Admit One

I'm gonna be taking a break from my blog. Anyone who knows me or has followed this blog somewhat, knows I have cancer. And tomorrow I start the mother of all treatments. A bone marrow transplant. High dose chemo being key. I have pretty good odds, although in the immediate reality this doesn't make the next few months any easier.

Chemo is poison and it will once again lay waste to everything and anything in it's path, to, in the process kill all cancer in my body. Side effects are supposed to be gruesome and from everyone that I've talked to who knows someone or who has gone through the procedure themselves, well it's pretty life changing and difficult to say the least.

Here I go. One last time.

Thank you for reading and stopping by. Hope to come back soon.

Cristian

One Last Weekend

Puberty

Crazy animated short by Alexander Gellner about the best time of our young lives. Not.

One Minute Puberty from bitteschön.tv on Vimeo.

Conversations with Cancer

To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.

To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.

Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of live, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew ow why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inveitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.

So, I believed.

-Lance Armstrong , It's Not About the Bike.

Darren and Natalie plus Rodarte

So last night I went to see Black Swan again to a theater near my house. I loved the movie so much I felt it deserved a second viewing in the theater to appreciate things I might have missed the first time around. So I salute Rodarte for the gorgeous costumes, Natalie Portman for her well deserved Oscar and Darren Aronofsky for being able to consistently create movies that are visceral, moving and unsettling.

Finally a Bike?

Over the years of living in SF I have been uninfected by the bike fever that seems to spread like wildfire, especially among everyone living in the Mission. I have nothing against bikes, just that pretentious, I'm so cool with my fixed gear attitude that is such a turn off. Maybe bikes are in San Francisco what cars are to folks in LA.
Also I have to admit after so many years of being an avid pedestrian, biking around the city, although it would open up whole new worlds, kinda scares me a bit.

My friend Adam did find the perfect bike for me though. Tricycles are tricky to pull of because they can either make you look extremely retarded or just be a little too much. This one is the perfect combination of cool and cute. I want!

Wounded Rhymes

"I'm really depressing. Some people watch comedy to relax. I watch 21 Grams. I can recognize sadness and tragedy really easily because it's been with me forever. "
Lykke Li

Couldn't have put it better myself!

So Lykke Li's new album came out today and it was everything I hoped it would be; haunting, dark, sensual, fun and just all around lovely.



Also I like this video because I like to think that she may be Death. When she finally reaches the guy she's following, even after he's been running from her, Death comes more as a consolation and solace.

Sometimes it feels like it could be that way.