"You took it all, but I'm still breathing."
Okay so, Sia has been on repeat IRL and also in my head for a bit now. She's really climbing the ladder of my cool list. This line has been tumbling around in my head for the past few weeks, from one of her newest songs called "Alive". I didn’t start singing along as a self pep-talk, it's just been in my mind like a welcomed ear worm. Then I realized this morning how much this lyric is saying about my life. Blah blah blah cancer you absolutely sucked everything out of me, but in spite of your efforts, I'm still freaking ALIVE.
Cancer takes a lot. I'm actually just sitting here at my desk with what’s probably a pretty blank expression on my face because I'm not sure what to follow that statement with. Yeah, it takes a lot. It takes away a lot of things, it takes a lot out of you, and it takes a lot of who you are. There were a good 7-10 months when I thought my personality was literally dead. Like, gone forever. I didn't think I had anything left inside me, at all. I am not exaggerating. I felt like a stupid hollowed log of a fallen tree rotting into the ground. Although it didn’t feel even that poetic; and that's not even good poetry to start with. I certainly couldn't have accurately explained how I felt at the time because it escaped words. Maybe I'm trying to explain it now. And maybe you are yourself at a place where you feel this way- cancer patient or not. I’m learning that this is a very real human experience. The experience of fear which often gives way to a dispassionate sensation that’s the one step past terror: a coping mechanism where your emotions just shut off as you watch everything you thought defined you slip away like the smoke of a blown out candle.
I've come away from my experience (haha. "come away" like it's over or something.) with cancer with a hugely expanded respect for the human condition. And I mean that in many ways. Philosophically, the human condition is defined as the essences of human existence: what it means to be a human. It often paints a picture of existential meaning, morality, mortality, etc. It's one of the reasons I am drawn to philosophy; I am sort of cursed with eternal existential crisis. But the respect I now have for the human condition has grown considerably: most notably the interminable human imagination in dealing with conflict. Whether that conflict is in relation to yourself, other humans, the world, or stupid, stupid fast-growing mutant cells that just wanna kill you. The ability of the human spirit to bushwhack through insane circumstances is, honestly, pretty damn impressive. I certainly don't claim to have survived humans' greatest plight or anything, but I have definitely experienced a level of existential (and while we're at it, physical) pain that I had not even touched the surface of before. Whether or not my actual experience is on "level" with some of the most horrific circumstances a human can go through (I don't believe it is. What with the Holocaust, genocide, refugee camps, bombings, child hunger, orphanages, lack of clean water, losing a child; the list marches sadly on and on), I do believe that I have tapped into the water table of the human condition a bit.
When we experience something horrific- and no person is exempt from this- we tap into that deep flowing river of muck water. We experience the same feelings of so many people have who have gone before us. In a way, it's like a horrifying rite-of-passage to becoming a human being. Again, I'm talking from my own experience here, but I see this imagery in my mind so clearly: It’s like a dark undercurrent of filth that flows beneath the surface of what we imagine life to be before real stuff starts happening. It’s just straight manure, blood and tears surging along under the crust we walk with our baby soft feet. And then something happens and we dip our toes (or wade in waist-deep- what’s the difference, really?) into that murky shit water and it never seems to fully wash away. And the current is strong, and the sewage is thick and disgusting and grips us like a crocodile death roll. It takes us down and it appears to be infinite.
I’ve talked about water before: it’s fluidity of states-of-being, its cleansing and life-giving properties, and the endless cycle it run through on our planet since the beginning of time. But now I’m adding water into the dirty part of living too, and it’s powerful there too. Take drinking water, for example. Millions of people in the world are unable to have clean water in their lives. And as I sit here at my desk while my stomach is telling me I’m slightly hungry and like, yay instagram- it’s hard to fathom that children are dying because the water they have access to is non-potable. It’s filled with dirt and disease. And that changes their lives- shortens them, certainly. There is so much pain. What an unfathomable thing. Our bodies are about 60% water. Blood is 90% water. Our brains and muscles are 75% water. Even bones are made of water. If you get bad water in there, your body just won’t work.
I’m getting increasingly metaphorical here, but back to my picture: So there’s the dark waters of deep shit, whatever your deep shit is or ever will be in the future, and you’re tainted and it won’t wash out, like Macbeth’s bloody hands. Water is powerful. But I also see that somewhere even deeper, a layer way below the unseemly depths of this wreckage, there’s another, different river surge. Picture a dammed river being released, or the water Arwen calls forth to flush those Ring Wraiths down the toilet of Middle-earth (c’mon let out your inner nerd).
Water is a conqueror. The dirty stuff wants to bring you down and suffocate you. But to live through circumstances that challenge us, even break us- living through them in my mind is diving head first into that polluted H2O, pushing deeper and deeper into the earth of living until you break that barrier into that clear, cleansing, beautiful cascade of water that is the deeper understanding of what it is to be a human being. And that in the interminable human imagination and spirit.
All this rambling has surfaced the words of (what a surprise) Rilke. I absolutely did not have these words in mind when I began writing all of this, but I now find myself stunned at the accuracy to which he is able to capture what I am trying to say. Way to go Rilke, you nailed it again with your concise and heavenly poetics that explain better than I ever could:
You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
So many live on and want nothing
And are raised to the rank of prince
By the slippery ease of their light judgments
But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.
and here’s another translation of the same poem that’s just. omg I’m on the floor. the. floor. hnnnngggg
You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.
So many are alive who don't seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.
But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.
You are not dead yet, it's not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.
Thirst. Light and darkness. Diving into depths. Drinking in life. Water.
“Hi my name is Rainer Maria Rilke and I’d just like to say: You are not dead yet, and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.”
*pauses for effect* *drops mic*
