"All the world's a stage,
and all the men and women are merely players,
They have their exits and their entrances,
and one man in his time plays many parts."
-William Shakesphere
-As You Like It, (1600)

      Considering life, it seems pretty amazing right. A person can become something so big, something that seems so much bigger then life, then anything that could touch, and harm any of the lesser know humans. Yet when someone like Farrah Fawcett, dies of cancer, or Michael Jackson dies of cardiac arrest at the young age of 50, it leaves everyone with a sense that if these people that we place on pedastals can not escape the narrow traps of life, then what hope will there be for everyone else.

       I had watched the previous special about Farrah, and there is only one part I can remember. Farrah had looked into the camera and said, "Today I've got cancer, but on the other hand, I'm alive." There is something about watching a woman who is and icon, go through something so painful and so personal, and knowing that I have that bond, I have that common, horrible and disaterous link to a woman who changed the world.

       Ther first time I had noticed my hair falling out, I was blow drying it. When I turned off the dryer, my hair was falling from the air above me, like snow, or rain. I sat on the bathroom floor and I cried. However the first thing to come to mind was I wonder how Farrah Fawcett had dealt with losing her hair? That is the moment I could stand up, because knowing there was someone to share that agony with me, was in it's own way comforting. Perhaps the most comforting part of the change from the person you were, to the person you become during chemotheraphy is the simple fact, that somewhere in the world, someone understands.

    Now with only days left of my chemotheraphy, and hair that I can pull into a ponytail, or even curl (which I seemed to miss the most) I think about the others everyday. I think about the people who will cry with fear or anger, and the people who can not seem to muster a tear, for the shear fact that if you cry about cancer, then it must really exist.

    Which leaves me with the question I had started with... If the people we place on pedastals can't seem to escape death and his friends, then how are we to be hopefull as well? The answer to this is within ourselves, and the public struggle that these figures wage, on not only their health, family and lives, but the press and other uslessness. I guess what I am getting at is we can't look to the end of the story for these people, we need to look at the begining, and the middle. The fight is what inspires us. In this case it is the battles, not the war that truly matter.

viva la vida...
Sam

(the bike ride is this sunday. feel free to join us, we would love it. meet at the maingate bar and grill across from the fairgrounds at 10AM)