the competition for the most beautiful day of the year

is really getting fierce.

it's hard to beat the golden light in the fall. it's hard to beat the cirrus skyscapes of summer. it's hard to beat the Christmas postcard picture windows in mountains or city or plains in winter. nothing more pervasively pretty than snow day snow.

but I first moved to Boulder in 1966, from Poughkeepsie, New York, and the colors I saw that first spring were no brighter, no better defined, no clearer and righter than right now.

I suppose it should come as no wonder to anyone who knows me that the months of the year are among the things I feel bear an eerie likeness to the progression of Beatles albums.

Rubber Soul seems early spring green to me, the start of new growth, re-awakening of creative forces. maybe it's more marijuana green than prairie grass...but it feels so April.

Revolver continues and consolidates the creative path...what could be better, after winter, than April? well, try on May for size. "The Word" seems a little last month, after you've heard "Tomorrow Never Knows".

and the end of May! the Memorial Day checkered flag! lilacs full out, tall grasses, those brown dirt Rockies turning into Greenies. how can tomorrow possibly have anything more beautiful in store than what has gone before, what there is today?

well, we who can see into the past know the answer to that question about the future with the June 1st 1967 release date of Sgt. Pepper's. not just different days, mind you, but a new season, Summertime. and a Summer soundtrack that insured that musicians making records forever after would have a lot of damn work to do.

but, going back to the present (?), these greens, blues, whites beat any photo ever taken, any memory held.

I played guitar a long time last night. a little shaky at first, but kind of ended up with a little more confidence. I sang very little...voice box still feels kind of thick, laryngitis-y. but not damaged. it'll come back as it needs to.

and I still feel better than I know why I should.

I'm starting to sort out the new healing from the old. shoulder continuing to strengthen, range of motion better. but there's a virulent swelling in a new spot, which is getting a lot of ice attention.

this is no familiar territory. I want to watch every signal. but...some of them are saying, come on, come back, heal.

it's been over twenty years since I have had this little amount of tumor in my body.

but what is left is the scariest.

I'm optimistic, determined, ready to take each step, in touch with the gift of these days.

but I'd be a damn fool not to be scared.

gentle readers, we get to be scared now. we get to cry, to wonder, to feel laden, to stand in shadow in a beautiful day. we get to take turns supporting each other...myself giving support as well as receiving it.

we get to express the real feelings appropriately.

what we don't get to do is lose control of our focus, let what we think about be determined by anything but our choice.

and we don't get to lose sight of what the medical realities are.

Dr. Nemechek says, we have a great plan.

smart money...even in an area with this many reverses and unknowns...says that plan is going to work. and that come December, we'll be celebrating some problem free scans, and I'll be wondering what to get for Christmas for everyone who saw me through this crazy mess.

the sense of where we go if this plan were not to work has been left appropriately indistinct. except that it has been made clear, other steps await. he said they usually like to combine two modalities...surgery and radiation, radiation and chemo... it is unusual to go for a second round of radiation, but not unheard of, just as it was very unusual to have a second surgery as I did, but not unheard of.

we know that he didn't take away the near microscopic layer of grits because it would have taken some functionality from me. I don't know how much. I don't know what kind. I don't know if any step after this can have full functionality as an outcome...maybe.

but just because he left some behind doesn't make it "inoperable". it's way operable. there's just a way better idea.

you might also be interested...at one point, debra asked Dr. Nemechek, so everyone talks about the stages of cancer...what stage is this?

he said, this cancer is unstaged.

I said, so, maybe like off-Broadway.

unstaged cancer, saith the net, is cancer for which there is not enough information to indicate a stage.

O. K. so this is a gamble in a game where no one has the least idea what the damn rules are.

but this is, scans show and I believe, a way way localized event.

maybe there are microscopic remnants from the tumor in part of the neck (maybe not)...that's the business of the generalized radiation. we know there is the thin layer he left, coming close to a spinal nerve. that's going to be the business of the gamma knife/ cyber knife, which business it is eminently qualified for.

I think there ain't nothin' anywhere else.

and I think the plan is a great plan.

thanks for letting me write this all out.

I think it was in Larry Plover's ninth grade english class, which was kind of more about living than speaking, that I learned about the contrapositive.

you posit a quality about an object..."that fire engine is red"...that's the positive.

you wish to negate a construct..."that fire engine is not red"...that's the negative.

a contrapositive offers another construct instead of a negation..."that fire engine is yellow".

musical performance is an excellent illustration of the value of the contrapositive.

because many people take their musical performance and try to "eliminate the negative" from it...get rid of mistakes.

the problem with trying to negate something negative is that it just ads to the negativity. "ok, here comes that place I always mess up, better plan ahead to get tense..."

then you finally hold on tight enough to get through the trouble spot, and totally forget what comes next. and eventually you can end up with a take that says, I hope I don't mess up, I hope I don't mess up...

but...countercreating.

finding something good about the performance, and strengthening it.

reconnecting with the feeling you want, and focusing on getting that out.

bettering the consonants of a line you're having pitch problems on, and watching the pitch problems disappear.

we can't negate those lost, confused cells that still remain from the tumor.

but we can counter create.

music. health. strength. healing.

I can be scared, I can cry, and I can reach as well for continuance, and betterment, of my ongoing life. I can keep impossible possibilities out of consideration, and not jump ahead over days I really want to hold onto. being present means seeing where I am today, and choosing the best creation to make of the day, choosing to express and acknowledge the shadow and still walk outside of it, into Summertime, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.