Though I have always thought of myself as a tropical man, there has long been a special appreciation in me for the season of autumn, the season of dappled sunlight and languorous shadows and brisk, crisp air and of leaves bursting with colour, flaming out like shining from shook foil, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote. Though not a cold weather person, the beauty of autumn is a reminder that the passage of time can also be full of grandeur and sublime joys, if we permit ourselves to see them.
This autumn, just about the time I was putting the finishing touches on my new book - With the Pen In One Hand and the Sword in the Other: Haiti and the United States in the Nineteenth Century - I was finally able to obtain a CT scan of my abdomen for a digestive problem I had been having for a few months. A mass was detected in the ascending colon which was causing a partial obstruction and needed to be removed. The surgeon I spoke with, an Afghan-American who specialized in colon surgery, told me that it needed to come out quickly and the next day, after scrambling to find care for my dogs and five cats, I found myself in a hospital bed being prepped for major surgery. The surgery went off well, but when the biopsy of the mass was analyzed it confirmed that I was afflicted with advanced colon cancer.
It was, as I’m sure it is for most people, a shocking diagnosis as I feel otherwise quite healthy. I have many plans for the shortterm and longterm future which are, it goes without saying, very much up in the air. I am navigating the byzantine maze of U.S. insurance companies and which doctors and institutions do and don’t accept their coverage in order to obtain care and treatment for my new and unexpected condition. It goes without saying, having people with no medical background making life and death decisions regarding patient healthcare on the basis of insurance and monetary status is no way to run a healthcare system, and I know I am hardly the only person in the United States living through this, nor is my experience in any way unique. I will steadily march forward, though, and do the best to get the care I need.
I don’t know what the days hold for me from this moment onward, but I wanted to say that my life so far has been an incredible gift, to see the places and events I have seen and to meet the people I have met and to feel the love I have felt from so many corners of the world. Many of you reading these words have contributed to that, and how blessed I have been to have you in my life, as much as I have been by the beloved animals who have come into my life and who rescued me as much as I ever rescued them. I now worry terribly what will become of the latter should things go badly for me. But I will continue doing what I do - writing, reading, caring for my animals, loving the people I love, amplifying the voices of those too frequently shut out of the international conversation of their fate and throwing a bright light onto the common humanity that, despite everything, we all share - for as long as I am able.
When you lead the peripatetic life of a journalist and an author, you leave bits of your soul in the places where you work. There will always be a bit of my soul that is wandering the lanes of Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil, learning about Haiti from the many voices that have been willing to speak with me there over the years, or watching the rain fall from the shelter of a café in Pétionville or waking up to the sound of the waves outside of Jacmel. Some of me will always be watching the bondinho roll past as the honeyed afternoon light falls on Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro, or walking through La Habana Vieja or getting a café colada from the lunch counter of a bodega in Miami. There will always be a bit of me walking over the Pont Notre-Dame in Paris one December night just as the snow begins to fall, or in a little château town in the Loire Valley. And when autumn descends in New York, I'll be at the end of the bar sipping a Manhattan to banish the chill, or by the Thames in Richmond in London with my friends. And somehow I will too be on the little peninsula of Viejo San Juan, where the street cats roam and drowse in the Caribbean moonlight.
In my profession, you realize that life often hangs by a thread, and that it can be full of tragedy and struggle. But life has so much beauty, too, and the transitory nature of it, the fact that le monde est comme une goutte de rosée qui s'évapore aux premiers rayons de soleil as the wistful Syrian proverb that greets visitors to the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris states, is what gives it its intense poignancy. Todavía podemos sonreír, aunque tengamos cicatrices en la cara. We can still smile, even if we have scars on our faces. The world is still all before us, where to choose our place. And in my life, you have all made the world more beautiful just by being in it.
With best wishes and love to you all.
xo
M
Michael,
I am so sorry to hear the news about your health. I hope you'll be able to navigate the complex US's healthcare system and get the care you need.
I wish you strength to get you through this difficult time in your life.
Thank you for your Notes from the World..and for all you give your readers.
My warmest regards,
Ana