Calamari

But first, The Plan; a little necessary update

Where I'm at presently is home, which is nice enough.  Lovely to be back here after the long hospice stay, but alas that too shall pass.  And pass soon enough.  But the Plan as at now is that really I'm about to leave home as home, and be far more at hospice (I shan't be calling it respite any longer from now, I think) than here.  Come here for day-stays and such, but get myself a 'permanent' room Up There.  For as is the way of all of existence, things have changed some more.  The details are unnecessary and sort of irrelevant, once parsed and passed along; the effective outcome is to bring my final line of crossing that much closer. The line beyond which I do not take nourishment - eat - at all.

Food will all be gone, and by that action, so shall I be; just a little while later.  Explicitly, I am reducing even further my caloric intake, but cleansing as well as I go along.  Much like one feeds one's escargot a cleansing diet before their planned ending (heliculturists refer to it as 'purging') I am cleansing the old insides too.  This may vary but right now it's the Ayurvedic standby of brown rice, mung beans (sprouted before cooking), supportive herbs and spices, ghee and maybe one type of vegetable only.

It struck me afresh the other day that food is how we are made.  It's what we're built of.  My entire life is due to food.  And it seems entirely fitting to look back on my life through the prism of food, precisely because of the means I face to meet my end - the end of food.

Here's what I think I'm going to do.  I'm going to take those fleeting memories or inspirations I still have about food, about specific food ingredients I think, and use that as a point to take me on a story through wherever it leads me.  And write it here as I go.  I think we might all like a bit of that, mightn't we?  Not like I could burn it or put too much chili in and you'd still have to be all polite and say "oh, no, really it's very tasty ... " eh? :-)

So, calamari.

I LOVE calamari; specifically meaning food made of the (usually cooked) flesh of squid.  It holds a very special place in my memory too, because it sits as one of my very first 'special' foods.  You know, special as in a luxury choice rather than a basic staple.  In my case, battered fried calamari rings instead of the then-much-cheaper slab of fried fish with our Friday night fish & chips.  I understand this is a bit of an Aussie thing though.  I would again suspect our Italian and Greek waves of immigrants for blessing our shores with the revelation that this marvellously tasty morsel is even edible, let alone deliciously so.  I have eaten it more ways than I could count and can settle on no one favourite dish.

It's also one of those foods that is embarassingly easy to cook just right, yet is so heartbreakingly often ruined by clumsy cookery.  And less-than perfect calamari is a dismal offering let me tell you.  There is little else in the world as disappointing as tough, rubbery calamari when you were all set for a tender scrumptious mouthful of bliss.  My reverie on this textural delicacy was triggered by one of those humdrum daytime cooking programs targetted at the SAHM demographic, so there was not much fancy going on compared to the evening time foodie-first offerings.  Simply fresh squid, washed and cleaned, tubes sliced nicely, dusted in flour and dropped in hot oil.  DONE.  That is all it needs.  To get all cheffy though, the guy made a lemon aioli, basically a lemony garlic mayonnaise.  Now normally, I am of the opinion that the ubiquity of the fish+lemon pairing in modern cookery is nought but a fad outlived its time.  Deeper down I think many people use lemon to mask the 'fishiness' of many types of seafood, protecting their coddled, narrowed palates from any subtleties or nuances arising from the flesh itself, especially when we're talking about the battered stodge that passes for most Australians' fish intake.  To me, the lemon just kills most fish.  But with calamari, it is almost the perfect accompaniment, in moderation.

Yeah, I missed calamari.  I'm over it now.  As a little kid it did make me feel grown-up and special to choose the calamari (and to call it calamari, not just "squid rings") and later in life I would as often as not take the gamble in restaurants that they'd get it right and order something like a chargrilled baby calamari salad. There is something about eating the baby calamari that is just very, very honest.  It's a terribly explicit thing to do, to put the entire tube and tentacular array of a baby beast in your mouth, like you were some apex predator monster-of-the-deep (oh, wait, um ... ;-) and risk angering the Great Mother Squid next time you go to sea, or something.

I cannot recall the last time I had calamari exactly, but it was in Bunbury, takeaway from the fish & chip shop, and I enjoyed it.  Thanks, squid.

Do you like squid?  More importantly, who would win a fight between a giant squid and a big tractor? :-)

No man left behind.(Notes from TWATEOTU #3)

One of our number departed early this morning; I heard her go.  Well, not exactly.  What happened was that I awakened, unusually, at just after 7AM feeling completely perfect, fine and refreshed, and even my room seemed full of light.  Except the sun wasn't properly up yet.  Then I heard it, what could only be the sound of the daughters I have come to know a little in the shared kitchen reacting to their mother's NOW finality.  I stood for a moment, paid my silent respects to my erstwhile neighbour, and went back to sleep.  By the time I left my room at 10 the room was empty, cleaned and changed, the whiteboard by the door erased too, all the people drained away to other places.

I'd been seeing clues.  This lady, I'd been told, really liked her sweet foods, and one of her daughters was bringing in treats of chocolate cake, and jellies, and icecreams, and ... they were starting to pile up a bit in the fridge, untouched, the last three or four days.

There is a sense of camaraderie down here on the ward, most especially amongst the clients.  Although we do not converse generally, I fancy that we consider each other from time to time, and that there must be for each of us at least some sense of a kinship of the dying.  So I figure my other remaining neighbour, she who was previously nameless but whose whiteboard has lately sprouted both a single name and a childlike drawing of a 'nanna' face, felt the loss of One Of Us in some way too.  And now she is doing That Breathing Thing, and the numbers of quiet new visitors are growing as the day goes on.  Word must have gotten around that the time is soon.

Meditating on time the other day as you do, simply noting just how much of my life involves knowing what time it is - a glance at a clock happens so frequently - yet having no good reason to know, the wall clock in my room suddenly threw itself off the wall to its noisy death in shards of cheap plastic and machine parts six feet below.  Just like that.

Now I can no longer glance at a clock and have to consciously look at my watch.  I discover it only takes that little bit of marginal discomfort and effort (tight long sleeves in this weather and dodgy hands means no casual wrist flick glance, I have to drag the darn thing out and down and remove any sunglasses because I can't read the screen through polarised lenses) to entirely change my behaviour.  I just hardly ever look.  Timekeeping was just like so many other things, a dance of habit, of empatterning, of rhythm and tesselation. Grown-up version of rocking oneself in the cradle, I suppose.

Time down here on the ward does not match time outside anyway.  If you are very gentle with yourself, if you can carefully breathe off all the accreted layers of preconception and belief about How Things Are, you can detect time running in different ways for different folks down here, we clients especially.  Some of the old-hand nurses see it quite clearly.  It is they who make timely phone calls to gather family members, etc.  Apparently, my observed time has changed lately too.

Still, I enjoy the idea of our little corps of dying comrades down here on TWATEOTU, that we operate to that (US Maries Corp I think) creed of "No Man Left Behind."  By which I mean "all are welcome to join the death space, unjudged. You shall not be left out alone."

I suspect that by the time I go home Monday, I might be leaving an empty ward though.  And that's the other thing we all have so poignantly in common: No-one can say for sure.

After The Fall; A Story.

OK, so here's a story.  Story, as in fiction.  If there is such a thing as autobiographical fantasy fiction, I suppose this is it.  I've toyed with 'outing' this story for quite some time now, partly because I do not know if it is any good as a piece of writing, but more because ... well, with some fantasies once you speak them they can never come true.  You'll see what I mean.  Right then. (Breathes in, breathes out.) Here starteth the story:

* * * * *

It's such a quiet and beautiful place out here, but the sky plays funny tricks on you. Driving all those miles across the flatlands, the big blue seems to swing between being a cool wedge above you, almost oppressive, as the tall whipcane and dense shrubs press close to the road, then suddenly it splits completely apart like the pages of a book falling fully open as the taller scrub rhythmically clears, and you can see forever – the heavens now a majestic, immeasurable lightness all around. I'm glad we came.

Then you come to the gorge, another sudden thing. There is no warning, no real incremental change in the complex patchwork monotony of intertwined tall scrub and flat low desert grassland; you just, well, you reach a carpark. And there it is. That arching infinitude of sky now plays another trick when you step out of the van and walk to the edge; you can feel it pouring in to the massive cleft – you can almost imagine the potent air rolling about the chasm of ancient fossil beds and red rocks like a second river above the silvered thread of water that runs far below, the sometimes-mighty Murchison. It's like the sky has vertigo.

I wonder what B's thinking now. I bet it's something like “What will I tell her?” or “How will I tell her?” Maybe not. Maybe he's not thinking much at all just at this moment; just letting it all sink in. It's very early in the day after all, and we sat up late last night around the campfire not saying much, just enjoying the peace and the sky, so maybe there's some thought like “Well, it's not like there's any hurry to sort it all out now.” Probably though, underneath it all, B's really pissed off at me, as well as sad. I would be if it were the other way around, but I know that he knew that I knew that he knew that this moment, or something like it, or even totally different but with the same end result, could have happened at any time on one of our trips. It does not strike me as especially odd that I find myself unable to read B's thoughts; nothing new there. It does strike me as odd that I find myself here at all though. I am dead, after all.

B must feel so incredibly alone right now, out here at the edge, looking down unseeing, knowing that somewhere down there my torn and useless body lies silent and still – I wonder if he can only imagine it whole, or if he has more horrendous visions, you know, of parts and flesh and bones sticking out and such. Of course, he is in no real doubt about what has actually taken place, he is as sure as anyone could ever be right now, but to have this burden placed so brutally on his shoulders, to feel this loss, this hurtful love, and undoubtedly some sense that he must now do the right thing also, well, it's not something one could ever take lightly. I may not be able to read his mind or his heart, but I can still feel, I notice, and I do feel for him deeply. And too I feel deeply that he will do what's required, in his own way, perfectly. Such a friend, even now.

It's funny, as I got sicker and slowly more and more limited, the 'Lotto Dreaming' changed. You know, most people have it; the instant set of answers to the questions of what you'd do first if you got a large lump of money suddenly. Better house with leafier views and more quiet, that stayed. Philanthropic ambitions towards helping my fellow-travellers and our planet stayed. But things like new cars and travel plans changed a lot, as it became obvious that I wouldn't even be able to drive a car soon. I'd let go on motorbikes already, as it got too dangerous riding my last bike. But the urge to travel did not abate, as I've always loved to move through the landscape, and seek connection with the earth and her people in different places and ways. Nature travel, that's me. And when I thought of travel, I thought sometimes of travel as a couple, and other times of travel without her. I'd imagine special places experienced together, a refreshing of our loving bond in the cathedrals of the world away from civilization, in the forests and on the coastlines. And equally, of visiting such sacred places as just … me.

But I'd need a travelling companion for that, either way. There was always going to be a clear first choice, old friend B. So you can imagine my delight when a little money did come our way, and my weird joy that it was, in perfect reflection of the modus moriendi currently expressed in my illness, not an extravagant sum but instead just enough to do a little more with life. Improve the house a little. Upgrade the car a little. Do a little travel. Importantly, not to have to concern ourselves with the usual bills and such for a few years if well-husbanded. Just the right amount, really.

So re-started my adventures with B. We used to live in the same town and once were thick as thieves, living an oddball bromance as extrovert cafe-culture cognoscenti, doing life as art and damning the consequences, he the errant artist and me the young gadabout musician. Japes and scrapes, beauty and abandon, all that romantic stuff without the homoerotic undertones. Times changed but our connection only deepened, even when we moved apart. We found ourselves in the same city again later on, and began a new chapter of our odd and intense little friendship. And again, apart. Always there for each other in spirit, if not fleshly available. We had the sort of friendship that spawned its own culture of in-joke and innuendo, language and the transcendence of language, and the sort of mutual respect that can only come from knowing precisely what it is about the other that really gives you the shits and which you judge so harshly, acting it out, and getting over it. Letting each others' sleeping dogs lie comfortably, whilst not transgressing our own moralities and ways. Where you can spend the whole day being an asshat if you need to be, and knowing that your friend will see straight through it, and be OK anyway.

Then there was the thing about The Road. We'd often hatched great dreams of travelling adventures, many times designed around some artistic notion or endeavour or event but mainly just for the fun of it.

Thus is was that we started our first little trips together. It worked out that buying a decent older large campervan with a view to re-selling later on, or maybe giving it to B at The End, was going to be smarter than hiring. And then you can have fun with fitout. Ours had an annexe attachment too, so there was a whole extra canvas room where B would usually sleep, unless he slept out under the stars, which happened a lot as we chased fair skies whenever possible. The first shakedown trip was a blast, all full of laughter and giggles and good weather – and enough space for he and I to properly see how well I was able to manage this and that, to adjust to a new relationship reality. For as much as we were equal friends, there was always underneath the issue to be settled, of transactions. He was driver, and in a large way carer. Contributed no money. I covered our costs and was essentially looked after. Decisions were mainly mine, based on where I wanted to go and how much travel I could manage on any given day. It took time for it all to be OK, for the power dynamics to go away. For us to feel out and accept the unseen edges, those things that need to go unspoken so often; like exactly how much monetary freedom there was, and wasn't, when it was only one of us doing the paying.

Forests and beaches and the wonderful nostalgia of sitting in a sidewalk cafe, the two of us as of old, in what amounts to eccentric dress and style most everywhere we go, especially when I have my coffee in a “small jug, double shot espresso, a dash of cold milk” through my feeding tube. All those years spent idling, 'contributing culture' as we liked to say, in a cosmopolitan port city, now writ small and a little gentler, but no less close and alive, in small towns along the way. Parking the van in a fine quiet spot in the bush nice and early, making a fire and not talking until tomorrow, as the stars come out and wheel about. Driving down “that road there” because it looks like it might be a more fun way to get close to our originally intended daily destination. Some days not having one at all. After all, at every moment, for me at least and often poignantly for B I'm sure as well was the underlying knowledge that this would likely be my last time here. My last time anywhere, even.

Right at the outset, I had laid it out: my illness might rear up and suddenly make me very ill, threatening to kill me, and possibly doing so in a quickish fashion. That was fine by B, naturally, in theory. But what to do in such a moment? I had to be explicit, to feel safe. If it was a case of creeping 'unwellness' then we'd manage it in real-time, and head homewards if possible. Hospitals were to be a very last resort. In all other cases, there was to be no panic, and no resuscitation. I may for example begin to choke on my own secretions and be unable to clear them. It would be ugly to watch me drown, but there it is. One of the whole deep meanings of our travels for me was to live out the dream of “at any moment,” and to walk a meditation on “in any place.” B needed to be OK that he might have me die on him at some point. Typically, he allowed that he might do the same. Snap. Philosophical intent notwithstanding, we had forged through the years a most loyal trust, and with this sprinkling of sunlight, this little explicit commentary, it was recharged and avowed afresh. He would be my friend as I died too, and I his, if it came to that. We would allow each other choices that included not being 'saved'.

We used to be such talkers. Then as my speech got harder and harder and eventually all but disappeared, we fell more and more silent together. B was still happy to ramble and be heard on whatever topic took his fancy, especially when he'd had a toke at the end of a day's driving, and I was happy to listen and nod and enjoy. It rather polished my own habits of speech really, the difficulty of it. Timing was impossible, so I became a speaker (using my text-to-speech program on my smartphone mainly) of one-liners. Zen-like utterances. Pithy witticisms. Such speech tends towards the surreal, really, and after a time it became a habit of the mind, to think in shorthand as well. That's what led to me one day mentioning, as we drove, that “An accidental demise would be just so much neater, all things considered.” I watched B's face as he took this in, his eyes ahead on the road, poker face in place. I caught just the slightest micro-flash of twinkle before he abruptly and expertly flinched at the wheel, wobbling our van alarmingly for a moment, then bestowed upon me his beamiest and most mischievous, loving smile. It said “I'm with you, brother. I get it.” The details we once would have chatted about, back-and-forth, for hours, enumerating all the practical, emotional, personal, omenological … any and all the reasons that a sudden death would trump this agonising lingering that had become my life, and just as importantly, defined so much of the lives of others. One other in particular. Oh, the relief to know that she is free of the attrition at last.

The wind blew quite hard last night for an hour or two, enough to polish the top layer of dust around the campsite and remove all yesterday's foot prints and scratching, if not the tyre tracks. So what an observer from up here would see, surveying the scene from above, is very little, in terms of clues. Footsteps fro the van to the fire and back, a few times. A dead-end trail to the edge of the scrub, still the odd droplet splashmark at the end of it, under the shrubs, if you were to look closely. And two sets of footprints only leading from the fire to the edge of the gorge; one of which of course is B's.

He squats on his haunches, curling in upon himself a little, sobbing gently now. Again I am keenly aware of just how much I feel for him right now, feelings clearer and stronger than those I had only yesterday, when I and my body were all of a piece. The hurt is profound, and I am sorry. I feel no remorse, I am not sorry for what has happened, but I am sorry for B's pain. I wonder if I will see her again now. I do not feel pain for her. Perhaps because this is not yet real for her.

It's right there, right up close in his face, you can see the lines and ridges reflected in his glasses. Stands up at length, stretches a little, wipes his eyes and drops his hands heavily to his sides. B looks out and up, far away, then his gaze slowly, slowly lowers. From the horizon, the opposite side of the gorge, down through the strata of fossil layers, back in time, playing along the sparkling kinks and bends of the river, down to his feet. He breathes in slowly, deeply, knowing he is not thinking this all through properly, but that it doesn't matter, this is right. Breathes out. You can see the tingle of fate about him, you know this is one of those moments where lives turn and gyre into their new directions. Watches himself as if from above, as if from where I am, pushing one foot forward. Shuffles it out to the side, and then in one-two sweeping motion erases the five letters written there in the sand with a stick, in clear hand, only very recently: “I fell.”

http://www.gofundme.com/My-Natural-Burial

You can help me with the cost of my natural burial here, if you wish.  Thanks.

Entropy Ensues (Notes from TWATEOTU #2)

When mention is made of what is often referred to as "the Law Of Entropy", more correctly known as the Second Law Of Thermodynamics, people tend to gloss over the important first part and simply reduce it to "Entropy tends to always increase".  Now it might well be that such a statement holds true, but the law itself clearly explains that "The entropy in any isolated system not in thermal equilibrium almost always increases."  So we're talking about closed systems, something around which one can put some sort of boundary, and of course it is an eternally open philosophical question whether such a system might ever be said to exist, or conversely whether it might be that the entirety of Everything is indeed a closed system.  Then there's the fudge: " ... almost always increases." Why not always?  Surely a Law must be universally applicable to be held up as a Law?  Well yes, but this is a special case as we're talking about the forces of chaos, that dynamism from which order spontaneously seems to arise and into which order seems almost always destined to decay.  Anything can happen with chaos, and entropy.

You may recall my application of the scientific method to form an hypothesis explaining why I always get delivered either exactly 15ml or exactly 17ml of my PRN pain medication.  It was dependent not just on the (to date consistent) personal preference of each nurse, but a factor of the pairing of nurses who brought me the dose.  Remember that nurses themselves had shown they were consistently either '15' or '17' deliverers by personal nature: That if I got two '17' nurses, I'd get a 17ml dose, if I got one of each type, I'd get a 17ml dose, and only if I got two '15' nurses would I get a 15ml dose.  Never over, under, or in between.

Chaos, or perhaps entropy, has reared up and spoiled the neatness.  You might have read about the 'observer effect' in quantum and particle physics where the actions of the observer inexplicably affect the outcome of the experiment - maybe such a thing has happened here, for in the last 36 hours or so things have shifted.  Twice I got a 15ml dose when delivered by a '15' and a '17' nurse.  Different '17' nurse each time, but same '15' nurse.  I have counted, and it seems there are on rotation some five '15' nurses.  Looks like what we have here is a rogue 'Alpha 15', one whom the other nurses defer to in this matter at least.  Her place in the social hierarchy, and in the professional hierarchy too, would seem to add weight to this notion.  One of the older hands here, and universally loved and respected by staff and patients alike, so it seems.

Then this morning ... unmistakably, 18!

As a kid, I was not especially tidy, at least according to my mother. But I have always tried to cultivate tidy habits of mind, and enjoy my own internal games of applying tesselation and rhythm to the minutiae of the everyday.  Somewhere along the way I became a physically tidy person too, you know the sort about whom one's work colleagues actually make comment on the state of one's desk.  The sort that maddens his wife through a sometime inability to simply walk past a messy and (to my mind) potentially hazardous array of dirty dishes and kitchen rubbish, having compulsively to tidy it to a certain standard.  Just a little CDO (that's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder arranged alphabetically, the way it *should* be lol) you might say.  That's why noticing such patterns in life as the 15/17 things tickles my fancy, it connects with a deeply-carved pattern with which I engage in the world; that of seeking patterns consciously.  Increasingly though, it's the breakdown that interests me.

Because every single judgement call I make on it is, ultimately, exactly right and exactly wrong.  Every pattern that pops up proves, when seen from a different viewpoint in space or time, to be also a signal of the dissolution of some other pattern.  Chaos and order simultaneously.

I realise that these two forces are not even really things; they are entirely relativistic.  Nor do they really turn me on.  What I'm seeking is the heart of entropy, which is tempting to view as akin to order emerging from chaos (temperature tending ever more towards sameness) but then when we step back, we know that difference cyclically emerges from sameness.

Somewhere in there, in between the tendency to order, and the tendency to disorder, through a mechanism that is half entropy and half - well, way back when I started this blog I thought I could do no better than describe it as 'light' - is the line that divides life and death, I think.  From the perspective of someone alive, anyway.

They say you are supposed to go towards the light.  For me to get there it seems like the path leads through the darkling lands of entropy, ripe with humus and the squelching substrate of metamorphosis underfoot.  Recall the light in a deep forest,late in the day.  How sharp those swords of sunlight slanting beneath the branches, sparking in your eyes and giving shape to the gentle air with its freight of dusts and creatures of the bteeze, all ultimately giving in to the inexorable logic of gravity and their own place in things.

Sometimes in the morning as I lay not yet fully awake I like to imagine I am in a bed made up of the forest floor.  I imagine my blankets as a soft, warm layer of earth and turf, my bedhead a mighty tree, my head resting on a buttressing root.  There is a gentle light, and butterflies.  Maybe a browsing kangaroo. Quite often I also see half-buried an old skeleton of some small animal, the bones so starkly designed compared to the random clutter of the leafy forest floor. It feels so welcoming and safe and ... grounded.

There, deo volente, and happily, go I.

.

Notes from the Ward At The End Of The Universe, 1.

Max was gone when I arrived this time.  Down here in the satellite ward, our little 4-room hospice and respite wing, we each have a whiteboard outside our doors.  Usually it will have the occupant's name, and it might have a message such as "PLEASE limit visitors to 3 at a time" or some other such caring admonishment.  More often the boards are decorated by loved ones, especially the kids, with drawings and notes, and hearts, like a giant 'get well' card, except minus the 'get well' bit.

Max had been here I think nearly 3 months, and in that time I'd not met him.  We don't typically meet, we clients (that being the preferred term to 'patients' these days), except perhaps by accident and through strange channels. Immediate neighbours get to know each other's television preferences for example. And it's not done to ask about other patients, especially down this end of the building.  Max's whiteboard did not tell me his surname, but said in one place "Max The Music Man" and in another "Max The Muleskinner" and featured a particularly bad drawing of a guitar, all anatomically incorrect, surrounded by hearts and "love you grandpa"s.  Max was old but not very, and had some disease that was killing him incrementally.  He did not seem in much pain. Of course, with just these few clues the temptation is to run wild with speculation as to who Max is, what amazing things a musician/muleskinner might have lived to do and see, but here ... what I am seeking in connection is a small and simple feeling-out thing.  Like an auric touch, or something.  Max had many visitors, but more and more wished he didn't.  That last time two weeks ago I noticed, on my peregrinations past his door, shuffling to and from the kitchen, he would usually be just sitting on the side of his bed, back turned, staring out the door.  I understand he did not go home.  Or rather one might say he went Home.

I'd gotten used to Max, the faces of his regular guests making tea in the kitchen. There's an odd combination of distance and immediate intimacy when someone like me - clearly a client of The Ward - meets someone else's guest.  They are already vulnerable and in an unusual place in life's journey, and of course the rote greeting is something along the lines of "how are you going?" but here that almost never gets asked up front.  Instead, a lovely thing happens, aided and abetted by my inability to speak anyway - we just look at each other a bit, and look away, and maybe stand a little too close to each other, and let our non-verbal talking do the talking.  So much gets said in that little kitchen in the silence broken only by the burbling pump on the fishtank, or the whisper of a kettle boiling.  Quite a profound sense of connectedness can be had by two strangers in a room standing inappropriately close, touching shoulders, leaning back against a benchtop and contemplating the fish together, in the face of All This.  I think people become very aware of how they are projecting outwardly in such times and places, and I like that I can 'converse' with people on that level.  I liked most of Max's guests, apart from a couple of pushy men about his own age.  The sort who hadn't really been such great friends through life perhaps, but now feel they have some role to act out, some agenda of their own to salve at Max's expense, and which he suffered through with grit and strength if not with perfect grace.  They were not available to me on the regular human bandwidth we use in The Ward.  Shut off.  Oh well.

Sometimes, clients are nameless, according to the whiteboard at least.  Next to the soft-feeling Kathleen with such gorgeously-gentle visitors is one such nameless older woman, arrived today or last night, accompanied by two women younger by 25 or 30 years, perhaps daughters.  Maybe there are no whiteboard markers handy today; after all there was a conference down the hall yesterday.  But then, there's another phenomenon I have noticed over this last year or more - the Nameless tend not to be here for long.  My sidelong glance (this is allowed under the Unspoken Rules Of The Ward, as long as it is done with respect and love; we can always pull our curtain if we do not wish to be seen) would tend to confirm this expectation. You can see the weight on her face now, and the distinctive  gibbous aura of waiting on the other two women that I have seen so many times on the loved ones of those Close To It Now.

I've said it before but it's a privilege to be here, to have had such a time to sit with all this wonderful end-stage reality.  Not all the deaths I've sat through here have been good, or easy, they've all been different of course, and probably half of the clients like myself go home rather than Home at the conclusion of their stay, but it's the life here, the nuances and flavours of how people are in the teeth of it all that I love.

It's true, I am romantic, and always have been to some degree, on the whole death thing.  That's a discussion for another time perhaps.  But here's to Max, one of my longest-term neighbours.  I understand from things overheard in passing and from the things I felt that he was in the last weeks eager to go, and I am glad for him now.

Going home is still something I expect to do for now; I am not worsening so rapidly that this will likely present much of a problem.  But already I am looking at that time when I shan't.  I wonder if I'll know in advance, whether I'll be leaving home knowingly One Last Time, or whether events will just transpire that way.  There is always the Space Junk option, of course (and if you are the prayerful kind, if you believe in intercessionary thoughts and so forth, that is the one thing apart from sufficient day-to-day comfort that I would ask you to pray for - hurtling space junk and a spectacular fiery demise.  Yes, seriously.)

In the meantime, it's a beautiful, perfect showery overcast autumn day.  I'm going to go and breathe some more of it.

.

There are two types of people ...

We've all heard some variation on the riff, where someone starts out "look, there are two types of people ... "  Some are deep and weighty: "Those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else" (Cyrus H. Curtis), frivolous "Rolling Stones people and Beatles people" (I think there was a deleted scene in Pulp Fiction where this was discussed by Mia and Vincent at some length for example) or somewhere in between like "Those who are willing to work and those who are willing to let them." (Robert Frost).  But my favourite comes from Edward A. Murphy, yes, he of 'Murphy's Law' fame, and it's "Those who divide people into two types, and those who don't."

In my little world I've noticed a clear divide amongst my legion of caring nurses here at hospice.  It's a little thing, but I think probably a telling one, and there really is no grey area on this that I have observed.

I take painkillers, and the reasons for this are mainly a) pain and b) as I have mentioned elsewhere, I value the side-effects of the opiate classes of drugs in smoothing my path and assisting me to welcome death with more grace and openness.  Some would call the later drug-seeking behaviour, and if you think that fits, I'll wear that. I in no way intend to demean or cheapen the lives and experiences of those who suffer such labelling (my many friends with gastroparesis for example for whom agonising attendances to the emergency room are too often treated with scepticism about the genuineness of their all-too-real pain, especially as they know so much about painkillers through hard-won experience) nor that of addicts living through their challenges.

I do not know what each of my many nurses thinks, of course, but there's such a clear split (and it's entirely consistent, no nurse has yet demonstrated a change in behaviour to date) that it seems to carry some meaning.

My 'PRN' (from the Latin pro re nata, 'when necessary') painkiller is charted up by my doctor as being 15-17mls PRN (it's a liquid suspension) and the nurses bring it to me in a 20 ml syringe, all ready for sending down my tube.  Exactly why it's been charted as 15-17mls remains a mystery, but there it is.  Not like there's a massive difference.  Those 2 mls though are over half a centimetre apart, two whole big lines on the side of the barrel, and it's easy to be very, very accurate with this stuff.  So here's the thing - it's always either exactly 15ml, or exactly 17mls.  Never 16, or just under 17, or a bee's dick more than 15, nor above or below the limits.

Now it surely says something that I think I have worked out that those who bring me the larger doses seem in general to more enjoy the act of giving, to be less worried about my pain, to be more accepting and trusting of me to self-manage my situation than those who bring the 15ml doses.  Totally subjective, and skewed by all manner of worldview preconditions I bring to the game, no doubt. And there's another layer.  With these heavier and potentially abusable drugs safety protocols mean that two nurses have to do the sourcing and delivery, checking my name band with my record, making sure the right patient gets the right dose etc etc.  And who those nurses turn out to be is pretty much random - 'my' nurse (usually) for the shift who answers my call bell, and whoever else has a spare minute (haha, those who work in hospitals know full well there's hardly ever such a thing).  And a rule has developed, a Law Of Nature as it were: If one of the nurses is a '17ml' nurse, the dose will be 17mls. It will only be a 15ml dose if neither nurse is ordinarily a 17ml nurse.  So the larger-dosers tend to be dominant actors, doing the preparing and being the one to hand me the syringe.

So there are two kinds of nurses - those who bring me the minimum charted dose, and those who bring the maximum.  It occurs that I could always ask for one or the other and see what happens, but I'm far more interested in seeing how it goes when I don't.  And the pain is OK. So is my sacramental progress, just btw.

Once, I would have asked them, the nurses I mean, interestedly and in a way so as not to raise any hackles, but now ... well I suppose it's a part-testament to the times I am living that I vastly prefer to leave it as something to toy with only, to allow there to be some great deep meaning and to not care whether I get it or not.  It's like having come full-circle with philosophy, in a way - I reached a while back the full understanding that nothing was ever able to be known (including the supposed fact of my own existence) with certainty, hence, philosophy as a way to get at the 'meaning of life' is hopelessly inadequate.  Now, it's become a fun pastime again.  Now there is nothing resting on the outcome, I guess.

Everything is increasingly freighted with vast and deep potential significance, yet totally random and unfathomable simultaneously.  Without the counterweight of certain mortality, I doubt we could stand the perspective for long. Like Douglas Adams' Infinite Perspective Vortex. powered by nothing deeper than a small piece of fairy cake :-)

Just a thought.

Man Behaves Badly - a confessional.

Last night I awoke quite clear-headed, as I seem to these days some 4 or 5 hours in to my sleep, with a fully-formed memory session, all narrative-like.  I am moved to share it here.

It isn't really a confession, as although this story contains one or more Things Not To Do Ever that I did, I have no shame or regret now.  No need for absolution or recognition that I have been far, far less than perfect in life. No prophylactic attempts to pervert the too-easy knee-jerk of Everyone's A Top Bloke When They're Dead that is bound to raise its queasy head for someone later down the track at least.  It's just, well, a really vivid image in which I felt deeply alone, in which Death stalked about nearby for a quick cheery "Hello!" and which seems to want to be told.

The lighting in this is really important.  Nighttime, no real clouds bar the occasional thin wisp of steam or exhaust from some appliance or vessel around the port.  Sodium vapour streetlamps in that special orangey yellow. The hour just that bit too late for someone out on their own.  Early 1990s, me and my trusty red Vespa.

The evening started out alone in a crowd, I remember this feeling clearly.  A bar in North Fremantle, once called The Stoned Crow (the name derives from some Australian vernacular; an oath to "Stone the crows!" - maybe something like "holy crap!") and at this time it was probably still called that, just.  The sort of low-ceilinged dive fitting maybe 60 or 70 souls inside to hear a small band, selling cheap beers and its own 'special drink', a fortified wine of evil repute called Kirup Sirup (sic) named after the country town not too far away that it came from. Beer garden out the back with wire tables and chairs and where you could smoke a J as long as you a) shared and b) maintained some semblance of circumspection and modesty in behaviour.  You most especially had to ensure you kept the bar staff topped up, and mind their drinks for them too.  I'd been sort-of invited by a friend from Uni days I'd run into earlier that day (Uni was two or so years previously perhaps but when you're that young it seems like an eternity) and at the time I was planless, and must have been in some in-between stage girlfriend-wise, I cannot remember now.  As you can see at a glance though, young man, at a loose end, bar full of mostly happy strangers, drinking and smoking, on his scooter ... danger lies ahead.  I don't remember the band, nor much of the company bar the young woman that mentioned the gig to me, but I do remember what happened after.  I found myself in a dingy flat two suburbs away with two underage (as in, 17 or so) girls who'd been at the gig, listening to Hunters & Collectors on their crappy stereo, acting like we were cooler than even the coolest cats from Beverly Hills 90210 and like there wasn't a shred of sexual tension in the room.  This and the smoking of bongs led me inexorably to eating a bowl of Froot Loops.

Froot Loops are for all I know ubiquitous in global western culture now, but for those who do not know, they are a teeny donut-shaped crunchy morsel made up mainly of coloured sugar and some cereal extract designed to float in milk, sparkly with an array of frooty flavours.  they are the sweetest, and possibly worst, breakfast cereal known to man.  They made me very, very hungry and I just had to escape the dire farce that these two girls who had lured me there I think so they could brag about having had some 'older guy' from the bar they'd illegally gotten into come and hang out with them - there was certainly nothing else on the agenda but awkward adolescent hormonal mismanagement - so I got myself to Captain Munchies.

Yes, dear reader, so far I have scooted from North Freo up to the far end of Mosman Park and back in to Freo port itself, maybe 10 km only, but in the wee small hours of the morning, smashed on alcohol and pot.  I'm tempted to say "don't do this at home" but really, that's exactly the ONLY place you should do it.

Captain Munchies then was one of only three places in the greater Perth metropolitan area that was open 24 hours a day; the other two being franchises of Fast Eddy's.  I parked the Vespa in an aesthetically pleasing way under a streetlight and ran the gauntlet of the too-bright neon interior to order a burger, with beetroot and cheese and egg and barbecue sauce, then sat at the bolted-down tables outside admiring the peace of the seagulls wheeling overhead in the glare of the lights from the port broken only by the occasional fellow-traveller awash in his or her own seas of fuzz.  It was only at this point, and this is where my half-dreamt remembering started last night, that I became properly aware that I was very definitely doing a bad Drink Driving thing.  More than that, I was going to do some more of it, to get home.  No way I'm leaving the Vespa here, and it's too far to walk now.

But drunk and stoner logic failed, as so often happens, and rather than settle on the shortest route home straight up the hill it seemed far safer to use some 'back roads' around the port and then speed down the well-lit highways, over the newer, shinier traffic bridge, across the highway and straight up to High Street; home.

And here's the vision.  Here, you ride it this time.  Glance down at your hands. Denim jacket done up at the wrists, fingerless gloves only, resting calmly on the handgrips, shiny red instrument and headlight nacelle glinting happily up at me, speedo at rest.  Pull that clutch in with your left hand, and off we go.  There's a beautifully curving on-ramp to the new traffic bridge from the river road, and we slope up that at a good clip,  having a wide and clear view of any traffic (none) coming along.  Now there's this drinkers' logic that says if you're drink-driving you should also speed as that means you are on the road for less time and thus are less likely to get pulled over.  Apart from all that, speeding across this four-lane bridge, with ample time to see and predict the lights at the end (green), late at night with not a soul around is sheer joy.

There is an odd weather phenomenon that happens at this place on the river though, especially this late at night.  The cooling air can funnel down the walls of the river and cause a sudden draught to cross the bridge at an odd angle, and hit your light-as-a-wasp Vespa side-on very hard and with no warning, sending me careening across two lanes before safely bringing the whole thing back under control.  Then I spent a few moments pondering my good fortune, scooting at unreduced speed through the green lights, and by the time I woke up properly I realised that at my speed (on these square tyres with these teeny brakes etc etc) if the NEXT lights changed I was doomed, so did the only sensible thing - decided to lower the percentages by veering as close to the centre line as possible and setting up for a high-speed left-hander rather than carrying on straight (if you're American, imagine this as a right-hander, OK?). My theory was that there would only be one direction's worth of traffic to dodge.  All this manoeuvring meant no time for braking, so it was a pretty line-ball thing, keeping the whole ship upright.

The rest of the journey home was entirely uneventful.  Not even an adrenaline comedown, no shaking as I fumble with keys to get in the house, no making it safely home only to drop the bike on its side in the driveway.

And I think that last night might well have been the very first time I have remembered that night, 20 or more years ago.  Just one typically stupid youthful misadventure that happily did not end in tears, but from which no great lessons were learnt at the time (except perhaps for just how fast you could take that left on to Marmion Road) as I am pretty sure I drove whilst under the influence at least a couple more times after that. I probably even ate Froot Loops too, and certainly Captain Munchies' burgers.  Never saw those girls again though.

What shoots the whole memory through is this sense of aloneness, in fact although there surely must have been other vehicles about, I recall seeing none. I wanted this landscape to myself, and drunkenly or otherwise I let Death sit close by for that time, in a comfortable place.  If there was to be a regret, it would be that I did not learn that Death rightfully *should* always be allowed to sit there at my shoulder.  That its proper role is as a companion in life.  I do not excuse my actions, of course.  But I might have learned earlier that with Death alongside, nothing in life is too terribly scary.  And the lighting, direction, sound mixing, and even the casting are from a top-notch movie maker when death is part of the production.

I miss that Vespa, sometimes.

Bittersweet.

At least, it would be supposed to be bittersweet but the truth of it is, I feel entirely unaffected right now.  I just found out I am not quite about to be an uncle again, you see.  There is to be a birth in the family, which I shall almost certainly never see.  In the fiction account, this would be a poignant moment full of introspection, ponderings of the great balance between one life in, one life out, and even better - the babe is due the day before my next birthday. And if you were writing it you'd choose the day before or after too, not the day itself - just a tad too cheesy; so this does feel like it should conform to the rules and I should grieve even if only a little wistfully at the loss of my future with an extra niece or nephew in it.  But no, it's not like that at all.

Or you could write it not so much as a wistful moment but as a tale of some sense of enlightenment, you can imagine such a setting and event might trigger a whole revealing cascade of sacred visions about the eternal nature of life, the impermanence of all things and so on.  But it's not like that either.

I'm really happy for the pregnancy, it is a joyous and much-desired thing for everybody, and I love imagining the happiness of everyone with a new arrival, the whole family shenanigans.  And that's sort of all I've got.  Huh.  No reaction but pleased. Which is fine.

On the other hand, there is this tiny conundrum, just a little mental round stuck in my head the last half day: That the lighter I become, the heavier I feel.  Of course it makes perfect sense as for me lighter must equal weaker now, but it's not all like that on the inside.  At the same time as my body and in some ways my mind grow heavier, denser, more gravitational, there is an equal and opposite lightening and expansion in me.  It too is in my mind and thinking, and I can sense it in an 'energetic' way also.  I am painfully aware that I cannot describe this, and it's not like no-one's tried all the words for this stuff before and still we have no way ...

It's the direction, that's the thing. Heavier is down, or more accurately in, where lighter is up and out.  This is going both ways. I am stretched even as I gather density at my core, like a badly-shaped micro black hole. In many ways, it's oddly enjoyable, that is when it's anything at all.

Patchy (Title)

That's how it's been of late, uniformly patchy. Reliably without rhythm.  Random, you could even say, but less predictable.

A few days back the whole thing, all of life, was about fading.  My being was consumed with the whole energy of fadingness.  At the time I figured maybe when you get two major systems of one's self - in this case my body and the part of my cognitive self that has discipline, focusses and concentrates on stuff - more or less attuned to the same frequency, like the frequency of fadingness, it becomes overwhelming and you can go deeply in there.

I remember weeping at the understanding in my cells, in the feel of my marrow, that fading is what I now am.  The weeping time passed, and I was OK with it.  Saw myself still me enough, just fading all the time.  Fading became less a thing and more a point on the compass - part of the quadrant my path leads into, as least as far as I can see in this light.

Then it changed, we entered another patch. This was a moment of searing love and kindness, directed everywhere, and I was simply radiant for a little while. Only a little while. Like a recharge break or something, in between these fossil layers of accreted self I traverse backwards now, seeking source.  Life did its bumbly thing, a jumble of smallnesses of emotion, tiny patches of once-normality now permanently shot through with this new light, this fadingness, rendering every little thing potentially nostalgic, and thus new again in my heart. I got tugged around from patch to patch for a while.

Today though, I had visions.  I awoke looking forward to a session with Robyn in the afternoon, our amazing friend and bodyworker.  It's hard to pin down what it is she does when we have our sessions, but she uses Bowen Technique, massage, is skilled in things like Trager, is a master reflexologist ... a hands-on healer in other words.  We seem to mostly do my feet these days as the rest of me has such little flesh, and because I love it.  It worked out to be mainly head and feet today, and whole new things happened.

A while back a Buddhist friend, on hearing the news, reading my last post, was moved to write me "Don't be afraid when the visions start" and I tucked that away in my memory, for it seems in my experiences in living and dying to date that the Tibetan Buddhist way of thinking is extremely close to the money with what is happening in my dyingness.  I have great respect for their knowledge tradition.

So when the visions started, I had this friendly admonition there and it was fine.  At first.  I saw myself as an energy body from the outside - this is not a new thing at all for me, but the clarity and 'place' I was seeing from were radically ramped up and different - and as with the realisation a few days before of fadingness, I got a deep draught of deathness, and a sudden flooding tide of visions I cannot in any way describe to you except using nonsensical mashups like 'white textured depth' because the visions were as much felt and sensed with every part of me as they were seen.  Importantly however, they were seen.  A question arose against this marvellous and entirely unscary background then - what if I get afraid?  I was suddenly afraid of being afraid and doing all sorts of panicky things. Afraid of chickening out, as if I had some sort of choice ultimately anyway. Afraid that when the next watershed line to cross came up for me, the next step in letting go, that I'd prove driven by fear more than love. And I could see and viscerally feel how the fear pollutes my being.

It felt utterly fucking devastating, and I'm not sure I've ever been that scared.  And yeah, I have had some scary shit happen in life too.  This feeling and the energy patterns around it nearly swamped me.  Robyn knows me very well and we have a trust that says to her "do what you feel I need without fear" and she facilitated my going into it all very deeply.  Got me stable and grounded enough to get to the car before going home, topping up quickly on some food (I'd barely fed anything all day) and essentially surrendering. Passing out, in a way.

Love conquers all.  Meeta was just there for me, and I felt that 1% feeling.  It's the same 1% of your being that (for most of us who have survived and even thrived from the experience) kicks in when you take something like LSD that remembers to tell you that you can't really fly.  But in this case, it was that you cannot be drowned in fear when there is love. So it was safe to go into it, and I let go a second time into the maelstrom. I let myself be that weak and terrified and beaten. Judged, found wanting, without courage or spine, a creature of base reflex only, clinging like an amoeba at whatever environment sustains it even one second longer in life.  Devastated at the thought that I might after all be completely devoid of spirit, a shell, an utter mortal with nothing beyond my animal senses and hard-wired physical drives and fears. Not connected. Just a gaping wound in the skein of my own consciousness, raging with sensation at the dying of the light.

And all that.

And it was, you know, OK in the end.

So that patch passed, but not without passing on its baton of learning.  What I have now to adorn the fading sideways light is a little monument to all the fear I have learned in my life and what it at heart rests on; the simple cellular panic of not finding breath.  I have a new respect for that terror, but know something about it now.  That love actually does overcome.  Even if that is a conceit of the desperate ego, a lurching fistful of balm against the horror of Not Being Here, it is true.  It is true for I have experienced it as such once, and thus, might again. So the fear has been more deeply felt, and it is still there, but that's, well, OK.  I know it for what it is now.  OK. And one thing I do not doubt, is that love is here.

So that's how I've been.  And you?

To everything; turn, turn, turn

There's been something I've not been saying explicitly the last week or so, for several reasons, but it's time now to properly, clearly, out it.

I thought that writing this next line would be easy, but instead I find myself explaining to you how it isn't. And I thought my usual blunt approach, the raw and obtuse foil to my more baroque and wordy stylings with which you are all surely familiar by now would carry the day, yet I hesitate. Fear? Naturally. But of what, precisely, I must first resolve. I see now I have already prevaricated in the very title of this blog post. Ah yes, that's probably all it is, vanity again - just not wanting to be seen as an overly dramatic or self-indulgent attention seeker - a wanker. Pfft. Too late for that now, eh? So here it is, the line that should have been birthed a paragraph ago:

I'm actively dying now.

Active, as in making very conscious choices that will hasten my ending, and now, as in ... well, as in now.

Here is a short story, as a way of trying to explain how this has come to pass, and what it all means.

Consider now an old Inuit woman, nearly toothless and almost blind, sometime not that long ago, living much as her ancestors had done for generations in the frozen North. She has lived a long and love-filled life, with all its ups and downs, and the signs of it all show clearly on her beautiful face. Various extended family members these days take turns chewing her food and placing it gently in her mouth that she may swallow, and helping her with the minutiae of everyday life in the communal igloo. Being an elder member of the clan, she is perhaps even more greatly loved and respected by all, and it never needs saying that as long as she wishes to live that everyone will make every effort to ensure she's as comfortable, happy, and involved in life as possible. She can no longer do so many things now - cut up the seals or fish brought in, stitch the sealskin clothing, or even help much with the very young children, as would normally be her due. Life is hard in marginal lands, and she knows full well she is a burden on the limited resources available, in a scheme to which she has less and less ability to contribute. Not that anyone minds in the least, they simply acknowledge the burdens involved as part of their life's sometime inevitables, and she knows this also. Her world, perhaps like yours or anyone's, is made up as much of others as it is by her internal goings-on, and the older and wiser she has gotten the stronger and deeper the bonds and empathies with her family and communities have grown. She knows they are concerned about her, that they are that bit more vigilant to her strange night noises, attendant to any minor changes, always wanting her to be as well as she can on her way closer now, closer now, to dying. She knows how much she is loved, and knows how much her love is valued by others too. She knows they feel her pains, and already in their own ways are grieving her impending death.

In the igloo, sitting around the small stove, it can happen that many hours pass wordlessly in a comfortable companionship, with people doing little jobs, or playing small games, or dozing, and in one such lengthy silence our old lady rouses herself slightly with a little shake of the shoulders; just enough so that she knows she is in everyone's attention for the moment, and simply, softly says "It's time for me to go outside now." There is no doubt as to the meaning here, and there is no great commotion either. One by one, tearfully, the family members come around and press in close, and whisper things of fond memories shared, of scraps of life and love, offering blessings and gratitude, sensitive even now not to tire her out too much. For they know and fully accept that her existence has changed in just these past few moments. Our old woman has crossed a line inside: Her experience of All - her own self in body, mind and spirit - and those things that complete her; the way the world is reflected back to her, the way her life ripples out through others and her experience of their hearts and souls too, has passed a divide. There is no inside/outside differentiation, you see – the feelings and needs of her kin and her spirit surrounds are just as real and valuable to her as her own, and in the quantum of her experience of life, the mode of carrying on is now no longer right.

It is neither a selfish nor a selfless act. It is not a sacrifice to the greater good of her family, but it is partly that. It is not a wish to avoid further suffering, but it is partly that. It is not just the result of long and clear thought and meditation – though yes, it is partly that – but importantly it is just as much the result of an Intuition. A message, a voice, something Divine, it is pointless trying to name it – just the sure knowledge that it is time now.

She will shortly leave the igloo, alone, one last time, to walk a little distance away while she still can – this is important too – to find a good spot to just sit, and wait for the bear that will come and return her being into the great cycles of All.

I crossed just such a line very recently. The details are more personal and close to my protected home-ness place than allows me to feel right about sharing here, but when it came, I can tell you it was very clear.

The line has been there in my future, as a near-certainty of experience for years now. I've seen it there and thought long, thought hard, softly, fleetingly, and every which way about it on this journey, and I always did have a sense that I would know it as a moment, a line that once crossed was going to change me in some way deeply. I can tell you what that line is, for me.

It is a line between a life whose mode is to go on living, enjoying what great things that being alive has to offer, even as I grow and increasingly accept the inevitability and looming closeness of my death, with an eye for quality of life, and some expectation of continuance involved at its core, to a life where quality remains important, but the focus is less on quality of life and more on the qualities of death. A life that invites death in now, actively. I have lived long enough, and the lingering part has become too long, yet it is not quite 100% time to step off the edge; that is another line I shall probably come to shortly. It is time to take steps to hasten the end, and I have begun the process.

I am truly sorry if I am causing hurt by doing this, but something I have come to accept as I connect with those loved ones near and far is that there is pain anyway, with empathy of my condition and direction. This is perhaps just a different, and much shorter, form of pain I offer out to the world, and for which I take responsibility. So I am sorry. But I am also, quite unequivocally, bathed in the light of a far greater freedom than I think I have ever known, having crossed this line, and I suspect this might radiate out to you as well. That would be nice.

This is about that hard-to-communicate concept, the quantum of my experience. It involves things like my relationship with notions of home, and partnership with my wife, relationships with people and animals etc. I cannot see my wife's needs and desires as any more or less important than my own, and I know that she needs setting free too. I need to leave things like 'home' increasingly behind too. And that's OK.  I get that there will be people whose personal morals and worldviews will cause them to judge me unkindly or wanting in some variety of moral fibre - so be it.  I am sorry for bringing you another confrontation with your judgments, and can only hope that this is somehow right and good for you in the overall scheme of things.  I truly have no ill will to any of you who think unkind or hurtful thoughts towards me in this.  It's OK. It's sort of almost inevitably human anyway.

You may be wondering about details now, about what it all means in a day-to-day sense and it's only fair to be frank with you. This is my last Easter, certainly. Beyond that I cannot give you a date. But I can tell you my plan, all my own choices of course, but made with the blessings and support of those closest by and dearest to me.

Bluntness again, then: I am invoking the assistance of another plant sacrament to those already helping me so greatly in body, mind and spirit, to help me on the way – the dark sacrament of Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. Not the poppy or raw opium itself; rather its pharmaceutical and legal derivatives. You see, I have been living in constant pain of one or another sort, and using a pseudo-opioid that is quite the odd drug, in that it actually also 'blockades' all other opiates from doing much of their job, including their cognitive and mood effects, which is why it is often used to treat addiction. But it never really fully worked for the pain, and besides it is time to embrace the sacrament properly – I want the full effects now; even the bad ones. It is time to give up the constancy of pain; a now-outdated sacrament in itself, but one I thank for its lessons, perhaps fittingly at Easter time.  Opiates (except for my old weird pseudo-one) are notorious for slowing digestive actions. Their use was directly contributory to my last hospitalisation emergency those many months ago now. I was trying to live on, trying not to lose weight, to enjoy life, to be normal but ... no. I am reminded of Zen master Yoda's sage wisdom from The Empire Strikes Back; "Do or do not - there is no try." I did learn a great, great deal from that time (the time of opiates, but from Yoda also), and much about the nature of myself and death. I understand the sacrament now, and its appropriateness and spirit.

I'm not meaning to euphemise drug-seeking, I truly do mean it when I speak of sacrament in that my worldview has it as axiomatic that nature (and by extension, through our agency, even science) provides us all around with the things we need for our journeys in life, and a key part of our spirituality on this earth has been through the use of powerful plants. They work with us in more ways than brute chemistry, of this I am entirely sure. What I want is for my gut's inarguably impending shutdown to happen faster now, and what I want is also to have support and assistance in spending more and deeper times facing the blank at the end, meditating on Nothingness, on absence, on death, and this is precisely what the energies of the opiate world turn towards. It's a shame this aspect is so overlooked in our dealing with this most potent gift, and the problems that result for so so many people. But then, we abuse so much that is sacred in nature, do we not?

And I'll be spending increasing amounts of time at hospice, away from home. This helps my experiential desires well; to have some peace and to be less burdensome on Meeta, in a way it actually makes us closer. Eventually there will come a time when I do not go home again, I think. It is most likely I shall die here, in respite. This very room, even; 8C. Next to Max, who has attained today his 'last goal' – his 74^th birthday. Happy birthday Max.

OK, so, this is my plan, as much as there is one. I have switched drugs, and already things are slowing. I can see that for the moment about three feeds a day is all that is comfortable, and that's fine. I will of course lose weight as this carries on and diminishes. There will be pain regardless, discomfort, unpleasantness of sorts, to varying degrees along the way, I accept this. More pain than I am OK with I shall ask the sacraments to help with, and thus the cycle intensifies. My several symptoms will change and worsen, and new ones will doubtless emerge. I am already having a little trouble with some new things. You can see how this will go. At some point, accident or incident notwithstanding, I will most likely cross another line; the one where it is time to disengage from nourishment altogether, and possibly fluid too if that feels right, and from then we know my life will be measured only in weeks or days, not months.

For those who may wish to see me hold on tighter, or adopt a fighting pose and kick on, I am sorry for that pain of yours. That is not my way now. I accept you may see the world entirely differently; all I want to do here is show you what mine looks like, that you might have a chance at understanding.  Of course there are options for living longer.  They are just not right for me, of this I have utterly no doubt.

I do not know how much or how deeply I will keep up my conversations out here in the public light, I know my non-Facebooking wife is most fond of ribbing me that it will be “probably right up until the day you die” and for all I know she's right. Maybe not. I truly do not know how this will go. But I do know I will be spending more and more time 'in'. Please do not think that me sharing less means I love you all less, or that my incremental disconnection – my detachment – betrays some lack of good will or gratitude for you. Yes, you, personally.  I hope you know I wish to speak to your heart.

I am grateful beyond measure for this life and all that I have experienced, and so very much of that, more than you can probably imagine, is changed and made better, deeper, fuller, more right, by your having been in it. By your being in it now. I will understand if you have to leave me early, turn away and not watch. That is fine; there are no 'shoulds' left.  If you wish to reach out to me, I will respond as best, as graciously, as fully as I am able. Please do what is right for you in terms of this thing, whatever that is. For that is what I am doing, even though I know it may precipitate pains for all of us.

Thank you for witnessing this far.

So now you know.

Here I go.

If anyone wishes to assist in some way with the practicalities of my situation, the very best way is a contribution to my fund for a natural burial.  It is my preference if possible to go back to nature bodily somehow - we have no polar bears here to perform this grace and sky burial is alas illegal here.  Thank you.

http://www.gofundme.com/My-Natural-Burial

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