Sometimes, there are these recent occurrences, where my body tells me that its more important to get up and write, then to sleep. These are happening at a frequency – that its pretty easy to blame it on medicine or other things – and we have come to a consensus that it won’t be before 4am that this occurs, due to the best/strongest healing hours being 11pm-3am – so this allows me to do my healing…. and then struggle for getting back to sleep – while my mind drafts over and over again some message I need to write down…..

I don’t know when I decided this was a “good idea” – or an “appropriate” idea …. I don’t feel like my conscious was actually consulted – I feel like the other “Alethia’s” – the super young self, the teenaged self, the young adult self, and the middle aged self all sort of had this quorum meeting, and decided “this would be the way of things” – its a strong enough feeling to be pervasive. I’ve tried, a couple of times to “silence” this drive of all these versions of myself – and I can chose to “not” get up and write – I can “chose” to lay in bed stare at the dark ceiling, while my mind goes into the zen place where I write….. there is the added frustration if I chose to do this, in knowing that most of what my mind drafts in this restful zen place probably will be forgotten to me consciously if I lay in bed and continue to rest.

There are sometimes when I can put my foot down, I can insist we sleep longer, and we generally do – sleep longer. However, there are other times, we will call these the “medicine is working against you” times …. when sleep is evasive, and getting up is probably the better option anyway.

My mind is often a warzone of concepts and ideas – of moving forward, backward, and back to present – of traveling to beautiful and horrendous worlds or scenes. Sometimes, reality of wakefulness is much more restful in its activity than the inside of my head in quiet and comfort of my bed.

The routine of the day is one I kinda feel like on these days, when I’ve allowed myself to be led into spewing my thoughts onto a page at some pace that is normally kinda frantic – spiderweb here – I remember the message that is mentioned over and over in Hamilton about him writing like he is out of time. …. While I don’t feel like I’m out of time, I do often feel like the writing is late. ….. Maybe more like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland… I’m late, I’m late for a very important date…. – frantic or not, the words just sort of come to me in snippets, and its more like deciding which to say, verses struggling with how to say. …

I was asked by a new friend to write a message about myself – sorta an introduction of myself as a “Cancer Warrior” type of thing – for her blog. And I mentioned to her that this would be a struggle for me…. I mean I blog – but my blog – This is a stream of consciousness for me, basically I’m taking dictation of the words going on inside of my head – not alot of screening or revisioning occurs. ….. For something more “formal” – thats going to be on someone elses page…. I dunno seems a bit more like I need to speak differently? Like I need an actual writers voice? Maybe this isn’t correct, I know at the very least I need to re-read and edit it – something I 99% of the time don’t do with my blog…. A failing perhaps – as I’ve gone back thru my blog (a rare rare thing) and re-read some of the posts – well the parts that were concise and legible enough to convey a full message 🙂 – the beauty and the bane of stream of consciousness – sometimes my thoughts just bounce along like a pinball in a pinball machine – racking up points of “I wrote I wrote” — without ever hitting that one pure prize that seemed like the goal – but I guess overall the goal of Pinball, and of my stream of consciousness blogging is — Like Nike said – just do it.

While its arguable more work than gaming, its alot more satisfying of a hobby – and with as much time and research i KNOW most gamers put into the games that they play – its actually, well atleast the slacker method I presently imploy – alot “less” work…

Had some recent waking thoughts about some of the incredible people I have on the fringes of my life – some of the co-workers for contract company that worked with us in India at my previous job – they were such amazing people – that went out of their way to stay in contact with me for years after I’d left for this health journey. The times I had with them in person in India were timeless and precious. Their faces still pop in now and again to visit me in my head when I am struggling with these times of “I wanna write” and “I wanna rest” — I just wish them all universally to be safe, healthy and above all happy – because my time with them was these things for me, directly because of their efforts and actions.

We went the other day – P had to take his ipad to the apple bar. Its a rather laborious story, but suffice to say, apple ipad of the generation which he uses have this thing where the battery dies if it gets a poor battery memory. This is something he realized a handful – not a week – when the thing was out of warranty with Apple…. it was still fortunately under warranty with AMEX – but they required documentation from the genius bar or other service provider that this was the case. So off to get this documentation we went — mostly I was riding as moral support and the opportunity to people watch from the safety of the car.

The domain was like a ghost town – okay there were alot of people there but like 10% the number you would expect, during the week later in the afternoon. We even got to park less than a block from the Apple store, which is — well there were a ton of empty spots, and this has never happened since that place was opened. My vision of people watching wasn’t let down, but it was significantly less prominent than anticipated.

I got to notice a few of the company buildings that were “coming soon” and wondering how long ago those coming soon signs had been up there…. normally its a couple months from coming soon till open – but with conditions as they are… had this been a “year” of coming soon? My mind pondered. I looked up one of the businesses, which had a cute name for Austin – it was called “Barkin Creek” – a dog food, and pet spa place – a chain and this was to be its new location…. Barton Creek being the name of both a natural exploration place and the posh mail in south Austin.

I watched so many of the people walking without masks, without social distancing – again from the safety of the car. P had work a mask over mask – usually he wears one of those bandana thingies, but since he knew he would actually be out with strangers today in amongst the ramble, and at a tech place with lots of other peoples germies from touching – he wore the more formal “protect me” mask too. Apparently they had hand sanitizer all over too for which we were both grateful.

I wonder how much the profits of the sanitizer business have skyrocketed during this experience. They aren’t the only business that has been uniquely positioned to capitalize on this adventure of life right now…. but they are one of the most consistent and well established.

Kinda its a prop to the American spirit – (spiderweb, I wonder if thats a closet racist term – the “american spirit” – I mean its the name of a brand of cigarettes and I can totally see that being racist – particularly since they have an indian on the cover and are marketed as such because they are free from most/many of the toxins normally in tobacco cigarettes… but when we say the “American Spirit” and we aren’t really referring to the continent of “America” — we are only North America and not even all of that…. we are the Estadoes Unidad – or United States of America or the USA – but we are just “Americans” — except we punish and detain other Americans that aren’t US citizens – so perhaps there would be value in not calling ourselves “Americans” when we don’t really mean Americans at all… but USA) — that no matter how down or concerning some things are, there is someone with an ingenious idea that will be able to rise above and create positive things without at the same time. The ability to take a glass of water and see it both as half full and half empty all at the same time, while having debates, arguments, and wars about it – that is the “American Spirit” — which I suppose now needs to be called the USA Spirit. This isn’t at all meant in a derogatory way. I believe in the USA Spirit – it’s also about the fact that we can take no matter how much we have slid into the mud, and somehow figure out how to sell mud pies from our experience, and encounter. We learn to rise above, to get knocked down, and get up again.

Chemo treatment was yesterday, we reduced my premeds again at my request. My blood levels are well, right now they are playing jump rope, bouncing up and down — not far enough down so as to be alarming, just far enough down to be almost actionable – but also back up to nearly normal range. I’ll be back to Mary Poppins in no time, it seems. I do have to say, the downside to reducing the premeds is in the knowing that the nausea is my own doing. My bodies way of saying “Oh I see, reduce the anti nausea things, don’t give me many carbs before or after, take away my probiotics to avoid conflicts with the meds – and then expect me to keep everything happy and content down here? ” — Yes, body there is a santa clause – I got up and got to write.