll lose another productive year out of my life as I’ve lost much of the last two years. If the metastasis is in the ‘wrong’ place, i.e., not surgically resectable, I’ll receive life extension therapy but my time will likely be counted in months from that point. Even if it is in the ‘right’ place, there’s only one more chemotherapy option available to me. After that, all the metastases are in the ‘wrong’ place, resectable or not. In effect, every scan I go through is a death lottery for me. (The next one of those is February 14th.)

So the mortality is always there. I’m not dying right this moment any more or less than you are, but like I said, on the whole I’m probably dying rather faster than most of my peers. And klwilliams put her finger on it. I won’t see how the stories come out. The stories of my parents’ lives. The story of my daughter’s growth to adulthood. The stories of my own characters, their fictive worlds and desires. The stories of my friends, my loved ones, everything. Even movies I care about.

In a sense, I’m already mourning what isn’t even yet guaranteed to come. My convictions are emotional, not based on logic or clinical evidence. But they are strong, bone deep. I’ve been battered too long, too many times, endured too many losses to cancer already, to believe that I’m getting out of this one clean at this point.

I can remember when life seemed like it would go on and on. I miss those days.

Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Child, family, health, Personal, Writing

Posted: 8:17 am Wed December 28 2011 | Comments(6) |

[personal|cancer] Bottoming out, I hope

I slept about fifteen hours yesterday, counting roughly three hours of napping plus twelve hours overnight. And yesterday was probably the worst day for fatigue that I’ve experienced during this chemo sequence. Or, really, ever. I hope like heck it was peak fatigue, and that I’ll be a little better today. It’s going to make celebrating Christmas tomorrow a bit tough if I can’t keep my eyes open.

Both the nap dreams/daydreams and the overnight dreams were about food. Pizza, largely, though in some unusual forms, such as made on a Prius floormat, or being used to burgle a safe. (No, I can’t explain now how in my dreams pizza is useful as a safecracking tool. And floormat pizza is just gross.) Sometimes I dream about hamburgers, but not yesterday. Food… food… food… The problem of course is the intersection between my rare physical cravings, my food aversions, my food dysfunctions, my chemo-damaged mouth, and the desires romping around in my backbrain for food that tastes like anything but aquarium tubing.

Oh well, we all have our little obsessions.

Today I am laying very low, tomorrow have two small family events, and that’s it. So if fatigue is my lot, I’m all tooled up for it. Whatever you’re doing, however you’re observing (or ignoring) the season, do it well and be happy. And eat something that tastes good, just for me.

Tags: Cancer, dreams, family, Food, health, Personal

Posted: 8:37 am Sat December 24 2011 | Comments(4) |

[personal] By popular demand, more on the quilt

Because Jeff Rutherford asked for more info about the quilt, as did several others, I now offer this note from Mom.

Thanks for the compliments on the quilt. It was made for you with lots of love from family members. By the way, I put fourteen book covers (counting Endeavor without title and author) in the quilt.

I know that both Dad and Q spent time perfecting the scanning of your book covers to achieve the best image. You would have to ask them for comments on that subject. Uncle Lloyd has lots of experience printing photos, but putting them on fabric was a bit different. He experimented and spent lots of time, I am sure, to produce the finished product. You can ask him to share his expertise.

As to “quilting techniques”, you may share the following with your fan, unless you think it is too much information.

Love,

Mom

“There are five rows of five blocks each in the body of the quilt. The quilt blocks are 5×8 finished. Book covers alternate with blocks of pieced batiks, each containing eight different fabrics. I placed the blocks based on the colors of the adjacent book covers. No two batik blocks are alike. The top row consists of one book cover placed horizontally and four sawtooth stars.

First I stitched- in- the- ditch around each block. Then I heavily quilted each batik block. I used a decorative stitch on the sashing. The thread is variegated in shades of yellow and orange. All this firmly anchored the quilt together.

I wanted the book covers to be the focal point so did not want quilting to overwhelm the image. I used outline and echo quilting mostly, with a few instances of decorative stitching. The thread color was dictated by the color or colors in the cover, so the quilting would blend in. Some book covers required more than one color thread.

The printed book cover fabric is a bit thicker and stiffer than quilting fabric. I used a thin, sharp needle (size 11) to quilt the covers, and I changed needles often.

The border fabric of green tone on tone and the four corner stars are quilted with variegated green thread, from light to dark.

Luckily the backing fabric of aloha shirts is very colorful, so all the different thread colors blend in nicely. Incidentally, I found that fabric one and a half years ago and it screamed “Jay” so I bought it immediately.”

I hope that’s helpful.

Photos © 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: Cool, family, Personal, Photos

Posted: 6:14 am Wed December 14 2011 | Comments(3) |

[personal] So, about that quilt

Probably the most significant gift I received at the family Christmas this past weekend was a quilt of my book covers. My (step)mother, my dad, my uncle and my sister designed and produced it, with the sewing done by mom. It’s funny and flattering and loving and magnificent, all at once. And since a bunch of you reading here are crafty folks, I’m offering preliminary photos of this wonderful thing:

The front of the quilt, with thirteen of my book covers — better photos to come

The back of the quilt, signed (so to speak) by the perpetrators

I wanted to hang it on the wall for display, but my gifters insist it’s for me to use as a quilt is meant to be used. So I shall.

My family is so awesome.

Tags: Art, Books, family, Personal

Posted: 6:23 am Tue December 13 2011 | Comments(15) |

[personal] More dreams, meaning what exactly?

@scalzi has been infesting my dreams lately, but last night was a doozy. In my sleep I was at the Scalzi Fortress of Solitude in Bradford, Ohio (a place I’ve never been in real life), which in my dreamscape looked like part of Coruscant under urban renewal. John had taken his role as president of SFWA seriously, and installed a large dining hall, an automobile service center and a publishing house, among other things. I couldn’t walk through the place without practically being assaulted by do-gooders working for him, trying to make my life as a writer and a human being somehow better.

I’m sure this is a metaphor for his yeoperson’s service as president of SFWA, not to mention his general nice-guyness, but mostly in my dreams it was overwhelming. Especially the mile-high Scalzi Tower that was under construction. I was amused as heck, and I surely hope John is too.

Family Christmas was yesterday, and my big present o’ presents was a quilt stitched by my (step)mother which featured all my book covers to date. Which as I write this I realize is much cooler than I just made it sound. Apparently production of this thing involved most of the adult members of my family, what with cover scanning, fabric printing and so on. At some point I’ll try to get pictures, though I doubt they’ll do it justice. the_child and the Niece scored big, as is right and proper for kids at Christmas, and I mostly sat around in an exhausted heap.

Workie bits this week through Thursday, and an unusual field trip for the_child‘s class Thursday that I arranged and may go on. Otherwise I’m resting and keying up for Friday’s final chemo session. Also having the new heater installed tomorrow, which will hopefully not be a signal experience.

And that’s the news from Lake Jaybegone.

Tags: Cancer, Child, dreams, family, health, Personal, work

Posted: 6:13 am Mon December 12 2011 | Comments(0) |

[personal] Weekend, without deep thoughts

I am drafting this blog post on the new MacBook Air, which finally arrived yesterday. It’s so… light. Expecting a quiet day today, other than a trip to see a matinee of the new Muppet movie courtesy of the good offices of mlerules. I invited the_child along, but she doesn’t have Muppetlove in her heart, and didn’t seem enthused. Otherwise laying low, reading, and shaking any potential bugs out of the new laptop before I transition the old laptop to its new role.

Last night N— came over with an apple pie (or possibly a very big apple tart) and some shortbread for me. She and the_child made peanut brittle, then they watched Time Bandits while I fell asleep. One of my favorite movies, but I didn’t make it much past the Napoleon/musical scene. Which admittedly is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on film.

Tomorrow we have family Christmas in the late afternoon, and I continue to lay low. Just trying to stay ahead of my rebellious lower GI and get lots of sleep going into this last chemo session next weekend. I can see the end from here. And man, do I really want to get back to writing.

Tags: Cancer, Child, family, Food, health, Movies, Personal, Tech

Posted: 8:25 am Sat December 10 2011 | Comments(0) |

[personal] Dreaming the weird

Last night’s dreaming was strange, even by my standards. I’m not sure I can reconstruct it coherently now, but it involved 1960′s French automobiles, geological processes, some kind of LARPing so real it was mandatory, self-reconfiguring architecture, and uncomfortable parental musings on the_child‘s future dating and sex life. Oh, and there was screaming. A montage, in other words, Miami Vice video editing by way of the landfill that is my subconscious.

Speaking of the_child, she is cogitating her high school choices right now with a varying mixture of astonishing maturity and predictable teen drama. This has led to various conversations about process, ambition, careers, and her particular learning challenges. Just lately I’ve really been wishing she’d come with a user’s manual. Or maybe a 1-800-HELPKID hotline.

On the topics of whinge this week, the heater has gotten more expensive. I’m very grumpy about the cash outlay, which will leave me broke for a while. Nonetheless, I elected the pricier higher efficiency option, as that will save money over time, and triggers some offsetting tax credits that mostly make up for the extra cost. Except the cost is now and the tax credits are later. To the good, I think I’m getting a cool Internet-linked thermostat out of the deal.

Likewise the still-missing MacBook Air. The original shipment has never turned up, but according to the FedEx tracking site, the replacement managed to make it to Portland overnight. Hopefully that means delivery (and more to the point, receipt by me) today. We shall see. Given the whole heater debacle, I debated returning the computer and recapturing the funds, but I think I’m going to sit tight.

This weekend is the new Muppet movie with mlerules, early Christmas with my family, and a bunch of the usual low-key sitting around. I am supposed to have brekkies this morning with kenscholes and Mrs. kenscholes, but they have not yet confirmed.

And, well, the big deal… a week from today is my last chemo. I am looking toward that with steely-eyed determination and great reservoir of potential relief for it to be done.

What’s up in your world?

Tags: Cancer, Child, dreams, family, friends, health, Movies, Personal, Tech

Posted: 6:30 am Fri December 09 2011 | Comments(2) |