The Journey Down the Mountain

I chose the title for this blog, because of a certain vision I was having, as well as the fact of character limitations for blogspot blogs. I wanted it to be "Dispatches from the Frontlines of an Ever Expanding Life that is Heading Down out of Isolation to the Shore of Life".
I was thinking that 2009 was the year for me having a great spiritual and physical journey. Most people would envision spiritual journeys as a trip up a mountain trail, ending in a cloud enshrined Nirvana. My vision of the year was coming out of isolation, out of the cold, out of the lofty and esoteric into the world of physical, the world of co-housing, the world of spiritual communities; a journey from the one to the many.
I had found that my spiritual quests had ended up with me more isolated and alone. I had chosen to move near the mountains, but found them too remote, too cold. I began to long for the warmth of the sun, for shores I hadn't seen before, for the call of gently gliding birds and the sound of waves. Come down from the cold ridges and walk towards the ever-expanding shores of a new life.
So, why not begin a journey by getting one's physical life in store. I had a 25 year relationship with tumors in my right breast, benign, huge, annoying tumors. I had the tumor of great size removed on more than one occasion. Each time, the doctors would warn, "it could be cancer", but it never was... not even close. So I just assumed when it grew back, that it was the same old thing.
But my doctor noticed something...that there was an older under layer of mass under the more substantial globe of tumor. New machines can detect finer areas of trouble in one's body and so it happened here. I had it all removed and the mass was instead of the usual grapefruit, it was the size of a baby's head.
On the other breast, there was spot, a small stable spot that had gotten hard. I had it biopsied with a sonogram and it was benign. So, the thought was to take it out, and oh, while we're there, might as well take out the 2 newer ones that had just appeared. Why not?
Except the new one, the one that we did on a whim, almost just because it was there, turned out to be cancerous.
And so now, my planned wonderful, whirlling, crashing down the mountain, rejoining life, great journey has to be, for a while, a cancer journal. Damn.