“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it  clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.  You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.  You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.  No artist is pleased…there is no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”  Martha Graham

 

“Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is one of the most attractive things you can do.” Rick Owens

Carlo Rossi and Chemo
by Elizabeth Blue

April 12, 2012
Sometimes I get the strangest, strongest desire to drink or eat or smell or whatever, something I used to drink or eat or smell all the time.  These are often things I don’t even like but because I get such a feeling of being in a previous place/time when I have the sensory experience or re-experiencing a past and familiar sensation I want this thing like I want bones because I want to revisit my life in that past moment where the original connotation occurred.
And this is an example that happened right now: here I am quietly tumbling to myself and: WHAT?  I crave Carlo Rossi Sangria?  My drink of choice ages 12-14?  Can this be real?
No.  Certainly not.
What can be real is that I crave to be in the same body, mind, place or mind-space as I was at those ages.  And to have the nowness of me in the perspective of then. 

It also reminds me of this time I went in to have chemo and I was by myself.  
By the way: chemo makes you extremely stomach sick and leaves a lingering metallic taste in your mouth that lasts for days.  At the time chemo is being pumped into your veins you can:
taste. the. chemo drugs.  
Yeah really.  I didn’t know that was even possible but then again what do I know about western medicine really?

Anyway, I was getting chemo and I walking around with my traveling IV hook up thing, which is on wheels to permit movement, and I came across a box with candy.  Being a lifelong lover of candy I selected for myself a package of Chips Ahoy cookies having no appetite for them (due to the chemo queasiness) I decided I would save them for later when I was high and hungry.  Good plan?  One would think yes, but no.
I bring the cookies home in their bright blue packaging and I can’t even look at them. When I accidentally drop them out of my purse I stare at the package on the floor, my stomach starts to churn and I stare and stare until I can convince my body to contain its innards.  And then I pick them up and put them in a drawer because:
THE COLOR BLUE OF THE PACKAGING IS A COLOR I RECOGNIZE AS EXISTING ONLY WITHIN THE TREATMENT CENTER.  
Seeing that color makes me taste chemo drugs and that taste has overpowered any childhood associations I have of liking these cookies.  
I remember those associations, Chips Ahoy cookies always came with pizza on pizza day and that was a big deal and I would eat them as slowly as possible to make them last as long as I could.  
But that doesn’t matter anymore to my brain.  What matters is chemo chemicals and their associations.
And now what I associate with chemo I do not want to put in my body because chemo tastes like poison.
You know why?
Because it is.  The poison that saved my life.  xoxox to Persephone and your pomegranates.  Winter is created but Spring is here.

This doesn’t make sense, I mean, my language if you’re outside of my head.  I’m just allowing myself the rarely indulged or afforded luxury of vomiting all over tumblr.  I mean, shhh Elizabeth, someone might even be listening.  I mean reading.
Ooops.

This is from Elizabeth Blue’s tumblr (blog) and more can be found here.  I am only posting ones here that are related to her journey with cancer, but if you want more of Elizabeth and her thoughts, loves, interesting obsessions (hairless cats, justice and fashion, to name a few)…see more at “Freshly Shaved Legs”