Dept. of Flora & Fauna
Last year Danielle requested that we plant raspberry bushes in our garden beds out back, and I consented because raspberries are delicious and they seemed easy to grow (unlike blueberries, which require acidified soil and have thus far bedeviled me). The bushes themselves came in great, however they didn’t produce nearly the amount of berries to justify the real estate they took up, so after a year of letting them run wild, I tore them out. Trouble is, the fuckers are persisstent: their roots went deep and snaked beneath the whole bed, so even though I’ve since planted this season’s crop of beans, squash, and eggplant, I keep finding rasberry stems shooting up from the soil. It’s like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park: Life finds a way.
Which brings me here: I had my six month oncology check up this week, which included reviewing the results of my first CT scan since I finished treatment. As the day approached, I kept telling myself and anyone who asked that I wasn’t making a big deal out of it. Then the day arrived, and suddenly it felt like a big deal. I lost my appetite, felt nauseous. It wasn’t a panic attack, but in the 30 minutes before our appointment, I went dog mode—i.e., I laid in bed surrounded by our dogs, counting my breaths to relax. Because it was a big deal. I finished chemo in August, finished radiation in October, and this was the first time we’d be checking to see if any cancer had made it through our defenses. Would it rear its ugly head like the raspberries?
The cancer center in Pasadena where I received treatment is a nondescript four-story building you could pass a hundred times and never realize the extent of the joy and suffering happening within—all the people fighting for their lives, all the doctors delivering the best news and the worst news, all day long. After spending several days a week there most weeks last summer and fall, we’d enjoyed a long break. But as Danielle and I pulled up, the trauma of it all came rushing back.
My oncologist is a considerate, intelligent, and attentive doctor—one of the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve had my fair share—and he always cuts right to the chase, delivering the news you’re in some sense literally dying to hear the moment he walks in the room. So in tribute to him, I’ll do the same: The scans were clean. I’m in the clear. I can relax, at least until the next six-month scan, and the one after that, and the one after that.
Another thing I planted when I first put in the beds was arugula, but after a few months I wanted to repurpose the space for something else, so I tore it out. That was two years ago. This year it just showed up again, despite a crop of broccoli and peppers I’d grown in the same space in its absence. Could its seeds have been lying dormant for over a year? Could they have blown in from somewhere else? Did I just forget I planted it? I honestly have no idea. Nature’s funny sometimes. Life finds a way.
Dept. of Meditation
We live in Highland Park, on the east side LA, amid endless clusters of single-family homes and two-story apartment buildings. When I meditate, I sit on a wooden chair in my upstairs office, the window of which faces our neighbor’s second story balcony. The balcony belongs specifically to the neighbor’s “aunt,” who the neighbor has told us is “a hoarder.” But whether it’s because the neighbor feels compelled to protect us from the truth, or—and I think this is more likely—the neighbor doesn’t have the extensive firsthand knowledge of DSM-level ailments as your truly, I suspect “hoarder” is not the accurate diagnosis.
More likely, my guess is the aunt suffers from schizophrenia. Often, we’ll see her on the curb wearing layers of mismatched clothing, like she’s off to Mardi Gras dressed as a tennis pro, and she’ll spend hours out there stomping around, berating cars and pedestrians. Or she’ll do this directly from the balcony, screaming in Spanish at no one in particular.
This happened a few mornings ago, and coincided with my meditation, which in turn coincided with something the baby’s been doing of late, which is making these surprisingly powerful adenoidal coos that sound like an alley cat having an argument with a tetradactyl. As I sat, my mind was flooded with these two sets of very different, very human, and very unintelligible noises.
And this was great, because it gave me a chance to experiment with the Buddhist concept of emptiness. According to the doctrine of emptiness as I understand it, there are material phenomena, and then there are the feelings or associations we ascribe to those things. For example, let’s say I showed two different people the same stapler. To the first person, I’d say I bought the stapler from, uh, Staples. To the second, I’d explain the stapler was actually pilfered from the desk of Donald Trump. This change of information would seem to change the essence of the stapler, even though I’m sure we could all agree that in every physical way, the stapler itself is unchanged.
We make thousands of these kinds of associations every day, ascribing all manner of feelings and storylines to people, places, and things (in recovery, “people, places, and things” is used as shorthand for the non-exhaustive list of stuff that can trigger us and make us want to use). To meditate on emptiness is to acknowledge these storylines and try to let go of them, to experience the world as no more or less than an endless procession of sensory experiences, and to try to divorce ourselves from the meaning we project onto those experiences.
In this way, the cackling of a neighbor’s aunt and the cooing of my nearby daughter are like the sound of rain, or a passing train’s horn—they arise and fall away, arise and fall away. When I’m done meditating, I’ll go back to investing all those sounds with meaning—the baby’s vocalizing is gorgeous, the aunt’s yelling is distressing. But for a few minutes at least, I can practice experiencing what those things are like without these associations attached, and this can carry over into everyday life, helping me to acknowledge the extent to which I’m the one shaping this reality that I so often perceive to be shaping me.
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Healings is written by Garrett Kamps and edited by Tommy Craggs. Ayana H. Muwwakkil provides art direction.
Healings is about illness, recovery, spirituality, and related topics, and began in the summer of 2023 as a chronicle of Garrett’s battle with cancer. We make no guarantees that it will hold together, thematically speaking, in the months to come.
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“Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” — William James
Loved this. Let go of the stories we tell ourselves. Or as you so beautifully put it:
"But for a few minutes at least, I can practice experiencing what those things are like without these associations attached, and this can carry over into everyday life, helping me to acknowledge the extent to which I’m the one shaping this reality that I so often perceive to be shaping me."
And congrats on the clean scan.
Thank G-d your scan was clean