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22.02.13
I found myself downtown on a weekday morning with some unexpected free time and dropped in on the Art Gallery since they went all asshole and decided to prohibit my pass on weekends. There was an Ian Wallace exhibit up on two floors, quite a significant amount of space, exploring his photo-conceptual practice in relation to painting. The images tend to be of the everyday—street scenes, interiors, details—or staged re-creations, placed next to, or on top of painted surfaces. The title cards are full of the art historical mumbo-jumbo that reached its apogee in the 1960s literature around conceptualism, with phrases like "critical examination of the displacement of the self in the context of modernity," and such. It was hard not to roll my eyes in the worst sort of post-post-modern apathy masked as ennui. It was perhaps a statement on the success of his approach at the time that a lot of it looks like bad contemporary student art in which someone photographed whatever was at hand in the dorm, then collaged the photos onto canvas five minutes before class. I did like his At the Crosswalk series, each composed of four monumental panels in which pedestrians are shown about to cross at a (Vancouver) intersection on the outer two and the inner two are flat areas of colour. One piece was grainy black and white photos surrounding a deep red field next to a green so dark I thought it was black. The lack of a contrived composition and the simplicity of each panel allowed for the intrinsic tension between each element to become apparent. Such is my own art historical blathering. While a worthwhile show of an important local artist, I'm filing this one under Not My Thing.
10.02.13
We were in Whistler in mid-December, in the long stretch of the communal evenings. My Dad made a phone call to confirm a detail about a medication relating to an upcoming appointment. That was the first I’d heard of something being amiss. Later, at dinner, he mentioned his PSA levels were elevated and he was having it checked out. In January he went for a biopsy (actually several small simultaneous biopsies) and most came back positive for cancer.
He seemed to take the news fairly easily; this is the side of the family that tends not to worry too much and—perhaps relatedly—looks about 20% younger than they actually are. The odds are staggeringly high, something like 1 in 6 men will get prostate cancer. The two senior members of his company, now retired, both had prostate cancer and have moved past it (as much as you can). It seems to be a pattern in his male-dominated enclave of engineers: get promoted, get prostate cancer, retire. (The secretaries are women. They're really breaking down those gender stereotypes over there.)
There were two main options. One: the more standard surgery: go in, cut out as much as you need to, trying to keep the nerves and other organs intact (reading the description of the procedure was vicariously sphincter-tightening). Two: the newer technique; implant a lot of tiny radioactive-gas-filed metal beads into the prostate. Expose the cancer to an intense, but highly localized and quickly diminishing dose of radiation.
Opinions were sought out. The former co-workers were contacted. The family network kicked into action. Anyone possessing advanced medical degrees or an advanced sense of religious devotion (two separate branches) did their respective legwork. Literature was consulted. Appointments were made. Questions were asked.
Suddenly we had a new topic of conversation. My Father and I are not chatty people and tend to lapse into comfortable silence if left on our own. His usual response to my phoning is to go get my Mother. We've sat through meals out where I've had to resort to asking about financial planning (a topic which, as you well know, makes me simultaneously angry and bored) or, if we're so blessed to be in a space with an exposed ceiling, inquiring as to the purpose of every pipe, duct, and vent in sight. Now I'm hearing about the latest experimental MRI technique that could replace a standard biopsy and accounts of the various arguments and counterarguments over procedures presented by a host of people I don't know.
He's picked the radioactive bead option and a date has been set for the operation next month. Apparently the effects vary widely in severity, so recovery time is difficult to predict. I'm booking the time off, going back to the house, and don't really know what's going to be required. The idea of my parents being dependent, in any sense of the word, is a foreign concept to me; any past incidents have been minor and fleeting. I'm not particularly worried (I take after that side of the family that way), in part because I don't know how to prepare for something I can't comprehend. Perhaps we never know what we're capable of until it is asked of us. I hope I know the answer.
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