"if the wheel is fixed,

I would still take a chance.

if we're treading on thin ice, then we may as well dance."

- "Do It", Jesse Winchester

ok. I slept. collected my daily ration of improved well being. feel less like a whipped puppy.

fairly confident that today will not bring another radical downward reevaluation.

the rehearsal with Christy was so great. the rehearsal last night with the Modniks was so great. singing with Jim and Vickie was so great.

if I end up needing some fight after the operation on the 20th, I want to remember good what I'd be fighting for.

it'll be great to see Vicki and Brian today.

I have to, now, start bowing out of gigs.

and I need to do it in a really present way.

it may or may not have been obvious, but all my life I've had a dark voice that said, if you ever get to the point where you can't be the one giving everything in a relationship, the relationship will end.

I don't think I'l be able to gig for a couple weeks after the 20th. with an option of, never.

but I think that option is like the small print at the bottom of the screen in a Lunesta ad. Dr. Nemechek isn't even considering, at this stage, doing anything he says can't be at least partly rehabilitated. and it would take nothing short of a stroke for me not to run the home studio, or share my prejudices about what would make someone's music even cooler.

and my dark childhood voice has to feel how out of place it is in the world of people in which I currently reside. I know no one who would be done with me if I can't help them.

in fact, that may be kind of an overarching lesson to come out of this time. I feel like my contribution to people's music is really valued, but that I am valued even more highly. I visualize caring, thoughts, and prayers permeating my doctors, surrounding and penetrating the misguided cells, giving me deeper breaths and sweeter rest, determining the outcome on the attitude battlefield.

I have to share one more story with anyone who might cock an eyebrow at all that:

I remember reading a piece about the question of whether light is wave or particle, energy or matter.

his study showed that most all of the research done on that question ended up proving the theory of the experimenter. if he was looking for particle, he found particle...looking for energy, it showed as energy.

most people jump to one conclusion, hearing that. but there is another intriguing possibility.

most people would say, well, a study as fragile as that, the bias of the experimenter is terribly hard to keep from corrupting the findings and interpretation.

but...

the other fascinating construct would be that the will of the experimenter influenced the result itself! that light, the strongest and subtlest of entities, is suggestible, accommodating. you want matter...let me do that for you. oh, you want energy...well, ok.

Einstein quantified a relationship, hitherto I suspect unimaginable, between matter and energy. (E=mc squared) he spent the rest of his life in an incomplete attempt to relate all energy forms

in a Unified Field Theory.

but...a direct active effect of will on phenomena...wouldn't that change the view we have of the universe! there's an equation I'd love to see.

and I'm here to say, we don't know it doesn't happen.

we do know that a fantastic amount of things we think happen to us are instead the direct result of our painting every stroke on our life's canvas, and signing it at the bottom. stuff that seems like life impacting us is actually our own creation, even if will itself has no subatomic gravity-like pull.

support, thoughts, care, prayers are like the folk songs that can change hearts, minds, and history though they exist only in air.

and when Dr. Nemechek calls this morning, my attitude will be...

let's do this thing.