Language that Doctors Use and Toughing It Out For Poetry

There is a certain language that doctors use that makes one nervous. Once such type of language was uttered at one of my (multiple) specialist appointments this week: “You’re so brave.” When doctors start calling you brave, you start to worry. In the television movie of the week, that is never a good sign.

So, some health problems (involving, among other things, ultrasounds, EKGs, emergency room trips for loss of vision, and such fun) have been inconveniently interrupting my summer schedule of readings and gatherings. But we still managed to pull it together for Wednesday night’s Cincinnati Review reading at the Richard Hugo House, where I got to read with Don Bogen and a bunch of Seattle poetry glittering literati – Martha Silano, Carolyn Wright, Rebecca Hoogs, Megan Snyder-Camp (whom I’d somehow managed to have never met before that night,) Kelly Davio, and Priscilla Long (all pictured below.) What a great group, right?

I had a wonderful time and it was a beautiful night – that kind of 70-degree sunny evening that has been rare this year. Driving back over the bridge, the full moon was yellow and had cloud wisps over it, and a bald eagle on the bridge was silhouetted against it in the half-light. Those kinds of moments – moonlight and eagles and the water of Lake Washington – those are what make living in the Northwest worth it.

When you think about what is worth doing in life – what is worth sacrificing for, what is worth doing with your time – I rarely dream of living more hours of hospital visits and doctor’s offices, tests and record-searching. I don’t like focusing on the part of me – that is, for me, mostly the physical body – that doesn’t always work correctly. When I’m told that I’m so cheerful for someone with the problems I have, I say “what’s the alternative?” and I mean it. You either embrace what you have and keep driving, or…what? Dissolve into melancholia? Bah.

Again, in between doctor’s appointments this week, I’ve been working on an essay about speculative poetry, a review of a really good poetry book, a presentation for Geek Girl Con that I’m hoping I’ll be well enough to give. I wrote a poem. I even tried to plan some Redmond Poet Laureate stuff, wrangling budgets and meetings and contracts. This is the work I’d like to do, the me I like the focus on. I’ve had a bit of a setback as writer in the last few months too, some bad news that I can’t share yet but has really punched me in the gut with disappointment. You can’t avoid the sad or bad or hard things about life, or about being a writer, how transient everything is. I keep being reminded. You just keep doing the work.

We don’t get to choose much about lives, but we can choose what to do with time we’re given.