Surgery Tomorrow

So, today, I have been going for tests, a final MRI and an intense discussion about my little stranger. The doctors have been giving me the blow by blow about that they may be doing to me during the surgery. They orginally wanted to do it laproscopically but they have decided to do it open, along the bikini line.

I have heard stories about the myths surrounding air reaching the tumor causing spread of cancer. I have been begging for a closed proceedure, but they felt that I would not be assured that all the tissue would be taken out that is effected by the cancer. They explained that the myth comes because most people ignore symptoms til it is too late and that adds to the notion that exposure to the atmosphere causes immediate spread. They promise me that this is not the case.

My dad has been donaing blood for the surgery and I have been doing a mix of synthetic blood and true blood to build up my count, and fight the anemia that I am experiencing. I will have two more rounds of radiation then they will do the bone marrow transpant and I will be in isolation.

I'm scared, I don't mind to say it. My priest is coming to anoint me and give me Communion and he will even do the ashes, on a little card to post on my window because I will be in a protected environment. I will be fully ready to go through whatever it is I will be going through, at least spiritually.

Mom and dad came to see me today. They still don't like to be around me and they are glad I'm about 30 minutes away and the weather has been on and off again so they have an excuse not to be around so much. I understand, though it does hurt.

My sister and her wife come to see me for a few minutes every day, which is nice. I like my sister in law. I can't see my little "niece" because she is seven and little kids are notorious little petri dishes, but she draws me pictures and writes me letter. I always email her a little note, just for her. She wants to know what the boo boo looks like. I told her it was a little man that was kind of ugly and the doctors were going to trick him out and grab him.

They give me about even odds, because the chemo and radiation didn't do everything they expected it to do, namely shrink the tumor. But it did stop growing and is in stasis. I hope they can get it out.

Geronimo's Bones

As I lay here in my hospital bed, trawling the Internet, trying to keep my mind off what is happening to me, yet trying to decide how much further I am willing to go, I ran across this article about the descendants of Geronimo seeking the remains and funerary pieces of the great Apache warrior to give them an honest burial so his spirit will go on to the land of the dead.

Being Cherokee and Iroquois, I have a profound empathy for the Native people of America. I know that aboriginal ways are not always Christian ways but their belief structures are just as legitimate as Christian ways of dealing with the living and the dead. I would hate to think that here would be someone in the future that would dig up my ancestor's graves or even my grave, to study and keep in a cardboard box in the dark bowels of the Smithsonian or some college. I would rather think that my remains would remain in the earth to become a part of the Great Mother, who allowed us to spring up and walk on her great body and then cradles us in the arms of the soil to nurse us in our death sleep as we wait for the time of rebirth and reunion with the Creator.

To honor the dead, whether they share your world or religious view is a human responsibility. To treat with respect the most basic thing left of us, our earthly remains is the last request any of us could make of our brothers and sisters.

As one chief wrote: Deal kindly with my people for the dead have a power, too.

And for the sake of the great spirit, go to Mount Rushmore and blow those President's faces off the side of that mountain. The Black Hills Mountain range, of which Rushmore is a part is the home of Wakontanka, the Creator God of the Lakota Sioux. Those carvings are the equivalent of drawing a moustache on the Virgin Mary. It is a sign of dishonor and respect. Those mountains are the Sioux' cathedral. Give it back to them.

My Own Sheets and Blankets

See, no one really knows what is like to be in a hospital for a very long time. And as I am going to be in the hospital for a long time, I miss my old room in my mom and dad's house. My own bed and matresses with that familiar divit in the spot where you lay the most, the smell of your own pillows, that mix of clean skin and hair and your favorite cologne, the favorite flowered sheets and the old blanket that is warm in winter and somehow cool in summer that has the little hole in it that that you finger when you read or just before you fall asleep.

So, although I am in a rather sterile hospital room, with my little True Blood calendar the nurse Sherri made for me pinned up on my bulletin board. (I'm currently staring at Eric, sitting on his throne, looking sexy and bored. Obviously she doesn't know about my Bill fixation.) I was surprised by my mom bringing my pillows and and one of flowered flat sheets and my favorite blanket to put on my bed. Hospital pillows suck anyway.

After she and dad left, I snuggled down in my hospital bed and pulled my sheets and blanket up around me. I could smell the fabric softener she's washed them in. Lovely smells of home.

They take out my little stranger (I hate funny doctors, even though he is English and sounds a little like Stephen Moyer when I close my eyes) on the 24th. They say it roughly the size of an IHOP pancake and twice as thick and sort of kidney shaped. I asked them if I could look at the little bastard (that's what I call it) when it is "born". I don't think they have ever had anyone ask to look at the thing the thing that has been held in stasis for the last eight months. That's just a fancy way of saying they have managed to make it stop growing, though they hoped it would actually shrink.

I want to see the thing that would have loved to eat me alive, that may still kill me, that made me puke, undergo alchemy, undergo the burning times, made me cry and despair, made me ugly and bony and pale. Made me lonely. Made me Other. I want to look at and say "Well done you little fucker. Even if I don't make it, I know you didn't either."

But, I like being under my own sheets and blankets.

Simplicity

Some of you will have noticed that I have changed my blog some. I wanted to change it to reflect not so much a change of heart but a change for myself. To open up this blog to creativity and a change of spirit. I want this blog to be about me, not just the occult side of me, my dual naturedness, but my human side, my frail and failing side, my creative side.

I am tired of seeing myself as just one way, for like a jewel, I have many facets. If you are looking for my magik, it is still there, just look for it in the guise of other things, in the hidden nature of art and thoughts and commentary, of meanderings and of fantasy. The spells that come from poetry and prose, the praise of God in the desire for life. The exploration of life through fantasy and fiction, to find truth in simple thoughts.

All Things in the Night

I was perusing the internet, like you do when you are bored and I saw a video for the Northern Lights and had a sudden streak of inspiration:

The Viking Vampire stepped out into the night and looked up into the black sky. How long had it been since he'd seen the sun? He thought hard, trying to remember, something Eric did not like to do because it reminded him just how long it had been since he was human. Still there were some things he did remember. Like the way the Northern Lights would light up the midnight skies and make the snow covered mountains seem to be blooming in the thousands of shades of green that could only been seen in the light of day. But then, as the night began to melt away, the colors would fade and disappear and the mountains would become dark with the coming of the sun rise behind the mountains. But in that brief instant, the ancient dead man with his ice blue eyes could see the world in false daylight, not under the killing orb that he now avoided since being made Vampire.

These things of nature, of the night days he now lived, did not trouble him. He was leaving soon, to America, and he would not see the green fire that danced and showed him the Valhalla he would never know. The gods were dead to him now, as dead but not as eternal as he. Eric had lived too long in one place and new vistas called to him. He stood there in the cold he did not feel, he saw the symphony of green and blue light which would be the only day he knew. Would the American nights be as beautiful? Or would they simply look like the velvet blues and blacks of a thousand other human places. He once killed a jeweler in Germany and scooped up a piece of velvet with a small mound of diamonds on it as he left. In the privacy of his nest, he spread the cloth on a table and spread the diamonds across the soft silky pelt of the fabric, and though he was not given to metaphoric thought, the Vampire mused how the diamonds looked like stars in an inky black sky.

The female, his second in command, eternally young and beautiful with her long blonde hair on her shoulders stood next to him.

"Everything is ready," she said.

"We leave tonight," he said. But he stood there a moment longer to watch the lights.

Love and Betrayal

So, here is something I want to talk about as I have taken the time to read and reread the Charlaine Harris books. I'll warn you now there are BIG TIME SPOILERS here so if you don't want to know, back out now.

Being that I am in the hospital and likely to be here for at least another two months, I have read the Charlaine Harris books multiple times. I had really stopped reading them thoroughly after book three after she so uncerimoniously broke Bill and Sookie up. I just wasn't that interested in reading about Sookie or Bill sleeping with other people. It's because I loved the love story and the notion of true love, every bit as real as true blood.

So, in Dead to the world, Sookie goes to clean out her cousin Hadley's apartment. Cousin Hadley was murdered and, unbeknownest to Sookie, Hadley was Vampire. In the course of her activity, she is attacked by the same people who killed Hadley. This is what Sookie discovers.

Sookie discovers that Hadley had been the favorite of the Vampire Queen Sophie Ann. In the course of their relationship, Hadley tells the queen about Sookie being a telepath. The queen is intrigued. She then forms a plan to draw Sookie into the world of Vampire politics by sending someone to seduce her. You guessed it, Bill Compton.

It's terrible. It's an idea so loathesome, that even I, a Bill Compton devotee, feel my skin crawl. There are a lot of reasons for this. Bill is so courtly, so gentlemanly, so sincere and he did take Sookie's virginity. (Some of you might say "What difference does that make?" It makes a lot of difference if you cherished your virginity and wanted to give it to that special man as the gift you can only give once.)

But then I took some time and thought about it. What choice did Bill have? None, under Vampire custom, he has to follow the orders of his queen. If he hadn't, someone else would have been sent who perhaps would not have been as patient. Did Bill really love her? Absolutely. That was something the queen and Bill didn't bargain for. He was sent in to bring Sookie into the world of Vampire, and James Bond, Bill is not. He ended up falling in love with a mortal. Is Bill a victim in this, too? Sure. Maybe not on the same level as Sookie, but he is. He even suspects his descendant, the person he inherited his home from, was murdered to make room for him in the world of Bon Temps.

I still hold out hope for the romance. In Dead to Worse, he declared his love for Sookie and the declaration of his willingness to die (for good) for Sookie. I will know the entire story in March when the paperback comes out and I will know in May when the newest book comes out. I won't buy the hard back edition but I will sit down in the local book store and read it through right there so I will know if there is the hope of a Sookie/Bill reunion. I have to believe in the possibility of true love. There is so little of it out there.

The Snow

I woke up this morning and eased out of bed to sit for a few minutes in chair and let the cna's change my bed. It felt so good to hobble about and stand at the window and look at the snow that had fallen during the night. I am pretty tired, but I actually feel less bad than before.

Snow is my favorite type of precipitation. I love the winter. While everyone is hopping about wishing for spring, I actually love the idea of snow on the ground til April. I loved snow even before I was sick. It never gets cold enough to suit me. I love the changes in weather.

But after a few minutes, I was ready to get back in bed. Dad hooked up the little VCR to my TV and I run TB almost constantly. I feel not so lonesome now that I can look up at the tv and see my favorite characters and hear their southern accents. I suppose they sound funny and contrived to those who actually live in the deep south, but I love to hear them talk. Especially Bill. And the actor portraying him isn't even American. Stephen Moyer is British, from Essex, just north of London and he has the most delightful Queen's English accent. I have been watching him on youtube in the British soap NY-LON and in the Brit-Flick Empathy. He's really a very good actor. He does well with both stories though I think the stories themselves are little under developed. I loved him in Restraint. After seeing him play Bill Compton, a sort of vicious Vampire with a heart of gold, it was tough to watch him play Andrew, an agorophobic art dealer with a dark and definitely insane side to him. In the beginning of the movie, he is so vulnerable, unable to defend himself, but in the end, you discover that he is filled with his own sort of evil, darkness. You feel less sympathetic towards him, but you are intrigued by him.

I am glad I have True Blood to distract me. I feel as much a part of that world as any of the characters there. Kinda sad really, but as some of my mates on True Blood.net have said "Whatever it takes,"

I'm sleepy now.

My Will and Testimony

Everyone makes one of these, sometime or other, so here is what I call my Will and Testimony. It is not a declaration of what I will share in my death but what I have shared in my life. My possessions are so few and pitiful that this is all I really have.

To my Family:

I have tried to be the best person I can be. I always tried to be a good daughter and sister. I have tried not be an embarrassment or a burden. If I have been those things, I humbly apologize and beg your forgiveness. I have devoted myself to every family endeavor and cause and have tried to champion you in every public and private forum. I have tried to honor you and respect you and I have always loved you from the bottom of my heart. Do not look back on my life and pity me. My life has been an adventure and I cherished every moment of it.

To my friends, living and dead:

I have always tried to cultivate my friendships with a few people who deemed me important enough to call me a friend. I have appreciated your intimacy and trust. You have seen me at my very best and my very worst. I have tried to protect and serve you with all that is in me and though I sometimes failed, your acknowledgement of my endeavors have been reward enough. You accepted my eccentricities and embraced me when no one else would.

To my lovers, living and dead:

To my husband, who is dead now more than ten years, I tell you you were not my first heart love, but you were my first lover. You claimed the only prize I had to give you. I surrendered to you as well as I could and loved you to the best of my ability. You claimed me for only a short while, but I was yours completely. All men who came after could never claim the one part of me I could only give once.

To my heart's love, you loved me as well as you could but I have always and will always love you. I wished that you could have loved me as much as I loved you, but you couldn't. I hope that where ever you are, you are well and happy and healthy and loved.

To my God and my Church:

I am a sinner as you well know. I have many times failed you, but I have never fallen from the palm of your hand. You forgive my weaknesses and make your presence known to me by the people you have placed in my path.

I was accepted by my church when no other church would have me. I have not always agreed with you and sometimes I have disobeyed you, but I have never strayed from you. You are my mother and you nurture me and give me peace.

I found my spiritual path to magik not by the straightest of lines. I discovered the innermost heart of God by understanding the special energies flowing through all people and all things and I have always tried to respect all people and all creeds and all practices so that I may learn of all the world the will of God in my life.

To my Students:

I was not a great teacher, but I worked hard to try to be one. I hope you will forgive my failings, my shortcomings and celebrate the precious times we had together. I tried to reach those who others gave up on and tried to embrace the ones no one would embrace. I loved you all. You were my childen.

To my Idols:

U2: Thank you for your music and your poetry and your beauty. Thank you for helping me through heartbreaks and lonlinesses and my sicknesses. Thank you for being the soundtrack of my life, the rhyme in my heart, the passion of my soul.

Mel Gibson: Thank you for your beauty and your humanity. Thank you for Braveheart, The Patriot, Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, and Apocalypto and The Passion of the Christ. Thank you for your failings and your triumphs. Thank you for your Vision.

Dog the Bounty Hunter: Thank you for being street level, for your big heart, for your story, for your pain. Thank you for being foul mouthed but soft hearted. Thank you for your bravery and your justice. Thank you for your mistakes and your successes.

Stephen King: Thank you for scaring me, for creating characters I loved because they had a part of me. Thank you for your subtle wisdom. Thank you for your words. You made me think I too could be a writer and you inspired me to put pen to paper.

JK Rowling: Thank you for Harry Potter, thank you for magic in my life, thank you for vindicating Snape, though I had him pegged as the eternal villian.

Charlaine Harris and the cast and crew of True Blood: Thank you for being my refuge, for the chance to contemplate my humanity, my feelings of Other, and for helping me recognize my levels of tolerance and intolerance.

Thank you for the love story.

This ends my will and testimony. Brightest Blessings Be to all I mention here and may you all shime on in this world and the next.

Aslinn Dhan Dragonhawk

Creepiest Places on Earth

Excuse the Vampire. He isn't pertinent to the discussion, but he has the cutest smile, don't you think?


Ever see that show? I liked that show. They pluck some suburban American family from their comfortable lives and drop them down in the most creepy old places in the world, usually somewhere in England, and attach those back and front cameras onto them so you you get this strange coming and going feeling when you watch them sneaking around in this dark old house.

But I can tell you what the creepiest place on earth is, hands down. A hospital at night. Yeah, pretty damned spooky. I think it is because it's not like a hotel room. You can't close the door and lock it. Anyone can come into your room. And there is nothing like waking up to someone taking your pulse in the middle of the night, or changing one of those IV bags. And they are creepy because they are very quiet. Like Vampires that way. One minute you are lying there, staring at the ensure milkshake they made up for you (Drink it all down Miss Dragonhawk, every last drop) and the next minute there is one of them and they want to check your sugar (Oh no, they are Vampires LOL) Which finger you want me to prick Miss D.? I always show them my middle finger. You know they have seen that gesture millions of times from millions of patients but they all laugh like they'd never seen it before. I bet they are taught to do that, to keep our spirits up so we don't get down in the dumps. Too late.

Pneumonia...that's what I am in for. Pnuemonia. Went my whole life without pnuemonia and now I have it. Bloody infections. And I still have to go for my nuke sessions. I thought "Oh goody, a week off from nukings, I work on my radiation burns and rest maybe break that fever" But no. Not only am I sick from the pnuemonia, I have more burning to deal with.

You know why I think hospitals are so costly? I'm not reaching here, I know. I was admitted for pnuemonia while I was here for a nuke session. I wear this bracelet with a bar code on it. Supposedly, they are supposed to be able to scan me and pull up my records. What I discovered is I am in another department and I have to fill out all my paperwork again. Here I am dying and they want me to sit my fucking SATS. I didn't do it. I called my oncologist to send photocopies of my records to ICU so I wouldn't have to do them again. I then sent my dad out to KINKOS and smuggle my records out so he could make a couple of copies so incase I have to go again or go to a strange hospital, I would have them. Let some RN fill them out. LPNS are the ones who do all the work anyway.

So, anyway, it's always funeral home quiet here. Depressing. They have TV but no HBO and no VCRS so I can't watch True Blood. More depressing. I have my laptop though and so I am writing in my blog, getting ready to watch Stephen Moyer in NY-LON on youtube. Checking in with my TB buds. I wonder if that VCR in the closet still works. I may be here for two weeks. I may have dad bring it and hook it up for me so I can watch TB. I could probably watch it online somewhere.

Depress, depressed, more depressed.

Dear Mr. President

Today is inauguration day and we are swearing in our 44th president. This is a momentous time in our history. You see, our president, Barack Obama is black.

Everyone wants to know what black people are feeling right now, and it's important, but I have to say it is important to me too. I am not free from the shackles of racism, I still fight with the seeds of intolerance and hate within my own self. But I voted for Obama, not assuage my guilt but because he is the best man for the job.

I will tell you a little story. Know the movie Deep Impact? The asteroid movie with Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall in it? I loved that corn ball movie, it had a depth to it that I enjoyed with Tea Leoni and her conflicted feelings with her dad, the young kids who were just kids in the neighborhood who let us see the world through their eyes and the astronauts who were preparing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the world.

It's all there in this improbable plot, the plan to send the Messiah up to break up the asteroid, the Ark rescue plan, the moral dilemma for ordinary people over fifty excluded from the chance of rescue. But the most improbable plot line in a movie filled with them, was the notion of Morgan Freeman as president of the United States. I told my mom that that was the only thing that really stands out as improbable. "There will never be a black man in the White House in my lifetime."

Now, history has made a fool of me. That's okay. It's time for Barack Obama to come into his own and change history, opening up the door to all hues, just as Kennedy broke the barrier for Catholics, Obama will break the barrier for people of color. God Bless Barack Obama.

Do your best Mr. President, work hard, you have been left a country in shambles and a world on the edge and white people did that. Sorry it is in such a mess. And Americans, be patient. It took eight years for America to be made a shambles of. It will take far longer than that for America to be put to rights.

I'm white, 42, a woman south of the Mason Dixon line, a Roman Catholic and a practicing witch, I am over educated and underemployed and uninsured and sicker than hell. I am fighting a system that would sooner see me in the grave than well and working. But I voted for you Barack Obama and I wish you well. Good luck, you are gonna need it.

Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Acceptance

This chick named Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book about the stages of death. Being that she was living at the time, I wonder if she had the neccesary qualifications to really write a book about what it was like to meet the notion of mortality. Now that she is dead, there is no way to know what she thought about her own death process and whether or not she felt she was correct in her assumptions.

So, now that I am facing the possibility of my own mortal coil, I want to see what she means by the stages of death.

Anger- Am I angry? I am. But I don't think I am as mad at my own human weakness and the possibility of my own emminent death as I am of other people around me. Everyone says "I'm praying for you" or giving me those little yellow bracelets or giving me cliches about how God doesn't put a burden on you that you can't handle. I wished God wouldn't trust me so much. This is one burden that is just too heavy. I know their reaction is just an inablity to cope or relate to what is happening to me. I feel sorry for them on some levels because I know they are afraid. I am living proof of everyone's eventual demise, their own human mortality. And they are afraid of what they see. I know they are saying "Damn, that poor bitch is wasting away, I hope I don't go like that," If you can't say anything besides those old worn out chestnuts, just don't say anything at all. Just come and sit with me and talk about all the gossip or bring me a magazine or a good book to read. You don't have to comfort me because you can't.

Denial- There's no denying that I might be dying. I don't deny it. I think the people around me are denying it. They don't want to believe that I and they will eventually die. I think it is more about them than me. It's like, if they don't believe that I might die, then they won't die. Which is such a load of shit.

Bargaining- "Let's Make a Deal" remember that show? I am not playing that game. I have nothing to bargain with. I'm God's to dispose of as He sees fit. But the doctors like to make deals "Hey, Aslinn, the hospital would really like to put you through this drug trial. If you do, they'll knock off that fee that the state says it won't pay," What is it doc? "Well, we'll have to take you off the morphine and put you on this new non-narcotic nsaid, sort of a super aspirin, thing is, once you start it, you have to stay on it, even if your pain increases and it may cause ulcers and bleeding." No thanks doc, I'll fight the system and keep my morphine.

Acceptance- I have no fucking choice but to accept that I may die from this. To not accept is to play a vicious game with myself of being high and low. That doesn't mean that I like it, I don't, but what can I do? I have already done more than I thought I would. I always swore that I would never do chemo, never do radiation, but here I am, I'm doing it. And I have to accept what it is doing to me, I have no choice.

So, is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross right? Maybe she is, but not for the person who may be dying, but for those around them. See, I have no choice but to be where I am. Those around me? They are the ones going through the stages.

The Mirror

I haven't looked at myself in the mirror in a long time. Long before I had cancer I stopped looking in the mirror because I was a fat girl and I knew no one would want to look at me, not even myself. Now that I have cancer, I don't like looking at my reflection because I know no one will want to look at me, not even myself.

But I looked today as I dressed to go to the hospital on this desperately cold day to be nuked. I had stripped down of everything. I stood there in front of the long mirror. I look like Jack Skellington from that wonderfully gothic The Nightmare before Christmas. My breast are empty and shrunken, my ribs show, my hip bones are too sharp and I am white (Momma, she's so white. We're white baby, she's dead) except for the bruises that are evident on my arms and legs from the ports they keep trying to maintain for the drugs. The doctor says that if I don't start eating more I will have to have a feeding tube. Damn it, I said no and I fucking mean it.

I dress in clothes that a few weeks ago fit me. Now I have to cinch them around me. I put on my black tee shirt that reads "My giveadammer is broken" I could almost wear it as a dress whereas before it was almost too tight. I snug my silk cap over my head and then pull on my boggan with the skull and cross bones on my head. The silk cap protects my head from being irritated by the fibers of my boggan. I pull on my pleather black jacket and slide my feet into my tennis shoes. I have to wear two pairs of socks now so my feet don't just slide out.

Dressed I still look like a boneyard. I put make up on the other day. I thought I might look more human and all it did was make me look like a tarted up skeleton. Fuck it. I kinda like scaring little kids who stare at me like I'm a freak. Watch it kid, but for the grace of God goes you. Mothers stare at me too, as if I could help it. Fuck you and your little kid lady. What do they want me to do? Wear a canvas bag over my head with eye holes in them and mutter to myself "I am not an animal, I am a human being." If someone hands me another one of them live strong bracelets I'm gonna strangle them.

Yes, goddamn it I want to live. I don't need some over paid, over hyped steriodal bicyclist who dumped his wife the moment she came down with breast cancer to tell me anything about living with this disease and the things it is doing to me. Or the things it did to my husband as he died in my arms, screaming for me to stop the pain. I let him down, I couldn't put him out of his agony and I think he hated me in the end for it. And I wish folks from my church would stop bringing me St. Jude medals, pictures, statues. They all talk about how holy my suffering is. I don't feel holy.

What I am is mad as hell. I hate what is happening to me. I cry when I know it is time for my dad to carry me out to the truck because I know he finds me repulsive. I touched his hand the other day and he jerked away because I look like a skeleton and it creeps him out. My sister is a nurse and hates to come to bathe me in the evening in the bath chair while my mother changes my sheets and puts on fresh ones and lays down the chucks pad in case I wet the bed in the night. Even my sister is disgusted with what I have become and she washes the old, the infirm, the eternally lost in that long goodbye. Maybe it is because she pities me and she knows I can feel the pity rolling off her and it stinks like chemotherapy and radiation sickness.

So, I retreat into the world of the south. I go to Bon Temps and I am courted by a beautiful Vampire who sees me, not as I am but as Other. Sometimes he has dark hair, someimes he is blonde, somes he is not a man but a woman, but they know me because I am like them. Undead, Other, hated and feared.

I won't see myself in the mirror anymore.

Nagasaki/Hiroshima

I had my first visit to Nuclear Medicine today for my first radiation treatment. It took all of ten minutes and left me with a sunburn from the waist down (not much of one, but still)

As I lay under this massive bit of hardware that glowed with some sort of infrared light, I meditated so I would not move around much. I have to be careful about meditation or I put myself too deep and my BP drops. But as I meditated I kept seeing this miniature mushroom cloud where my uterus used to be. What was it in that U2 song Bullet the Blue Sky "Plant a Demon Seed/ Raise a Flower on Fire" Well I think that is what is happening to me. I think the bowing lilly that was my uterus (now a wierd globbulous mass I am hoping will shrink enough to be removed) is now the flower on fire.

I am still running a fever, though some of it may be from the radiation. They say my infection is clearing up but I can't tell, I never really feel good anymore, just some days I am less bad.

Meds are kicking in.
Goodnight

Would I be Vampire?

I asked this quesion to the forum and I have had an astounding resonating no. Many of the people who answered said they would do it if they could have some conditions like being able to move around in the day and not having to drink human blood. This is sort of like saying "I'd be a racial minority (black, brown, red, yellow, whatever) if I could wash it off at the end of the day.

So, before I answer my own question on the forum, I will answer it here.

Yes, I would be Vampire. I suppose you might say "of course you would, Vampires don't die of cancer" And I suppose that you would right to an extent. I would want to be Vampire and all that entails because of the fredom it entails. I would have the freedom to be a part of the mysteries of the night, to know it's loves, lusts and hungers. To live without a lot of fears (of course Vampires do fear being found in the day or being staked). To have superstrength and senses. To seek out evil and kill it and to protect the innocent and to hunt. I believe I have a bit of blood lust in me and a disposition to living solitary. To walk through history and see it unfold all around me. To be disengaged with others unless it is my will to engage them.

I would be Vampire

Goodnight Jaime

One of my friends and fellow member of Club Chemo died of leukemia today. He was 16.

A fellow True Blood fan, we watched each episode at home, then I brought the tape in and we and the rest of the baldies watched it as we were having chemo. After a few episodes, he told me that I had big brown eyes like Sookie and he had lovely blue eyes that I said were like Bill's. So, as a matter of course we called each other Bill and Sookie (we look nothing like Anna and Stephen, eye coloring is the only thing we share with those two).

We would meet in Club Chemo "Good morning Sookie," "Good morning Bill," and we would settle in for our daily catheter flush, B12 shots, blood work and then be hooked up to our alchemy. Then, when the techs would leave the room (they always leave the room, they don't like the living dead) I would use the remote and run tape.

Yesterday, Jaime's mom called me and told me to come to the hospital, Jaime was dying. I came in, wrapped up in my cloak with my boggan on with the Jolly Roger on it and sat down in the chair. We were so happy that at the end of season one we were both alive. We spoke with excitement of season two, went on line, argued over the plots of the books, pouted over the romance of Bill and Sookie. Now Jaime was dying. He looked up at me with his big round blue eyes, too big for his pointed face, a face whiter than Bill's ever was, his bony hand like a huge white and pink spider slid from under the sheet and took my own thin white hand. His heat was enormous.


"Hey Sookie," "Hey Bill," He told me that he guessed I would have to find another True Blood BF cuz he was "greeting the sun". I told him there would never be another "Bill" in my life. I told him "I am a one Bill woman" He laughed a little and drowsed off in a morphine haze. He died there.

Goodnight Jaime.

A Purpose for Everything Under Heaven

As I was rewatching the episodes of True Blood last night, I was struck by a conversation that Adele Stackhouse (Sookie's gran') had in episode four. It seemed to answer a few questions that I have asked about the existance of the soul, and whether or not Bill and indeed anyone thought of as Other had a purpose in this world and whether or not there was evidence of the soul.

Sookie is confused about her feelings about Bill, that mix of desire and fear and admittedly a certain amount of disgust for Vampire mores. Gran tells her that God has a purpose for everything, whether it is a special gift (her telepathy), or an over priced cup of coffee or a Vampire, that God will reveal His purpose in his own time.

So as I pondered this, I thought about how Vampires are thought of as Evil. Bill tells the members of the Descendants of the Glorious Dead that he can "Stand before a cross, or a Bible or in a Church, just like any creature of God" and that is where it hit me. How could I have been so ignorant (a real Homer Simpson "Doh" moment, complete with forehead slapping). "We Vampires are not the minions of the Devil" he goes on to say.

If we discuss this on the premise there are real Vampires, then we have to ask the question, if they are a supernatural evil, why doesn't God just destroy them? I mean, we read in the Book of Job that God gave Satan the power to do whatever he liked to Job except kill him. On this premise alone, early Church fathers who wrote about the occult developed the notion that Satan had limits placed on him by God. I don't think God would have allowed Satan the power to create other demons, including Vampires. (Again, working on the premise that Vampires are evil minions of the Devil) So what purpose would a Vampire serve under heaven? What purpose would someone who is Other serve?

Being Other can be seen as both blessing and curse. Imagine having boundless strength and energy, being able to heal the good or kill the evil, imagine having super senses to sight, smell, taste, feel, and hear. Imagine being able to create a blood link to someone you love so you can feel them and know if they are safe or well or in need?

Now imagine it is you and people hate you because of what and who you are? It's the root of the stories I write about werewolves, they are the heroes, the Other, the beast in the field, the hunter under the moon, the Justifier and the Protector. I think this above all is the lure for me to this story. The notion of Other as a servant of God.

But does Bill believe in God? I don't know, but it doesn't matter. If this story were real, and he were real, I think you could best answer it with a line from Stephen King's The Stand: "It don't matter...He believes in you."

So perhaps there is a purpose for a witch, or a werewolf, or a Vampire, or just a woman with cancer. A purpose for everything under heaven. And God will reveal that purpose in His own time.

Bill Part Two

I have a fever. Apparently I have an infection somewhere. They think it may be from my catheter in my femoral artery. I am on broad spectrum antibiotics. You know what I wish more than anything?

Charlaine Harris describes Bill's body as cool, in fact Sookie says his body rarely gets above tepid. I would love it if Bill were to appear at my bedside and undress and get in bed with me and hold me against his Vampire cool body. How wonderful it would feel. And he would like my radiant heat. He loves to lie in a warm bath. I would be so warm to him that he would enjoy the fever and he wouldn't have to mess around with getting wet.

I told mom about my stray desire and she said that lying in bed with Bill must be like lying with a big lizard *smirk* beside you. Who cares what she thinks. I know it would be wonderful. Of course he could turn me, but I wouldn't let him drink my blood. Tainted and poisonous as it is, I probably would taste terrible. He might offer to let me drink his blood, but I wouldn't deplete him to be healed. I'm too far gone. Maybe, later.

Ah Bill, come lie down beside me and cool me.

The Immortal Soul

Well, it's Christmas Day and I have lived to see it. After Christmas, I have fourteen weeks of radiation to get through, so I still have my hands full.

I have been contemplating the existance of the soul. Of course I would. I have of course been watching True Blood On Demand and now on tape. I keep thinking about the soul as it applies to others and I think it is because if I can prove the existance of the soul in other beings, even if they are mythological, then I can confirm that I have a soul, even in this wasted body.

Anyhow, let's chat.

I remember once that I heard a preacher say that humans were the only living things with a soul. He said it was because we are the only creatures who were aware of God and other living creatures and we had a capacity for love. I go with that to a point.

I read that one Saint or another wrote that humans have a soul because we can dream of God and through our dreams be more open to His consciousness. But I have seen animals dream. My cat, the irrepressable Ishee, as wicked as he is, dreams and seems to appreciate it if I wake him from a dream in which he snuffles and cries and runs. So, does that mean my cat has a soul?

If Ishee has a soul, though he is innocent of the Great Sin of Adam, does he get to go to heaven? I hope so. He might try to bite and angel or two, but he is nice in a befuddled sort of autistic way.

If dreaming is evidence of the soul, does Bill have a soul? You remember Bill? Bill Compton, my fictional Vampire with a heart of gold? Bill dreams, does that mean he has a soul? I would like to think if there were Vampires in the world that they too might have souls, though I doubt Malcolm, Liam and Diane still dream. I doubt Eric dreams. In the book, Bill doesn't dream...in fact he has no sentient consciousness when he goes to rest...Bill simply dies. But on the show, Bill sleeps, more in the way of humans, he even has a couple of books with him under the floorboards of his house so he can read himself back to sleep if he is wakeful. And Bill dreams. He dreamed of Sookie when her gran died. So does Bill have a soul?

If Vampires can have the ability to dream, then can they pray? Bill certainly seemed to pray when he discovered that Sookie was fine, sleeping with Prince Valium. If he prays, does God listen to his Vampire's prayers? Is being a Vampire a curse? Bill says "We Vampires are not minions of the devil, we can stand before a cross or a Bible or in a Church," Bill, of course does not live like other Vampires, he doesn't nest, he doesn't make until he was forced to, and he seems to try to be both Vampire and human. But can he? Does he have to have a soul to do that? He says "I am not human," But if humanity is defined by the soul and dreaming evidence of the soul, isn't he, on some level, human? And therefore possess a soul? If not human, then some Other? Because I feel very Other right now. All of my hair is gone. I am so white I seem to be without pigment. My eyes are hollows and large and glassy. My lips are obscenely pink. I weigh in at 89 pounds where once I was...well...considerably larger (size 18). I went to Walmart, the first place I had been since I got sick. I had on a hooded cape one of my circle sisters made for me with celtic knots embroidered on it. I was in a wheel chair. It was very early in the morning, so I could enjoy the store without a lot of people staring at me, but the few people who were there saw me and I could hear them whispering "She looks like an alien," "She looks like a Vampire," One even said "Fuckin' Halloween is over, Vampira" And it didn't help when I fell out at home and had to have a blood transfusion. Well, at least it's Vampire Bill's favorite type O-.

I had planned on going to church, but I decided not to after that. While my friends at church would never have said those things, I know they would be looking at me, pitying me, maybe loathing me, hoping I don't drink from the same cup they will have drink from in case I am contagious, as if you can catch cancer from mouth to mouth. So, I asked my pastor to bring me communion.

I am Other, at least temporarily. Do I have a soul?

The Grief of Angels

When true love dies
Angels bow their heads
Crying out into the storm
Their tears fall and cover
My face

I walked away from you
And you turned away too
And my tears mingled
With the cold December rain

The grief of angels
Mourning the loss of love
Hell on earth
Brought from heaven above

Eric

So everyone wants to talk about Eric the Vampire Sheriff.

Eric is a Viking, about a thousand years old and he is a real Vampire with a capital Vamp. He has no human emotions and is really more than a little disgusted with Bill, who wants to recapture his humanity in the form of a love relationship with Sookie.

Eric mainstreams only because it is lucrative. He can have sex and blood from willing Fangbangers (indiscriminate sex groupies) and charge them at the bar for their drinks. He sees humans as a source of wealth and Vampiric pleasure. This Southern Vampire is no gentleman.

But why are there some women who are interested in Eric? It is because some human women are little less than Vampires themselves, they have no human feelings and sex is extremely casual. While I have no illusions about Bill, I think he puts women in two categories as all men do: bad girls that you screw, and good girls that you date and fall in love with. The difference between him and Eric is that he would be a gentleman with either.

Though, allow me to say this: In the book Dead Until Dark, Sookie tells Bill that her co-worker, Dawn, has been murdered and he tries to place her "The red-head that has been married so many times?" and Sookie says "The brunette who kept bumping your chair with her hip." He says "Yes, she came to the house after you left the night Liam, Diane and Malcom were there and she seemed very confident. It was a good thing the others were gone," Sookie then says "Wouldn't you have protected her?" and he says "No, I don't think so," Sookie asks why. Bill says "Vampires don't automatically care about humans," So Bill is still Vampire, but, he isn't so Vampire that he can't invest himself in someone he likes or cares for.

Eric, would have done nothing to protect any human unless he was forced to, either by a higher up or to serve his own purposes.

So, all you ladies swooning over Eric, remember this, he is one Vampire who would not face the sun for you.......