Cancer

 

It started after an evening meal.
The pain.

Five hours in I broke.
And phoned.
The helpline said an ambulance would soon arrive.
Not so.

All night dressed and waiting. Bent.
Stomach-holding. Sofa-bound.
Yet no-one came.

Ten hours later, I struggled off
to A&E,
alone.

 

Now doctors were taking an interest.
Usually a bad sign.
I got a little cubicle, to myself. Less stressful.
For an introvert.

“It’s not your appendix, but 
we’ve found a shadow on the scan.”

A shadow. I didn’t like the sound of that.
Vague, yet somehow ominous.

A colonoscopy was next.

Then CT with contrast dye.

 

 

The call occurred one Friday in October.
“Consultant wants to see you.”
“Can’t we talk by phone?” I asked.
“No. We need you to attend.
A nurse will be there, too.”

I knew, of course, my luck had gone.
Good news didn’t travel
quite this way.

“Stage 3 bowel cancer”
the diagnosis, came.
4 weeks til they cut me open.
Chopped half my colon out.

Yet blood leaks through such tumours.
They found me too anaemic, for the surgery.
During an iron transfusion I collapsed.
Caught a virus
in their waiting room.

Lungs congested, on the day.
Operation, thus,
delayed, another month.

More time to fret.

 

Finally
through December’s dark
at 6.45 (am)
I walked

across a rather quiet city
toward an opaque
destiny.
Amid those distant lights.

 

Taking in its sights.

 

Along

with the thought

of a slicing

blade.

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

 

Since being discharged from hospital, three days before Christmas 2021,
I’ve been writing a (first) novel.
Hadn’t quite realised how exhausting that would be.

Hence my absence from blogging.
Multitasking is hard for me. I feel a need for sticking obsessively at one thing.
Sadly, I haven’t written a poem since my last blog post.
I’m even anxious that moving back to poems might lose the flow of prose.
Its narrative arc, focus, and intensity.
Plus those inspirations for slogging away, trying to reach that distant summit,
of the word mountain.
(An actual end.)

As Cancer is my starsign, too, and birthday week has come around, again,
I thought to write a piece: explaining this extended absence, from WordPress.

I want to return to poetry, once the novel is finished.
Hopefully, before 2022 is over.

(I’m 27,000 words / 16 chapters in, so far. Past half way.
Slow progress. But my energy levels are low, due to chronic illness.)

 

Wishing a big

Thank You!

 

to all my followers. ❤️

I am very grateful for your patience.  🤗

 

I still log in (irregularly). Then, greatly enjoy other people’s writing, art, drawing, photography.
(And leaving likes.😄)

Sorry if this post seems tedious, yet I wished to update everyone on my situation,
rather than just let a long silence continue, unclarified.

I have not abandoned blogging, or poetry.
(Ab)Normal ramblings may even be resumed,
on here.
By winter time…

 

 

 

Comments are always very welcome!  🌞

 

Bye for now!

 

 

 

(PS: Any art, or photography, on this blog is mine. Hope you like it? 🙏)

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / drawing / illness / life / photography / poem / poems / poetry / prose / reading / writing )

Advertisement

At an end?

 

(Third blogiversary post.)

 

 

From a summit
the only way leads down.

 

Starting this site, three years ago, it felt like I had a mountain to climb.

Chronically ill. Isolated.
The last of our family line.

Worried a lifetime’s creative output might be lost, once I died.

Eager to preserve some work, I blogged.

Through pain, exhaustion, vertigo, brain-fog, depression, infections, migraines,
technical ignorance, self-doubt, and bereavement.

 

Told regularity was important, I stuck to Sunday posting.
Never missed a week.

 

Yet, now I’ve reached a kind of end.

Until this point the path’s been clear:
edit, then upload, past work.

But, after 224 posts, seeing poetry and prose all published,
the future looms uncertain.

Anxiety has risen.

I fret over not being a proper blogger.
Thinking my existence too dull to write about.

 

Should I just stop?

What to do next?

 

 

Here are three basic options:

 

1) Take a break?

(Which risks resumed oblivion.
Would anybody even notice I’d gone?)

 

2) Recommence Daily Notes?

(Presently terminated at 2012.)

(My concern is, these notes turn increasingly political, from 2013.
Since politics are notoriously divisive, I fear alienating valued followers.)

 

3) Recycle forgotten items?

(During the first eight months my blog remained text only; and under-tagged.
Views were very low.)

I could update selected early pieces.
Thus keeping things active: while leaving more mental energy,
for new writing.

 

(There’s also a novel, left unfinished.)

 

 

In seven days
a choice must be made!

 

 

---

 

 

I am sincerely grateful for your support.

And hope you continue visiting my site.  🙏

 

Comments are always VERY welcome.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

🙂

 

 

 

(Art on the blog is mine.)

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / drawing / life / mental health / poetry / politics /  prose / reading / thoughts / writing )

 

Sick of blogging?

 

 

Ever get fed up with blogging?

I do.

Sometimes during moods of unexpected intensity.

“Why continue, then?” you ask.

(Notice me discerning your thoughts? Pretty cool, eh?)

“Because I don’t have a life,” is the basic answer.
Being chronically ill reduces capacity for enjoyable activities.

“Which activities are those?” you inquire.
(My mind-reading’s on a roll, today.)

“Hmm. Let’s see.”

“Say the first thing arising.”
“Er. Maybe the second thing.”
“Why not the first?”
“It was slightly inappropriate.”
“Go ahead. After all, who cares?”
“Excuse me?”

“Face facts. Hardly anybody’s interested.
They wearied of your existential rambling months ago.
And the depressing poetry.”

“Hang on, a minute…”

“Hence you’re left talking to yourself in cyberspace.
Like a person suffering multiple personality disorder.”

“Listen, rude inner-voice doubling as imaginary interlocutor,
such disrespect for a fellow, on his own website, appears poor etiquette.
Can’t you find redeeming features?”

“There’s no compulsory optimism, I suppose.”

“OK. Now please be quiet, as I wish to address my audience.”

“Both at once? LOL!”

 

Dear Reader, do you ever get sick of blogging?

Does anything help?

 

I remember advice articles suggest ending on a question.
Though people often ignore mine.

Perhaps engagement stays low since I’m a bad writer?
Yet, no-one wants to admit that, about their work.

Except, I just did.

But, wait:
isn’t honesty a positive quality?

So, might this downbeat post negate its own negativity?

Has my failure gone meta?

Could meta-failure
form a kind of success?

 

 

(Thus, when I’m trying to think the way out,
philosophy pulls me back in.)

🤔

 

 

 

 

---

---

 

Hi all!

Attempts at spontaneous writing took a silly turn this week. 🙃
(Influence of British humour upon me, since childhood, is not easily escaped.)

Comments are always VERY welcome?

Art on the blog is mine, hope you like it?

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

( anxiety /art / blog / depression / humor / humour / life / mental health / poetry / prose / reading / thoughts / writing )

Blogging tips

 

 

Tiny things can trip us up!

Bloggers who write well, and create sites of beauty, may miss simple details.

Below are some examples:

 

(Tag-tastrophies!)

1)  Under-tagging.

It’s sad, finding good posts, neglected, and barely viewed.
Because they were cast, under-tagged, onto the WordPress Reader feed.

2) Over-tagging.

At the opposite extreme: other posts fail after adding too many tags.
Getting classed as spam, and excluded from the Reader.

3) Narrow-tagging.

Picking tags so limited that perhaps nobody follows them, reduces views drastically.
(OK: I invented a word, but hope you understand the idea?)

 

Tag tips:
Choose a minimum of one category (“Uncategorized” is the vacant default state)
and between 5-12 tags, per post.
Yet do not exceed 15 categories and tags, in total.

Devise tags which are liable to be searched for, or popular.
Unusual tags normally gain least traffic.

 

4) Blog-link your Gravatar.

Don’t be hard to find!
An unlinked avatar is like sending cards with no return address.
Your image should give curious people a route to your site.
(I discover much interesting work via new “likes” on my blog.)

 

5) Slabs of text?

Paragraphs and spaces aren’t just for wimps!
Why make it tough on your reader’s eyes?

 

6) Post bloat?

Less is often more.
If you’ve ever skimmed, skipped sections, scrolled toward an end,
or given up partway through a post, you probably know what I mean.

(Which leads me to…)

 

7) Blog-stravaganzas?

These risk overstimulation:
with multiple subjects, digressions, visual effects, GIFs, links, audio/video, etc.
Unappreciative visitors could seek a plainer read, elsewhere.

 

Of course, long-form pieces can also be great!

 

8) Check your spam.

Genuine comments get filed there, occasionally.

 

9) Timing matters!

For attracting new followers: best avoid publishing when they are at work or asleep.
I post Sunday evening, from the UK, because America is 5-8 hours behind us.
(Hence, at midday, here, it would be only 4 a.m. in California.)

 

 

Apologies!

To those familiar with the above points already.
I intended saving a few less-experienced bloggers my own, painful, learning curve.

What blogging tip do you wish you had heard sooner?

Comments are VERY welcome!

(Please feel free to share, if you think this might help others.
My audience is so small, hardly anyone will access the information, here.
In fact, not a single person, who could benefit, might see it.
But, hey, I tried.)

 

Thanks for reading.

 

(Art on the blog is mine.)

 

---

( art / beauty / blog / blogging / culture / ideas / inspiration / life / opinions / prose / reading / thoughts / writing )

Giving up?

 

 

Do you sometimes feel like giving up?

I do.

Almost every week.

Here is my 200th post.
Which finds me, again, unsure, over going on.

 

This blog was started, as it will probably end, in sadness.
From being unwell, and the last of our family line.
Painfully alone.

Realising the flat would simply be cleared
(thus art, poetry, writing, totally destroyed)
after my death,
I decided to commence a cyber memorial.
For lost life, ruined by chronic illness.

 

I did not know enough about blogging to notice the flaw in my idea.

People normally only visit around the day of publication.
Then, until adding new material, views fall away toward zero.
Resulting in that very oblivion I hoped to avoid:
A dead site.
Sinking, forgotten, beneath the vast digital ocean’s surface.

 

Recently, I have another worry: political correctness and censorship.

Since thrown (by poverty plus sickness), into an inner city underclass environment,
my prose reflects lived experience.
Language is often raw.
Subjects include anti-social behaviour, abuse, aggression, bullying, crime, noise nuisance, stupidity and violence.

I’m a victim of all these.
(Eventually driven from three different homes as a consequence.)

 

Now, perceiving such topics contain potential to offend,
when preparing to edit past work involving them most
(while seeing reports of entire sites deleted without warning),
makes me quite anxious concerning how much I should self-censor?

 

As this blog is my sole public voice, I don’t wish to endanger its survival.

Fearing a return of that silent isolation, where the journey began.

 

 

 

 

 

It would be interesting to hear your opinion?

 

 

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

 

( anxiety / art / blog / culture / depression / life / mental health / photography / poetry / prose / reading / thoughts / writing )

 

Another birthday lost

 

 

 

A youthful finger
points the way.

But looking back on
where things led

what could I really
say to him?

 

Now fragile words
are all there’s
left
that tell

about
this life.

 

Which
faded

so completely
from

the world

of human care

 

 

or touch.

 

 

 

---

 

 

Birthday update

 

Since diagnosed with an incurable, progressive, and dangerous medical condition
(tending to require mind-numbing painkillers (e.g. morphine)),
I’ve focussed on editing a 47-year backlog of writing.
Before mental clarity declines any further.

At times, blogging has felt like a race against death: saving my art from oblivion.
No-one is here to preserve it, after I’m gone.

Unfortunately, multiple illnesses leave me little energy for networking, or growing an audience.

However, by around the 200th post (September), a great majority of my past output should be online.

 

As a lonely person, existing in painful obscurity, I still imagine being popular, one day.

Thus, beyond forming a tiny, neglected, cyber-memorial for my lost life,
I actually wish a few more people would visit this site.

 

Successful bloggers often recommend social media to raise stats?

 

(Presently, dependant upon the WordPress Reader, posts quickly disappear down the feed. Then views fall away, until a new piece is published.)

 

 

Yet, perhaps those other platforms might be too distracting?

 

And

there’s also a novel I need to finish…

 

 

---

 

Does anyone find Social media helps grow their blog?

Or have an opinion on which platform is best for writers/artists?

 

Comments are very welcome!

 

Thank you all for reading.

 

 

---

 

Hi guys!

 

My thumb and finger infection persists. The nail is hanging partly off.
Still oozing pus. On 10th day of antibiotics.

Am quite anxious, and fed up with it, after almost 4 weeks.
Hardly able to write due to pain.

 

Another birthday alone in my flat, feeling too ill to go out.

Which, for me, is the norm.

 

Hope you are all well?

 

 

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / depression / life / mental health / photography / poem / poetry / prose / reading / thoughts / writing )

 

 

Forlorn lucidity

 

 

Lostness   (41)

 

 

At times I feel so unformed.

My “becoming” experienced as drifting.

Perhaps such shapelessness constitutes a price of freedom?
Hence, while freedom is curtailed by the liberty of others, or biology: I wrestle, in addition, with lack of direction.
How to advocate a lifestyle even I may not enjoy?

For me, any hopes to produce something worthwhile carry a suspicion of fantasy.
Whatever I concentrate upon leads to an imaginary complaint from neglected possibilities. Thus my shifting between art, poetry, prose, music and philosophy.
Yet these urges to “keep options open” might work against the commitment required for achievement in each area.

 

What I do, today, is more important than what I intend to do, tomorrow.

 

Writing can be lured toward an ideal:
a certain beauty, via vivid sentences, lit by clarity, evocative as distant incense, hinting at transcendence, through the web of art.

Or, in the present case, while living isolated and unknown:
a dream that people I cannot meet might still be touched by my words.

 

---

 

 

Forlorn lucidity

After the telephone call
turning
into that gloomy front room
lit by a single electric button, glowing
red and insistent,
under its display panel,
though daylight’s blade
slicing between almost-closed curtains
smears one white fleck
across darkened glass

I stand
perceiving some discomfort
in the head
from neurons alert
with forlorn lucidity
while self, sensed
spirit-like, lingers
where conflict had been,
on the site
of my defeat.

 

 

(1986)

 

(philosophy/psychology/mental health/thoughts/ideas/poem)

 

 

Words like dead leaves

Lostness   (25)

 

Someone says: “Given that the world is divided into mental or physical spheres…”  And the fatal step has already been taken!
Dualism opens a chasm then wonders how to close it.

 

Man is a problem to himself.

 

Would we have motivation without emotion?
Even logic is a product of will.

 

---

 

Some disconnected thoughts strive after aphorism…

 

Most systems produce attitudes unsuited to freedom.

Opinions that cannot be defended are not worth holding.

Firing-patterns: thought from the viewpoint of an electrode.

Asking a question could indicate the overcoming of a problem.

Certain optimists hope to change what people want by not giving it to them.

Arguments from design appeal to natures not disgusted by biology.

We learn the result of refusal to learn from history, from history.

For believers incapable of life, its postponement until after death seems a useful option.

Many praise virtue, yet dislike those who hold its mirror to their faces.

Love your enemies: so they may hate you even more.

Deception is parasitic upon truth.

 

---

 

 

Dissatisfaction with my writing
shed in these
words like dead leaves
scattered across whiteness.

 

 

(Jan-Mar 1980)

(philosophy/ideas/aphorisms)

 

Shooting my grave

Lostness   (22)

 

I imagine a multi-gun salute fired into my grave, instead of over it.

 

Someone in a dream insists “Special relativity is all very well, however the time I am referring to is the same throughout the universe!”

 

---

 

Trust is needed by infants, but an open book can be filled with lies.

 

Lacking knowledge of either parent a child may be partly an enigma to itself.

 

---

 

My freedom feels greatest in actions of least importance.

 

Moves of chessmen are determined, not the game.

 

Art is one of the better ways to waste time.

 

A culture should leave space for activities which lead to its advance.

 

---

 

What I reject philosophically can still affect me emotionally.

 

Alienation could lead to identification with the oppressed.

 

Explanatory power might make a theory more harmful, especially if it is false.

 

---

 

I return to this moment won from death
in defiance of entropy.

 

 

(Sept 1979)

(philosophy/ideas/thoughts/opinions)

 

The perspective of a soul

 

Lostness  (21)

 

Does saying “I have a body” rather than “I am a body” imply the perspective of a soul?

 

It might be convenient to have gods who do the loving for us, while we carry on exploiting each other.
It seems some believers already take that approach?

 

Can society afford a conscience if its pleasures are built upon suffering?

 

A depressive view may be accurate: yet reached without depression.

 

Atheism can feel emotionally preferable to dogma.
As a child, I found myself trapped in an environment of malicious authority.
My nervous system formed under threat.

 

For the alienated, interaction with others often has a hint of self-betrayal.

 

Can I love humanity when I hate myself?

 

The cosmos tells us we are nothing; the ego tells us we are everything.
Both, in a sense, correct?

 

In the mirror of life a universe becomes visible to itself.

 

What use is knowledge if I remain unaffected?
Will is a manifestation of energy, subject to chaos.

 

No one sees the world whole.

 

 

(Aug 1979)

 

(Philosophy/questions/opinions/thoughts)