Cancer Has Entered My Dreams

I awoke prematurely, i.e. before I needed to, due to strange dream. I was on the basketball court with some very aggressive cancer survivor/basketball players. They were giving me tips on life, which was reason enough for concern, even consternation.

But what really bothered me was that I was missing lay-ups. Despite the fact that I was nearly touching the rim when I left my feet.

This is what comes of living across from one of the most popular playground basketball courts in upper Manhattan, a magnet to every team of feral young men in the vicinity.

After a day of "Next!" and rough and raucous play, they pile into cars, Toyotas as well as jeeps, flush with victory, or simply flushed from exertion. I used to be one of them. But now my basketball is in retirement in the trunk of my car as I have become a semi-aquatic animal--going to the pool every day.

It is a habit I learned from Oliver Sachs, the neurologist par excellence. I saw him on a documentary some years ago and the cameras followed him to his health club, where he swam and explained that it was his therapy, that it must be some atavistic pull back to the origin of all animal life, his philogenic, ichtheological (sp) ancestry calling him to the water. I am hyper-paraphrasing here. His explanation was simpler, but delivered in a British accent.

At any rate, swimming does relax and energize me. When I enter the pool area I am sluggish and tired and dispirited. After my session I am no longer sluggish and tired. So I can return home and work for another four hours.

Swimming is the only exercise in which you don't sweat. This appeals to me. It's multitasking: I can be fit and clean at the same time.

Later...