Writings in Progress    




1. Planet Chemo: Confessions of a Self-contained Man ( excerpt )

2. Song of the West ( excerpt )

3. Happy Valley

Planet Chemo excerpt:

Touchdown

I have cancer. I can't remember when I first uttered what would become a mantra of self-realization. It was an exercise in self-convincing. At a stop light: I have cancer. At dinner: I have cancer. While reading the paper: I have cancer. While shaving: I have cancer. IhavecancerIhavecancerIhavecancer. I was saying it to myself two hundred times a day. Then I would try believing it.

Being back on safe and familiar ground after the trip to Planet Chemo gave me time to settle into the reality of being a cancer survivor. The treatments had been worse than the symptoms, it was hard to identify the lymphoma since it had been, to me, nothing more than a nasty lump at the base of my neck and lab results from microscopic examinations of cells. But chemo rammed home the truth—cancer had become the defining feature of my life on Earth.

I'm going to die. Well of course I'm going to die; I'm not made out of titanium. It's one thing to contemplate my own death philosophically—and I have a degree in philosophy as evidence that I have—and a wholly different exercise to confront death as it's squirming inside me, vying for dominance of my every waking moment, seeking to end those very "waking moments." Cancer will try to kill its host, even though that means it will eventually die too. And "host" isn't a very good word because it's not an invader like malaria; it's my own stem cells gone haywire. I could ask, "Why is my own body trying to kill me?" but my energy is better spent on questions like, "How am I going to fight it?"

Life has become a meditation on when I'm going to die. And how I'm going to live. It's that last part that gets me up in the mornings.

Song of the West excerpt:

I finally reached the age where a rite of passage in western life took place. I was given a bolt-action, JC Higgins model .22 caliber rifle, magazine fed and complete with a 4 power scope. It was a major landmark in my ascent to manhood, and I was ecstatic. The rifle felt heavy, the blued steel reflecting a solidness to breach and barrel. This was serious business. Paper targets, concentric circles of black and white, were my first targets.

I read Dad's war manuals on how to shoot, the pocket-sized volumes complete with pictures in faded sepia tones, mostly of men with guns. One photo was of a strong, masculine hand squeezing a tube of toothpaste, illustrating how not to jerk or mash the tube, but rather confidently "squeeze." That is how you pulled the trigger on a weapon, squeeze, not jerk. One page contained a grainy photo of an Imperial Japanese soldier carrying a big bolt-action combat rifle tipped with a long bayonet, charging the camera. The caption read "Maybe his uniform doesn't fit as well as yours, his rifle may be obsolete, but he is as determined as you to kill his enemy. Don't underestimate him." I started at the picture and looked back with a determined scowl; I wouldn't take my enemies lightly, no sir. I would learn how to squeeze the trigger just so, keeping the barrel steady and not jerking it off target, whatever that target may be. I had just turned twelve.

The .22 didn't kick at all when fired, and the weight became a reassuring heft as I stalked the land. I was armed and able to affect the world around me in a newly profound way. I progressed from paper targets nailed to a fencepost to live animals.

Gophers were worth a nickel a piece bounty from Dad. I became an efficient shot, squeezing the trigger and always aiming for the head. It upset me to see the small brown furry rodents flopping around in the dirt so I tried to kill with one shot, making the end quick and easing any suffering, theirs or mine. There were huge complexes where gophers had built entire towns, real communities, and I would pick them off one by one. Timing was crucial. The gophers would stand up on their haunches taking turns to look for eagles, coyotes, danger of any kind, looking for any threat to the extended family burrowed below. A quick chirp, a warning flick of the tail, and they would scurry back below into their safe tunnels. But the lookouts could not beat a .22 Long Rifle slug. Occasionally I would find a blood trail leading down into a burrow, and sense the panic and fear hiding below me, the tiny heart pumping out the last of what little blood their small bodies held. I learned they had brains, bones, body heat. My nickels piled up as Dad's pride grew. His son was learning the song.

 
(photo courtesy: yourskinandsun[DOT]com/freepub.html)

Current News

April 2011
Annual Instrument Show Northwest Musical Instrument Exhibit: Saturday and Sunday, April 30, 2011 - May 01, 2011 Marylhurst University, near Portland, Oregon.
February 2011
Jeff has recently finished radiation treatments for his 3rd relapse of lymphoma.
He is completing a 16 1/4” viola and will soon begin a 15” viola of his own design.
August 2010
Jeff has moved! His new contact information: 2635 SW Fairmont Drive
Corvallis, OR 97333
New e-mail:   jeff@jeffleemanthos.com
May 2010
Jeff was the keynote speaker at the Modesto, California, Doctors Medical Center cancer survivor celebration of May 15th.
November 2009
Jeff is the featured cancer survivor in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Horizons newsletter, Volume 6, Number 3. Contact Jeff for a free print copy, a limited number are available.
March 2009
Jeff's interview about his Sea King helicopter adventures with aviation historian and journalist Tamas Szorad has been published in the March, 2009 issue of the European aviation periodical Aeromagazin of Budapest, Hungary.
February 2009
Jeff's short story The Warrior's Song was published in Perceptions, Mt Hood Community College's magazine of the arts this spring. (http://www.mhcc.edu)
May 2008
Steel Beach has been selected by a Florida High School history class as literature of the Vietnam War era.
April 2008
Latest manuscript- Planet Chemo completed and submitted to agents and publishers.
December 2, 2007
Finalist in the Oregon Book Awards for creative nonfiction. Literary Arts
April 2007
Published release of Steel Beach
(Inkwater Press ).

Contact information

Street: 2635 SW Fairmont Drive
City/State: Corvallis, OR 97333
Phone: 541-754-7645
E-mail: jeff@jeffleemanthos.com