I Blame Drew's Cancer

Drew Olanoff's cancer diagnosis has galvanized many people who express themselves through the #iblamedrewscancer hashtag on Twitter. People blame Drew's cancer all day and all night, in time zones all around the globe, for everything that goes wrong, or right--from losing keys to developing a greater appreciation for life and the humanizing effect of candor.

I recently met Leigh Ferreira at the #140conf in NYC. She struck me at that time as a particularly genuine person, and we've been following each other on Twitter since. I've also been following Drew Olanoff, and so I was choked up this tonight when I saw a message from Leigh to Drew in the tweetstream wishing him well.

"I think its the lack of control that hits me the hardest," Drew tweeted.

Ever since I first heard of the #iblamedrewscancer hashtag, it runs through my head all day long.

Iblamedrewscancer for the constantly deepening ability to care about strangers that is moving across the world like a wave at a stadium, stronger in some zones than others.

Iblamedrewscancer for the cold slivers of panic that tingle in my skeleton when I think about the slow, secret slip of the body.

Iblamedrewscancer for the predictable surge of adrenaline this obsessive thought produces, and for the subsequent endorphins that arise when I speed walk for an hour to carve new neural pathways.

Iblamedrewscancer for making me wonder if we've poisoned the environment irrevocably.

Iblamedrewscancer for the constant memory of a long ago Relay for Life lit by candles in paper bags, symbolic of the human struggle to survive that fuels all of our greatest, most heroic tales of perseverance.

As we move away from passive television watching toward participatory media, Iblamedrewscancer for my feeling of gratitude that an era of "reality shows" extrinsically prepared us for the possibility of becoming protagonists in storylines of our own creation.

Iblamedrewscancer for reminding me that these storylines can be zipping along just fine only to be stopped short by unscripted disruptions, at which point a person gets thrust into the public consciousness like a sheriff in a town where some unthinkable crime has been committed. Drew was camera ready.

Iblamedrewscancer for forcing me to tap into places in my distant memory I'd long forgotten, like Clementine and Joel in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The red glow of my grandmother's lava lamp on the wall of her living room in West Virginia was luminous and beautiful as wine shadows on a crisp white cloth thirty years ago, when they told us it was a miracle she had not died yet from cancer.

She is still alive today.

Do you find yourself blaming Drew's cancer? When, and for what?