Blog (Irregular Reports From the Front)

I’ve been thinking a lot about Spoon Theory lately, which made me realize I’d never talked about it here on Parentheticals. For those who don’t know, Spoon Theory is a metaphor used by the disability community to explain what it feels like to have a limited amount of energy available for basic tasks of daily living and how it is more difficult to replace or regenerate that energy if one is dealing with a disability or chronic illness than it would be for others. (A “spoon” in this metaphorical sense just refers to “a unit of energy”, not an actual eating implement.) People use this metaphor to express various ideas about having energy, running out of energy, safeguarding one’s energy, spending one’s energy, etc. So one might say, for example, “I wish I could go out to that event tonight, but I am all out of spoons.” Or, “It took almost all my spoons just to shower and get dressed today.” Or, “I used all my spoons up yesterday and I don’t have enough back to do that today.”

When I was going through the active phase of my cancer treatments, with all the chemotherapy and surgeries, I was definitely much more spoon-deprived than I was used to being. Of course it made sense that all the difficult physical demands of killing cancer cells and re-sculpting my body would take a lot of spoons, and it was not surprising that I found I needed to hoard my spoons and spend them only (or at least mostly) on self-care and recovery activities (however broadly or personally defined those activities may have been in my specific case).

But then I got better, and after a while the physical demands eased and I found my spoons didn’t run out so fast. I found I could go back to spending my spoons on activities and projects besides self-care and daily living, like I had been used to doing. So of course, I did. And I’m happy to report that physically, my stamina and spoon supply seems to be nearly back to normal. (If I had to estimate, I’d say I’m at about 85-90%.)

But now...now I’m realizing that spoons as a metaphor for units of energy doesn’t only apply to physical energy, it also applies to mental and emotional energy. And I’m still lower on spoons in those areas than I used to be (or than I want to be). Mentally I’m getting better, though I still struggle with some concentration and memory issues and my stamina for doing intellectual work is still somewhat lower than usual (which is a bummer for writing, though I’m pushing through and trying to spend spoons on it as often as I can, because that’s still a major priority for me). Emotionally though, it’s even more of a struggle. I find myself in a place where I’m seriously low on spoons, both because I’m spending a lot and because they’re slow to get back. It’s like maybe I loaned all those spoons to my physical silverware drawer, or maybe that they’re still in the dishwasher and the dishwasher doesn’t get run everyday so I have to wait longer to get them back.

Metaphor torturing aside, I’ve found that it’s often been the pattern that once the physical demands lessen, the emotional ones surface to get their turn, and that seems to be what’s happening now in this phase of my cancer recovery. I’m still dealing with waves (sometimes larger, sometimes smaller) of grief, anxiety, depression and anger. And because I run out of spoons faster, my resilience is low; I’m less flexible, less forgiving whenever things go wrong or just go in a way I didn’t expect (which, because I am alive, is all the damn time). All that is understandable and fine, but this is also a time of additional emotional challenges brought on by the state of uncertainty, fear, anxiety, outrage and despair that our national political situation is creating. Every day seems to bring a fresh new worry or upset (or sometimes several), and even though I know I could just make like an ostrich and ignore the news, it’s hard to look away, to not at least bear witness even if I can’t summon the spoons to act. I know I’m not alone here—there are many, many people all around me that feel emotionally battered and exhausted from this same climate—but I’m finding it especially difficult to handle both my personal trauma and our communal trauma with a still-relatively-limited number of spoons. I’m impatient—I so badly want to be “all done” with all this recovery process and back in the cheerful, optimistic, enthusiastic, motivated, energetic mode I prefer, but I’m just not consistently there yet. I feel like the world outside my house is a rapidly devolving mess that urgently needs caring responsible people to fix it, and that I have to justify why I’m still floundering around in this depressive place. I find myself worried about being judged for not doing enough, for not improving fast enough—though I am pretty sure that it’s only me that’s doing the judging, not anyone else. (Why I am so judgy and hard on myself is a whole other topic, one which I have explored in therapy for many years and am still working on...suffice to say that during times of low resilience and not enough spoons, one’s chronic issues tend to get inflamed more easily.)

So what do I do with all this? (Apparently, I write a blog post so I can play with metaphors...) Seriously though, I think the first step is acknowledgement and acceptance of how it is: that emotional processing takes time and that I am still low on spoons of all kinds. Then the next step is a continual practice of mothering myself in a loving way, trying to be both gentle with and forgiving of myself during this period, which after all is hopefully temporary (God willing and the creek don’t rise.) Then after that I need to start being strategic about how to conserve and regenerate my spoons. Now is not the time *for me* to Do All The Things, or even most of the things. (Basic adulting and parenting excepted.) As I apparently reminded myself way back in 2011 (before I was even half as challenged as I am currently!), now is the time for practicing, prioritizing and pausing. I can be the change I want to see in the world, but I also have to respect and honor the place I’m at and the priority of self-care. (Oh hi, Oxygen Mask Theory, here you are again. Come on in and rest a spell, I made up the bed for you.) Fallow time is important for healthy growth, even for people who have plenty of spoons to spare. I can make more spoons for myself by resting, by making art and spending time around like-minded, positive, loving people. These are not indulgences; they are part of the process, part of the practice. 

Practice, practice, practice. Isn’t that the challenge and the privilege of living? As someone who is particularly grateful to still be alive right now, I’m going to choose to see all this opportunity for practicing my lessons as a good thing, even though it doesn’t always feel so good. No rainbow without rain. No mud, no lotus. Just keep swimming.

I’m a few days late getting this traditional birthday blog post up this year, because there was a lot going on for my birthday and then I got sick (which I refuse to take as an indication that I overdid it around the birthday shenanigans...it is after all seasonally appropriate and I have been around a lot of people). Today I’m finally feeling better though and ready to contemplate this dual anniversary as I do every year and see what it feels like this time.

For those just now coming to the party, my birthday is also the day I got diagnosed with cancer...the first time, back when I was 23. That makes this year my 25^th anniversary of the day my relationship with my body and my mortality abruptly changed. 25 years is a nice round number and worthy of celebration, though it would feel nicer (and more victorious) if there hadn’t also been this new diagnosis and cancer saga part 2 that I have been dealing with for the past year-plus. It’s become interestingly complicated to do this yearly philosophizing now that there are two cancer-versaries to contemplate, but I still like the dramatic dichotomy that this day of transitions from one state to another (from unborn to born, from healthy to ill) presents.

I do still feel a sense of victory, of having made it this far after the initial shock and upset of that first diagnosis. But that sense of victory is tempered now with the reality that life is complicated and the lesson that victory often comes at a cost (which sometimes takes a lot longer than expected to manifest). I can no longer see my life as divided into only three phases, pre-cancer, cancer treatments and post-cancer survivorship—my survivorship status is now no longer something I can confidently assume will not change, since it already has changed once, from cancer survivor back to cancer patient and then back to survivor again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m humongously grateful for and pleased at being back in the survivor identity after a tough second go-round, but the very fact that the pendulum has swung back and forth between having and surviving cancer an additional time makes me have to acknowledge that it could certainly do so again. (In fact, it is more likely to do so again than it once was.) I have to constantly be able to hold two possibilities in my head and heart: on the one hand, that I am free, that I have fought the good fight and triumphed and cancer has once again vanished from my body, never to return because we have salted the earth quite thoroughly (and will continue to for years to come, just in case); and yet on the other hand, that treatments for cancer can sometimes cause cancer, as they did in my case, and that my body seems to be a fertile ground for cancer (as evidenced by it popping up at least twice now that I know of), so even though we have done all we can to prevent recurrence, I cannot be certain that it won’t happen. Holding two opposite things simultaneously and being comfortable in that “gray area” of uncertainty is something I learned to do back in the first go-round with cancer, but now I’ve had a chance to repeat the lesson and it is even more nuanced and complicated. I would say that the ability to live in the gray is one of the hallmarks of maturity, so I guess I would also say “yay me” that I have made it far and long enough to even mature.

One last metaphor (because it wouldn’t be Parentheticals without torturing a few metaphors) that I’ve been thinking about in regards to this cancer-versary and the whole double-cancer saga I now possess is that of the Boulder in the Meadow. This is a metaphor I came up with after another, non-cancer experience to explain how it feels when things change abruptly, but it certainly applies here too. Imagine that your life can be compared to a beautiful forest meadow: open, wide, flat, with lush grass and beautiful little flowers blooming here and there. Perhaps a stream trickles through it, and little fish and frogs live in that stream, and the meadow grass is home to butterflies and hummingbirds and lizards and mice and insects—a whole happy ecosystem. Then one day out of the clear blue sky a giant stone boulder unexpectedly falls smack into the center of the meadow. It rips up the ground, crushes a bunch of grass, and wreaks havoc on many tiny creature lives. The stream now has to divert around it. And it completely changes the view of the formerly flat, open expanse—even though the boulder’s fall has not affected the entire meadow, you cannot any longer look across the meadow and not notice it. It is the single most obvious feature of the meadow now, and it cannot be changed or removed. Over time, things in the meadow eventually return to some sort of equilibrium, and the boulder is incorporated into the ecosystem of the meadow. Grass grows around it, flowers appear in its cracks and fissures, creatures take refuge in its shade. The meadow is still beautiful, but it will never again be the same open, expansive place that it once was. You can’t dismiss the boulder, or wish it away, or pretend you don’t see it. You can mourn the past, and remember fondly the way things once were in the meadow, but eventually you must accept the boulder as something that will always be there. Then you can find a way to view it as positively as possible, and choose to focus on the beauty that is still present.

So in this cancer-saga context, I now have two boulders in my meadow. I’ve had 25 years to incorporate the first boulder, the one that so radically changed my meadow’s topography. It’s nicely weathered and worn now, and has certainly made things more interesting. I have accepted it as an ongoing feature of my meadow, and even grown to appreciate its gifts. But this second boulder—it landed so close to the other boulder, and it’s even bigger than the first one was. It did more damage to the meadow than the first one, and in some ways it is harder to imagine that its presence will ever feel integrated (even though experience with the first boulder should be reassurance that it will, given enough time). It makes me once again remember and mourn the flat meadow that once was, and even the single-boulder meadow that once was. I know that acceptance and integration is possible, and indeed the process has begun, but it isn’t finished yet. Of course, it may never finish—the meadow is an ever-evolving place. But that second boulder still bothers and distracts me with its disruptive, obvious presence.

I wish I could hurry this process of acceptance and integration along, and get back to thinking more about the meadow than the boulders. But every day I still see my scars and feel the numbness and oddity of my new “foobs” (fake boobs) and it still bothers me. I still struggle with feeling like my memory and my energy are not back to “normal”. I yearn—oh how I yearn—to put this latest cancer experience behind me and move on, and I am impatient with the fact that I am still dealing with the aftereffects. However, if there’s one thing that the first cancer saga taught me, it’s that recovery takes time. A long time. I actually think it’s an ongoing experience, not a destination. So there is no “putting this all behind me”, really. There is only the journey, round and round the meadow, looking at things from all angles, appreciating what is good and holding what is not good with as much compassion as I can muster.

It’s taken me a couple extra weeks to actually write this down in any coherent way, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my intentions/resolutions for this 2017 year, and I think they are finally coming into focus. I think I am coming to accept that this year is *not* a year for proactively taking on new big challenges and aspiring to grander activities; I still have more recovery and processing to do before I feel like I will be “free” enough to seek out and accomplish big projects or big changes to my intentional life design. I still do feel a pressure to accomplish and help (help people, help our country, help change the world to be a better place) but I also feel a resistance, a need for taking my time and continuing with the self-care (which is mostly not physical anymore, which makes it a little more complicated). I think it is so important to be politically active and make my voice heard and help others make their voices heard too, but I still have to be conservative with my spoons so I don’t burn out or fall into despair and depression. So I want to focus on “small ball”, by which I mean working at a more local, personal level to live my values and operate as the kind of person I want to be in my marriage, my family, and my communities. I want to be a role model and really commit to the idea of “be the change you want to see in the world”.

So what do I believe in? What are my values? What kind of world do I want to live in? Maybe it would be helpful to list some of them for reference.

• I believe that people are more important than things. I prioritize spending time with people and making them happy over most everything else.
• I believe everyone—yes, everyone—has equal value and importance. Like Jewish tradition teaches, saving one person is like saving a whole world (and therefore hurting or destroying one person is like hurting or destroying a whole world.)
• I believe that for the most part, diversity and differences make us stronger and more interesting and should be celebrated and eagerly sought out, not ignored or devalued.
• I believe in community and collaboration, because we are all connected. I think it does indeed take a village to raise our children and make our neighborhoods clean, safe and nurturing.
• I believe that people are intrinsically good at heart and have the same basic needs for respect, safety, love, connection, comfort, creativity, meaning and purpose.
• I believe we humans are the stewards of this one unique planet Earth and it is our individual and collective responsibility to live in a way that supports and protects our global environment for ourselves and for all future generations.
• I believe in tikkun olam, the healing of the world, and in partnering with each other to make the world a better place for all, not just some.
• I believe in justice and the application of appropriate consequences for wrong actions, not as punishment but as encouragement and scaffolding for learning how to do things right in the future.
• I believe in peace.
• I believe in treating others as you would like to be treated.
• I believe that each one of us has amazing gifts and important stories to share, and that we should both share our own gifts and stories and take the time to appreciate each other’s gifts and stories.
• I believe in optimism and hope, even in the face of difficulties.
• I believe in honesty.
• I believe in self-reflection and personal growth, because the more we understand ourselves the stronger and more resilient we get and the more we can empathize with/connect to other people.
• I believe in treating others (and myself) with kindness and respect.
• I believe in play and creativity and trying new things.
• I believe in being of service.
• I believe in the “oxygen mask theory” where you need to take care of yourself first in order to then take care of others.

I’m sure there are more things I believe in, but this is a pretty good list for now. If I can keep reminding myself to live my life according to these beliefs I think I’ll have a successful year.

Once again I am stealing some time away amidst the familiar familial hurly-burly that is our Stinson New Year’s tradition to do some reflection on the past year and record it for posterity. 2016 will definitely be a memorable year in my book, mostly for purely selfish and personal reasons (helloooo cancer! And also, goodbye!) but also because this past year has definitely felt like a turning point in history, especially with the election of Donald Trump and all the accompanying upheaval in American life. We are certainly living in some interesting times and I am doing my best to stay solid in my values and my determination to keep loving and creating and making the world a better place for everyone.

But before I get too far down the rabbit hole of predictions and solutions for what kind of looking glass country we seem to be dealing with, let me go back to the point of this post, which was to record and reflect on what happened to ME in the year just past (because after all this is my solipsistic storytelling space). With the able assistance of my calendar and my photo log, I ought to be able to at least remember the highlights in vaguely chronological order.

January started off quietly, which was definitely welcome after so much upheaval (cancer surgery and treatments, holiday hoo ha) in the previous months. For my birthday weekend Josh and I got all dressed up and went to the Edwardian Ball in SF for two nights with a bunch of friends and had a terrific time. A few days later we also went to see the Wood Brothers in concert but it turned out to be kind of a bummer show since the band was sick. The week after that I had my first chemo treatment, at which I did not have a terrific time but at least it turned out to be less horrible than I had so fearfully anticipated.

In February I got my hair cut short in anticipation of its impending demise, which turned out to be a good idea since it started coming out in handfuls right around Valentine’s Day while we were at Dundracon (one of our annual gaming cons here in the Bay Area). After Dundracon we had a gaggle of teens over for Eli’s traditional birthday gaming sleepover. By the time I got to my second chemo treatment in February I was pretty much bald so I began to fool around with wearing different brightly colored wigs (I had blue, green, pink, auburn and purple but my favorite was the purple). One thing I was determined not to let chemo spoil was my trip to Joshua Tree in late February for Pantasia (a handpan gathering). I drove with my teacher Judith and a couple of her friends and we all shared a room and even though I was tired and queasy a lot of the time, I had a truly amazingly great experience there. I got to geek out and play some soul-lifting music with some incredible people in a gorgeous setting (including the trippy and wonderful Integratron nearby), and I even won the lottery, which meant I could acquire a new handpan (my CFoulke Aether, which is still my favorite). I made new friends and grew as an artist and I can’t wait to go back again this year, especially now that I’m feeling so much better.

In March I had my last two chemo treatments so that’s pretty much what I did all month. Friends and family were wonderful during my chemo treatment months and brought us food and helped schlep the kids around, although I was also able to keep doing some of my usual activities. I did have to let go of my desire to go to FOGcon (local writer’s con that I always go to) and instead stay home and lay low. I did manage to go see my brother and his friend Matej play a fabulous, intimate concert as the Pull-String Duo at the Maybeck House in Berkeley, participated in the Purim shenanigans at our synagogue, and helped throw Isaac a sleepover “Pi Party” for his birthday. My last chemo treatment was the last day of March and I celebrated with bubbles.

At the beginning of April I was still feeling pretty crappy trying to get over the final chemo treatment (plus I got a cold), but not so crappy that I couldn’t start making freak flag blanks and getting ready for Maker Faire (which I was determined not to miss because of cancer treatments). Josh and I stole away for a rejuvenating spa day at the Sonoma Mission Inn, I went to a party at Adrienne and Jim’s house where I got to hang out with my Dickens Fair buddies, and Mom and I took a trip to the De Young Museum for an art day and to see the “Flowers to Art” exhibit (which was awesome). We celebrated Passover with family, which was lovely as always. The Lucas Valley hills were amazing in springtime so I went for walks with various people at various times and even shot a music video with my brother where I played handpan while surrounded by green and wildflowers (it was very pretty). The biggest event of April though was that at the end of the month I had double mastectomy surgery, which though physically challenging  was even more challenging to deal with psychologically. But I got through that (again with the help of my wonderful family and friends) and was feeling pretty good after about two weeks.

Other than recovering from surgery, the two big things that happened in May that I was determined to do were Maker Faire and Wiscon. I am happy to report that I managed to participate in both. Once again I had a terrific team of friends who helped me run the Fly Your Freak Flag High booth at Maker Faire, and it all went really well (it certainly helped that I had run it so many times before and so I kind of had a system down). I even won Best In Class/Editor’s Choice awards which made me feel glad I’d made the effort. It was also good to be at Wiscon and re-activate my dormant writer identity by being around all the smart geeky people talking about all the craft and philosophy of writing...one thing the chemo definitely took away from me was the brain-power and discipline necessary to write, but the desire was still there and I was glad to be feeling better enough to want to start writing again. (Though as it turned out I didn’t actually start writing fiction again until Fall, because things got too distracting with all the cancer treatments and self-care, and then Burning Man.)

June was a pretty good month for the most part. I continued to run around doing lots of self-care appointments and all the usual end-of-school stuff. Our nephew Jonah graduated from high school and we went to Chico for the weekend to help celebrate that momentous occasion. The following week Isaac graduated from our beloved elementary school, which marked the end of 10 years of our time at that institution. I was sad to say goodbye to that place and those people after so many good experiences there, but it was also kind of exciting to be entering a new era. Isaac and I went to the Pirate Festival in mid-June, and then a few days after that our family foursome went on a quick 6-day trip to NYC (Josh had a conference to go to and the rest of us decided to tag along). We stayed in the East Village and had lots of fun being all touristy (Empire State Building, 9/11 Memorial, 1 World Trade Center, the Met, Central Park, Statue of Liberty, etc), watching Broadway plays (Lion King and Les Miserables), eating delicious food (mmmm bagels) and visiting friends. We walked a lot and finally taught our kids how to ride the subway. We packed a lot into a short time! After we got back we took the kids to see one of our favorite bands, Flight of the Conchords, in concert. We had a flat tire on the way there but still managed to make it in time to see most of the concert. At the very end of June I went back to a different UCSF campus to have my DIEP flap breast reconstruction surgery, which went successfully but was definitely tough to recover from (the toughest so far).

I declared July the month of Julaxing, where theoretically all Julia would do was relax and recover from reconstructive surgery (Josh and the boys were all caught up in Adventure Gaming Camp). Luckily for at least the first three weeks or so I had lots of people visiting and bringing food and helping entertain me while I sat around and healed up (which was harder than it sounds).

In August I helped my mom with her booth at the ACC Craft Show, and then the week after that the kids went off to sleepaway camp once Adventure Gaming Camp was over and Josh and I snuck away for our traditional belated anniversary trip to Ashland to see some great plays and eat some yummy food. Then we came back and hit the ground running trying to get ready for Burning Man. (Josh built a new water bar for our camp, which I helped with a little bit, and I made myself a new scallop vest and an art piece about my breast cancer saga to burn at the Temple, but mostly there was just the usual craziness of prepping and packing). Isaac started middle school, and then Josh left early to help with build and I drove up to the burn with Mom (who was back for her second year.) I had a really great burn...saw lots of art, danced and partied and met new people and gave away lots of things. I played my first handpan concert and got to spend some important “year of living cancerously” processing time at the Temple, which helped put a lot of things in perspective.

In September Eli started his second year at The Marin School and got his braces off. He’d also cut his long hair over the summer so he had a whole new look. We finally got our foam roof recoated and some new electrical work done (it was a big project involving coordinating with multiple tradespeople). I helped mom with her booth at the Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival. In late September Josh and I went to South Lake Tahoe for the weekend to celebrate with Josh’s family at the wedding of his cousin Robert and Lisa, then came back to visit with my extended family in honor of my cousin Rich and his wife Kim and their kids who were in town from Colorado.

In October we celebrated the high holidays with family (and I did a lot of reflecting on the one year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis). Josh and I saw Ani Difranco in concert. We helped set up and hold down the Pink Heart Camp space at the SF Burning Man Decompression event. We met up with Dave and Keri and Zinnie in Placerville at the Hangtown Music Festival, where we dressed in fun animal costumes and saw lots of great music including the Wood Brothers (actually only two out of the three Wood Brothers, as the third was out sick, but it was a great show anyway). Then I flew out to Columbus, OH for the World Fantasy Convention. I got to hang out with my writer buddies yet again and this time I actually even did some writing, which felt great. I got back from that just in time for Halloween, although this year I hung out at home with the teenagers watching movies and handing out candy rather than running around with Isaac and his buddies trick-or-treating.

November was the start of Dickens Fair workshops and performances, and my friend Robin came to visit for a few days. After she left it was finally election day and I think it’s safe to say that most of the country was pretty surprised and slightly more than half the country (including me, the one who was positive we’d finally have our first woman president) was pretty upset that it turned out that Donald Trump had won the election through the electoral college (not the popular vote). While still reeling from the election results and what felt like a new, more frightening and less friendly America, I went in for my final “fix-it” surgery to finish out the breast reconstruction. (Compared to the previous surgery, this one was a cakewalk—I didn’t even have to stay overnight in the hospital and I was back up and at it relatively soon afterwards.) Later in the month we went to go see Cirque du Soleil (Luzia) with our friends Janet and Todd and Audrey and John, and as usual it was an amazing show and we had a fantastic time. We had a quiet couple of days of Thanksgiving at my parents’ house. The only other thing of note this month was that I fortuitously acquired another new handpan (an original 1^st Generation Hang that had been retuned to the Kaffa scale, which I love).

In December Eli and I finished out Dickens Fair (we had a great run overall, and I especially enjoyed getting to model 4 times for the Dark Garden corset windows and leading my own shanty during the Paddy West Shanty Hour) and we went to go see our friend Mark and the SF Gay Men’s Chorus sing their annual holiday show. Josh and I once again threw our annual Black Turkey Party—this year was the 20^th Annual, which we celebrated by awarding a turkey trophy and knit, turkey-shaped “crown” to our friend Rebecca, who had attended all 20. We took the kids and met up with a bunch of friends to see “Rogue One” (the new Star Wars movie) at the Corte Madera Cinema, as is tradition. We celebrated Christmas Eve at Josh’s parents’ house, and Christmas Day at Brandi and Quinn’s with the extended Archer/Gomes families. And we ended the year as we always do, with my parents and my brother’s family out at Stinson Beach.

Looking back at my admittedly incomplete and largely on-the-bright-side list of all the big things that happened in my life this year, I am struck by the fact that even though there was a lot of difficult and unhappy stuff (and I haven’t even gone into the fact that 2016 also saw a horrible humanitarian disaster continue to develop in Syria, the exit of Britain from the European Union, the massacre in Orlando, far too many police shootings of innocent black folk, some huge natural disasters, a huge fire in an Oakland warehouse, and what felt like an unusual amount of celebrity deaths...Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Muhammad Ali, Leonard Cohen, Fidel Castro, George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, and many more), there was also a lot of good stuff: trips and adventures, time with new friends and old, music and art and food and celebrations of all kinds. I feel I can say without exaggeration that on the whole 2016 was one of the hardest and most challenging years I’ve ever seen, both for me and for our country and our planet, and I am more than happy to wave farewell to it as we begin afresh in 2017. Here’s hoping that this newly-minted year will be kinder and gentler for us all than the last one was.

A year ago today I had my first breast surgery (a lumpectomy and reduction). A week ago today I had what I fervently hope is my last breast surgery (tweaks to finish the DIEP flap reconstruction I had back in June). So I have been this new, smaller-breasted person for a whole year now. It still feels strange and unreal, though I’m finally getting more used to it. Being done with the reconstruction also brings with it a mixed set of feelings: on the one hand, “yay, that’s it, I’m done!”, where I’m happy to finally be through all the trials and tribulations and relieved to be relatively pleased with the results; and yet on the other hand, I also am feeling “oh, that’s it, I’m done?”, where I’m realizing that the form I’ve got now is what I’m going to have for—God willing and the creek don’t rise—the rest of my life. And it isn’t perfect, as it never is, but whatever my minor disappointments, now I must begin the journey back to body acceptance and self-appreciation all over again. Having done body acceptance work slowly but surely for decades already, it’s a little disheartening to have to do it again (and so relatively quickly). Do it I shall, with as much focus on the silver linings and bright sides as I can manage, but today is an anniversary where I mourn, just a little, the way things used to be back before I was a “modified” human.

The other thing that I’ve been mulling over the last few weeks (in between all the election hoo ha and the emotional rollercoaster that has created, which will have to be another post), is the “now what” feeling of existential angst that I mentioned in the last post. Other than the next 5-10 years of prophylactic hormone therapy, I am officially done with the active phase of my treatment. I'm excited about that, oh hell yes I am...but I am also feeling a little discombobulated and lost. I feel like a wild animal in a catch and release program—I got caught, I thought I was going to die, but now here I am thrust back out into the place where I started (more or less) and not sure about how safe it really is anymore or whether I truly belong there. Don’t get me wrong, I vastly prefer it out here to back in captivity, but I’m uncertain about what to do and where to go next. I guess I’m just going to have to put my focus on the first half of the “patient patient” moniker while I move away from the second, and see what this crazy, complicated, contradictory, unpredictable, and ever-interesting universe throws my way next.

Monday was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year (5777 on the Jewish calendar). I went with my family to services at our synagogue, where we helped greet and hand out prayerbooks to people, sang, prayed and listened to moving poems, personal stories and the amazingly loud “wake-up” blasts of the shofar. I even chanted two verses of Torah in front of the whole congregation (this is more impressive than it sounds, considering I don’t read Hebrew and had to memorize the whole thing, including the intricate up-and-down traditional melodies). After services, we went out to lunch at our favorite bagel store.

I mention this because this is exactly what we were doing last year on Rosh Hashanah when I got the voicemail from the Marin Breast Health Center telling me that the test results from my mammogram re-do were back and they wanted me to call them (it’s never good news when they ask you to call back to hear test results instead of telling you right then and there). If you’ve been reading this blog over the last year, you know the rest of that story (and if you haven’t, well, spoiler alert: it wasn’t good news). In this time of anniversaries (one year since my breast cancer diagnosis, my triumphant return to Burning Man after the Year of Living Cancerously) and of High Holidays-inspired introspection and t’shuvah (re-turning, redemption) I’ve been thinking a lot about how to put this past year in perspective and what I want from the year ahead. This post is an attempt to record and reflect on some of this t’shuvah work.

So now it’s not only a new year, it’s also time for a new stage of my life: post-cancer. It’s the time when I get to switch from being a patient patient to being a survivor. (Not that you ever really are “cured” and of course I’m still in the recurrence danger zone for the next five years, which is why all the chemo and hormone therapy, but the active phase of treatment and recovery is now over.) On the one hand, I am enjoying being able to celebrate surviving all that I had to endure and I am excited to finally be able to put a confident, weighty period at the end of the sentence “I had cancer and went through treatments and now I’m better.” Yet the other hand is busy holding the question: “so what do I do now”? That’s a big and heavy question, and the answer isn’t necessarily obvious.

Do I just flip cancer a jaunty middle finger salute and go right back to where I left off, and try to resume as close to the exact same life I had before this disruption came along? After all, I have spent a lot of the last ten or so years on intelligent life design and identity work around who I want to be and what I want to do with my one wild and precious life, and I was pretty happy with the way things were going and who I was being when this cancer detour came along. Maybe the kind of t’shuvah (returning) I want is exactly this, the relief and reward of getting back to a previous, hard-won equilibrium. There’s a lot to be said for this path, but...I’ve also been here before. The last time I had cancer, when I was in my 20s, and I hit this “survivor” phase, returning to my old life as much as possible was exactly the path I chose. I had just moved to a new city and started grad school when I was diagnosed, and when my active treatment phase was over, I decided that I wanted to go right back to school afterwards (well ok, I had the summer off, but still). I felt like it was important to prove that “cancer can’t stop me!” and honor the choices I had already made. After a long and scary time of not knowing what was going to happen and submitting to whatever medical science said I had to do to survive, I wanted to return to the comfort of the familiar, the chosen. So I did...but even though I was able to use my MA thesis to do some important processing, grad school and the academic life just wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be. I had changed, and my priorities and interests had changed. Perhaps some of that was inevitable (after all, I was only in my mid-twenties, and for most people that’s a time of change and exploration), but I think some of it was also that, just like Frodo at the end of the Lord of the Rings books, I discovered that after certain life-changing events, you can’t really go home again. Because even if you do go home, you don’t fit neatly back in place, and that can get uncomfortable after a while. So after struggling with transformation and fear of failure for another few years (!), eventually I took my MA (and my new husband) and returned back home to the Bay Area to figure out what was next. And life has definitely moved in some interesting and unanticipated directions ever since (though I must note that it has also spiraled back to familiar themes and choices as well...because even though you can’t fully go home again, you do sometimes get to go back and visit for a while).

But if I don’t go right back to the way things were—the way *I* was—before all this came down, what other path can I choose? I guess the opposite of wanting to stay the same is embracing and exploring transformation. But there are little and big kinds of transformation, and there are the transformations we choose willingly and the transformations that we are forced into—and there’s the rub. Change just for the sake of change is not especially attractive to me at the moment, but I’d be dishonest if I said that everything was perfect before and that I have no more interest in evolving and growing and finding new meaningful activities, adventures and work. Whether I wanted it or not, things are different now and thus I have inevitably already transformed (and will likely continue to do so) to accommodate. Life isn’t static, even if we choose to re-turn to previous patterns. But how much transformation can I tolerate, let alone enjoy, right now?

I guess what it comes down to is choice. Transformation is desirable *if* it is a chosen transformation. I *chose* to go to grad school, I *chose* to be a wife and then mother, I *chose* to be an entrepreneur, I *chose* to be a writer and an artist and many of the other identities I carry. I did not choose to be a cancer patient or a cancer survivor. I did not choose to lose my hair or my breasts or my menses, except in a “lesser of two evils” kind of way because above all I did choose life as my highest priority. But at least in a life-or-death situation the choices are clear(er), albeit not always palatable.

Now that I am released (however temporarily) from the tyranny of cancer treatments and the cancer patient identity, I have the opportunity to make my own choice about what I want to do with myself and my life, but the pros and cons of my choices are less clear cut. I want to make sure that whatever I choose to do now is truly right for me (or at least right for the me that has arrived here in this moment), and not just another comforting attempt to reset back to an earlier version of me. But surviving existential threats does make one go back to asking the big existential questions like “what is my purpose?” and “why am I here?”—except in my case now it’s “why am I still here?”. And this time of t’shuvah makes me ask “for what was I redeemed? What redemption can I now make?” If there really is some sort of destiny or design to our lives, maybe that means I can find some meaning and context for my life by transforming what I thought (however imperfectly and arrogantly) my purpose was before into something new that I never would have imagined (or had access to) before this latest bout with cancer came along. I can at least keep my eyes and ears open to what that might be, knowing that standing at this crossroads is a gift and that I have at least some limited choice over which direction I pivot.

So what will happen now? What direction will my life go now? I really don’t know. I do know though that the more I feel like I can choose the things I spend my time engaging with the better it feels, at least for now. So I am going to go back to the familiar priorities that so far have given my life meaning: my family, my communities, my art, and making the world a better place. But I’m also going to be open to whatever comes my way and stay alert to the possibilities of transformation. Perhaps transformation will come slowly and calmly, or it will come with another shock and bang. Perhaps it will not come at all, or only be understood in hindsight, once I am way farther along. Regardless, I’m grateful to be here pondering these questions and the shape of my life’s story arc for yet another year, and I’m feeling positive that this coming year will be full of good things. Bring it on, 5777!

Monday we got up as early as we could and spent three or four hours striking and mooping our own camp area and loading up the van and the Uhaul with all our stuff. We said goodbye to all our remaining camp mates and then Mom, Josh and I caravanned together with Kathy and Anthony to the Exodus line. We were expecting it to take a long time to get out and at first we were happy and perky hanging out in line with our friends and other random folks around us, but after hours and hours and hours of that we got tired (like you do) and cranky. I spent time writing in my journal and listening to BMIR. We didn’t hit pavement until nearly 9pm, which meant that our traditional stop at the Black Bear Diner in Sparks was not going to work (they closed at 10). So we decided to go back to the GSR to get some food (casinos are open all night, after all) and maybe see some other Pinkies there. Once we got into cell range Mom called Dad and we called home and spent a nice long time (maybe an hour?) talking to our eldest (youngest had already gone to bed) about what had been going on for him in the first week of school, which was great.

We got to the GSR around 11 and changed clothes and wiped down in the restroom there and then promptly ran into Alex, Lionessa, MissyKat, Halcyon and Millie. We had a late dinner with Kathy and Anthony and Millie, and then eventually got back on the road around maybe 2am. We were all tired but especially Josh, who’d been driving most of the way. I took over from him for the last hour or so, and had to fight to stay awake, especially when we hit morning rush hour traffic around Vallejo. We got home just before 7am, and the kids were already up and about getting ready for school (though my poor Dad was asleep on the couch waiting for us to get home). It was so great to see the kids (and they were happy to see us too) but it was also great that they left to go to school and we could finally shower and fall into our own comfy bed for a couple hours.

And now, as per custom, it’s time for the bullet list summary of lessons learned and final thoughts about this year’s burn:

• I’m just so stoked to be here. Really.
• Everything is going to be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
• Burning Man has always felt like a sort of New Year’s celebration to me, but it was doubly so this year after having lived in cancer-land for nearly the entire year between the last burn and this one.
• I now have a pile of pretty solid proof that no matter what happens, I’m still me, and me is a bright expansive powerful supernova. It’s my nature and my privilege to shine and provide an example of said shining to the world.
• While it’s true that you could sum up the experience of being at Burning Man by saying “you just can’t make this shit up”, you could also sum it up by saying “that’s a giant fuck-ton of shiny shit”. Both statements are a vain and somewhat silly attempt at distilling years of experience and squeezing way too much meaning into something short and pithy. (Which is ultimately an impossibility, but it’s fun to try.)
• PHamily is real and it feels really good to be a part of it.
• Savoring leads to happiness. Savor more, be happy more.
• Cold treats in the desert never get old.
• Short hair on the playa is certainly more convenient and easier to deal with.
• Ritual is a powerful tool for healing.
• Suffering cracks us open and lets the light in.
• Try pitching next year’s Freak Flag making workshop as (also) a “chill and color” activity.
• Playing handpan on stage is pretty fun. I would like to do it again, but prepare a bit more next time.
• I really want to make a wind-art freak flag sculpture for Burning Man next year or the year after.
• No mud, no lotus. If I hadn’t gone through so much crap during my year of living cancerously, I would not have had such a particularly sweet burn this year.
• Yes, apparently I *am* Lady Luck. And now I can look the part whenever I want to.
• Foam shower + coconut oil + cookie + dancing in the company of other happy clean burners is a recipe for an awesome good time.
• The art is amazing, the dancing is fun, the absurdity is awesome, and the creativity is inspiring, but it is the people that make Burning Man so compelling and keep me coming back year after year.
• Burning Man may be only a week, but the best parts of it can live on 24/7/365 in the way we choose to be in the world and in the way we treat each other (and ourselves).

[Da Vinci's Workshop Intro]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 1]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 2]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 3]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 4]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 5]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 6]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 7]

[Full Set of My Da Vinci's Workshop Pictures on Facebook]

Sunday we did indeed get up ridiculously early and jump right in to hours of camp teardown. I mooped and schlepped and helped write down the inventory of one of our two camp storage containers (which both got absolutely crammed with stuff in every smidge of space). I worked on that until mid-afternoon, after which Josh and I tried to consolidate and pack up as much of our own stuff as we could in preparation for leaving the next day.

Around 7:00 we got a few people together to head out to see the Temple burn. As I already mentioned, that burn was particularly lovely and meaningful, although I’d done much of my processing already. I was especially drawn to/impressed by the smoke angels (vortexes or tornados of smoke that formed at the fire and “marched” across the playa in a line until dissipating into the air). They started at the Temple and kept leaving it in a beautiful procession, one after the other. I also loved watching all the embers dance away up into the sky, billows and puffs and clouds of tiny glowing sparks all moving this way and that until they winked out. I was glad to feel the sense that all the grief and loss of the last year were puffing away so beautifully, and to put a ritual sense of closure on my year of living cancerously. I took out my letter to myself that I’d been carrying around and re-read it. Ryan, who was sitting next to me, asked if he could read it, so I let him, and then Josh asked to see it too, so I let him read it too. Really the whole thing was beautiful and satisfying. I would have stayed longer but at a certain point everyone else with me wanted to go so I just let that desire go along with everything else I had let go of that burn and went back home to Pink Heart, where almost everything was transformed also. Our fluffy pink home during the week was gone, all packed up, vanished like the beautiful temporary love dream it was; but our little silver yurt and shade patio were still there. (Hmm, are there metaphors here? Yes, probably, but I will let you imagine your own.)

[Da Vinci's Workshop Intro]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 1]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 2]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 3]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 4]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 5]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 6]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 8]

[Full Set of My Da Vinci's Workshop Pictures on Facebook]

Saturday morning we slept in (me more than Josh, surprisingly), and then it was time for the Pink Heart Meats and Cheeses party, which we wound up hosting in our shade patio. In addition to the sharing of delicious meat and cheese-related food items (and those that go with them like pickles and fruit), there was a bunch of Pinkie fun and merriment. One particularly memorable highlight was our campmate Karpo dressed up in a hilarious “cock and balls” stretchy onesie costume, swinging the giant penis around. (Trust me, it was funnier than it sounds.) Like I said in the Intro, I really felt so much closer to and bonded with so many more Pink Hearters this year—we talk about being a “PHamily” but this was the first year I really felt it so strongly. It feels really good to be a part of such a loving, open, committed, conscious, positive group, even though each of us has our individual “warts” and issues, our moments of less-than-awesome, and our particular agendas that sometimes make connection more difficult. It also felt very harmonious in camp this year (at least to me, with full acknowledgement that I was not privy to all that went on and others’ experience might well have been different and possibly less positive). The only down side to all this PHamily love is that now I really miss everyone! I could have spent hours and hours and hours more making camp with and hanging out with and adventuring with other Pink Hearters. We are a pretty amazing crew of kind, silly, playful, raunchy, loving, caring individuals and an absolutely kickass collaborative team.

After Meats and Cheeses, there was a big group of Pinkies that wanted to go all the way over to the other side of the playa to visit the Dr. Bronner’s camp, where they gift a shower experience called “ReFoamation”. The idea was not only to go get clean (at this point I still had not taken a shower or done any more cleaning of myself than baby wipes...one of the benefits of having short hair this year) but also to give away some more of the boxes and boxes of leftover Headspace cookies that Anthony had made (and which never got given away on Headspace because it broke down and didn’t voyage through the playa). I had heard of the Dr. Bronner’s experience in years past but never been. This year it sounded good to me and I wanted to go (Josh stayed behind), although I was also feeling a little shy and self-conscious about being naked around other people given how red and obvious my scars still are. Kathy told me that she was going to wear a bathing suit so I decided to wear one of my sports bras and a pair of bikini bottoms that Anjanette loaned me. I’m really glad I did go though because it turned out to be super fun and pleasurable (because clean!)

Anyway we all biked over there and got to skip the very long line because of the cookie gifting we had arranged, and go in as a group. (There were other people in the dome with us too, but we were a large enough group that we went through as a clump.) The shower experience went like this: first you walked in to a big covered dome with a cool tree-sculpture (with a face on it!) and a DJ spinning upbeat but mellow music, and we took our packs and clothes off and put them on the side of the dome. The floor was covered with perforated foam tiles with a tarp underneath, so you could walk comfortably around (and dance) with bare wet feet. One side of the dome was the showers—so after getting naked, you walked with your group of about twenty people up some stairs and into a clear plastic-enclosed area with a scaffolding above it. There were people up in the scaffolding with foam and water sprayers. Everyone gathered in a clump on one side of the enclosure and they explained to us that the goal was to not wash yourself and to not use your hands, and then they blasted us with a ton of fabulous thick peppermint-smelling soapy foam while we all shrieked and yelped and giggled and wiggled around. (I have to admit that right beforehand I had a brief twinge of Holocaust shower PTSD but it was so clearly not the same kind of setting and so happy and fun that I didn’t linger in that thought.) Then the group moved down the enclosure to the other side where they sprayed us down with water (and there was more yelping and giggling). After that we all walked out and down a set of steps back into the rest of the dome, where there were people painted and costumed to look like satyrs and dryads and other fae woodland creatures who offered you oils and lotions (and later on, after we Pinkies got into the act, cookies). I have to say it felt blissfully great to be clean and moist and moisturized in a cool shaded dust free space while also dancing around and appreciating all the different shapes and sizes of naked bodies happily coexisting. Anjanette said to me at one point “you know, this is exactly what people who don’t go to Burning Man think we do out here the entire time” (e.g. get naked and dance around in pagan rituals). Giving out cookies to clean naked happy people was really fun too. I loved the whole experience and I will definitely do it again next year (and hopefully this time with no clothes on). 

After the foamy fun, I biked back across the playa with Anjanette. We made a detour to go see the Temple one more time before it was to burn the next day—I was curious to see what had become of my plaster bust and also to see how much more the whole Temple had gotten built up with additional offerings and energy. It was indeed humongously more built up and very emotionally intense there, but I was feeling strong and happy and so this trip there was more of a sightseeing and honoring other people’s grief than a reactivation of my own. Though I did dust off my bust (especially the piece right in the middle with the words “I’M STILL ME” in a heart) because why not. Then we biked back to Pink Heart with a couple of stops along the way because again, why not.

Around 5 or 6 we got all dressed up for burn night (I finally got to wear the big pink scallop coat that I’d made) and gathered up a group of people (I think we wound up with me and Josh, Mom, Graham and Andrea) to go stake out a spot near where our campmate Lionessa would be performing with her fire troupe in front of the Man before the burn. First though Josh and I detoured over to the Space Whale to meet our friends Mary and Evan, with whom we traditionally spend burn night. It was the first time I’d seen Evan this burn and we had a lovely long hug but alas, he was too worried about the way the weather was going (it was super dust stormy and cloudy and even a little sprinkly) and didn’t want to risk leaving all his projection equipment out at Camp Question Mark with no one he trusted to take care of it in case it did start to rain. So we reluctantly let him go back to camp and Mary came with us. We had a blanket and huddled around for a while hoping the weather would clear (which thankfully it did). We saw Lionessa’s fire troupe perform (which was awesome, especially the crazy giant fire wing props they had specially made for this), and then finally it was time for the Man burn. It was a great burn this year, with lots of fireworks to start with and a quick, intense burn after, and the usual raucous revelry all around.

The Monaco was right behind us (which is where Anjanette was watching the burn from), so after the Man fell and the crowd started to disperse we walked back there and met up with her and hung out some. She wanted me to try walking the perimeter of the burn (which I’ve never done) but it was too hot and intense for me so I just stood at the edge for a while. It was still pretty powerful and amazing though.

I think after that I wandered back to camp, and then later around midnight Josh and I and a bunch of other Pinkies went out to watch the BRC Lighthouse installation burn at 1am. At one point Anjanette and I were walking together (everyone else had gone on ahead) and we were hailed by a passing art car in the shape of a little boat (actually it was a real boat, on wheels) called the Wet Dream. They said something like “hey you gals look so well lit up and purposeful in your direction, do you want a ride?” Well of course we said yes. There were three people on the boat car: the captain, Pasquale, his lady (whose name I forgot) and a guy friend (whose name I also forgot). We had fun chatting with them about the boat and its creation and the people they’d recently given rides to. They brought us to the Monaco (little boat to big boat!) where we met up with Rory and introduced Rory and Pasquale for some playa mariner geekery and bonding. Pasquale’s lady gave us some pretty clay pendants that she’d made and we all bid each other a fond farewell and went to go watch the lighthouses burn. That too was a spectacular and gorgeous burn. I got home and to bed some time around 3am or so but it was totally worth it, even though we all had to be up super early the next morning for camp strike.

[Da Vinci's Workshop Intro]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 1]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 2]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 3]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 4]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 5]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 7]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 8]

[Full Set of My Da Vinci's Workshop Pictures on Facebook]

Friday we were supposed to have a volunteer space on Headspace but it was broken and not going anywhere, so we had a day free of commitments to explore and play and do whatever we wanted. What that turned out to be was a slow start and some fun chill time in the back of camp with various friends over at our camp neighbors Deron and Suneeta’s place, and then Mom and Kathy and I decided to go over to our neighboring camp, Kostume Kult, for some free costumes. We’d been hearing them all week with their very loud sound system and often obnoxious MCs talking about the people strutting the runway, but we hadn’t yet gotten around to the whole Kostume Kult experience. What is the Kostume Kult experience you ask? I will share. First we went and waited in line along the edge of their frontage, which looked like a graffiti’d metro car cut in half, and watched people who had acquired their new costume pieces come do a parade down a long elevated runway that led from the curtained back of their frontage up to the Esplanade. Then we were welcomed in groups to pass through a curtain and into a large tented space full of clothing racks and bins on tables and wall clips full of costumes and accessories. A lot of what they had there were actual costumes (e.g. the low quality kind made for Halloween and other costume events that you might find at a Spirit store) as opposed to just fanciful costume pieces, but because burners could also bring things to gift (we didn’t, although apparently if you did you were allowed to skip the line), there was some random one-off stuff in the mix too. After browsing around we all found some fun things to try on, which we did over in one corner of the tent. Kathy found a beautiful long pink tropical flower print dress with little ruffles on the neck and sleeves, Mom found a black gauzy overshirt and a bright pink Mad Hatter soft top hat, and I found a silly “Lady Luck” costume which was a long stretchy green dress with three-dimensional foam dice as shoulders (being a long time tabletop gamer, I could not resist a costume with dice), a gold horseshoe insert at the neckline and a gold chain “belt” with a four-leaf clover, a small foam die, fake rabbits feet and a heart hanging from it, paired with an oversized “leprechaun” green top hat with a fake gold buckle on it. Once we were satisfied with the things we found and ready to take them away, we put them on and exited the tent, where we waited in a much shorter line to go show them off on the runway. It was fun to strut down the runway dancing to the music and doing model twirls; the MCs were obnoxious and loud but generally supportive. Sadly, at some point in the trying on fuss I lost my sunglasses, and even though I went back right away to look for them, there was no way of finding them in all the piles and bins of stuff. (I lost a lot of things—sunglasses, water bottle, buff, earrings, flashlight—at the burn this year, like little aftershocks of the bigger losses I had experienced during the year between last burn and this one. But they were very clearly just things, and though I was sad to see them go, it didn’t bother me that much.)

We went back to camp to show off (and in my case, take off) our finds, and hung around for a bit longer with our campmates, until finally at some point in the afternoon Anjanette and I motivated to go out on another playa art adventure. (I got to spend a lot more time with my bestie at this burn than I had anticipated, and that was a real joy.) She wanted to climb on the giant warthog, which even though it was not spinning anymore looked too hard and dangerous for me, so I declined and cheered her on and took pictures from the ground. She made it all the way to the top and back again with no incident.

One other cool highlight from that set of art adventures was a piece that I later found was called “Doors to Recovery” but which Anjanette and I were calling the Lotus Temple (there was a giant and gorgeous Lotus Temple we had spent some time in the year before, but this was much smaller). It was a room-sized, lilac purple octagonal structure with a conical roof, and a big white lotus flower at the top of the roof. Each facet of the octagon had a door in it, and each door was painted with a beautiful painting and a question above it, which said things like “what makes your heart sing?” or “what sets your soul on fire?”. There were a few fill-in-the-blank questions too like “addiction is...” or “a natural high is...” or “self-love is...”. You chose a door to enter through, and once you entered you realized that (not surprisingly, given the size of the building) all doors led to the same interior space. Right in front of you when you first entered were chalkboard-painted walls punctuated with open entryways into an inner room. The chalkboard walls had the same questions as the outer doors above them, and space and chalk to write your answers below.

On one of them I wrote the same “everything is going to be okay in the end...if it’s not okay, it’s not the end” quote that had become such a theme for me this burn. The inner room inside the chalkboard walls was mirrored and at the top of the walls were two long quotes, one of which said “The lotus flower begins from mud and darkness, finding the strength to rise to the light and bloom its beautiful flower,” which is a flowery version of one of Anjanette’s favorite quotes ("no mud, no lotus") and similar to my own love for the “suffering cracks us open and lets the light in” philosophy. The ceiling inside that inner room was hung with gorgeous pierced-metal lanterns with purple light inside, and the whole thing was really beautiful. It was the perfect art piece for the two of us.

After we got back to camp that afternoon, I don’t remember much else besides climbing up on someone’s RV to look at the beautiful sunset and getting ready to go out for the evening again. We did at some point go over to Moon Cheese to get some late night grilled cheese (our camp had loaned their camp some room in our refrigerator truck so they let us cut the line to get our grilled cheese). So they brought us out a big metal bowl full of sandwiches and we got to nibble on warm grilled cheese while listening to awesome live music next door at Crossroads. After that a group of Pinkies went over to see the Helios burn at midnight, which was gorgeous and exciting and started with a ton of fireworks. It was the first big burn I’d been to that week and it got the burn excitement going for sure.

[Da Vinci's Workshop Intro]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 1]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 2]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 3]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 4]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 6]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 7]

[Da Vinci's Workshop Part 8]

[Full Set of My Da Vinci's Workshop Pictures on Facebook]