Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Kate reassures me. Old age prostate cancer is slow, non-aggressive. The treatments work. And, it’s true that Mark and Dick and my Dad, the three men I know personally who’ve had it, were all successfully treated.
I am not afraid. Yet I have returned to a liminal space, no longer healthy, yet not in immediate danger. This is life with a possible dangerous disease. Once I know for certain, even then, I will still be in a liminal space between either disease and death or disease and health. The move prepared me, taught me how to live between worlds and it will serve me well now.
This is life with a difference, life when the end is no longer abstract, but lurking in a known spot.
I’ve thought about the human as apex predator. We take from the animal world and only in the rarest of circumstances does it take from us. Now the predators who hunt us often come from within: cells of our own body, virus replicating, bacteria with a warm, rich host. Or, externally, motor vehicles and other humans.
Ours is a privileged eco-system, that of the apex of the apex predators. Most things feed upward toward our open mouths.
The tiny and the cunning pose our greatest risk, attacking us at a scale so small that we have difficulty imagining it. Cells multiplying are a danger to me. And my own cells? How ironic.
