“I think is it the year 1909. I feel as if I were in a motion picture theater, the long arm of light crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed on the screen… I am anonymous, and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies, it is, as they say, a drug.” — Delmore Schwartz. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

 

You know the experience when you’re watching a movie and something happens on screen — like a continuity screw-up or a bad performance — and suddenly you’re “out of the scene” looking around at the walls and drapes of the theater and seeing the exit lights you hadn’t noticed before? Being told I was going to die was like that. Cancer kicked me into the last row of the theater; in a seat near the exit.The movie I had been watching was my life and I’d lost myself in its’ consistent negative narrative. We all tell ourselves stories of who we are; how we got to be the people we are; what makes us similar to others but also different. Our stories — whether negative or positive; whether a rationalization or motivation for our actions — are how we frame ourselves internally. Our habitual thinking is a condition not unlike being so engrossed watching a movie you lose yourself in the characters and story on the screen. My story wasn’t mentally healthy and I’m certain it played a role in developing my disease. And I have to tell you, the perspective from the back of the theater is different; a point-of-view that became critical to my repair and survival.