On some days, the world stops moving and I feel I’m sitting on a wooden chair inside a still life painting. I look at the objects around me in my living room—the navy blue fabric recliner, music magazines on the coffee table, the wooden perch near the window where Sophie, my black cat, sleeps. The painting on the wall of the Mist Trail in Yosemite by my mother before she faded into dementia—the rocks, trees, and waterfall dissolving into colors—magenta, light blue, crimson, shades of charcoal gray, and forest green. The red coffee cup, the … Continue reading Still Life by Mark Liebenow →
To me, being alive means dealing with one challenge after another—some glorious, others not so much. My current, decidedly inglorious challenge is having chemotherapy for metastatic cancer. I think of chemo as Paleolithic, micro-inch cavepeople marching around my cancerous body, brandishing clubs and whacking every cell in sight. There’s one! Healthy? Malignant? Who cares? Whack! Among the whacked healthy cells were the ones that hold onto hair. After the first chemo session, I went from having what one friend described as “long hippy hair” to being all-but-bald. So being who I am—a determined realist—I … Continue reading A Challenge is a Challenge is a Challenge by Martha Woodroof →
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