Canada, and more specifically its Brain Tumour Foundation, has decided to fall in line with the Americans again: May is the new Brain Tumour Awareness Month. So much for the Holy Month of October (although I do very much respect the mammary aspect of that month). I shan't fountainously spout my bile over the various little nitty-picky problems I have with this example of Manifest Destiny, assuming the spellings of grey and tumour shall not change to the rather appalling gray and tumor, and instead I choose to simply celebrate my "own" tumour day. For according to the Foundation's Brain-Tumour-a-Day-in-May schedule, the 18th of May is reserved for Anaplastic Astrocytoma. Very well. It would have been, once upon a time, the 4th of May: Oligoastrocytoma day. Well, grade II no more. Onwards.
To mark this auspicious day I spent some time taking
selfies with my radiation mask, including being silly and putting her on the back of my head. Little did I know what would transpire from this - I was just trying to document me hanging out with myself in the sunshine. But I couldn't actually fit sunglasses on her, and
headscarves and hats were looking foolish, so I stuck some earrings in
what initially appeared to be her general ear location but is actually nobody's ear location, especially visible after we united heads. We've got a mysterious drop of amber at the base of our skulls...
Then I had to give her a name, and there's only one that I kept coming back to. Becky. Why? I have no idea why, and it's a bit embarrassing, but it's the first thing that came to mind when I looked at her this morning. And then I couldn't shake it. We couldn't shake it. I had much more symbolically suitable names in mind, people who are dear to me, who have protected me in the past, people who are brilliant, people who are ridiculous. But no. Becky. Not even ridiculous, just dorky. Fine. So be it.
Then I had to give her a name, and there's only one that I kept coming back to. Becky. Why? I have no idea why, and it's a bit embarrassing, but it's the first thing that came to mind when I looked at her this morning. And then I couldn't shake it. We couldn't shake it. I had much more symbolically suitable names in mind, people who are dear to me, who have protected me in the past, people who are brilliant, people who are ridiculous. But no. Becky. Not even ridiculous, just dorky. Fine. So be it.
And then I sat down to write this and I thought, mein Gott, yes, yes, of course! Because Rebecca is actually my middle name. It's true. Becky seemed dorky, but we all know that I am dorky too. And if it is a diminutive of Rebecca then I am willing to take it on board, because it's elegant and I wish to be in an elegant mask, even if in it's dorky shortened form. We look in different directions at the same time.
I should have known something like this would happen.
The universe is telling me that I am all, and I am none, and I look in both directions because I am Janus. That's right, bitches. I preside over and through binaries, I am a conductor of transitions, I am all the liminal spaces and means of passing through them. I have eyes in the back of my head. I see backwards into the future. Frances Rebecky. Janus. Kruk.
Thanks for keeping me still during radiation, Becky. You are one of my lifesavers.
Let's continue beginning, and here's to many happy returns.
