@gennizaidain Hi - meant to get back to you. I did check out The Last Lecture. It did remind me of my initial reaction to my cancer diagnosis earlier this year - I was like, dang, I'd better write down all those boring stories I was planning on repeating to Johnny year after year after year if I lived, and I actually did write down some of them, and got that out of my system. It's never the true things, though, is what I learned. It's just the narrative we tell ourselves that make up what we think of as "my life", whereas they are only a tiny fraction of the real thing, and those that matter most are fleeting, evanescent epiphanies, glimpses into the deeper more real world. Those never come at will to a writer, it seems, but only surface by accident in the course of a genuine flow. It's that flow we are always pursuing as artists - whether in music, writing, painting, whatever your expressive medium, and it's in the flow when we are most our genuine selves, and it's so elusive, so hard to capture or portray. So I gave up the memoir and, with my treatment apparently working, went back to living in the present. I'm pretty worn down by the medications lately so I haven't been writing much - I'm looking forward to improving conditions later this fall. In the meantime, I am still hoping to read more of YOUR stories, which are where? - Tom
