Another Dark Little Corner


moon phases
 

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.


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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]


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2006-09-30
 
Twisted  
A poem
...
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are just as they were, only the earth has grown smaller,
and what happens sounds as if it's happening in the next room.
...
      — Wislawa Szymborska

Conscience


More ...

2006-09-27

2006-09-17
 
Next Hurdle: Radiotherapy  
Having 'stayed the course' (well, six courses) of chemotherapy with highly poisonous cytotoxic chemicals, I now start five weeks of radiotherapy with doses of X-rays planned to wipe out any blossoming remnant cancer cells which survived. Went in to 'planning appointment' to set up series and determine where & what will be zapped. The previous lot of radiotherapy in 2002 only needed three pinpoint tattoos, I suppose because they were just aiming to triangulate onto the tumour itself. To mark out the field this time, they've put on five — making a total of eight tattoos! (Is this still cool? Or are they pretty passe now?)

Photo shows the text markings from the preliminary set-up.
(Earlier post-op photo at April 27 - Anatomical Pathology)


Felt pen markings for radiotherapy


This therapy wil involve irradiating my left chest from just above the base of my throat down to below where my breast used to be, and around under my left arm. It usually causes a effect rather like sunburn, and fairly severe fatigue. Depending on how my oesophagus &/or trachea get hit by it, I may also get a very sore throat.
Stocked up on some canned soup, congee, and other food & meals that don't need much preparation and won't hurt the throat. I also found a cheap hand-mixer that will help make puree of vegetables & so forth. Today I used it to make a cinnamon tea-cake in my new proper sized cake-tin (um, if you can call a soft silicon mould that) and it worked out really well. My friend & I ate half of it this morning. <burp>, but made healthier sandwiches for lunch, as well as going for a nice long walk. Have to strengthen the body to get ready for the new assault.


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2006-09-11
 
Five Years On  
110 Stories
by John M. Ford
This is not real. We've seen it all before.
Slow down, you're screaming. What exploded? When?
I guess this means we've got ourselves a war.
And look at -- Lord have mercy, not again ...

Once more, we'll all remember where we were ...

You live, is how you learn that you can cope< ...
Five Years On; Remembering: a news flash during the late-night Channel 9 slot of West Wing. Changing channels through many hours that followed, watching CNN, BBC, whatever feeds were available. A quick call to friend A, who now had a TV, as the news about Washington was confusedly coming through: "This looks serious." The black blossom of smokey dust that burst out as the first tower collapsed, with me caught, frozen in horror, holding to the kitchen door jamb as I'd gone to get a hot drink when the chill, deeper than the simple temperature of a spring night, crept over my nightdressed body. My mind bouncing between sheer pity & terror, speculating the purpose & proponents, worrying what use was going to be made of this, what this distraction would be used to shield. So very sad, now, that so many of my worries and speculations have come to pass. So fearful that more will.

You live, is how you learn that you can cope.

I'm not altogether sure this living counts as coping. It comes and goes.

Five years. So much has happened — deaths & illnesses & moving house — in my life, but it all seems not so long ago. The years spin so quickly past, even as some long nights & days stretch out almost beyond bearing.


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2006-09-10
 
Truth & Consequences: I Remember Townsend ...  

Truth & Consequences


"If you're going to tell a story about something true, then make damn sure you get it right."
LiveJournal: Scribblings by Lizbeth (liz_marcs):I Remember Townsend ...
liz-marcs.livejournal.com/206303.html


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