This is something I call the tragedy of oblivion. Speaking from my own experience, I think back to one frustrated night about five years ago. I had been through one failed attempt at dating after another, and one particularly painful episode of unrequited love. I was ready for “the one” to come along, and at 32, felt somehow cheated by life in this respect. Not being one to hang out at bars, I would occasionally browse online personal ads. But this night, I was simply looking for support within the gay community, maybe a message board or mailing list discussing the difficulties of actually finding someone who wanted the same things that I did.

Normally, I quit on page two of a Google search. If I haven’t found what I’m looking for by then, I’m probably not going to find it. But on this night, I kept clicking, though I couldn’t explain why. At one point, I distinctly recall thinking about shutting down the computer and going to bed, but kept on clicking. Finally on page six of the results, I clicked on a web page that looked interesting.

Within the personals section of this site, I noticed a woman who posted a simple “moving to the area from Japan, wish to meet new people” and her email address. It had been posted several months before, but I wrote to her anyway, thinking she might be moved here by now. “Hey, I am also in blah blah town, write back if you’re still looking to meet someone.” What followed was a month long email correspondence, without even exchanging pictures, and we will now be celebrating our second wedding anniversary in August.

But what if I had shut down the computer and gone to bed that night? We would never have met, and I would never have known it. And you might ask, how can it be tragic if you would never have known? To which I answer, the tragedy is that very thing…my oblivion…whether I would have been aware of it or not.

artwork from cozymisery.com

And so I wonder, how many tragedies of oblivion do we each experience every day? It really puts into perspective how very much our lives are dictated by our own choices…the irony and tragedy being that oftentimes we are unaware, blissfully ignorant, choosing another option from the menu of life and moving along as if nothing happened.

There’s something very wrong with someone who would act with such disregard for the nature around them. When I drove past this scene, I wished I had come along while the crime was taking place so I could tell this person what I thought of them, or at the very least get a license plate number.

And then we have this, at a local park with a beautiful lake that is home to four swans…swans that certainly do not deserve to have the skid-marked, nasty ass underwear of some disgusting human for dinner.

Nor do they deserve to eat the plastic soda cup of some flippant jackass who has no concept of responsibility, nor possesses any real self-awareness.

Between this, McDonald’s bags full of uneaten slop laying in the middle of the road, and of course the current oil spill catastrophe, I can’t decide if I want to scream or throw up.

1. There’s a website where people add funny captions to pictures of pets, and I visit it a couple times a week because it really does crack me up sometimes. Animals are cute, and people are funny, so sue me. Anyway, the submission below  was hilarious to me, but at the same time I had a quick thought of  “I never thought of yogurt as something a dog would like”. The next day, I saw a commercial I had never seen before, for a special yogurt made just for dogs.

2. I was sitting at the pharmacy waiting for a prescription, and was reading a Time magazine article about Tom Hanks. There was nobody around, as I had arrived at a slow time of day for them. About halfway through the article, a woman walked up to the counter and said “Picking up two for Hanks, please”.

3. I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my family…yeah, we play it…and one of the questions was about Skylab, the United States’ first space station. During a moment of down time in the game, I picked a card from the middle of the deck just to see what questions were on it. The first question my eye fell on was another question about Skylab. The odds of this seemed pretty slim to me.

4. The same day of the Trivial Pursuit game, my mother had been telling me about a guy she used to know named Pat Riley. One of my questions was to name a certain basketball coach…and since Pat Riley was the only basketball coach I could think of, I guessed him and said “yeah Ma, you were just talking about him, haha…” (it’s not the same guy). A short while later, a different sports question asked how many championships Pat Riley had won with the LA Lakers.

5. Driving along one day recently, I was flipping the radio stations. “Wild World” by Cat Stevens was just starting, a song I love and proceeded to crank up. The first car to pass me in the opposite direction after finding the song had a license plate that said “CAT 15”.

6. At work, I was talking to a co-worker who is also a very close friend…we were wondering about the history of the building our office is in and what year it was built, but we couldn’t find it on the website we were looking on. We eventually said screw it, and moved on to something else…

Fast forward approximately one hour, and a local police officer stops by to say hello to us. We work for the state, and sometimes have to interact with the police, so it’s not uncommon for them to stop by and say hello once in awhile. However, this particular officer, we had never seen before. He proceeded to tell us that he used to work there from 1976-81, and chatterboxed away about the history of the building. He told us it was built during WWII, and the pine trees surrounding it were planted by Yale University in the 60’s to test how different pines reacted to that particular soil…and that a man by the name of Garfield had once run the building for years, and there’s a legend about “Garfield’s Ghost” roaming the building.

Now that was especially interesting to me, since during an overnight shift I had very clearly seen a shadowed figure in the second floor window looking down at me in the parking lot, in a lucid/out of body type experience.

So not only did this cop show up to answer our questions about the building…literally, he just pulled into the parking lot and started talking, we didn’t ask the guy a thing…but I got a very cool lead on a ghost experience I’d had there a year before.

All of the above coincidences have happened within the last month. But probably the most incredibly fucked up coincidence to happen to me took place a little over a year ago. And so I save the best for last.

7. For some time, I had/have been basically obsessed with King Philip’s War, a conflict that took place in New England before America was even America. The story of this war had been heavily on my mind, since I live and drive on some very specific battlegrounds every day. I feel the energy of this conflict very strongly at times.

One day, I was driving along a main street, at about 15 mph since traffic was a bit congested. A UPS truck on the side of the road took it upon himself to pull out into oncoming traffic…that being me. The impact sheared off my passenger side front panel, destroyed my tire, crushed the A/C components, and the g-force sent my rearview mirror flying off the windshield and into the back seat. Needless to say, I was sore for a few days.

a violent manifestation

The coincidence comes in the following….(or IS IT a coincidence?). When I filled out the official accident report, the name and address of the UPS driver were already filled in. This driver lives on….are you ready…King Philip’s Road. Making this even stranger is the fact that it’s in a city 20 miles away, and that a few weeks before, I had been in that city and driven past King Philip’s Road, and at the time, I thought to myself “Hmm, let’s take his land, kill his people, and then name a street after him! Way to go!”

So in summary on that particular incident…I had been feeling very mentally, emotionally, and spiritually impacted by the history of this violent war…again, living and driving on its battlegrounds my entire life. And then one day, a very violent and physical manifestation of this war literally impacted me.

I’ve always believed that our thoughts can and do create our physical reality, but after that one, I am 100% convinced of it.

Anyone have any stories of bizarre coincidence to share?

This past week, I witnessed an epic fight between two of the swans…all caught on film (memory card). I was on the other side of the lake at full 200mm zoom, so the quality isn’t as good as I would like, but still manages to capture the action.

Below, the swan on the left was chasing the other swan around the lake very aggressively:

Suddenly, he began skipping across the water and became slightly airborne:

The other swan didn’t stand a chance in this one. Didn’t even bother to fight back either…just flapped his wings and tried to get the hell out of the way. Those ducks didn’t even flinch, which I find hilarious. You can almost hear their conversation…”Oh look Harriet, the sparring Swanstons are at it again…”

And then finally, THE ATTACK…

And off he goes, wings out in triumph, as the victim scurries away…

I have a theory about why these swans are being so aggressive with eachother. Last Fall before they were taken to “a local private location” they all got along great..two couples, always swimming and preening together, and I never saw any fights like this one. Well, the parks department was only able to secure one of the swans for a period of about two weeks. This meant that only three swans were left for that amount of time, one couple and one lonely swan wondering where the hell his lady suddenly disappeared to.

So I suspect that some rift or distance was created during that time, and the lone swan perhaps tried to take over the other male swan’s partner. And now, even after being returned to the big lake, there is still a perceived threat. It makes sense, because now while there is again one swan couple,  the other two swans only seem semi-interested in eachother.

File under: Swanitude.

Please enjoy some of the droplets I have captured over the last year.

Sparkly drops...

All hail King Droplet...

These are actually snowflakes in mid-melt.

Water droplets are a beautiful and unique natural phenomenon, and I recommend stopping to look at them as often as you can. It’s good for the soul…

My experience with cancer began in mid-February 2007. I was sitting at work talking on the phone, and poking around absent-mindedly at my neck. For a long time I had been periodically feeling around my neck, much like a woman periodically examines her breasts, because it always stuck in my head that my grandfather discovered he had lung cancer from finding a lump in his neck. Having been a smoker, although a very light one, I got in the habit of checking my neck as I got older. Go figure that I end up finding a cancer that is unrelated to tobacco use, which was confirmed to me by three different doctors. Of course, smoking doesn’t help anything health related, period…but a part of me was glad to hear that the more likely cause was the fact that dentists didn’t cover your neck when they took x-rays in the 80’s and 90’s

The lump I found was the size of a small grape, and wasn’t easily felt. It required coming in at a certain angle that only seemed possible using my right thumb. So I wasn’t surprised when I went to my primary care doctor and he told me he couldn’t feel anything unusual. To his credit, he ordered a thyroid ultrasound anyway, and I received a call from his office on March 26^th that he’d like me to see an ear, nose and throat specialist. For some reason, I became very emotional at that point and had a shitty afternoon of worrying. Even though there was no biopsy yet, I think I instinctively knew where this was all leading.

At my first appointment with the specialist a few days later, I asked him if there was something on the ultrasound that indicated a malignancy to him. He replied with a fast “yep”, and proceeded to explain something to me about “hot nodules” and “cold nodules”… I then waited for another month, with that “yep” in my head the whole time, this time for a needle biopsy on April 30^th (not as bad as I thought it would be), followed by the official diagnosis of papillary thyroid cancer on May 10. I received the call while at home, trying to take a nap in preparation for the overnight shift at work. I can still hear it, “Unfortunately, the results came back positive for papillary carcinoma.” I paused a moment, half-asleep… “For what? Does that mean cancer?…It does?….Oh….okay…what should I do next then?” He told me that surgical removal would be all that was necessary, which took place one month later on June 11.

It’s hard to explain how dirty and contaminated my body felt for that month from diagnosis to removal. I wanted to turn myself inside out and take an alcohol bath. I was relieved at having such a good prognosis, but feeling fine with no symptoms while having cancer is a clashing of two very different worlds. Because seemingly nothing has changed…except everything has very much changed.  Suddenly there was what I call a “cancer gloss” over everything. It was very literally on my mind every single waking second. Driving to work…holy shit, I have fucking cancer…Taking a shower…I can’t believe this shit is happening …Watching a movie…this is bullshit, it really is….Brushing my teeth…I hope I live to see the wedding we just started planning ….checking my email… there is a cancer in my body, and I want it out. And mornings especially were such a joy…I would wake up, and for a few seconds it would be a great day, and then…oh yeah, that’s right, I have fucking cancer…

According to my kick-ass surgeon, the removal of my thyroid has cured me. I have declined to have a follow-up radioactive iodine scan to check for lingering cells, as he (kick-ass surgeon) said he didn’t think it would be necessary. Being a professor at Harvard and one of the top doctors in lymph and node surgery in Boston, I trust him to know what he’s talking about. All of the surrounding nodes tested negative, and that’s good enough for me….most of the time. I’ll admit there are times I still find myself considering this scan, and wondering if I’m screwing myself by not having it done, but as of this writing have yet to make the appointment.

Now almost three years later, I still have a hard time with what this was supposed to mean, because I believe that everything that happens in life serves some kind of purpose even when it’s not immediately apparent.. I had cancer, and I did not spend one night in a hospital. I spent a few groggy hours waking up after surgery, got sick a few times on the way home, had two weeks off from work to recharge, and that was it. I had some trouble sleeping for awhile, that was the worst of it.

And that’s where it gets a little complicated for me when I get an email asking for stories from cancer survivors…because what I really feel like is this:

Artwork from zombiescantdance.com

It’s been 2 years and 9 months, and at least once a day I hear or see something about someone dying of cancer. Whether it’s been in my own family, or on the news, it’s everywhere…try counting how many times you hear a reference to cancer in a 24-hour period. And each time, I have to process the fact that I am now a member of a very esteemed club, but in no way feel that I deserve that distinction. Stand me alongside the woman with one breast and no hair…and what have I gone through? A same-day procedure, followed by a couple weeks of feeling tired and foggy…that’s not an ordeal, it’s an inconvenience.

My mother suggested that I give back to the community, which I attempted to do, but ended up running from it instead. I went to the Cancer Center at the local hospital, and signed up to volunteer what I thought would be answering phones and handing out pamphlets. Then the woman in charge told me that part of volunteering would include going to the waiting rooms and talking to people there having their treatments. This is where I froze…what could I possibly have to say to these sick, weak, people in front of me? I had no idea what they were going through.

At best, I can relate to the social aspect of having cancer, because it truly is the “elephant in the room” once people know about it, and it’s not comfortable. For a while, I didn’t even want to be around people (with very few exceptions) because I was convinced that everyone was just looking at me and wondering if I was going to die. And nobody ever brought it up, which didn’t help.

Actually, that’s something I learned from this…if someone I know is ever diagnosed with cancer of any kind, I’m going to talk about it. I’m going to look at them and say “Holy shit, cancer…this really sucks…how are you dealing? What’s going on? What are they telling you?”…. And having said that, I want to be clear that I don’t have any resentment towards anyone in my life for their silence, because until this happened to me, I probably wouldn’t have known what to say either.

I think what this experience did was make me look closer at my priorities in life. I quit my job 6 months after the surgery, after asking myself ‘what if I weren’t so lucky?’ and wondering what regrets I might have. One of them was that I hadn’t yet found and pursued my creative self, even though I have been creative for most of  my life. As it stood,  I was working at a job I was very frustrated in, for a  boss who was completely absent and ineffective. My discontent with my situation at work was very deep, and had already been festering for close to a year before I was diagnosed. I had been at this job for eight years, five of them as a seasonal employee, and three of them as a year-round employee. So this was a big change and a difficult decision in many ways. The job itself was enjoyable and I got to meet and talk to a lot of really nice people over the years, but the circumstances at the time were screaming at me that it was time to move on. In hindsight, there were probably ways I could have gone about things differently, and perhaps made more of an effort to stick it out, but what’s done is done

So that was how I started 2008, with a lot of free time on my hands and a very supportive fiancé who encouraged me to find my passion in life and figure out what it was I wanted to do. And when I say “do”…what I came to realize was that what I “do” to earn a paycheck does not necessarily define who I am…and that it is possible to find meaning in life outside of the 40 hours a week we devote to paying our monthly expenses.

I got really bold and ventured into online sales, had some small success, and then flopped miserably…but it was kind of fun to try it. Then I discovered one of my true passions in life, which had always been there, but been kind of dormant, and that is photography. So I spent some money on a professional camera and discovered how to see my world in a new way. I now have over three-hundred pictures for sale online in various print media, and while I am not yet earning a livable income with this, I know that day will eventually come as I continue to hone my skills and learn new things.

In the meantime, I had an opportunity to return to the job I had quit, 6 weeks after I left…just go back, and pick up where I left off, easy as that. It was a chance encounter that presented this opportunity, and I weighed the offer very heavily because of that. I strongly believe that all things happen for a reason, and this chance meeting seemed to be telling me “go back, you weren’t supposed to leave’. But eventually, I declined the offer to return. In hindsight, it was a ballsy move that I might go about differently now, but I have no regrets because unless you have a time machine, regret is pretty much wasted energy.  Not to mention my replacement is currently experiencing the same frustrations as I did, to much the same degree.

So it would seem even more strange that I still had another opportunity to return to the job later that summer, only now as a seasonal employee. I had been a seasonal for 5 years before moving into the year-round position in 2004, and when I was asked to come back in that capacity once again, it sounded strangely appealing. My role would be different, while my job duties for the most part would stay the same. And I was right, and it was kind of nice to watch someone else now deal with the frustrations that had helped push me out the door. I am now returning for my third season since initially quitting. We do what we need to do…but I’ve learned how to live while I’m “doing” it…and that seems to be the key to reconciling my 40-hour self with my personal self.

In writing this, it has occurred to me that what I’m feeling is perhaps a form of survivor’s guilt. Why am I so lucky? What about those who aren’t? I’m certainly not complaining, just to be clear on that, and I suppose I could just as easily ask, why not me? It’s a strange place to be…

And that’s my story…I don’t know if I’m going to send it to the American Cancer Society for their book or not, because it still doesn’t feel like it would fit. But it’s been nice to sit down and attempt to write it.

Why?…he seemed to be asking…why you crazy white people take my land, “honor” me with crude statues, then chop off my nose? There is wisdom in this proboscis-missing ancestor of the land I now call home…I took a few different photos of him, and he ever graciously allowed me to do so, and went on my way.

And because I love them so much, I have to share another shot of the most incredible icicle formation I have ever come across:

And here, we have a little icicle hand making a kind of peace sign, I think.

And finally I will share this rusty row of wheel wells that I spotted while driving through an industrial area:

I was given permission to take the picture, but strangely enough I had an employee with me and watching me the whole time, which was about 5 minutes. He didn’t seem too interested when I told him I was driving by and pictured these wheel wells in black and white, so I took my shots and got out of there. Sometimes people really act weird around a camera.

When I look at how everyone lived in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and compare it to how we live today, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like for those long-dead people to suddenly time-travel to our present society. It’s fascinating if you really think about the details. There was no Dial soap, no internet and instant email, no ball point pens or conveniently lined spiral notebooks, no long-lasting batteries or flashlights, no local and international flights ready to take you anywhere you like on any given day, or drive-thru windows, or a magic pill to take away any pain, and there certainly wasn’t any roll-on deodorant, smooth-shaving razor blades or quilted toilet paper.

So let’s take John and Abigail Adams for example, or even George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and time travel them forward to the year 2004. What do you think their reactions would be to things like email, cell phones and text messaging? Or 2-in-1 shampoo? Better yet, as soon as he steps out of the flying DeLorean, hand Thomas Jefferson an iPhone and see how he reacts. This brilliant politician and author of The Declaration of Independence would probably be frozen with awe, and wonder if some alien technology had been dropped from the skies. And maybe I could take Mrs. Adams to the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru and order a couple of caramel swirl coffees and observe her reaction.

The scenarios are endless in thinking of how our many ancestors might respond to our everyday environment and many conveniences. How about Henry VIII text messaging the current Queen inquiring if there have been any recent beheadings?

I suppose my fascination with Facebook is most strongly directed in the ‘high school classmate’ category. Now, while I have said many times (and truly do believe) that nobody knows who they are or how to act between the ages of 14-17, I also concede the fact that some people are just born a certain way and maintain that core self throughout their lives. And some of those ‘some people’ are, quite simply, assholes and bitches.

Okay, so maybe the asshole who walked around like his shit didn’t stink has been humbled by life over the last 20 years since graduation, and isn’t such an asshole anymore. And maybe the supposedly-really-pretty snobby girl with the crazy hair and the cheerleader uniform has also had experiences that have made her a warmer human being over the years…stranger things have happened, I always say (really I do, because they have). But forgive me if a part of me takes some delight in the fact that I have aged far better than the majority of them

But to see these people after 20 years…people I was always aware of in the hallways growing up, but never spoke with…and suddenly they’re requesting me as a friend on a social networking website. And all of a sudden I’m looking at pictures of some of them…the cheerleader who is now 60 pounds heavier from having three children…the smug asshole who is now the doting dad of two beautiful daughters…and I think to myself, what the hell happened here? When did we all supposedly grow up, and why do I find myself interested in people’s lives who I haven’t given a second thought to since we all tossed our caps in the air at graduation? That next September came, the start of either our first year of college or first year out in the working world…and with the exception of a small handful of friends, those people I had crossed paths with were no longer there…and I didn’t think anything of it. They were just gone. Have a nice life, everyone.

And now, here they all are again. This one’s daughter got accepted to a great college, that one is buying a new house, and the other one constantly complains about the weather…and while I think 75% of what people post is total fabrication, usually to make their lives seem somehow more interesting or exciting than they actually are…I will admit that I’m intrigued.  Somehow, I think the quiet and not-very-pretty-or-popular 16 year old in me enjoys seeing the human side of these people, even if it is mostly bullshit.

There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground on this issue, and it’s frustrating in the context of certain conversations with certain people. It seems as though we must be one or the other, even though there are many of us who don’t fall on either side of that particular fence.

Speaking for myself, I believe in an all-encompassing intelligence and awareness that I call God. And I very literally mean all-encompassing…there’s nothing in the physical universe that isn’t made of this intelligent energy that is very much aware of Itself. And I believe there was a mortal man named Jesus who became immortal because he could do amazing things beyond our physical understanding, and that he was persecuted for it because small human minds cannot accept such miracles even when they ask to see them. But that being said, I don’t believe Jesus was any more or less the “son of God” than any of us are, or that he was our “savior”. How does being murdered by assholes make you the savior of all mankind?

Having now stated my belief in God (or as I also call It, The Consciousness), and Jesus the man…I think the Bible is a bunch of stinky bullshit, written by power-hungry old men seeking to control the masses over which they ruled. And that’s the origin of most religions, really…greed and too much testosterone. And brainwashing. Otherwise, how do you explain something like this:

And even that wouldn’t be so bad if not for the owl and freaky Tweety Bird head on the roof…

I could go on, and maybe I will at a later date ..but for now I’m going to go enjoy the chocolate I’m not giving up for Lent, and thank God for its goodness…mmmm…