Days of Absense

Hello, my dear and patient friends.

You must surely have thought that I, after creating this blog and writing only a single post, had immediately grown lazy or bored and simply wandered away into cyberspace. 

I assure you, this is not the case. 

During the second week of November, 2010, in the time it took the kind and resolutely noncommittal mammography technician to answer my chipper, bravado-filled question, "have you ever seen a caffeine cyst get this big?" with the statement, "we're sending you upstairs for an ultrasound now," my life changed forever.  In the surreal, reeling hours and days that followed my mammogram and ultrasound, I underwent a barrage of tests, each more invasive and unpleasant than the last.  By the end of the week I heard the words that no one should ever have to hear in this life - "your breast cancer is infiltrating ductal carcinoma."

So there it is.  I had breast cancer.  I wanted to blog.  I really and truly did.  There were moments when I stalwartly, even defiantly, sat down at my laptop to mull over posts about the cold, still air of the forest in which I went walking that day, or about the acrylic painting of daffodils I'd planned in my head while waiting for my mammogram and trying to pretend I wasn't wearing the ridiculous cape-thing I had to change into beforehand.  But then the enormity of it all, the absolute, numbing coldness of realization would wash over me again, and my mind was wiped clean of all thoughts but one:

I have cancer.  I have cancer..?  I have cancer?!  I have cancer!!!!

The days went by, then the weeks, and suddenly it was Surgery Day.  And then I was in the hazy hinterland that was Recovery.  And then, though I wanted time to slow down so desperately that I would have made a pact with the devil, it was Chemo Day.  I was sick and scared and outraged...but I had also, because of cancer, made a new and beautiful friend, a kindred spirit who's been through it all just ahead of me, and has given me more love and support than I could have imagined or even thought possible.  She is the gift that cancer - bastard that it is - has given me.  And there has been my family and my partner, and Harry Potter, and chocolate and candy cane tea and ruby red grapefruits to get me through.  Life is actually going on.  How...surprising.  How amazing.

Now here we are.  It is the second week of my chemotherapy.  I still have my hair, though I can sense, like something on the wind, that I will lose it soon.  What feels miraculous to me now, though, is that I wanted to write today.  It's been a long time.  What's more, I was ready to post about what has happened. 

I must stress, however, that Transforming Tradition is not going to turn into a blog about cancer.  You know why?  Because I have already kicked cancer's ass.  That's why.  I'm cancer-free, baby!  This chapter of my life - and it was only one chapter, mind - is already closing.  One page is turning, and I'm ready, with a white-hot intensity that could slice through titanium, to create the next.  I'm ready to dust off my watercolors, break out my brushes, unfurl a smooth, new piece of Canson paper, sharpen my graphite, and start drawing already.

Let's get to work.

Happy Birthday

Welcome!

This is the first-ever post on Transforming Tradition, my blog devoted to artmaking and writing for children of all ages.  Transforming Tradition will be part chronicle and part agony aunt, the place where I'll log projects and research while sharing cool books, writers, artists, stories and, no doubt, numerous watercolor disasters.  (Is anyone else as abysmal at watercolor as I am?)  I've christened this blog Transforming Tradition to reflect the nature of my work: I use text and image to give fresh, creative expression to the themes and motifs found in fairy tales, folklore, customs and rituals. 

And then there's Victorian children's literature.

Transforming Tradition has a rather auspicious birthday.  For all you Lewis Carroll fans out there, November 4 is the day that Alice steps through the parlor mirror in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.  When the story opens it's late afternoon, and Alice has been at the window "watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire."  This suggests the bonfires set ablaze for Guy Fawkes Night (or Bonfire Night), celebrated in Britain on November 5, as does her remark to the black kitten, "we'll go and see the bonfire to-morrow."  Pretty cool, right?

When I learned the true significance of Bonfire Night my first year in England, I was...a little freaked out.  JK Rowling and Lewis Carroll make it sound rather jolly in their books, and the festival I attended in Ottery St. Mary - which includes a carnival and flaming tar barrels carried through the streets by burly, completely insane men - was fantastic.  Bonfire Night in fact commemorates the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the execution of the surviving conspirators, including Guy Fawkes.  The Brits traditionally burn an effigy (not necessarily of Fawkes) at the top of the fire.  I enjoy traditions, of course, but that smacks a little too much of 'The Wicker Man' for comfort.

Anyone have a good Bonfire Night story?

Thanks for reading.  Have a lovely day.