May 6, 2024 • 28 mins
This week we’re talking breast lumps, the doom forecasting that comes with health scares and awaiting *results*, talking to angels, and our very good but mysterious pal SURRENDER. And, like, how to fall dizzyingly in love with the lumpy mess of reality precisely as it is right now.
Spoiler alert - I gotta clean bill of health, this is about the upgrade in consciousness we get when we let the stunning truth of our mortality have its way with us weeeeee
hey, I love you thanks for being here.
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Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:45):
Okay, it's really not my intention to totally commandeer this podcast and turn
it into a podcast in which I only talk about grief,
death, and dying, but it just so turns out that those are the topics that just
keep jangling around in my brain and heart.
(01:07):
So, hi, welcome. This is what you're getting yourself into.
This one is a dinder story. I just couldn't go into his little tinder.
I want to share with you, I feel compelled to share the recent,
if you follow my newsletter,
you really should if you do not, but if you're on my newsletter,
(01:27):
I made an allusion to this activity that happened recently, which was because
baby got her first damn mammogram.
Baby got her titties squeezed so hard. Oh my God.
Y'all, if you are the under 40 crowd and you got titties, they get checked out
(01:51):
from mammograms, but you have not done that yet.
I'm here to tell you, I don't want to put a scare out.
I don't don't want to make it sound, it's intense. There is much intense sensation.
We've heard this from the titty-haven folk and our families for a very long time.
We all know the dreaded mammogram situation.
(02:13):
But the deal for me is that back in September, I felt a lump.
I felt a lump, a lovely lady lump, except I did not have the experience that it was lovely.
I had the freak week experienced that it was freaky and I did not like it.
And I had my sweetheart, I had Gavin feel up on it. He was like,
(02:34):
huh, yeah, feels like a lump.
Went to go see a new gynecologist who took me a minute to get an appointment in there.
And when I finally did, that was like mid-December, mid-December.
She was like, huh, yeah, that's a little lump in there.
(02:55):
Can't say, can't say. So we're going to need to get that, let's get a little
mammogram action going.
And I had just recently, earlier this year, went through this,
a process of my mom having a lump, it getting a mammogram scan,
it needing to get multiple more scans, a biopsy needing to happen.
(03:18):
And it's just like, you know it if you know it, the feeling of waiting for the
results, Waiting in the uncertainty,
waiting in the, oh my god, my imagination is on fire and is proliferating all of the worst possible,
I'm worsting, exclamation, what?
(03:38):
I'm asterisking, whatever. I'm making the word worse stand out and be wiggly
for multiple interpretations as per the last episode in which we don't collapse around here.
We're trying to not collapse this idea of illness or death or loss or cancer
(04:01):
or any of these things into just like, oh my god, this is the worst possible
thing that could happen.
But anyways, there, but there's still, yeah, much fear, much fear that arises
in the not knowing which direction reality is going to collapse its little timelines into,
particularly when it's someone else, it's not you.
(04:23):
Or it's just maybe a different flavor when it's someone else and not you.
And so now I was like sitting with this myself.
And so in early February, I finally had my mammogram appointment.
And yeah, there was just so much tenderness around like, okay,
(04:47):
here I go to the oncology building.
And the word oncology is just so charged, such a charged word on the side of a building.
And it feels like you're going into this like tower of really having to face
mortality when you go into the oncology building at the Emory University Hospital, right? Right.
(05:14):
So I swaddle myself and head to toe with all of my soft armor garments,
which that's a series of garments that I have made in the past.
It's basically like putting a bunch of quilted talisman patchwork pieces on
different items of clothing and feeling their sturdy properties.
(05:37):
The medicinal properties of their sturdy mint up against my body.
Body and yeah so
with this experience and i don't i'm not it's it feels boring to me to like
describe the experience of a mammogram there's much sensation and much intensity
and i snuck a gorgeous picture of the like it looks like an x-ray it's not an
(06:02):
x-ray if that's what it looks
like, like of my right boob and just being able to see all the, oh,
like tributary, millions of little tributaries and delta sprawl of like veins
and blood and tissue in the tit is, it's, God,
(06:24):
it needs to be framed. It's so gorgeous. So gorgeous.
And so I you know had a series of of
tests I also had the sonogram and essentially
not to just like take you through or drag
you through my medical appointment the thing that feels the couple of things
(06:46):
that felt really bright about it or like stand out to share is I there were
like Like, am I going to say this part?
It's kind of dorky, but it's also so perfect.
I had this experience at one point when I had one point, I had one scan and
then I had to wait for a long time to get another scan.
(07:08):
And in that waiting room, that was this particular liminal space where I was
sitting with women who appeared to me mostly to be over the age of definitely 50, probably 60.
And like some women
were in wheelchairs some women were looking more
vital and some women were looking much less vital and I knew that in that liminal
(07:33):
space everybody in that room has had different results and has been walking
a different path and I just felt this like Like, yeah,
just this, like, wave of awareness of things that people are carrying in their
body with them all the time that is so invisible on the surface. And...
(07:58):
Yeah, that they're just, we were all there waiting for different results or
having received different results.
And this like liminal soup where there's just really nothing that can be done
except to rest in that precarious middle space that everybody's sort of holding differently,
(08:21):
but all together.
Felt like we were really holding that, sitting in that space all together,
right? And then I go into the second appointment and the lights are dark.
There's no fluorescent lights in the exam room. It's so warm and cozy.
And it's about to be Valentine's Day. And so they have this really dorky but
extremely endearing projected moving light show across the ceiling with these
(08:49):
projected images of cartoon cherub angels shooting.
Arrows and hearts and it's
like love across the big bubble letters
like love across the ceiling and like laying down tits out getting jelly rubbed
(09:11):
on me and the sonogram is that what it's called that's what it's called ultrasound
it's an ultrasound the ultrasound wand you know moving over me.
And then the nurse practitioner leaving.
And once again, I'm just with myself and these silly little cherubs.
And I'm like, actually, like, what if in this moment, I'm not alone.
(09:37):
I'm in this, like, I'm in this secret third space, this liminal space of like, where the angels live.
This is where the angels live. Like, they're literally on the ceiling.
This is where the angels live, and that I could feel this love.
Possibility of like the angel
(09:57):
of death could be in this room with me in a
certain way like i know that sounds kind of dramatic to
say but like it certainly doesn't
feel dramatic in the castings of reality
that my imagination was conjuring i tell
you what but to to hold
this like pretend this game of pretend while being
(10:18):
like you know the the environment is like
wiggling with these silly little angel cartoons like okay
the angels are with me the angel of death is
here she's with me she's with me in
this room as she actually is all of
the time sidebar this is something that has been like so richly with me since
(10:40):
starting death school is that like death is this benevolent beloved goddess figure,
this mother figure who walks with you right alongside you from the moment you
enter the world, like you exit the womb, and that death is actually the midwife.
(11:04):
Death is actually the midwife that holds you up to the light and lets you live
because she She says so. She hasn't taken you yet.
So if you wake up tomorrow, it's because Mother Death has allowed you,
has permitted you to have another day.
(11:25):
So she's actually kind of here, like smoking a little ciggy in the wings, like stage left.
You know, got her little pumps on, hoops, and always looking correct because
the moment could happen at any moment. And she's.
You know, she's going to have a look for your exit. But she's like,
(11:46):
she's just off to the side and kind of like a loving mother watching kids play
on the playground, like close by, but a little bit at a distance.
Anyways, so I was like in the waiting, in the exam room waiting and seeing love
like blown up on the ceiling.
I'm like, this is such a moment of love.
No matter what happens, no matter what the doctor comes in, because I knew that
(12:11):
I would get a result by the end of that day before leaving the hospital.
And I was like, no matter what this doctor says, they might say,
we found something. We're concerned.
Let's now like shoot off into this new totally foreign trajectory of life in
(12:31):
which, foreign for me, I will say, in which you, you know, now have to ask,
like deal with a different series of questions regarding illness,
health, healing, et cetera.
Or they could be like, we found something, we're not that worried about it. It's maybe a cyst.
Maybe it's something benign. It's just a little, little pee.
(12:52):
There's a little frozen pee rolling around in your titty. You're just fine.
Or they might be like, coast is clear.
Nothing to see here. Party on, my guy.
And, but in that moment when I'm telling you, you're just like,
what the fuck is going to happen? Like, what are they going to say?
My God, what are they going to say?
I'm like, I'm overwhelmed. I'm over, overcometh with this feeling of like,
(13:16):
love occupies every molecule in this tiny little exam room.
And I am swaddled, swaddled in love.
And I am so protected by the angels.
I'm so seen, being loved and
supported by the mother of death the angel
of death who is in this room with me and
(13:39):
it's her call she's the one holding the clipboard actually
she's the one holding the exam results actually and of course you know i know
of course plenty of people receive different breast cancer diagnoses and do
not die from them so it doesn't have to automatically collapse until to like,
oh, breast cancer equals death.
(14:00):
But, you know, this is in our cultural material. This is in sort of our fear of the big C word,
that like all roads lead to demise and decline, which, ha ha,
punchline, all roads do lead to demise and decline,
whether they start with a C or not.
(14:20):
So I just, I guess what I want to express to you is like, It was really wild
to have the feeling of like total surrender that is,
I can't get to that level of surrender in just my doopy derp,
regular degular old day of living.
I can say the serenity prayer all I want, and I still kind of like a little
(14:44):
bit scratch my head about the word surrender.
I'm still in like deep research and deep dialogue about this word surrender.
I found it, y'all. I found it for like two minutes.
Two minutes. I was like, okay. Yeah, it really doesn't matter what happens because all of it is love.
That was the thing. All of it is love.
(15:04):
I will be, I will just return to the hot, wet soup of love.
And I'm in the soup of love now. It's all love. It's just one big soupy doopy swirl of love.
And then at that moment, a handsome doctor man, I hadn't seen him at any point during this journey.
He's not my gynecologist. It's like, you know, like very doctor-y looking dude
(15:30):
comes in and he's like, hey, nothing to see here.
Literally nothing to see here there's not it's not even
a nothing there's nothing it's not a speck not a little crumb not a crumb of
a lump so party on my guy wait what like not even a little sissy doodle no nothing
(15:52):
okay so he leaves and then the nurse practitioner who was just nothing
but delightful, was like, girlfriend,
you better go like pop a bottle of champagne.
Champagne poppy right now, okay?
I was like, wow, okay, I like think I will, that sounds like a great idea, huh?
(16:16):
And she was like, I don't always get to say that, I don't always get to say
go pop a bottle of champagne.
I was like, damn, I really bet you don't. She's like, no, I give out a lot of Kleenexes.
That's what I do. I give out a lot of Kleenexes and I give out a lot of hugs.
And y'all, when she said that, I was just like, I fucking won the lottery.
(16:39):
I fucking won the lottery. Won the lottery.
And I got dressed and I went outside and I like sat in a
freaking sunbeam right in front of the building and just
like wept oh my god cried so
hard wept big weepy weepy
tears of like having tasted the surrender having tasted the like the the truth
(17:06):
serum of like oh my god it really doesn't matter it's all love and it and that
not being like a cognitive bullet point weight.
That being something I felt really viscerally in my heart.
And then just as quickly as I tasted it, it was like, whew, like gone with a
little flutter of a cherub wing. And.
(17:30):
I felt like equal parts like sort of collapsed back into like mortal schlep,
mortal schlepitude, mortal just like derping alongness.
Like I had tasted some, it's like, you know, like imbibing any sort of psychedelic
where you're like, oh my God, I've seen the face of God.
(17:52):
I've like made out with the lips of God. Oh, and then you like,
like collapse back into the dirt, the earthy, earthy dirt of your regular sweet, sweet humanness.
And I had that feeling and simultaneously the like, ah, I just fucking won the lottery.
(18:13):
Ah, ah, I just fucking won the lottery.
And I wonder about that. I wonder about how it takes those moments of,
like, getting real kissy, kissy close,
cozy with death and mortality,
(18:35):
that it sort of takes that.
It takes those experiences to, like, remember that this is the fucking best.
Even when it's the worst, it's the best. And it's so cool.
It's so freaking cool that we get to experiment out here.
(18:58):
And, like, oh, my God, everything was so sparkly. I, like, got in my car,
and there's all these things. I'm such a like, I'm a really like chaotic car
person in the sense that like I always have a bunch of shit in my car.
And I also am so Virgo-tastic about my car and I want it to be clean and spotless all the time.
(19:19):
I want really competing things in my car experience.
And so I often in my regular derpy life, I'm like, I have the experience of
driving around and being like, Like, for, like, car wash. I need to, like, put that in.
I need to mail that package that's been in the backseat.
There's, like, irritations and, like, places for me to get snagged in my car.
(19:43):
And I got in my car after I, like, wept on the lawn of the oncology building.
Got in the car and was just like, are you fucking kidding me?
Look at this dust on my dashboard. Like...
What? Are you kidding me? I get to bear witness to this, like,
(20:03):
symphony sea of dust particulates on my dashboard.
And oh my god, the way the sunlight is, like, coming in through the slightly
dingy windshield and, like, casting this mysterious little glow halo upon the dust field.
Like what a fucking miracle that
(20:26):
i am witnessing right now this is insane traffic
could not be bothered absolutely just coasting just surfing along five o'clock
traffic in atlanta georgia you've heard you know it's stupid easy so easy so
joyful and like wow thank god i'm moving
(20:47):
slowly enough to notice the way the winter branches are dancing in this wintry gust right now.
Thank God. Look at all these people that are on their phone or distracted and they're missing this.
They're missing the show.
(21:08):
Hold on. I kind of have a panic. This is not actually recording. Okay, we're recording.
I'm missing the show. People, people, oh, we're missing the show.
And at first glance, it looks boring as fuck, irritating as fuck,
annoying as fuck, disheveled as fuck, horrifying as fuck, whatever.
(21:30):
There's always like a first layer veneer on reality.
And then when you realize that you've won the lottery by getting to like like,
be proximate to whatever the mess is, you're like, wow, this is a show.
And I have a front row seat.
(21:53):
God, look at the way the light is dancing on the surface of this show.
It's insane. So insane. I took myself out for a really beautiful Italian dinner,
sitting at the bar by myself, drinking wine, drinking full aperitif,
aperitivos, bowls of delicious, rich noodles.
(22:16):
I ordered the most expensive shit on the menu for myself.
And I just wanted to cry the
whole I was so softened and
I just wanted to weep the whole time because I was like the audacity the audacity
that I get to sit here and order the most fucking expensive thing on this menu
(22:37):
that I am so accustomed to like not doing and I just thought like, wow,
in this moment, I get to, I will deny myself no experience.
I will deny myself no experience.
And that includes, and that's actually not like, okay, now I'm going to Lenox
Mall and I'm going to like fucking, you know, whatever, like buy a Gucci bag.
(23:03):
Like I'm sparing no expense because I am alive and I don't have titty cancer. This is amazing.
No, quite the opposite, actually. Like, I'm going to sit here and I'm going
to witness these candelabras with multiple candles that have been dripping for months,
years on this candelabra and it's like caked out to the max in wax drips.
(23:25):
I am certainly not gonna
deny myself the experience of noticing that
fucking candelabra and it's like strange
stalactite sculptural formation sitting to
my left and I'm gonna really notice it
and really absorb it and like have a
(23:47):
front row act like I got a front row seat to the show and that that that's like
that's just one that's that's one little actor on the stage that little candelabra
dancing and I can spread that flavor of attention on everything,
everything in the room in front of me and I swear to you everything takes on
(24:12):
this like Like, irresistible glow.
Nothing feels regular anymore. Nothing...
In that moment, nothing felt regular. There were no regular forks anywhere in that restaurant.
There were no regular saucepans that the chefs were touching to heat the stuff
(24:34):
behind the bar where you can see the show.
Literally, that's so funny. In this particular place, shout out Gigi's,
in this particular place, you can see the chefs cooking in front of you like
a show when you're sitting at the bar.
It's a very small, small, small restaurant. And there was just no detail.
(24:55):
There was no teeny tiny detail in that space that wasn't like just like throbbing
and humming with aliveness and interest, total interest.
And I'm not going to take this episode in the in the direction of like, oh,
(25:16):
alas, our attention, it's so mangled by social media and screens and the internet
and our attention is so fractured, which it is.
But that feels like sort of a logical direction to go.
I'll let you take yourself there. I know that I did not pull my phone out a
(25:41):
single time that evening because I just didn't feel compelled.
I didn't even think about it. I didn't feel compelled to.
And that's quite, I will say for myself, that feels quite peculiar for me.
Sitting at a restaurant by yourself, right? It's like, well,
yeah, of course you're going to pull out your phone. You're by yourself.
(26:03):
It's not rude when you're by yourself. Anyways.
Is there more to say about that? I will say that I feel so gifted with being
able to have that experience,
and being able to just, I really think that's the secret punchline of like,
(26:30):
when we can learn to stop being so death phobic,
and when we can learn to like,
get a little closer to it when it comes up for us,
when it comes up for other people, it has
a tremendous ROI as
they say the return on investment in stepping
(26:53):
a little bit closer to death where you see
it loss where you see it the potential
for death and loss the potential for massive
changes and disfigurations in your life other people's lives people across the
world's lives when we let ourselves really witness it and step closer it it's it can do some pretty.
(27:20):
Powerful and transformative stuff to our benefit we just don't get taught that
we surely don't get taught that yeah okay i love you take care of yourself take care of your um.
Yeah. Talk soon. Love you. Bye.
(27:42):
Music.
Music.
(00:45):
Okay, it's really not my intention to totally commandeer this podcast and turn
it into a podcast in which I only talk about grief,
death, and dying, but it just so turns out that those are the topics that just
keep jangling around in my brain and heart.
(01:07):
So, hi, welcome. This is what you're getting yourself into.
This one is a dinder story. I just couldn't go into his little tinder.
I want to share with you, I feel compelled to share the recent,
if you follow my newsletter,
you really should if you do not, but if you're on my newsletter,
(01:27):
I made an allusion to this activity that happened recently, which was because
baby got her first damn mammogram.
Baby got her titties squeezed so hard. Oh my God.
Y'all, if you are the under 40 crowd and you got titties, they get checked out
(01:51):
from mammograms, but you have not done that yet.
I'm here to tell you, I don't want to put a scare out.
I don't don't want to make it sound, it's intense. There is much intense sensation.
We've heard this from the titty-haven folk and our families for a very long time.
We all know the dreaded mammogram situation.
(02:13):
But the deal for me is that back in September, I felt a lump.
I felt a lump, a lovely lady lump, except I did not have the experience that it was lovely.
I had the freak week experienced that it was freaky and I did not like it.
And I had my sweetheart, I had Gavin feel up on it. He was like,
(02:34):
huh, yeah, feels like a lump.
Went to go see a new gynecologist who took me a minute to get an appointment in there.
And when I finally did, that was like mid-December, mid-December.
She was like, huh, yeah, that's a little lump in there.
(02:55):
Can't say, can't say. So we're going to need to get that, let's get a little
mammogram action going.
And I had just recently, earlier this year, went through this,
a process of my mom having a lump, it getting a mammogram scan,
it needing to get multiple more scans, a biopsy needing to happen.
(03:18):
And it's just like, you know it if you know it, the feeling of waiting for the
results, Waiting in the uncertainty,
waiting in the, oh my god, my imagination is on fire and is proliferating all of the worst possible,
I'm worsting, exclamation, what?
(03:38):
I'm asterisking, whatever. I'm making the word worse stand out and be wiggly
for multiple interpretations as per the last episode in which we don't collapse around here.
We're trying to not collapse this idea of illness or death or loss or cancer
(04:01):
or any of these things into just like, oh my god, this is the worst possible
thing that could happen.
But anyways, there, but there's still, yeah, much fear, much fear that arises
in the not knowing which direction reality is going to collapse its little timelines into,
particularly when it's someone else, it's not you.
(04:23):
Or it's just maybe a different flavor when it's someone else and not you.
And so now I was like sitting with this myself.
And so in early February, I finally had my mammogram appointment.
And yeah, there was just so much tenderness around like, okay,
(04:47):
here I go to the oncology building.
And the word oncology is just so charged, such a charged word on the side of a building.
And it feels like you're going into this like tower of really having to face
mortality when you go into the oncology building at the Emory University Hospital, right? Right.
(05:14):
So I swaddle myself and head to toe with all of my soft armor garments,
which that's a series of garments that I have made in the past.
It's basically like putting a bunch of quilted talisman patchwork pieces on
different items of clothing and feeling their sturdy properties.
(05:37):
The medicinal properties of their sturdy mint up against my body.
Body and yeah so
with this experience and i don't i'm not it's it feels boring to me to like
describe the experience of a mammogram there's much sensation and much intensity
and i snuck a gorgeous picture of the like it looks like an x-ray it's not an
(06:02):
x-ray if that's what it looks
like, like of my right boob and just being able to see all the, oh,
like tributary, millions of little tributaries and delta sprawl of like veins
and blood and tissue in the tit is, it's, God,
(06:24):
it needs to be framed. It's so gorgeous. So gorgeous.
And so I you know had a series of of
tests I also had the sonogram and essentially
not to just like take you through or drag
you through my medical appointment the thing that feels the couple of things
(06:46):
that felt really bright about it or like stand out to share is I there were
like Like, am I going to say this part?
It's kind of dorky, but it's also so perfect.
I had this experience at one point when I had one point, I had one scan and
then I had to wait for a long time to get another scan.
(07:08):
And in that waiting room, that was this particular liminal space where I was
sitting with women who appeared to me mostly to be over the age of definitely 50, probably 60.
And like some women
were in wheelchairs some women were looking more
vital and some women were looking much less vital and I knew that in that liminal
(07:33):
space everybody in that room has had different results and has been walking
a different path and I just felt this like Like, yeah,
just this, like, wave of awareness of things that people are carrying in their
body with them all the time that is so invisible on the surface. And...
(07:58):
Yeah, that they're just, we were all there waiting for different results or
having received different results.
And this like liminal soup where there's just really nothing that can be done
except to rest in that precarious middle space that everybody's sort of holding differently,
(08:21):
but all together.
Felt like we were really holding that, sitting in that space all together,
right? And then I go into the second appointment and the lights are dark.
There's no fluorescent lights in the exam room. It's so warm and cozy.
And it's about to be Valentine's Day. And so they have this really dorky but
extremely endearing projected moving light show across the ceiling with these
(08:49):
projected images of cartoon cherub angels shooting.
Arrows and hearts and it's
like love across the big bubble letters
like love across the ceiling and like laying down tits out getting jelly rubbed
(09:11):
on me and the sonogram is that what it's called that's what it's called ultrasound
it's an ultrasound the ultrasound wand you know moving over me.
And then the nurse practitioner leaving.
And once again, I'm just with myself and these silly little cherubs.
And I'm like, actually, like, what if in this moment, I'm not alone.
(09:37):
I'm in this, like, I'm in this secret third space, this liminal space of like, where the angels live.
This is where the angels live. Like, they're literally on the ceiling.
This is where the angels live, and that I could feel this love.
Possibility of like the angel
(09:57):
of death could be in this room with me in a
certain way like i know that sounds kind of dramatic to
say but like it certainly doesn't
feel dramatic in the castings of reality
that my imagination was conjuring i tell
you what but to to hold
this like pretend this game of pretend while being
(10:18):
like you know the the environment is like
wiggling with these silly little angel cartoons like okay
the angels are with me the angel of death is
here she's with me she's with me in
this room as she actually is all of
the time sidebar this is something that has been like so richly with me since
(10:40):
starting death school is that like death is this benevolent beloved goddess figure,
this mother figure who walks with you right alongside you from the moment you
enter the world, like you exit the womb, and that death is actually the midwife.
(11:04):
Death is actually the midwife that holds you up to the light and lets you live
because she She says so. She hasn't taken you yet.
So if you wake up tomorrow, it's because Mother Death has allowed you,
has permitted you to have another day.
(11:25):
So she's actually kind of here, like smoking a little ciggy in the wings, like stage left.
You know, got her little pumps on, hoops, and always looking correct because
the moment could happen at any moment. And she's.
You know, she's going to have a look for your exit. But she's like,
(11:46):
she's just off to the side and kind of like a loving mother watching kids play
on the playground, like close by, but a little bit at a distance.
Anyways, so I was like in the waiting, in the exam room waiting and seeing love
like blown up on the ceiling.
I'm like, this is such a moment of love.
No matter what happens, no matter what the doctor comes in, because I knew that
(12:11):
I would get a result by the end of that day before leaving the hospital.
And I was like, no matter what this doctor says, they might say,
we found something. We're concerned.
Let's now like shoot off into this new totally foreign trajectory of life in
(12:31):
which, foreign for me, I will say, in which you, you know, now have to ask,
like deal with a different series of questions regarding illness,
health, healing, et cetera.
Or they could be like, we found something, we're not that worried about it. It's maybe a cyst.
Maybe it's something benign. It's just a little, little pee.
(12:52):
There's a little frozen pee rolling around in your titty. You're just fine.
Or they might be like, coast is clear.
Nothing to see here. Party on, my guy.
And, but in that moment when I'm telling you, you're just like,
what the fuck is going to happen? Like, what are they going to say?
My God, what are they going to say?
I'm like, I'm overwhelmed. I'm over, overcometh with this feeling of like,
(13:16):
love occupies every molecule in this tiny little exam room.
And I am swaddled, swaddled in love.
And I am so protected by the angels.
I'm so seen, being loved and
supported by the mother of death the angel
of death who is in this room with me and
(13:39):
it's her call she's the one holding the clipboard actually
she's the one holding the exam results actually and of course you know i know
of course plenty of people receive different breast cancer diagnoses and do
not die from them so it doesn't have to automatically collapse until to like,
oh, breast cancer equals death.
(14:00):
But, you know, this is in our cultural material. This is in sort of our fear of the big C word,
that like all roads lead to demise and decline, which, ha ha,
punchline, all roads do lead to demise and decline,
whether they start with a C or not.
(14:20):
So I just, I guess what I want to express to you is like, It was really wild
to have the feeling of like total surrender that is,
I can't get to that level of surrender in just my doopy derp,
regular degular old day of living.
I can say the serenity prayer all I want, and I still kind of like a little
(14:44):
bit scratch my head about the word surrender.
I'm still in like deep research and deep dialogue about this word surrender.
I found it, y'all. I found it for like two minutes.
Two minutes. I was like, okay. Yeah, it really doesn't matter what happens because all of it is love.
That was the thing. All of it is love.
(15:04):
I will be, I will just return to the hot, wet soup of love.
And I'm in the soup of love now. It's all love. It's just one big soupy doopy swirl of love.
And then at that moment, a handsome doctor man, I hadn't seen him at any point during this journey.
He's not my gynecologist. It's like, you know, like very doctor-y looking dude
(15:30):
comes in and he's like, hey, nothing to see here.
Literally nothing to see here there's not it's not even
a nothing there's nothing it's not a speck not a little crumb not a crumb of
a lump so party on my guy wait what like not even a little sissy doodle no nothing
(15:52):
okay so he leaves and then the nurse practitioner who was just nothing
but delightful, was like, girlfriend,
you better go like pop a bottle of champagne.
Champagne poppy right now, okay?
I was like, wow, okay, I like think I will, that sounds like a great idea, huh?
(16:16):
And she was like, I don't always get to say that, I don't always get to say
go pop a bottle of champagne.
I was like, damn, I really bet you don't. She's like, no, I give out a lot of Kleenexes.
That's what I do. I give out a lot of Kleenexes and I give out a lot of hugs.
And y'all, when she said that, I was just like, I fucking won the lottery.
(16:39):
I fucking won the lottery. Won the lottery.
And I got dressed and I went outside and I like sat in a
freaking sunbeam right in front of the building and just
like wept oh my god cried so
hard wept big weepy weepy
tears of like having tasted the surrender having tasted the like the the truth
(17:06):
serum of like oh my god it really doesn't matter it's all love and it and that
not being like a cognitive bullet point weight.
That being something I felt really viscerally in my heart.
And then just as quickly as I tasted it, it was like, whew, like gone with a
little flutter of a cherub wing. And.
(17:30):
I felt like equal parts like sort of collapsed back into like mortal schlep,
mortal schlepitude, mortal just like derping alongness.
Like I had tasted some, it's like, you know, like imbibing any sort of psychedelic
where you're like, oh my God, I've seen the face of God.
(17:52):
I've like made out with the lips of God. Oh, and then you like,
like collapse back into the dirt, the earthy, earthy dirt of your regular sweet, sweet humanness.
And I had that feeling and simultaneously the like, ah, I just fucking won the lottery.
(18:13):
Ah, ah, I just fucking won the lottery.
And I wonder about that. I wonder about how it takes those moments of,
like, getting real kissy, kissy close,
cozy with death and mortality,
(18:35):
that it sort of takes that.
It takes those experiences to, like, remember that this is the fucking best.
Even when it's the worst, it's the best. And it's so cool.
It's so freaking cool that we get to experiment out here.
(18:58):
And, like, oh, my God, everything was so sparkly. I, like, got in my car,
and there's all these things. I'm such a like, I'm a really like chaotic car
person in the sense that like I always have a bunch of shit in my car.
And I also am so Virgo-tastic about my car and I want it to be clean and spotless all the time.
(19:19):
I want really competing things in my car experience.
And so I often in my regular derpy life, I'm like, I have the experience of
driving around and being like, Like, for, like, car wash. I need to, like, put that in.
I need to mail that package that's been in the backseat.
There's, like, irritations and, like, places for me to get snagged in my car.
(19:43):
And I got in my car after I, like, wept on the lawn of the oncology building.
Got in the car and was just like, are you fucking kidding me?
Look at this dust on my dashboard. Like...
What? Are you kidding me? I get to bear witness to this, like,
(20:03):
symphony sea of dust particulates on my dashboard.
And oh my god, the way the sunlight is, like, coming in through the slightly
dingy windshield and, like, casting this mysterious little glow halo upon the dust field.
Like what a fucking miracle that
(20:26):
i am witnessing right now this is insane traffic
could not be bothered absolutely just coasting just surfing along five o'clock
traffic in atlanta georgia you've heard you know it's stupid easy so easy so
joyful and like wow thank god i'm moving
(20:47):
slowly enough to notice the way the winter branches are dancing in this wintry gust right now.
Thank God. Look at all these people that are on their phone or distracted and they're missing this.
They're missing the show.
(21:08):
Hold on. I kind of have a panic. This is not actually recording. Okay, we're recording.
I'm missing the show. People, people, oh, we're missing the show.
And at first glance, it looks boring as fuck, irritating as fuck,
annoying as fuck, disheveled as fuck, horrifying as fuck, whatever.
(21:30):
There's always like a first layer veneer on reality.
And then when you realize that you've won the lottery by getting to like like,
be proximate to whatever the mess is, you're like, wow, this is a show.
And I have a front row seat.
(21:53):
God, look at the way the light is dancing on the surface of this show.
It's insane. So insane. I took myself out for a really beautiful Italian dinner,
sitting at the bar by myself, drinking wine, drinking full aperitif,
aperitivos, bowls of delicious, rich noodles.
(22:16):
I ordered the most expensive shit on the menu for myself.
And I just wanted to cry the
whole I was so softened and
I just wanted to weep the whole time because I was like the audacity the audacity
that I get to sit here and order the most fucking expensive thing on this menu
(22:37):
that I am so accustomed to like not doing and I just thought like, wow,
in this moment, I get to, I will deny myself no experience.
I will deny myself no experience.
And that includes, and that's actually not like, okay, now I'm going to Lenox
Mall and I'm going to like fucking, you know, whatever, like buy a Gucci bag.
(23:03):
Like I'm sparing no expense because I am alive and I don't have titty cancer. This is amazing.
No, quite the opposite, actually. Like, I'm going to sit here and I'm going
to witness these candelabras with multiple candles that have been dripping for months,
years on this candelabra and it's like caked out to the max in wax drips.
(23:25):
I am certainly not gonna
deny myself the experience of noticing that
fucking candelabra and it's like strange
stalactite sculptural formation sitting to
my left and I'm gonna really notice it
and really absorb it and like have a
(23:47):
front row act like I got a front row seat to the show and that that that's like
that's just one that's that's one little actor on the stage that little candelabra
dancing and I can spread that flavor of attention on everything,
everything in the room in front of me and I swear to you everything takes on
(24:12):
this like Like, irresistible glow.
Nothing feels regular anymore. Nothing...
In that moment, nothing felt regular. There were no regular forks anywhere in that restaurant.
There were no regular saucepans that the chefs were touching to heat the stuff
(24:34):
behind the bar where you can see the show.
Literally, that's so funny. In this particular place, shout out Gigi's,
in this particular place, you can see the chefs cooking in front of you like
a show when you're sitting at the bar.
It's a very small, small, small restaurant. And there was just no detail.
(24:55):
There was no teeny tiny detail in that space that wasn't like just like throbbing
and humming with aliveness and interest, total interest.
And I'm not going to take this episode in the in the direction of like, oh,
(25:16):
alas, our attention, it's so mangled by social media and screens and the internet
and our attention is so fractured, which it is.
But that feels like sort of a logical direction to go.
I'll let you take yourself there. I know that I did not pull my phone out a
(25:41):
single time that evening because I just didn't feel compelled.
I didn't even think about it. I didn't feel compelled to.
And that's quite, I will say for myself, that feels quite peculiar for me.
Sitting at a restaurant by yourself, right? It's like, well,
yeah, of course you're going to pull out your phone. You're by yourself.
(26:03):
It's not rude when you're by yourself. Anyways.
Is there more to say about that? I will say that I feel so gifted with being
able to have that experience,
and being able to just, I really think that's the secret punchline of like,
(26:30):
when we can learn to stop being so death phobic,
and when we can learn to like,
get a little closer to it when it comes up for us,
when it comes up for other people, it has
a tremendous ROI as
they say the return on investment in stepping
(26:53):
a little bit closer to death where you see
it loss where you see it the potential
for death and loss the potential for massive
changes and disfigurations in your life other people's lives people across the
world's lives when we let ourselves really witness it and step closer it it's it can do some pretty.
(27:20):
Powerful and transformative stuff to our benefit we just don't get taught that
we surely don't get taught that yeah okay i love you take care of yourself take care of your um.
Yeah. Talk soon. Love you. Bye.
(27:42):
Music.
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