I Had A Tumor. But It Was

I Find Life Itself Provides Ample And Sufficient Tests Of My Valor And Mettle: Illness; Betrayal; Fruitless Searches For Love; Working For The Abusive, The Insane, And The Despotic. All Challenges Easily As Thrilling To Me As Scrambling Over Icy Rock In A Pair Of Barely Adequate Boots.

Have You Ever Had One Of Those Moments When You Know That You're Being Visited By Your Own Future? They Come So Rarely And With Little Fanfare, Those Moments. They're Not Particularly Photogenic. There's No Breach In The Clouds To Reveal The Shining City On A Hill. No Folk Dancing Children Outside Your Bus, No Production Values To Speak Of- Just A Glimpse Of Such Quotidian, Incontrovertible Truth That After The Initial Shock At The Supreme Weirdness Of It All, A Kind Of Calm Sets In. So This Is To Be My Life.

What Remains Of Your Past If You Didn't Allow Yourself To Feel It When It Happened? If You Don't Have Your Experiences In The Moment, If You Gloss Them Over With Jokes Or Zoom Past Them, You End Up With Curiously Dispassionate Memories.

There Is Nothing So Cleansing Or Reassuring As A Vicarious Sadness.

There Are Many Things In This World That Are An Outrage, To Be Sure, But Death At Our Current Life Expectancy Doesn’t Strike Me As One Of Them. Maybe I Sound Like Some Victorian Who Felt That Forty Years Ought To Be Enough For Any Man, But One Of The Marks Of A Life Well Lived Has To Be Reaching A State Of Finally Getting It, Of Not Needing More, And Of Being Able To Sign Off With Something Approaching Peace Of Mind.