Another Blue [Ink] Day of Cancer

Saturday, February 20, 2010



Saturday, January 16, 2010

JUST ANOTHER DAY ... (not really)


Sheri Swaner to Joanne 10/10/2009

HI and greetings.
I am forwarding an email I received from Dr. David McCann, Scott's mentor, professor and dear friend.
David and Scott remained close long after Scott's graduation from Cornell and Harvard; both experts in their ability
to translate the Korean language and their shared gift of the poetic and written word.

David was also a frequent blogger on Scott's blog; supporting, caring, sharing and loving him through his nine months
of fighting against Pancreatic Cancer.

Dr. McCann was recently diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, as he states in his kind and eloquent email.
I am so sick of cancer--and the many people I love and care for having to fight against this insipid
and senseless disease; all diseases and illnesses, (far too frequently)
that threaten the lives of those I (we) love.

David also attached a poem he wrote about Scott. It is beautiful and telling of the friendship they shared;
also, their fondness for fountain pens, ink and fine, wanting to be written on, high quality paper.
Paper that makes one drool and elicits, inspires one to be moved, inspired to write.

Scott gifted many of us with ink, pens, journals and great books --
the tools that symbolize, personify some of what he did; the passion
of an expressive and gifted writer and the words that touch, move and impassion us.

I want to share and pass this on to those who know David, either personally,
or through his association of knowing our brother and friend-
This and his beautiful posts and writings on Scott's blog. Whew!

I will remain in contact with David, supporting and caring for him, as he did Scott.
He is such a good, talented man. Both of them are.

Loves and best wishes to all of you.

Sheri
sschapin50@gmail.com

The poem is attached, titled: BLUE INK. It is also part of one of David's recently published book of poetry,
entitled: _Sijo_.
Yes, it is published and this particular poem, dedicated to Scott.
(yes, to those that are plagiarists- It, is copywrited. ; ) Ya, goofballs.

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2009/06/30/
the_sijo_poetry_form_captures_a_harvard_professor8217s_imagination/

Reminding me once again, though I don’t need to be, just how much:

Cancer Sucks!

sas



From: David
Date: October 7, 2009, 10:35:52 AM MDT
To: Sheri Swaner
Subject: Re: sijo, Kudos and Scott Swaner


Dear Sheri,

Thanks for your message. I apologize for the delay in replying, but I've been
in sort of a rough patch. It turns out I have prostate cancer, and will be
having an operation on Friday next week. Trying to figure out the treatment
options and such has been a challenge. It does make me think of Scott, of
course; and I've written some other poems about him. I'll attach one sequence
of sijo...

I will hope to be sort of back in stride in a month or so. They say 4-6 weeks
to get going again, and then some interval even after that for the full
recovery. Let's keep in touch.

With all best wishes,

David




Blue Ink


This ink is blue, though you can’t know
that if you read this in a book,
nor that this ink in a bottle
was given me by a colleague
formerly at U Dub, Seattle,
up the hills from the waters

of the Sound, where one can see
on any day boats as they pass
bound in, away, a metaphor
for the traffic, our commerce, life.
His life stopped near three years ago,
the in and out of his breath.

Yesterday I found an old pen
and cleaned it, soaking, wiping,
twisting the screw control, ink
drifting away from the nib
overnight. Then I made it drink
a barrel full, my friend’s ink.

And I sit here on the couch
writing in this deep blue ink
across the white notebook pages,
anticipant of my own course
of treatment, hoping, ill or well,
to write the end with his gift.


--- David R. McCann




One Reply: Joanne Lee (Scott’s Birth mother)
A very fine writer, herself, and someone I am forever grateful to
for “the gift,” the blessing of Scott.


Joanne Lee to me



10/10/09



Hi Sheri,

Thanks for the poem. Yes, Scott - pens, ink, paper. Of course I didn’t know that about him in the beginning.
Well, not the beginning beginning but the middle beginning. Our beginning. I sent him moleskin notebooks while he was in Korea.
He wanted to know how I knew. He seemed slightly embarrassed by his notebook fetish. I have it, too.
Nothing to be embarrassed about, I said. I shopped pens for him but never bought one.
The ones I wanted for him (for me)? were hundreds of dollars.
Carved. Fine metals. Sleeping smugly in their padded beds.
For years I have had beautiful small potent bottles of colored inks.
They sit, waiting in my art studio. Waiting. For what?
They are so full of that potent beauty that I have never wanted to ask more of them.
Never wanted to stretch their beauty out across a page.
To dilute it. Isn’t it enough to be beautiful in that small potent way?
And paper. I still lust for paper. Collect it. Stack it. Fondle it.
And sometimes, even use it. Splash paint across it.
Frame it under glass – though by then it plays second fiddle.
Melting behind the narcissistic image. Holding space.
Letting its beauty be usurped.


How is it that the very mention of Scott, the memory of Scott brings poetry out of us?
That he lives on in the pens and ink left behind.
Maybe I will buy one of those outrageous pens.
And invite Scott’s spirit to dwell there. In its padded bed.
Close.

Sweet Sheri. Thanks for being you.

Naturally,

Joanne





CONCRETE MEMORIES

For: Tiffny , who brought me back to Life.
My Thanks, gratitude and love, always.

Bright Petaled-roses
Scattered on frozen concrete,
Your name
(life)
Etched and scrolled
Lay frozen on the ground.

Were you there?
Cross-legged
Sitting, waiting for a glance?
Perhaps a chance
To meet
To greet
“Yes,”
She is the one I talk with you about?
The “she”
that makes the corners of my mouth
Turn Up-wards
Closer to where you are;
Closer, always closer
To where I look for you-
The space, place of you;
The one that feels at home

Yes, (with her)
I feel like I am home.

I came to visit you
Today,
No, Not in the usual way.
(Alone, but not lonely)
I brought her (My “she”)
“Yes,”
to introduce-
(reintroduce)
For you to meet and greet.

Concrete softens,
Falling like rain;
Gentle and wet,
Puddles and memories
Of life
Of death
All mix into One...

Splash, splash
Pitter pitter
pat, pat pat
(twitter)
My HEART now beats
21 Love poems
per minute
(complete)
For 21 (effulgent) days.


---sas
01/16/2010

Dante's Inferno and The Overwhelming Question

"...Having a keen eye on the world, feeling experiences with an open sensitivity,
if at times with too much sensitivity, caring about people (not all, I’m neither saint nor altruist), having the good or ill fortune to be placed in some odd experiences,
Also at times having the stones to walk head first into others.
Those, I think, make something good of a life.

This is all unplanned, like my death, there is no outline to guide me through this piece,
there is no map despite my fondness for maps, literal and metaphorical.
(I picked up a great copy of a newish translation of Dante’s Inferno recently,
translated as Hell, and it was not the quality of the words I wanted,
it was the maps and diagrams.
It’s laid out graphically, not scenes of torture, not Blakean drawings of the mystic,
but nearly architectural sketches of what is where, what one might expect
in the space of experience. (It explains in part why one of my only published
essays deals with "cartographies of utopia.")
This is extemporaneous. What do you make of that?
I too don’t know. It’s an anti-eulogy. It’s an anti-systematic handbook.
If so, then for what? It’s simply what I have. All I have.

In the poesis, then, what is it that feels good?
What kind of making brings you pleasure in addition to warding off the unpleasure
that naturally comes to us all? In doing- what have you lost?
Truly, beautifully lost? Where are those doings? And now, too late,
I only start to see how crucial it is to find them.
I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of questions put to me since my diagnosis,
and more accurately my prognosis, was made public,
many of them have been posted on Do Not Go Gentle, many discussed there.
Most elsewhere. Many are repeats, many, candidly speaking, are uninsightful —
but how many of us know just what to say or ask? I don’t begrudge any of them really.
Some just seem to have cut to the heart of the things: what will you do that matters?
And why do those things?
No doubt I’ll have a pretty good sense of this in about three months or so,
when the clock really steps up its pace, when my timeline starts to deviate radically
from most all of yours. Then I’ll know something more concretely.
Pause for thought.

One thing of which I’m sure, it’s not distraction.
Travel is fine, fun is fine, shopping is fine, responsible debauchery too.
There is an amazing book to be written on Distraction Theory,
I haven’t gotten to it, though I have notes everywhere, it hasn’t been written.
But it’s out there in the future. I do know, however,
that distraction is almost an insult to dying consciously, dare I use the cliché,
of dying with dignity. Again, I see nothing wrong with travel, fun, debauchery,
but they are not [it] Not for me, and I’m not sure that I can offer any further
explanation of why, they just miss the point, by definition.

Distraction is the activity that averts your eyes from seeing what is really happening.
There might be no outside of ideology, but distraction is the indulgence in ideology.
(e.g., Think fascism.) Just as faith, in my view, is the escape from critical thinking.
Certain dispositions require these, so be it, it’s not something we have much control of:
it’s what highlights the crucial difference between Jung and Freud.
The former believes too much in a voluntarist psychology, he must explain the psyche
and twist it so as to leave a possible space for the I to act freely;
the latter knows the determinist web we find ourselves caught in,
if we're lucky we find ourselves.

Marx saw it with political economy and history, faults aside.
Boils on his backside keeping him from sitting to finish Capital.
Nietzsche saw it with society’s morals and values, faults and all.
Arms wrapped around a beaten horse in madness.

So that is the base, the substructure if you will, for how to think of doing. In the doing the key aspect I keep seeing is a degree of choice within the circumstances I find myself in.
That is, what will I do with what I have? What will I be able to do?
What are my desires and where do they mesh with the doing?
It’s still hard to believe that Old Man Eliot could write this, at age 24:

“To have squeezed the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question,”

and then, in fact, earlier in the poem, the question itself.
In short, “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” That is the overwhelming question.
How to begin? How should I presume? Yes. Yes.
Worse and more overwhelming still, however, is to ask
and only to ask and to leave it at that,
and that is Prufrock’s curse."

. . . The curse of J. Alfred Prufrock

Scott H Swaner
07-26-06 "The Overwhelming Question"

ts eliot


dante’s inferno

"If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
without fear of infamy I answer you."[10]

WHAT CANCER CANNOT DO / a guest of M. Jones

Several people have asked if I know where they can find the quote:
"WHAT CANCER CANNOT DO."

Here it is. I have a Tee shirt with this quote on it,
though I must admit- "CANCER SUCKS !" remains my favorite.






Cancer is so limited
It cannot cripple love
It cannot shatter hope
It cannot erode faith
It cannot eat away peace
It cannot destroy confidence
It cannot kill friendship
It cannot shut out memories
It cannot silence courage
It cannot invade the soul
It cannot reduce eternal life
It cannot quench the spirit....


--anon.

Hope this helped.
Yes, cancer is painful, horrid, senseless, tragic and
sometimes, terminal.
As dzd said in her guest blog a year ago ( ? )
be grateful for the mundane, the every day things of life.
They are precious, and often overlooked, as "gifts."

Though Pancreatic Cancer killed Scott physically, he lives on
in the hearts of all of those who know and love him.
He lives on through his words, his beautiful mind
and through all of those he inspired.

I miss my brother....

Sheri

9.03.06, A Sonnet from Fragility

“Life, the Crash Course Version”

Death opens vistas through its immanence. Widened
Vision and broadened possibility both result from the horror
Of the approach, the horror. Every possibility existing gossamer,
Hanging by delicate threads of if, comes to the fore of when

Pain’s freedom is finally achieved. The ambivalent joy is where
In the eye-opened crash course for life, life until death is no more
Fast on silent shoes of black patent leather across a floor
Swept clean by silence? The daily expectancy is where,

In dodging nausea, neuropathy, constipation, diarrhea, and more
The localized general pain, incessant & unseen like a cancer,
Stop a step short of simile — as cancer without “like” is interred,
Buried in the belly of everything you could have become before

Your horizon expanded to reach anything, yet restricted to the now?
Dream your fullest desire your everything, just do it fast somehow.

* * *

If there is going to be a Franky Scale I'm going to think about it some more. Even at this time of day it hasn't been long enough to say well. And sometimes it gets tiring constantly taking one's temperature.