Watched the Queen movie again with Charlotte and had a piece of my cheek removed by the doctor. Hoping it’s pre-cancerous (as opposed to cancerous) and will find out in a week. Not really worried about it but wondering should I be? Not the kind of awful doctor diagnosis scene it was for Rami Malek as Freddy Mercury learning he had AIDS. It is an old city hospital that smells funny in certain parts. All the people who must pass in and out of there each day receiving bad news. Getting caught in the urban parking garage hell corkscrewing down forever through the levels in tight turns with skid marks on the walls. When you get to the bottom there is no space left. This is how ugly the world must look after a bad diagnosis.

By the end of April it’s too hard for me to wake early enough in the morning to need a candle. Then I start to picture those mornings in September when it cools down and the light softens. I don’t know if I’ll be working come mid June. I’ve been waiting to hear about a new job that would go until the end of the year but I’m not sure if it would be a good thing or bad, hard to tell.

Now in late April these swollen clouds, how many shades of green. In the distance coming down the long road from the park there’s a seam of sky beneath the cloud cover and a set of mountains, must be the Olympics. Out here we are bounded by ranges to the east and west with stand-alone volcanoes north and south so it’s hard not to think about mountains. They both remind me of somewhere else I could be and make me glad I’m right here.

I don’t think anyone can see the little hole in my cheek on camera and if they do I don’t care, it’s more like a scabbed-over zit. The thing with contract work is it’s either not enough or too much and now it’s the latter. Everyone in business, all these abstract people I’m targeting with my marketing copy, everyone wants to grab a customer and hold onto them forever. They call it lifetime value: how many dollars can you extract. How AI helps them do that better. And so on. Through personalization, data and consumer insights, conversion from search. Showing them stuff they’re inclined to buy with greater precision online. I do all this like I’m removed by it because I am. You have to be I guess.

I would never die. That’s how I felt when I was younger, smoking cigars, mocking death. I flew in the face of it. But that attitude is a waste of life, a lie. Better to live with the understanding that your time is limited. Perform like Freddy did with the band at Live Aid for your 20-minute slot.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Technology

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, death, journal writing, pacific northwest, spirituality