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Murphy Daley

Feb 26, 2025

I’m wishing I had the time and energy to write. It’s not easy right now.

I’m still in recovery from all the medical things. I would like to think that I have the basic skills and could write a story or a little scrap of something interesting worthy of my regard.

I got in a conversation with my daughter about how sci fi explores ideas by imagining what else might be possible.

If this is true, what else is true?

What’s true is I’m engaged in a battle with a tiny enemy . A VERY serious battle—so much so that everyone seems to understand how serious it is.

I’ve been taking it seriously. And I see something that most people don’t—how miniscule the cancer is. Why does the battle of this insignificant little group of cells take up so much of my life?

Not just my life. There is a whole bunch of medical professionals who have made it their mission to fight these cells.

Why should people pay attention to something so small?

It grows. That’s the prominent aspect of cancer: it grows at a faster rate than the other cells—sometimes aggressively faster. That critical mass is the danger.

I wish I were in an alternate reality. What else is true?

IF those tiny enemies can grow into something so significant it kills me

What else can tiny things do?

The idea still works if I turn it inside out. I can only manage the smallest steps, barely a nod to remember the skills I once used with such little effort.

But those small things can add up to significance. I don’t have the endurance now. Except I can still do short sessions. Half an hour? Ten minutes? Two?

Can I make it my mission to keep going? Those doctors, nurses and scientists keep going on their fight. I want to stick to my mission as well. Small things add up. As I push out the small enemy, I feel the effort in my body and I know it is heavy. Removing those tiny things is hard. It is valuable and encouraging to recognize the effort of the addition.

Just before Valentines’ day, I went through my fourth surgery because of cancer. It was a success (much better than the last one). These doctors are almost done with these cancer cures.

These medical doctor/scientists are very sure that they know how far to push me. I hopw they are right, but I’m weary of the load they are putting on me.

I’ve found an audiobooks to listen to as I fall in and out of sleep: Caliban’s War

The sci-fi in the story gives me some science to hang onto as a part of the story. There’s a botanist in the story that is part of terraforming a moon. They had done such a good job of it that it fed most of non-earth humankind

UNTIL

Disaster struck. And humanity had to be saved. Of course, humanity was not at all concerned about the danger it was in because it was too focused on the political power struggle.

The botanist could see the problem clearly, because he understood the systems at play. He knew where the tipping was and what the consequences were. He called it a complex simple system. There were a limited number of systems that balanced the biosphere on that moon, not enough to be fully redundant—that made it simple. But there were enough systems that meant you couldn’t predict which ones would fail.

I am not a simple system. I”ve got so many interconnected systems that I’m pretty sure there isn’t even a full tally on what’s happening in my body. So many systems are in motion to keep me alive and healthy, I stand amazed.

That complexity in my system is what the doctors are leaning on when they cut me open and mess around.

I am both weary and weak from the medical interventions. I like imagining myself like the heroes of the space epic. I’ve read it a lot, and every time they make it through. I know what’s going to happen.

So when I wake up in the middle of the night—which happens most nights—I can play the audiobook and fall back asleep hearing the adventure again. The heroes encounter all kinds of obstacles and they make it through

That’s what will happen for me too.

I have been thinking that I should be a lot further along.

Aren’t I supposed to be further along that where I stand?

I remember times that I”ve climbed a mountains. When I got tired and I’d look back at what I’d travelled and realize I had covered so much ground. So satisfying to see the snake of a trail that I’d walked bedhind me.

I did that. It gave me courage to push to the summit.

And this February, this week, I am looking backwards and I am seeing that I am just about exactly where I was last year.

Another surgery, another dose of radioactive iodine—and another despairing essay for my weekly wonder.

What am I supposed to look back on? It’s been a long long path.

Now I remember the labyrinth. So many time I’ve walked the labyrinth and felt the conufusing winding path that gives me hope and then takes it away again.

As I am looking for hope right now, I will shre with you and with myself a piece I’ve already written 12 years ago.

The center of the labyrinth–that is supposed to be the meaning, the goal and the reason. People have always had reasons and goals.

And that is why the labyrinth has been around so long. There is something to it.

I’ve walked these before. Somehow, though, that standing stone in the middle was different.

I wanted that rock. Up in the path, and it is right there. whoops, no, swing around to the left.

Don’t worry though. I will get there. Look, I am almost there.

Whoops, no, and again.

And THIS time I am walking all the way around a circle like I have nowhere to go or anything to care about and doesn’t matter because I’ll never get there anyway.

that rock

in the center

once I reach that rock in the center every desire I have will be fulfilled

and I want that rock

and it’s right there

but it

TAKES SO FREAKING LONG TO GET TO THAT ROCK!!!!!

until I got there

This whole year

Ok, it has only been a month long

BUT!

This whole year I’ve been down sick.

If I’m real, it started 2 years ago with the cancer diagnosis. Ever since the big news was handed to me, I struggled to choose my identity within the disease. How did I stay me in the middle of this overwhelming terrible malady?

I learned to rely on the person I had been all along. I choose to be a writer and this very piece is proof that I am what I am striving to be.

In my weariness I feel doubt. Am I really? What do this words amount to?

While I was at the bottom of the well of the cancer treatment, I work to maintain a veneer of the person I hoped I could still be.

Hanging on the edge with my fingernails while gravity got stronger and stronger, I did start taking shortcuts. I lay in bed and listened to easy books, I didn’t challenge my weary head with complicated things.

And

The malady is waning. I have a surgery on the 13^th and another radioactive treatment at the end of March. Those are not trivial milestones to cross, but they are the last ones. My grasp is not tenuous anymore, it’s getting stronger and more secure every day.

Can I remember how to engage with big ideas again? My creative imagination needs to come out of hibernation.

Hmm. This is going to take some loosening up. I’ve gotten some habits I’ll need to upgrade. The road to beign a Sensei taught me that every small step matters. Pushing myself is worthwhile.

I’m falling back on some old tricks:

Pen and paper. I wrote most of this essay on notepaper in a three-ring binder. Almost half of what I wrote has been crossed out. In ink. Like my ancestors used to do.

It’s messy. I’m rusty and crusty and slow. And I’m willing to keep trying because I really want to get better.