It’s Sunday, a gorgeous day here in Arizona, with cool autumn temperatures in the mid-60s and lots of blue skies and sunshine. I feel good. I am alive and well.

This morning I got up early to work on Final Draft, a book – probably my last one – which is one part memoir and two parts meditation on what has meant to live my life by the power of stories. With the help of my pal Hugh Downs (himself a lifelong amateur scientist and a member in good standing of our Beyond Institute of advanced theoretical physics) I completed a section on quantum theory and human mortality, which sounds larger and far more daunting than it is. But a life such as mine – and, I venture, such as yours – lived between the imaginative/explanatory powers of the Cosmos defined by science and the explanatory/imaginative powers of our lives defined by stories would hardly be complete without it, with a narrative merging the two storylines into a plausible afterlife.

I do love to write in the morning! And my good day was just beginning.

Nic came home from Tucson and after some grocery shopping he made us a beer-battered fish ‘n’ chips lunch. Tonight San and I will enjoy the company and conversation of our friends Sarah, Brad, Belle, and Dan, and dine on chicken enchiladas accompanied by maybe a glass or two of fine white wine. On the way home we will stop by Jeff and Angela’s to pick up some of young Anna’s amazing homemade cookies.

All in all, it’s a wonderful day as far as I can see. And I am grateful for it.

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My usual magical practice is to begin each new month with a personal good luck mantra drawn from British folklore and/or old Nantucket superstitions. I say with my very first breath: “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!” and then prepare myself mentally, physically, and soulfully for a month of hopeful good fortune. Today I repeated that magical practice and imagined with it a white rabbit leading me through this month, this “Big November,” the last month of my chemotherapy.

Full disclosure: I believe in magic. I believe in the persuasive power of words, stories, speeches, prayers, gospels, surra, parables, and poetry to change how we look at and understand the world, how we act in it, and how we use such understandings to promote happiness, peace, prosperity, love, and justice.

Why wouldn’t I? I earned a doctorate in rhetoric. I studied with wizened word wizards who culled their knowledge from ancient and modern texts, practices, and even the occult. I have, myself, studied the spells, er, done research from the ancients to the present on the subject of words and their relationships to what the philosopher Richard McKeon once called “thoughts, passions, and actions.” In fact, my fellow word wizard and dear friend who teaches health communication at Ithaca College, Stew Auyash and I just exchanged email this week about Jacqueline de Romilly’s classic book Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (1975), in which exists a compelling discussion of medicine, rhetoric, and magic. Not is this ancient knowledge lost on contemporary scholars who study the close relationship between diagnosis of disease and doctor-prescribed remedies as persuasive efforts designed to elicit belief as well as agreement.

Socrates may have railed against rhetoric in The Gorgias as being “akin to cookery” in relation to “medicine” but he was wrong. He also opined in The Republic that poets ought to be banned from society. There are a host of other things he was wrong about, including the idea he passed along to Aristotle about farting being responsible for death. He was wrong about that, too. Not all philosophy is truth. But as a rhetorician I would say that, wouldn’t I?  

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Probably the best way to characterize the all-day chemo treatment is by saying that when it was over I had tears running out of my eyes. But they were from laughter. And I was still delightfully full in the belly, due to a cupcake, two brownies, and a huge muffin that preceded my lunch. Laughter and sweet treats make the poisoning much easier.

The event that triggered the laughter was the blonde Lauren’s second application of skin cream, which is a line that only makes sense if you understand that before that happened, our mood was made merry by San explaining her theory of “how to get men to do housework” (bottom-line: ask them to do it because otherwise, left unasked, they won’t see what needs to be done) to an audience of appreciative women, including Lauren.

And this only makes sense if you know that Lauren had already applied a skin cream that was a divine vanilla and something else and that, for some reason, made us all think:Freshly baked cookies! We all complemented her on it and I innocently added to the universal “freshly baked cookies” idea that she should wear it when she asks Steve to do those household chores. “You know,” I said, “that reward thing.”

And this comment only makes sense if you understand that during lunch San and Lauren and Monica and Gerri and Jan all were engaged in a “man discussion” in the chemo prep room that I was not privy to, but at least part of it had something to do with Steve not doing something involving household chores Lauren thought he should just do “because it is common sense.” Men don’t have that particular form of common sense. Hence, the Supreme Bunny Being’s “advice on men” session and after it, my team of great oncology nurses and lovely wife all returned to the Room of Orange Chairs with big knowing smiles and gendered laughter, and maybe that was, at least for them, what triggered an afternoon of what can only be described as fun while being poisoned.

I have been silent on my blog for the past week for many good reasons: I’ve been feeling really good (a result of not taking the white count booster shot) and when I feel really good there is often less to say and more to do; part of the “more to do” has been recording audio lectures and preparing powerpoints and posting readings and URLs for my online class and part of it has been hanging out with San’s folks, who are happily ensconced in a rental house just down the street; and because I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to write for this post.

I haven’t written about “chemo anxiety.” I haven’t written about it because, like chemo treatments, the anxiety has been cumulative, which is to say that over time it has moved from a low-level anxiousness to a more pronounced level of dread about the next treatment. Before I go further into this subject, let me say that I’m not basing my conclusions on a scientific study so the specifics of this condition are not generalizable although I do think they are fairly common among cancer patients given what I’ve heard and witnessed at the clinic. And I do know that “chemo anxiety” affects people differently.

This week I have been encouraged to consider the most existential of questions: what is this life for?

Without revealing details of those triggering events – all of them happy – events that if recalled in detail would once again make me tear up, let me just say that I have been deeply honored and even more deeply humbled to receive gifts of visits, words, original music, email hugs, and virtual love from people whose lives I’ve somehow influenced or otherwise positively affected.

I say this not because I want to underscore what a fine fellow I’ve been. Instead, I want to acknowledge what I have learned from them: that a rich and meaningful life is one in which we contribute to others and accept with gratitude what they give back to us, help them achieve understandings, goals, and pleasure in their lives and in so doing see clearly how such cooperation allows us to achieve our own. It is a relational life lesson and perhaps one of life’s most important lessons.

So in the spirit of musing publicly over “the Big It” question (i.e., what is this life for) within the context of relationships with others, I offer the following fragments. Read one way they provide a reflection on how answers to that question may change over time. Read another way they show that such reflections are timeless. See what you think …

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