Tag: life

  • I’ll take this as a sign to book my next tattoo.

    Daily writing prompt
    What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?

    I just got my second tattoo Tuesday this week. It’s on my right forearm, where I can see it when I’m writing. That one is the words, “it’s something to do” in my handwriting. I heard the poet Nikki Giovanni say this at the beginning of a talk. The full quote was something along the lines of, “I’m getting old. I don’t mind. It’s something to do.” I was nervous often this past year in the lead up to different procedures, surgeries, biopsies, treatments, etc… and her words often came to mind. They calmed me. She calmed me.

    The artist Bibi Abelle drew this one. She’s local and does single needle tattooing. Her work is beautiful. I’d read in an article that she also had cancer. It’s comforting to be in the presence of someone who you don’t have to explain things to, especially when that person is doing something as intimate as drawing on your body.

    The tattoo didn’t involve a whole lot of planning. I wrote the words on a piece of paper with the pen she had out for me to sign the consent form. I didn’t even pull out my favorite (if you know you know) pens that I had in my purse. I was a little nervous. No. I think actually it was excitement. I’m finally in a place where I’m able to differentiate between the two. And maybe my hand shook a little as I wrote. But part of my promise to myself was just to write it, tattoo it. One and done. Extend myself grace. Whatever came out of my hand on to that piece of paper was going to be tattooed on me. Bibi did give me some options of different sizes and we discussed it. She said, “bigger is always better when it comes to tattoos.” So I went with a slightly bigger size. It seemed apt also as my eyesight is getting worse and it would be easier for me to see it and read it. Part of this whole experience was to accept my imperfections and to let go of trying to make everything perfect. That was achieved.

    As my daughter pointed out when I showed her my new tattoo, “It’s also the answer to the question, ‘why did you get a tattoo?”

    My first tattoo was only about ten or so days before my second and also inspired by Nikki Giovanni, who had the words Thug Life tattooed on her left forearm. I’ve read that she was inspired by Tu-Pac’s tattoo across his abdomen. Mine is the words, “Kung Fu Life” in archaic Chinese. Here are the themes that I pulled from Nikki Giovanni’s tattoo: reclaiming words that contain entire codes, lives, meanings, philosophies, and ways of being but have been weaponized against us and people who look like us.

    It was designed by Candy Wang who’s based in the other Washington (I’m near DC) so I was looking for someone local to do the tattooing. I found Ariyana Suvar who is about thirty minutes from me in Clarksburg, MD. The truth is that in the back of my head, I was also looking for someone who could do a large chest tattoo where my breast used to be. I’m not getting reconstruction. A tattoo just seems a lot more fun? Beautiful? Unique? Meaningful? Collaborative? All of the above. Ariyana and I first video chatted. One of the first things she asked is, “Are you Thai?” I think my jaw dropped because she quickly said, “I saw your last name on your email.” She then explained that she uses Suvar for convenience but that her actual last name is also a longer Thai one. Relatable. Not only are we both negotiating using our long Thai last names in spaces that aren’t generally very open to that sort of thing, but it turns out that one set of her grandparents are also from China and immigrated to Thailand just like mine. In spite of how countries might try to contain and control their borders, migration isn’t that unusual in most parts of the world. But if you can see that something bigger was at work here to place me in her tattoo studio to get my archaic Chinese characters on my arm, then you get it.

    Do you know what it’s like to spend most of your life having to “explain” (ie justify) your family’s history in almost every space you enter? Do you know what it’s like to, on the other extreme, have that same history be ignored in almost every other space you enter?

    At that same appointment, Ariyana started designing my chest piece. Turns out, I’m going to have to put it off until after summer is over because (cancer) reasons. I do not have the words to explain what it means to have someone, an artist, look at your changed and scarred body and see potential.

    This morning, I was thinking about writing a blog post today. It was really bothering me, this question of: what am I going to write today? I’m trying (see “it’s something to do” tattoo experience above) to be in the moment with all things, but perhaps most especially with my writing. I’m trying to shut out all the voices that demand perfection and meaning and beauty and profundity in every word and sentence and paragraph, the voices that tell me that the only way to write is to brainstorm and outline and draft and revise and edit and on and on and on and anything less is not worthy of being seen by anyone else.

    I am working on trust. I am working on trusting that if I show up to my notebook or computer, something will come. The thing that’s needed will be come. It’s in the returning. It’s in the faithfulness. It’s in trusting that I have practiced this, this putting on words on the page over and over.

    And so it was, that I came to my computer. And there was the question of the day. The thing that had already been on my mind.

    And that, friends, is why I’m off to book my next tattoo with Bibi, one in which I’ll show up at her studio at the appointed time and we’ll just see what comes up, what we decide needs to be put on my body in that moment and that time. And that, friends, is Kung Fu Life.

    If you’d like to contribute to these and future tattoos, please click here.

  • Is a port just a port?

    I could feel something happening on my lower abdomen, close to my pelvis. I saw the blue paper a few inches from my face and lights and blurry shapes through the clearish plastic to my right. Nothing else. I heard the voices of the nurses and techs talking to each other and some music. I’m fine I told myself. This is just paper and plastic. I turned my head upward slightly to look at the opening to the paper and plastic just above where I was lying on the operating table. What if I push this whole thing off of me? I thought. Would I be able to? Can I even move my body? There is enough air, I reminded myself. Soon, I’ll have a sedative in my IV and this will all be fine, I thought. But what if I don’t make it that long? What if they’ve forgotten about me? Calming words started to escape from my brain, fleeing alongside logic. I heard a slightly louder voice from the other side of the room.

    “Are you just getting nervous over there?” Joy, the nurse, asked. Is she talking to me? How did she know? Words were still floating somewhere outside of my head and body, flitting about out there with its buddy logic, having abandoned feeling to be on her own inside my body.

    “Are you feeling nervous there?” Joy asked again. Oh! Maybe she is watching a screen. Maybe the screen tells her my heart rate and my respiration too. Maybe Joy is an empath. Maybe both and all of this is true.

    “I’m just feeling a little claustrophobic,” I croak from the operating table, trying to gauge how loud I needed to be in order to be heard through the paper and plastic sterile shield. Hands were quickly enlarging the opening, rolling the paper from above my head to eye level. My hot breath escaped and cooler air touched my face.

    “Something is on my body. I don’t know what it is,” I tried to explain the feeling of lying on a table and not knowing what’s being done to your body. But words were still on the lamb.

    A voice: “We use your body like it’s a table.” I shouldn’t be comforted by this, but somehow I was. It was the straightforwardness of it. This is your body. We are using it. For this purpose. And somehow it was comforting even though no one could see my face nor any of my skin even really (wrapped, as it is, in warmed blankets) save for the six or so square inches of my left chest, below my collar bone where the port has been situated ever since it was installed in a similar operating room at a different hospital eight or so months ago.

    One of the nurses leaned down so that he was eye level to me. “If you need something like that, you can tell us,” and he offered to take my glasses. I was grateful that he phrased his help and care in this way. He didn’t question why I didn’t say something, just offered.

    I thought that maybe I could hear the doctor who I met in the prep area an hour or so before enter the room. I could feel the IV in my left arm being fussed and fiddled with. It wasn’t painful and I knew that Joy was likely getting ready to push the sedative into my body and I could begin to anticipate the not caring. And then, perhaps, the greatest comfort, more so than having the drape pulled back so I could breathe, is when Joy said in her very serious voice, “nobody touches this patient until she is sedated.”

    Joy gets it.

    Another beat passed and I felt the cool liquid enter my vein. Soon, a bitter taste filled the back of my throat.

    “I can taste it,” I announced. Apparently, my words found and opening and returned back into my brain. So did logic.

    “That’s the sign of a good IV,” Joy assured me. “This next one is going to burn a little.” But already I didn’t care. Or maybe I almost wanted the burn, knowing that what would follow would be complete not caring. I barely even noticed when the doctor injected the numbing agent. Still, Joy assured me, “this is the worst part.”

    I thought I heard someone at some point say something like, “I’m sure the chemotherapy is the worst part.” And then clarified, “that’s some nasty stuff they give them.” Or something like that. But maybe I dreamt that part. In a way, I feel proud that I endured something that even a medical professional (and one who is currently cutting into my skin no less) acknowledges as awful.

    I could feel slight tugging at moments. And then someone held the port where I could see it. It was a purple triangular hunk of titanium bobbing a bit at the end of the thin, white plastic tube and covered in droplets of blood. My blood.

    “See?” Joy said. “It’s out.”

    “Can I take it to show my kids?” I asked her, still sedated.

    “No, my dear,” she responded. “This is biohazard.”

    “Yeah. I’ll just draw it for them,” I answer.

    “Just draw a line with a triangle at the end.”

    I thought I could hear bits of conversation. The surgeon and the nurse discussed the scar from when the port was installed. “If she scars, she scars,” the doctor said. I could feel the stitches going in. The right side of my chest, where my breast was removed a few months back, is entirely numb. No nerves there anymore. And I’m finally used to the odd way it feels to touch the skin and have no sensation.

    And like that, the surgeon was done and gone. Ten minutes they told me. Someone finished bandaging me up and then they took the “after” x-ray showing nothing to pair with the “before” x ray of the triangular port in place.

    When the port was first placed, it was uncomfortable and at times even painful. Still, it was better than the alternative of the chemo medicines burning the veins in my arms as they entered my body through an IV. And the discomfort didn’t last forever. At times, I even forgot I had a port, although I never really wanted to touch it, so disconcerting was the feeling of that bump of metal under my skin. I say that at times I would forget it was there, but those moments were brief. I wondered how much my body and mind had adapted to having this in me without me even realizing. After my chemotherapy treatments were complete, I still had to have the port flushed at least every six weeks. Tracking this, scheduling the flushes, getting to the office, all of that took a large amount of mental space. I wondered too, if my body was expending energy to accommodate my port in ways that I wasn’t aware. Would I feel different after having it out?

    It’s been two days now and I don’t know how different I feel. Is my energy flowing more smoothly on that side of my body? Maybe. I’ll give it some time. I’m still healing.

    If you’d like to support my writing, please click here. Thank you.

  • Are you only one?

    For about a year in my twenties, I lived and taught in Karenni Refugee Camp #3 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand near the Burmese border. I lived in a house built by hand of wood and bamboo with a thatched-leaf roof. I loved by house. In the camp, I was often asked, “are you only one?” At first, I did not understand the question. But eventually I realized that “only one” meant “alone” and I discerned that the asked was also usually asking after both my physical state and my emotional one. Are you alone, yes, but also: “do you feel lonely?” During the beginning of my stay there, I did, indeed, live by myself in my two bedroom house. As a result, I was often physically without another person in the same shared space.

    But I very rarely felt lonely.

    This was, in part, due to the nature of the space there. The next closest houses were a good distance away from me, but because the houses were all made of bamboo and wood, I could usually hear my neighbors. We were also on the edge of a jungle, in a fairly remote area and so there was little white noise. No street traffic. No air conditioners. For a few hours on some evenings, there was a generator that would run the lights so that students could study, but even that wasn’t all the time. In the cities of North America where I’d lived prior to that, the ambient noise covered over sounds of life. In the camp, the primary sounds were of life: people talking and chopping wood, roosters crowing and pigs grunting. I could hear the bamboo floors bending as my neighbors walked on them or even shifted in their sleep.

    I think that maybe a reason my students and co-workers often asked if I was “only one” and my that meant “lonely” is that I must have radiated some sort of American-ness that was unfamiliar to them. In this community — as with many around the world I assume — togetherness was central to existence. How strange and off-putting my American pseudo-independence must have been! I cannot remember specifically, but I must have inadvertently pushed away bids at connection directed at me.

    I remember hearing at some point that if you come across an injured or sick baby animal in the wild, you aren’t supposed to touch it. The theory goes that your human scent will mark the animal and frighten away the mother who will then leave the baby to die rather than care for it. I feel as though, having been raised here, I was marked by some sort of American-ness that, in a strange reversal, covered over my human-ness. Fortunately, my students and the rest of the community didn’t leave me to die. I think that they were pretty quickly able to smell through whatever it was that I carried on myself. Or perhaps the well water washed it away. Either way, eventually some students moved into my house. The “only one” questions became less frequent as I was so rarely without companions.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about loneliness and being “only one” lately. I’ve read that America is facing an epidemic of loneliness and that it’s suspected that this is maybe in part due to people more often engaging with their phones rather than connecting with humans in-person. I don’t know about all of that. For me personally, being tethered to my phone makes me feel more lonely. When I am able to step away from my phone, I feel less lonely even when I am physically alone. I suspect that having lived in a community like the one in Karenni Refugee Camp #3 inoculated me against feeling lonely even now all these many years later and in the middle of a loneliness epidemic. Such that even when I’m only one, I’m never really only one.

  • What needs to be written?

    This is a place of personal acceptance. What happened that this place became necessary?

    Many years ago I attended an MFA program in creative nonfiction writing. I won’t go into too many details about the program. I entered in bright-eyed, engaged, and optimistic. I was going to become a WRITER and this program was going to get me there. Suffice it to say, that’s not what happened. It was only years later that I realized just how cut-throat and toxic that whole setting was.

    Here, let me share with you one experience. I wrote and submitted a piece to a workshop. It was a long piece, maybe fifty pages. I was nearing the end of my access to getting feedback on my work and I wanted to get as many eyes on my writing as I could before I would be on my own writing my thesis. The comment that I received from the professor was that it was a disaster, so disorganized that she couldn’t even read it. At the time it didn’t cross my mind that if that was the case, how did she know it was a disaster. My only solace was that there was one other student in the class who received more or less the same feedback. In fact, the professor gave us the feedback simultaneously. We were both women of Asian descent.

    After workshops, we scheduled meetings with our professors to go over the work one-on-one in more detail (or something like that). To pour salt in the wound, this professor wanted to schedule our meetings at her apartment. I think that this was supposed to be some big deal: like the professor was so gracious as to welcome students into her home. But this professor lived across town. And most students lived near the university. After I scheduled the meeting with her at the end of the workshop, she turned to schedule with the other student who had received the same “this was unreadable” comment. The other student said something along the lines of, “if you weren’t able to read it, then there’s nothing to talk about and no need for a meeting.”

    Damn. I wish I had thought enough of myself to do the same. But I didn’t. I think part of me still thought I would show up to the meeting and, I don’t know, she would have changed her mind? Or she would have read it in the meantime and had more, you know, helpful things to say? Needless to say, she didn’t. When I was younger, I was always giving the wrong people second chances.

    I must have trekked across town because I remember sitting in her apartment with a cup of tea which she had offered and I had accepted because I thought that was the right thing to do. She couldn’t find a saucer or small plate and I told her it was fine. And I remember she said, “isn’t the tea bag going to bump against your lips?” And it was such a weird concern to me. Like, if you’re so worried about that, then just find a fucking plate or bowl for me and let me make the decision. And also, “you’re so worried about my lip coming in contact with a fucking tea bag when what you should be thinking about is the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition that I’m paying for you to read my fucking pages and have something helpful to say.”

    But, honestly, I didn’t have those thoughts until much later.

    “Pretty hard to hear feedback like that?” she said to me.

    “Oh no. It’s fine.” I might have low enough self worth that I was willing to cross the entirety of this island city on the off-chance that this person who had already proven herself to be unable to do her job was going to redeem herself, but I wasn’t going to break down in her apartment. Somehow, part of me thought that maybe that’s what she was trying to do? I implicitly (and wrongly) trusted professors and teachers and assumed that there must be some sort of greater plan or lesson behind this whole interaction. There wasn’t.

    This whole incident was one of the most obviously toxic moments of my MFA program, but there were other ones. The cumulative effect of these small jabs is that I really struggled with my writing and, as a result, my self worth. I hate that these individuals had so much say in how I valued myself.

    I’d like to end this post with some sort of redemption arc for myself. But, also, it’s necessary to sit with these moments of pain and toxicity, allow them to move through before jumping into “light and love.” Not everything is linear, which would be boring anyway. Besides, maybe where I want to end this post is actually where I started it.

    Drop a tip here.

  • Untethering from Social Media

    I deleted Facebook years ago and Twitter a few after that. A few weeks ago, I the last of my social media apps: the mostly image-based Instagram and their partner text-based Threads. Social media, the whole of the internet, is, I believe, mostly a gift to the world. But my brain, my whole person was formed before the internet, much less social media, existed. In other words, I’m not equipped for handling it. My mind simply doesn’t move fast enough to keep up and, in attempting to, I was doing damage. It was as if I was lining up on the track next to Florence Griffith Joyner each and every day and expecting myself to keep up. My hamstrings – nay my whole body would have taken a beating if I ever even dreams of going up against Flo Jo but, more importantly, my self-esteem would have been obliterated. And it was. 

    I wasn’t too keen on the idea of deleting social media. The other day, my six-year-old son was staring out of the car window into the massive sky above. “Mom,” he said, “I don’t like to think about the universe.” I told him I get that. He confirmed that it’s the vastness that makes him feel small. It’s dark and lonely out there in the universe. I was so used to having and being on social media that I thought that deleting it would untether me from the earth and send me out there into the universe, alone, cold, and in the dark. 

    When I first came across posts on social media by patients in cancer treatment, it made me feel less alone.  Somehow, in spite of the fact that I wasn’t really looking for it, I’d come across people posting about their experiences with cancer. There was even a woman preparing for her mastectomy at around the same time that I was. I wasn’t alone. 

    Perhaps you can see where this is going. As soon as I clicked on a couple of cancer posts, the algorithm latched on. Soon, a good portion of my feed was cancer. And I couldn’t help myself but read and click. I’d try to close the app and just the c-word alone would catch my eye. I felt an obligation to consume it all. 

    One of the prayers that I had when I was going through treatment was this: that my suffering makes someone else’s a little less. There are certain aspects of Catholicism that are engrained in me and that’s one of them: offer it up. Offer up your suffering so that it has meaning if not for you, then at least for someone else. For the most part, I was thinking about my daughters in those moments, praying that somehow me going through all of these trials would save them from a similar fate. In the early days of my treatment, the genocide in Palestine was dire and so my prayers were also for mothers there. In my moments of pain rooted in my own body attacking my breasts, all mothers and children and their bonds and their bodies and suffering all became mixed together. 

    And some of that responsibility and connection carried over to my fellow cancer patients on social media. Somehow, it was my duty to keep reading all of these threads. But reading, engaging them seemed to created more until everything was cancer content. It’s about as much fun as it sounds. 

    This was all in the midst of me, in-person, going with some regularity to a literal cancer center where I would sit in waiting rooms nearly full with other people who possibly also had cancer. And at one appointment, my doctor mentioned (without violating HIPPA) that he’d been recently seeing more of the type of cancer that I have. Later, as I moved into the recurrence prevention phase, he mentioned that he had a patient in a very similar situation to me. At the very least, it’s possible that the doctor was able to use some of what he learned treating me to better care for the other woman. 

    These are connections that I couldn’t get on social media. 

    And so it was that I had it all wrong. When I finally cut the tether, I didn’t float out into the vast, cold universe. Rather, I floated back down to very real, solid, warm earth. 

    Visit my Ko-fi page to drop a tip in my cup.

  • The Doctrine of Chai

    “Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them, gets its teeth into doctrines and rends them; time reveals the foundation on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.” –James Baldwin from The Fire Next Time

    Most of my mornings begin with making a cup of chai. Actually, it’s more like four cups: two for me and one for each of my two daughters. My son has yet to show any interest in having his own and my husband has never been a warm beverage drinker. (Yes, that includes coffee. Cast aspersions as you will. He’ll never know.)

    Here is where I explain the process of making chai. And perhaps a little bit of the history. But this isn’t really that type of essay. What type of essay is this? Let’s find out. 

    First, I pour about two cups of water into the pot and set it to boil. I pull out my round, lidded chai box packed tightly with smaller also round containers each holding a different component, which varies only based on what has been available at the Asian market (where spices are cheaper than at the “regular” grocery store). Cinnamon sticks, fennel seeds, rose petals, cardamom pods, star anise, candied ginger, whole cloves and, of course, black tea leaves. I’d like to say that I choose what to add based on some sort of higher sense of what my kids and I need that day. Extra rose petals for love. Cinnamon for protection and boundaries. Star anise for good luck (especially if I find a rare nine-pointed one). But the truth is that I mostly do it by rote: scooping small amounts of whatever is available. This is with the exception of fresh ginger, which I will pull from the fridge, slice thin, and toss in the pot if any of us has a cough or cold. This makes me feel like an apothecary. Or a witch. 

    My daughters have helped me on occasion. One such time, my older daughter commented, “This is what I think potion-making is like.” The other daughter recalled when they were younger playing in the yard, they would mix up batches of something that seemed, in their imaginations, to be both nourishing and magical. Our morning chai feels a bit like that with the added benefit of being also drinkable. 

    While the tea and spices steep on medium heat, I can step away from the stove to feed the dog or take my medicine, cut up an orange or make the bed. The next step requires my full concentration. I pour the two cups of oatmilk into the pot and watch the white whirl into the dark brown (“clouds in my cha-ai, clouds in my cha-ai.”). The liquid starts to bubble. It reminds me of the edge of the ocean where the surf breaks and kicks up sand. It’s a similar sandy color and, at least for this moment, similarly unappetizing. But then just when I start to think, “am I really going to drink this?” the roiling becomes suddenly light and almost airy. Just the right amount of foam. This is point when I have to watch carefully as the liquid climbs the sides of the pot. I keep one hand on the handle of the burner and the other holds my measuring cup which I use to scoop and pour the chai, thus aerating it further. I want the drink to bubble up as high and for as long as possible without it spilling over. I have no idea whether this is the goal or whether this is good chai making technique. I’ve found I just kind of enjoy the challenge. 

    On more than one occasion, I have let the pot boil over, not only wasting the precious tea, but creating a sticky mess that needs to be cleaned. Once or twice, this happened when I let myself get called away from the stove during this crucial stage. Shockingly, it’s also happened when I’ve been right in front of the stove, hand on the burner knob, eyes on the pot. How is it possible that my body can be in the right position, my eyes laser focused on the pot, and yet still it boils over? There are times when allowing my mind to wander, perhaps to even dissociate from my body was perhaps something of a gift. But dissociating is not the doctrine of chai. 

    One day, after I’ve been practicing this for years, will I be able to space out? Will I be able to let my mind wander and still be able to keep track of the tea and the pot and the foam and the heat? Do I want that day and moment to arrive? I do not. Dissociating is no longer a gift. Embodiment is. 

    Ritual is routine made holy and some call the product of this particular chai ritual “liquid gold.”

    This winter, I watched by daughter play a lot of basketball. Observe a player take to the free throw line and you will see ritual. It’s not just that the shooter has her own pattern of familiar actions (dribble three times, line up knuckles on the ball, place toes a set distance from the line, breathe), but the crowd also participates. At one of my daughter’s games, every time a player on her team found herself at the line, the cheerleaders would all silently extend their hands and twinkle their fingers in the direction of the shooter. I could almost see the fairy dust flit through the air. When an opposing player was on their line, the cheerleaders were less quiet. “Rebound!” they’d chant while stomping their feet on the stands. These rituals were all familiar to me from my own days in high school, save one thing. The noise the fans used to make when the opposing team was on the line used to be aggressive —  hissing and booing meant to intimidate the shooter. But the “rebound” chant of today’s young people encourages their own team rather than trying to disrupt the opponent. I love this generation. Each time I observe them practicing the power of approaching the world from a place of support rather than tearing down, this Gen Xer is a little more healed. 

     Are you with me here? Do you see the magic in the mundane? Do you see how there is no doctrine of chai? Do you see how the ordinary is not a kingdom? How ritual creates a bubble around us pulling us away from time’s awful teeth?

    At least some of the magic is in the returning, coming back to this pot, this stove at this time each morning. Yes, even coming back to the foul line. Day after day like a miner returning to the depths of the earth, digging a tiny bit each day in search of that seam of gold. Here. This writing is a bit like that too. I’ve returned to this piece day after day first in my little notebook filling up with my sprawling handwriting. Twenty minutes at a time. I set the timer and drew the habit tracker to keep me honest in the moments when my faith in the ritual of return faltered. And here we are because reading is the other side of that. A partnership. 

    Showing up to the stove is not dissimilar from showing up to the pen and paper or keyboard and screen. And it’s not dissimilar from sticking it through to the next paragraph or page. These are acts of devotion. And devotion always transcends doctrine. These commitments to these rituals. We are not kingdoms. Nor are we the foundation. Whenever we choose to return, to focus ourselves to a particular task, to a particular ritual, to a particular moment, we become an ally to time. And together we rend kingdoms. Here. A pause. A slurp of chai. The steam creeps up in front of my screen. I made this pot a few hours ago this morning between my morning stretches and morning writing. I reheated it just now so I could have the creamy comfort here as I venture back down into this particular mineshaft. Liquid gold to fuel my search for that seam of gold somewhere in these folds of my brain. Oh! Here it is. 

    (Drop a tip here. Thanks!)