Gifted a stack of reading material yesterday, I was up til midnight perusing the contents of my instantaneous reading list. My neighbor was feeling inspiration, too, twirling the dark, wee hours with the tinkle of piano keys and starlight.
My writing continues, though sometimes you’ve got to fill the well with the words of others. And sometimes you have to rest, ever-still, in the waters of your own.
Here’s to words and silence, time, space and the present.
“as soon as it was named
it ceased to exist” – Miriam Sagan, “Spiral Jetty”
I don’t want to write about it.
I could deflect and try to describe the pregnant pause before letters meet the screen. Hands near my jaw, suspended above the empty keys that sit patiently waiting. An in drawn breath anticipating exhale…But that description would be a clever ploy to avoid what hesitates to be written.
Pushing myself to find the power in vulnerability, I’ve even pulled the Superman move, peeling back cloth to reveal my tender heart (that’s ‘S’ for ‘Strength’). Ok, ok, I did that. I survived the naked telling. But do I now need to write about my womb?
I don’t want to write about it and that’s what makes me suspect that maybe I’m supposed to.
Maybe the story comes in pieces. I’ve got twenty years of reproductive history and all the ways my womb has shaped my life. Maybe these fragments are not in chronological time.
Perhaps it starts with today’s second opinion: Statistics are good: Chances are 98% benign, 2% malignant. But you don’t know which group you’re in. The only way to know for sure (and get rid of it) is surgery. There’s nothing to be done to stop recurrence (unless you want to remove your last remaining ovary). This is in your genes.
From the mouth of an intelligent, medical doctor, is the suggestion “use your intuition.”
Intuition says that in the next three months I will not be undergoing surgery. Intuition also suggests that Life is offering me an opportunity to learn something.
There is no book published, that opens to page 29 and reads “Jessica, this is what you are to do.” Intuition says the book that tells what I did do, is yet to be written.
If I want to dissolve this growth and do not want to have surgery than I recognize that I am moving into the realm of miracles. I’ll leave some room for those.
On Saturday I vacuumed corners, wiped baseboards and dusted off my stone collection. Caught up on correspondence and paid some bills. I wrote about worms squirming in compost. I strategized my health plan.
Sunday morning, in the rising light, there’s wind in the leaves of the hibiscus. Birds are singing to pink and grey-blue sky. It is quiet but for the rustling of tree limbs. Jeb still sleeps and I simply sit.
There are plenty of words. An overflowing fountain for a lifetime. For now I am hushed by the sweeping of gusts. I am so small. Resting in the vast emptiness of the wordless.
For the Archives 