Dear Doctors                                                                                                               June 2023 I survived CyberKnife — the weeks after have been rough with lots of unpleasant side effects. I am making it through but it’s not something I would want to repeat. There are larger life decision changes afoot, nothing carved in stone yet, haha, but I want to give you both a heads…

Tony the cyber knife He is not tall. He is not young. His hair is mostly gone and rubbing his head for luck feels like polishing Aladdin’s lamp. Tony’s been around the block. The few times. Given the limits of Pandora, he’s a great DJ for his captive audience of zappees, each of us lying…

I probably met Denny in Darwin in the late 70s early 80s, but it could have been earlier at the Sculpture Center on Cannery Row in Monterey. In either case, Gordon Newell was the bridge that connected us — Gordon, stone, cream sherry,, Robinson Jeffers poems, and the kind of light that tells the sculptor…

  mar 2023 From where I sit in the sunny spot on the couch, I can see Culebra peak in the Sangre de Christos rimming the San Luis Valley to the east. The watershed from this mountain range gives life to San Luis, San Acacio and many other small towns. It also gives life to the…

My eyes thirst for the sight of dark red-brown and cinnamon brown. Involuntarily, they jerk to the field, the water tanks, the manger. Where are they hiding? Are they all the way at the top of the field? Are they napping in a soft hollow out of the wind? If we start doing chores and…

                              January — March 2023 Having brain cancer will hone your vibrational frequency, lower your tolerance for bullshit, and exponentially expand your appreciation for irony. Brain cancer can make the world become a Cubist painting where you can see all sides at once, simultaneously aware of what is being said as well as what…

All I really wanted to do was get some exercise by walking 100 yards or so from our house to the entrance to the KOA campground. I invited Henry to walk along with me and at first he declined, but luckily he changed his mind. I did okay walking south, but then when I turned…

Last December was a tough month. It started with hearing about the death of an important aikido sensei, Wendy Palmer. Not that we always saw eye to eye: we didn’t. when she became codirector with me of the prison integrated health program at FCI Dublin back in the early 90s, she was all about containment…

It is hard for an artist to admit that she is uninspired, especially when she is also a warrior. But the truth is I don’t want to go out to the studio, and when I do, everything feels wrong. The paintings feel forced. I recognize them as sequels, as if I can only do the…

I can’t help but notice after three years of receiving treatment for cancer and having labs drawn that many nurses are quick to accuse my veins of any number of sins: namely teeny-weeny, rolly, valvesy, jumpy, scarred, stingy, positional, blown, and generally speaking uncooperative. The seven dwarfs of phlebotomy. No, make that eight. I’m starting…