What's up friend shark?

I've been thinking about this picture I put together. About who or what the shark represents. I do know that the shark is not the cancer. It is not just one thing but it is good. It is big, powerful, dangerously unknowable in it's depth and reasoning and yet gentle and loving so it might be God. Same with the pirates. I don't approve of actual pirates, they steal and kill, but it is the attitude of course.

Cancer takes takes away a sense of control, as false as that sense of control might actually be whether or not you have cancer. For me the shark is a ramping up of aggression and expression of courage that I might not actually feel every day but that I need to remind myself I have available in my bag of tricks.

Also it's fun and a celebration of beauty in something that is quite ugly so it needed a flower.

It is finding joy when you are not looking for it in the week while you wait for the biopsy results when hardly anyone knows.

It is the strength of family, friends and acquaintances who love and care and pray and hope and offer to punch holes into walls and travel the road with you when you let them in.

I also know what the shark is not. It is not a hatred of my body or even the cancer. The cancer needs to leave. Move along my friend, go harmlessly like a reverse meteor and do no more harm. But no I don't hate my body or the cancer.

I love how sharply I experience life and happiness now...

at the same time that I mourn the loss of security and regret, however out of my hands it is, that my family needs to think about cancer so soon after losing my sister to it.

I don't know everything the shark is, but suspect it is also physical pain. That will be a story for another day.