Free Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors by Evan Handler Page B

control.  A sense of simple cause and effect.  While all the doctors were emphasizing the randomness of my history, and more important, of my hope for recovery, here was a way of thinking that offered me some influence over the course of events.  Even if I wasn’t sure, it made a certain amount of sense to me to simply
assign
a cause for the illness.  Just pick one that felt emotionally vivid, and work on changing that particular aspect of my life.  At the very least, I would be sending to myself the powerful subliminal message that I was working toward gaining the very greatest potential for healing.  And, although I could never be positive, there was always the possibility that I might actually hit upon a contributing factor, and by acting upon it, substantially enhance my chances.  If the way that I had responded to the stress of the world included cultivating a cancer, then changing the way that I experienced my life should alter the chemistry and make for a less fertile environment.  Indeed, according to Simonton’s thinking, one’s belief systems were simply choices themselves, to be eagerly embraced for as long as they proved beneficial, and then discarded and replaced when they no longer served to enhance the quality of one’s life.  He saw a change of convictions as nothing more than a change of outfits, or hairstyles.  I figured, “Hey, it seems to work for a lot of politicians.”
     
    And so began the propaganda campaign.  With myself as maestro and Jackie as devoted lieutenant, minions of scouts and messengers were dispatched to find and retrieve any and all accounts of long shot victories.  There were no criteria as to the field of reference; these didn’t have to be replicas of my own predicament.  Of course, nothing would have soothed me more than to have had a visit from someone who had conquered precisely what I was facing, but I was starved enough to appreciate much humbler morsels.  Tell me about the “infertile” couple who were celebrating the birth of their first child; read to me about the runner who was told she’d never walk again.  The topic didn’t even have to be related to health in any way.  My life was being transformed by sportscasters who would announce certain defeat for teams losing by margins that had never been surmounted before.  Each time I witnessed one of these premature eulogies shattered by an unexpected comeback, I took it as a personal message that my duty was to provide the world with yet another example, this one more miraculous than any that had come before.
    A lot of the propaganda handed to me was brought in or sent  unsolicited.  Some of these items were wondrous accounts of spontaneous healings that had supposedly occurred.  Occasionally, these would be described in letters, written by the subjects themselves, who happened to be people that I had known or been introduced to in my life.  One woman, an ex-girlfriend of a good friend of mine, wrote me a long letter describing her medical history of cervical cancer.  Soon after her diagnosis, she began a journey of investigation, delving into many different types of spiritual healing and emotional therapies.  She told me, in her letter, about coming to terms with the sexual abuse she had suffered as a child, and how, after one particular day of deep contemplation and cleansing tears, a small mass of tissue had dropped out of her body, and no cancer was ever found again.  I became fascinated with these accounts.  Hearing about them, reading documentation of them, boosted my spirits tremendously.  I remained skeptical about a lot of what I was hearing, but there were also stories that were compelling and hard to dispute.  In the hours that I spent pondering them, fondling them, I would luxuriate in their reassurance, relishing the inspiration they offered.
     
    This sudden shift in my demeanor and outlook took a lot of people who knew me by surprise.  Friends, relatives, anyone who came to