Outside at this very moment (9:18 pm Saturday), a brutal wind scours our house of cobwebs, loose boards, shingles, anything left in the gravel drive, soda cans, stray butts, last leaves of the green season, an orange flyer proclaiming anything you want, dregs of the living, and dust.

Rain slants through our sorry barriers like a well-timed right hook. The wind makes it hurt.

Ours is an old house, and last week while raising one of the windows, a pane gave way. It didn’t break precisely: There’s no jagged edges, no danger of an incident incision, just empty space where once was clear glass. The cold creeps. We’ve taken fate into our own hands, however, and the cardboard yet survives under layers of flat gray tape.

Such a fix settles the stomach, but not the nerves.

This wounding is the latest of several, including a rash of rot and decrepitude necessitating the removal of our deck, which when sound offered a fine view of Martin Slough, which runs through our property and slices it messily in half like a tumor. Where the deck stood against the house, there remains a scar: the hint of its old form, a bleak black outline in spectral slime and mold that keeps a strange and fading vigil on the vacant wall.

Fuck cancer.

Late in a good life, with family and expectations happily piled around like presents at Christmas, it doesn’t give a shit.

Crossed signals deep in the invisible center of nothing where real magic — and a cruel brand of genetic sorcery — dictates the precise business of living, someone forgot to turn the engine off.

Or press the red button? Hit return. CTRL+ALT+DEL. Clean the lens. Flux the capacitor.

Do whatever it fucking takes to make sure the business of cell growth goes on properly uninterrupted and according to The Plan until someone better paid and in another department heeds the counsel of whatever supervisory committee decides the eventual fate of your mortal coil.

Cancer is no widget. It kills through a hijacked process of cell growth, perverting the normal and necessary maintenance function into your murder weapon. Your body is what kills you — not some disease you caught from sleeping with lemurs, or from swimming in the bay without a condom. Not a virus, or bacteria with a horned helmet and lots of angry friends.

How fucked up is that?

Of course, not everyone dies.

We now repeat these words out loud and to ourselves so often they lose meaning, become a kind of syllabic charm against the gathering dark. We know only that our loved one is facing the battle of their life, against likely even odds, and however it plays out, she will be transformed before it is through.

Suddenly, when she visits every exchange seems hallowed, the words writ large in sad serif as if carved into memory as her last. This though she’s yet to even begin the fight.

You feel guilty for this, and try to stop. It gets worse.

Fuck cancer.

Its victims would make a crowded Christmas dinner at our house. Dad, grandfather, father-in-law, mother-in-law, three uncles, cousins, coworkers, friends, acquaintances, strangers, ancestors, and likely progeny. It shaped our past, distorts our present, and endangers our future.

Like the squall outside tonight, with winds brutal enough to make the wooden bones of our house wail and flail like a grieving child, there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.

Live a healthy life. Make the right choices. Love your people. Ignore the bullshit. Maybe drop some change in the bucket.

Because cancer lives, and people die. My people, and yours. We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars, dedicated our brightest minds to the fight, progressed against various strains, and are every day more capable of predicting who’s in danger and how they can prepare.

So why does it feel so goddamn hopeless? Like this is one problem we may never fully solve?

We landed on the moon, for fuck’s sake. We’re supposed to be the smart ones.

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James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He turns 40 next month and his beard is turning gray. His hippie name is Mossback. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.