Piss Off Post

I ran into a former co-worker yesterday. God, it was good to see him. I miss work something fierce much of the time. I mostly miss hanging out with writers all day, being smartasses. He, one of the most proficient smartasses I know asked me what I was doing with my time. I said, Oh, you know, having cancer, reading books, hanging out, going to doctor's appointments. And, I said a bit sheepishly, I started a blog.
He laughed and said, "You must be the last person to start a blog...what are you writing about? What Dick Cheney said today?" I said, "No...(Asshole)." He said, "What? About having cancer? There must be a few blogs about that out there by now." I muttered something about how I didn't really know what I was doing yet, had just started it a few days ago, didn't really care if anyone read it, just needed to be making something happen. He laid off. I carried on with grinding my teeth.
Today I did a search for cancer blogs. I knew before I opened this blog that there was plenty of this out there and I admit to having illusions of writing something so different about my experience with cancer that it has no compare with the other blogs by people with cancer.
I will not only be the exceptional experience, I will be the most outstanding author of cancer lit ever to hit blogspot. People, with and without cancer, will stay up into the night waiting for my next post. In my hands, cancer writing will encompass the whole human experience in the way that Camus' "The Plague," spoke not only of festering lymph nodes and bloated rats, but of love, death, friendship, swimming and war.
And where will the energy come from for this life -defining piece of work if I have to take a three hour nap every day as well as keeping my house clean, doing laundry, feeding myself, going to the movies, reading books and contemplating my next bout of chemo?
Where will the scalding syntax, the vivid vocabulary, the cliche-splitting chapters, the genre-busting narrative arc come from when I can't remember what I did yesterday, when my ears are ringing so loud I can't even hear myself think, when I sit for ten minutes tapping my fingers waiting for a single simple noun to come to me?
Here's how:
A lava flow burning its way to my fingers will illuminate every thing that stands in its way. All that left over radiation and throat burning chemo will lead me to the truth. Adverse drug reactions, pain and constipation will keep me up into the dark fertile hours of the early morning. Irritation is my cloud by day, my pillar of fire by night.
Piss and fury are my guides.