ENTRY 122, October 31, 2015: The test results were delivered to me down the phone as I sat in a car staring out to sea, sulking about the petty dramas of my life.

The nurse was excited: the CT scan revealed there are no "mass lesions" - or tumours - present in the liver.

"No evidence of current or recurrent HCC" could be found, she told me.

It was scarcely believable. I sat stunned, superstitiously reluctant to rejoice, or even share the extraordinary news. The possibility of this being true seemed too fragile to risk it being passed around.

I am relieved, of course, but wary: if I was sceptical back in 2013 when told I would soon be dead, I must remain sceptical now. "Believe nothing" is the best policy. My lack of exuberance strikes me as disappointing, even churlish, but there's good reason for it.

I am still far from well: A separate blood test showed some tumour activity and it's likely the disease is lurking in the shadows, doing press-ups.

Damage has been done and the liver and related organs continue to be assaulted by the underlying pathologies of hepatitis C and cirrhosis which, as the specialist quickly points out, are as potentially lethal as the cancer itself.

So it's more tests: an MRI and down the track a gastroscopy - a camera, sucking device and darning implements fed down into the oesophagus to look for any varices that threaten to start bleeding, and "tying them off".

It's an appalling prospect, and one I hope to avoid, simply through continuing to focus on health.

I am grateful to mainstream medicine: When offered the chance to see a clinical picture of my condition, curiosity overcame squeamishness and I jumped at it.

It seemed like the right time to get some facts; and the more courageous, and prudent, and holistic thing to do.

Plus, the opportunity came from an unexpected but much-loved source, and I trust such coincidences: a door opens and something fresh sweetens the air.

Trust in such happenstance - faith - has equipped me with this fresh information, which is useful and massively encouraging.

The specialist focused on what needs to be done now to slow the progression of the other diseases as they frog-march me towards the grave.

It's a sensible, pragmatic approach but I refuse to accept the inevitability of the prognosis.

"Anything is possible," is my motto for this trip.

Three years' discipline and focus have managed to keep cancer at bay. I'm not going to stop there.

ENTRY 121, October 17, 2015: Call me a wuss but I wouldn't be alone in disliking being punctured during blood tests and I don't much enjoy having iodine fed into my veins while lying inert inside a camera as a flood of warmth spreads through my loins (a disconcerting effect of the chemical).

However, the opportunity has arisen once again (life is full of second chances) to assess what the cancer - indeed, the liver's full jaundiced portfolio of pathologies - is up to, down there in my largest, most cantankerous organ.

It's the first step in a course of action that would eventually target the hepatitis C, the condition which lies at the root of the cancer and contributes to any unwellness I may feel (mainly fatigue and prolonged periods of itchiness).

The notion of clearing my body of this virulent, decades-old virus is exciting - though it's far-fetched, and the process would also throw up a gob of data that I'm not sure I want to be exposed to.

A scan could reveal that the cancer has disappeared; or it could be caught out, brazenly alive, pumped up and on the rampage.

There's little I could do with such news.

Most likely, the disease is present, but semi-dormant, moving lazily, like its host.

But anyway, I don't know if I would commit to a course of even mild chemotherapy for the hepatitis.

It would seem a betrayal of what has sustained me for the three years since diagnosis - a faith in something beyond science, or knowledge, beyond numbers and statistics.

That faith - in a life force, a sustaining spirit, human resilience - was all I was left with following the clinicians' failures. Paradoxically, their sombre, defeated farewell set me free. I had to accept uncertainty - surrender to it - while taking action to increase my chances of survival.

It's not always been easy: uncertainty can bring a certain lassitude with it, almost a paralysis, but my weird little approach has worked so far. Quite how, I don't know - which is my point: not knowing is OK, and even sets up a creative void, rich with potential.

I'm outliving the prognosis, thriving, in good shape for a man my age. There's a certainty in this, in the truth of the body and its vitality -- but more than that, who knows?

I'll look into the medical options that have kindly been offered me, but I'm almost certain that, for now, I'll go on embracing the mystery.

It's expansive, infinite, allowing anything to happen, making room for the miraculous.

ENTRY 120, October 10, 2015: Even the Nats have climbed aboard the bandwagon. Seeing the inevitability of reform, the party advertised this week that it supported the Baird initiatives to legalise medical cannabis.

Employing the fatuous jargon favoured by managers and pollies the world over, the Nats' headline claim is that they are "delivering cannabis research".

Well, good on the "country party" - although Victoria's leaders have stolen their thunder, with plans to make the state the first to cultivate and sell the healing herb.

But the people are way ahead of them all: anyone who wants to can obtain - in our region at least - a high quality, possibly organic, dope product to help with their ailments.

They couldn't wait for bureaucracy - and Big Pharma - to catch up, and they don't need the mealy-mouthed controls that's come with it. They know it's safe, and effective.

The little guy is fighting back elsewhere too, with the establishment of a "buyer's club" to import medicines to treat Hepatitis C - which at present afflicts a quarter of a million Australians (and nearly 200 million worldwide).

The owners of some of these new treatment protocols demand obscenely high prices for their product - and the sick are, well, sick of begging and jumping through hoops to deal with their deteriorating health.

People here now can organise their own medication, and for as little as $1000 have a shot at clearing the virus that often leads to cirrhosis and hepatic cancer - imposing a massive burden on the health system.

There are other positive changes in the wind, with plans to make codeine products available only on prescription. I'm no fan of "prohibition" but I support such a move. Codeine is a narcotic, originally derived from opium, and therefore a drug of abuse and addiction. In combination with paracetamol or ibuprofen it can cause terrible damage to the body: ulcers and liver damage.

But the best news of the week is a post-drugs story.

One evening a crowd of us partied at Byron's Main Beach to celebrate a friend's freedom from active addiction.

Just over a year ago, S fled the ice-ravaged streets of Moree for treatment in the balmy, healing air of the far north coast.

In that time she has blossomed, become the open-faced, smiley, beautiful young woman she was meant to be.

Smart, funny, and with a fine line in eloquent profanity, she will touch other addicts, help save lives. It's a joy to behold, especially relevant in the middle of Mental Health Week.

ENTRY 119, October 3, 2015: A flat rock in the middle of a fast-flowing stream in Carnarvon Gorge proved an ideal spot for prayer and meditation this week.

I took the opportunity to pause and breathe in the pristine goodness while hiking there with the gang.

It's not hard to bend the knee when deep in a vast primeval ecology, our feebleness exposed by time and this panorama of nature's power - and her range, an artist of infinite variety. The whole mind-blowing experience is given mystical texture by following ancient footsteps up to caves containing some of Australia's most immediate and potent art, adding a keenly human connection to the barely credible landscape, while confirming the sense that this is sacred country.

The cave illustrations date back more than 3500 years, though clans from the surrounding highlands have gathered here for much longer, peacefully sharing their respect for the uniqueness of the country, and to develop sites of ritual and ceremony that such expressive geology inspires.

Sandstone walls are covered in red ochre stencils, of hands mainly, including children's. Stylised nets, eggs, tools and weapons give way to walls of engraved vulvas - one gallery is a place for secret women's business; the men did their thing in an amphitheatre further off, a colossal misshapen cylinder in which the floodwaters surged and spun like a washing machine, heaving themselves at a multi-storey but absurdly narrow cleft in the rock, desperate to escape and be on their way.

Only its ruggedness has saved the gorge from industrial depredation - firstly cattle and forestry, now CSG exploration despoiling the land for miles around.

The drive here offers a disturbing picture of mining's infestation across the Darling Downs. But in one wet, cool side canyon ferns grow that have been around for 300 million years; seeing them, the 21st century and its short-sighted and unsustainable cultures seem very far away.

I squat on my chosen rock and tune in as the creek continues to babble, as it has for thousands of millennia. The water carries all before it, its playful harmonies carving out new space in the psyche, refreshing mind and spirit.

It allows me to shed the vestiges of the world and its everyday worries. I can settle in to the landscape, contemplate the wildlife, and the art. It is naive, with a sophisticated spiritual purpose and significance.

The images are numinous, but nourishing in their humanity. Their existence also exposes how much we have lost -- of culture, social unity, reverence for nature, humility.

ENTRY 118, September 26, 2015: School is out, which means the region is teeming with families, busy clusters of them everywhere, noisily having fun. I like seeing such holiday-makers here, especially at the beach. It's a wholesome picture - fathers appear present, engaged; the kids are laughing.

Sure, appearances are meaningless: such plausible bourgeois displays often conceal a hideous reality, which is why the government is chucking $100 million at fighting domestic violence.

But "wars" on anything, from terror to drugs, have proven futile and here, once again, the focus is on a symptom, and an "ambulance" solution. Extra training for police and emergency workers? Untraceable mobile-phones for bash victims? You're already too late.

The new PM's vision isn't inspiring: no one would vote against boosting respect for women, it's like apple pie. But the reform of such deep, intangible attitudes is the work of generations.

The language Turnbull uses to sell the message is revealing: It is "un-Australian" to be abusive; "real men" don't hit women,

These social stereotypes are unhelpful and condescending to both sexes; they belong to a 1950s suburban paradise based on redundant definitions of what it is to be Australian, such as being polite to the little woman.

But our genuine social beliefs are reflected in sport, where the sledge and the biff are so revered. We are encouraged to tolerate, even value, the violence on show, overlook the temper tantrums; adore the King Babies, forgive their overgrown, unleashed loutishness. Like them, we need to grow up.

We are infantile too around alcohol: elevated to a sacramental level, it is worshipped. It has become a must-have component of all social interactions: witness the granddads clutching tinnies to their bosoms at everything from kids' Christmas parties to beach walks. Drunkenness is applauded. Australia is dependent upon the stuff and it has become a cultural poison and is the catalyst for aggro in every arena.

Nevertheless the scenes at the beach inspire hope - and I'm glad visitors are able to enjoy a slice of the holiday haven I call home.

I couldn't avoid them even if I wanted to … they are in my playground, my spiritual gym.

Living with a life-threatening illness, I sometimes feel a ghost walk through me, causing a sudden, cellular weakness. I pause, wondering if I'm about to drop dead.

Then there are the days in limbo, a demoralising inability to plan, a kind of doomy paralysis, taking inventory of my failings.

Action is required to shake off the self-centred fears.

The coastal walk provides an amphitheatre upon the ever-changing sea and sky-scapes - from maelstrom to millpond, towering cumulonimbus mobilising on the horizon or a clear and absurdly blue yonder.

It's also a window into grassroots nature.

This week on the path I stepped over a red-bellied black snake, which moved off unhurriedly, with supreme indifference. Such incidents create perspective, engender goodwill towards all living things - men, women, politicians, tourists, myself.

ENTRY 117, September 12, 2015: The wonderfully laconic Australian expression "no dramas" is an effective motto for a peaceful life.

It is echoed in the Desiderata's "avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit" - a well-worn article of faith in my ragbag of spiritual jingles which, unusually for platitudes, provide a genuine seed of comfort, and a spur to action. Keep clear of the drama queens.

Nevertheless, we packed the NORPA theatre for Bell Shakespeare's production of Hamlet, which is all drama, and the full spittle-flecked variety. Morbidity, hysteria: we beg for more.

The play reeks of madness, death and betrayal: regicide, murder, suicide - the stage is bloody with corpses at the end - but Shakespeare's representation of the first modern man, paralysed by self-doubt and human iniquity, strikes a chord in our godless, anxious minds, confirming his status as visionary and moralist for the ages.

Hamlet becomes resolute, the hours of angst and agonising are followed by a spiritual breakthrough bringing acceptance, including of death. "The readiness is all," he says

The line sang out to me as I sat in the dark, absorbed, moved.

Eighty years ago the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous understood the same thing: one sober member who had been a particularly egregious drunk and dope fiend wrote: "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation - some fact of my life -unacceptable to me … Unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy."

The whole message of AA is acceptance, says Northern Rivers "thought-leader" Margot Cairnes, whom I met last week.

Margot has devised a program based on AA's 12 Steps to train corporate heavy-hitters to think like fully-sensate human beings.

"The New Age movement is all about self-improvement - which leads only to narcissism," she says. "And it's based on getting it right; there is nothing in AA about getting it right. It's all about acceptance.

"I accept you, wherever you are, I accept me … even the horrible things I've done in the past. I choose not to repeat them but I accept them."

That's self-compassion, she says, which is "the most healing thing on the planet".

I accept I have cancer: I have to, because I can't change that fact. But I don't accept the fear and drama that come with it.

I prefer to see my cancer as the flaw in the otherwise "perfect offering" of life, as Leonard Cohen puts it: the crack where the light gets in.

ENTRY 116, September 5, 2015: Spring had its official start this week, though the milder weather began in early August, suddenly bringing a brief and benign winter to an end.

Overnight it became shorts-and-bare feet weather and will remain so for many months. The world flocks to the North Coast to holiday, while we who live here feel as if we're on a permanent vacation.

It's warm, the sea sparkles, food bursts out of the ground, there's water in abundance …

Life is so easy, so privileged, one almost feels guilty, especially as the visuals appear of refugees surging across borders or of small children washed up on Mediterranean beaches. The inequities created by virtue of birthplace become shockingly clear.

Nothing I have had to face nears the horror of the refugees' existence. When I was diagnosed I was able to have surgery within weeks: when the tumours reappeared I enjoyed the attentions of highly-skilled technicians tenderly administering chemo.

Every form of help and support, including financial, is available to me, whenever I need it. I will never be without a roof over my head and food on the table. Nor be the target of some murderous entity (though the blackshirted Border Force has potential).

This is the big picture, putting my petty problems into perspective and feeding gratitude.

My principal dilemma most days is to decide whether to drink coffee or not. A cup of Joe here tastes better than anywhere in the world, and there is the promise of a euphoric rush, making addicts of us all.

As irresistible as the pull of the drug is the anticipation of the imagined setting - a welcoming café, footpath table at which to ruminate, browse the papers, watch the world go by … the flaneur, unhurried, urbane.

My naturopath would be horrified and sometimes a queasiness, or a vague dread, will have me regretting my indulgence.

I swear off it but within a few days, there I am, back at the zinc counter, excessively affable, expectant, eager for a fix.

Luckily, it being Byron Bay, an Ayurvedic chai is never too far away - yet another first-world luxury.

Speaking of which, I want to say thank you to Brisbane restaurant Euro, whose vegan chef didn't let my tedious food restrictions stop him from providing a delightful "fine-dining" experience recently.

Flexibility, generosity, acceptance of difference: our government could learn a lot from him and his accommodating crew.

ENTRY 115, August 29, 2015: On the first day of the balmy Byron Writers Festival I ran into an acquaintance waiting for his caffeine jolt and looking pretty pleased with himself.

Recent radical prostate surgery had been 100% successful, including preserving the full suite of "plumbing" functions, he revealed, a meaningful twinkle in his baby blues.

Something to do with "the nerve-endings", apparently.

Say no more … we expressed our felicitations and left him glowing pinkly in the unseasonable heat - free of cancer, wedding tackle in working order and, not least, gratefully possessed of the drive and desire to make the most of it (not to be taken for granted in blokes our age).

Big respect to him, and his surgeon. He's one of the lucky ones. It's cheering to hear a survivor's stories and encouraging to learn such clinical procedures can be so effective. I know of several men struggling to decide whether to undergo the chop or not, mainly for these reasons. They're afraid of the collateral damage. We don't even want to think about it.

Diminishing libido and sexual function are among the more grievous of "little deaths" ageing doles out. Few wish to hurry it along.

Satisfying, meaningful sex is an important part of staying well. It's a reason to live and it prolongs life, with effects that verge on the mystical - though that may just be the endorphins kicking in.

Making love is good for the immune system, we feel it full-bodily, even if we've never heard of Immunoglobulin A or give a hoot about hormones. It makes us feel better - happier, healthier, more whole; and fun to be around. Irritation, tension, depression disappear in a pheromonal mist.

I keep an eye on my libido, as both a gauge of vitality, and a primary source. It's the gift that keeps on giving, and it needs to be nurtured. It now receives the same focus as the other healthy habits that self-care requires I cultivate. It quickly builds its own momentum.

Yet, despite the sheer pleasure of it, and the unrivalled human connection, it can, as it were, shrink in importance. Half my life I've been too busy, tired or stressed.

Like youth, desire is wasted on the young. With the well running dry, it has become a priority.

But it takes two to tango. I'm far from young, and often tired. For a couple of months, the liver's struggling to cope has caused a plague of itching up both arms and around my neck. It's painful, infuriating, and my crazed nocturnal scratching leaves scar tissue and scabs. Very stressful and very unsexy.

Despite this, The Angel still wants me. Now that's love, and long may it last.

ENTRY 114, August 15, 2015: I'm still smiling an hour after watching a highly entertaining stage show called Country Song, tracing the tough life of the late Aboriginal musician Jimmy Little. There was country & Western, gospel and lashings of rock 'n' roll, a thumbnail sketch of race relations in Australia and plenty of humour.

By the show's end the audience was on its feet clapping along to the rousing finale, resolving to be better, braver people.

The outing was a celebration of the two-year anniversary of the day my expiration was predicted: within months, the good doctor announced, I would be as dead as Polly the Parrot.

Not resting or stunned but definitely deceased, demised, passed on, bereft of life, gone to meet my maker and humming along with the choir invisible.

But I'm still here and, happily, becoming stronger by the day, putting on the k's, rarely tired, cheerful, stimulated by meaningful work.

Today, the cancer is not winning; I don't feel as if I'm dying - or at least no more rapidly than anyone else. I greet the feelgood mornings with open-armed glee and mild amazement, breathe a word of gratitude, then get on with the day. The cancer tags along, in the back seat.

Occasionally I remember that I have a life-threatening illness and the gap between that fact and the reality of my vitality seems absurd, unreal. I am incredulous.

Why me? Why not the many good people I know, friends, who are gravely afflicted, or who have died suddenly? Simpler, kinder, nicer people.

If the "why" of my overstay eludes me, the "how" is also awkward, because if it's not pure luck, it implies something special about me, when all I've done is made some lifestyle changes, and shifted my perspective.

The Angel calls it the magical approach*: but it's not something I can take credit for. I'm fortunate that life has gifted me some useful tools.

Scepticism is part of it, a refusal to be obliterated by the experts' prognosis, to have them - or anyone - chart the arc of my life. Paradoxically, innocence is key too, a willingness to trust in the goodness of life and a confidence that no matter the "outcome", I will cope, perhaps even with with dignity. It's a dumb - blind - faith. I am not afraid.

I've simply turned my face to the light rather than stare into the abyss - and from that decision, gratefully repeated every day, life flows. One day it will stop but until then, I keep calm and keep going.

If a neurotic like me can do it, anyone can.

* She not only named it, she cultivated it, drove it, kept it alive (and me with it). Her light showed the way.

ENTRY 113, August 8, 2015: Chatting to Man Booker-nominee Chigozie Obioma is as close as I will ever get to Nigeria but our conversation, and his beautifully written novel, The Fishermen, have expanded my understanding of that vast country and its inhabitants.

While reading the book I was connected to its characters and through their joys and suffering, felt our common humanity.

Which I suppose is why we read: I was talking to Chigozie at the party to launch the 2015 Byron Bay Writers Festival.

For several years I was happy to volunteer at the festival - experience it obliquely, semi-detached, until I realised I wanted to soak up more of it than a volunteer can manage, and actually bought a ticket.

Before that I had resisted attending it for many years. I would blather about writing being a private, silent act, and that reading was similarly intensely personal, but envy, resentment and self-centredness were the main drivers behind the boycott.

Having gradually become more able to not take the celebration of others' hard work and success as a personal affront, I now revel in the festival, valuing it for the intellectual stimulation but also because of my experience with The Fishermen and its author - the deepening of human sympathy.

We are becoming an increasingly atomised society, with more and more of us living alone.

Some solitary types may be at home improving themselves with a good book, but I suspect that such aloneness does not always equate to greater happiness and personal fulfilment.

There is something comfortable - unchallenged - about living alone and on the night of the launch party I had to make an effort to get out the door to travel there, not because it was cold, as I told myself, but from a mixture of social anxiety and indolence.

Having stirred myself, pulled on my big boy's pants and left the house, I had an experience that I've had a thousand times, but which I seem to forget.

I witnessed Arakwal woman Delta Kay tell the assembled visitors about her "country", places along the coast I am coming to appreciate the more I know them.

I shared ideas and opinions and jokes with a dozen people there, people who seem to like and even love me - a reality that is almost impossible to acknowledge when stuck at home with only my head for company.

Expansion and connection are the great rewards of reading, but nothing beats contact with my fellow humans. The Writers Fest provides both.

ENTRY 112, July 25, 2015: How do the "patriotic" parties manage to keep tabs on themselves? They split and spawn with a People's Front of Judea-level talent for schism.

It may have all begun when the National Socialist Party of Australia broke away from the Australian National Socialist Party in 1967.

Neither is any longer functional but since then we've had the Nationalist Alternative, the Nationalist Party, the Nationalist Democratic Party of Australia, the Nationalist Republican Guard, Rise Up Australia Party, the Australian Defence League and many smaller groups, with names like Volksfront and Women for Aryan Unity.

Judging by recent visuals of the clenched-fist lobbying employed by their finest swastika-emblazoned specimens, Reclaim Australia has survived its internecine ructions, and UPF is alive and, er, kicking too.

So kudos to Jimmy Barnes for going all Harry Enfield on them: "Oi! Nazis, no! I do not support you and I don't want you to play my music at your stupid rallies," or words to the effect.

The Australia Barnes loves is "open and giving ... a place that embraces all sorts of different people", is strengthened by diversity.

Compare and contrast slithery Bill Shorten, throwing his meagre weight behind boat turn-backs.

Where's the vision, where the compassion and drive to devise something better than the cynicism of current "on-sea operations" and the inhumanity of the off-shore camps?

Doesn't he feel a powerful urge to pull the plaster of secrecy off this festering wound and declare that what is going on is obscene and murderous, and make reform a priority?

Apparently not. But I can't allow disappointment and outrage to take root and bloom - as it has in some friends, who end up permanently depressed. That's just not healthy. Having a life-threatening illness means a little denial, some distraction, is permissible: nature, art - music - provide some of the necessary solace.

Barnes has never been my cup of tea as a muso. I prefer the tragic poetic types and their love-lorn, too-sensitive-to-live stuff: a favourite album is called Ashes and Dust. I'm a bit of a wallower, and it's harmless, even cathartic.

But what works musically can hang heavy on the page. I'm stuck with a book of short stories peopled by bitter, selfish, lazy characters who treat each other with indifference.

Aside from the comfort provided by reading about others behaving as badly or worse than oneself, it's dispiriting. I need heroes: models of tolerance and generosity, people with big hearts and beliefs. Courage, not resignation or fear-filled aggression. Onya Barnesy.

ENTRY 111, July 18, 2015: Let's hope the chill of the "polar vortex" will be blown away by the benign blizzard of festivals heading our way.

Next weekend, the musical spectacular Splendour in the Grass will bring thousands of young people into the Northern Rivers to party to the sounds of Blur, Florence and the Machine and Ryan Adams. Despite a certain grandfatherly demeanour, I aim to be there among them, soaking up the music along with the roar of the greasepaint and smell of the crowd.

I'll be up front and flailing along to Florence and her passionate anthems. She may be too melodramatic to be considered cool by many but she stirs my blood and one song, Heartlines, is freighted with nostalgia for voluptuous mid-week afternoons.

A week later, another iconic event rolls round. The Byron Bay Writers Festival is more sedate, more cerebral - although this year the presence of the original street-fighting man, Tariq Ali, will no doubt send a quiver through other parts of his bien pensant audience.

But my anticipation of these stimulating, spirited events has been overshadowed by the passing of one of my tribe.

This is a loose conglomeration of seekers, making efforts day-by-day to extract themselves from the mire of addiction, facing up to their behaviour, past and present, making amends, getting healthy and growing into productive members of society, while flying in the face of Aussie culture's brainless acceptance - its promotion - of excess and intoxication.

Life without a little pick-me-up can be demanding. If their luck falters - illness, broken bones, job losses - recovering addicts can wobble. The mental/spiritual/emotional illness gains the upper hand. Resentment and self-pity conspire with a life-long pessimism. Chuck in some painkillers to muddy the waters …

In those circumstances, it's not always possible to lift up our eyes and appreciate the big picture: that we have been saved from hell, are loved and needed, are blessed by nature, with cultural distractions on all sides. Above all, that we enjoy good health and can even live with cancer.

Addiction is fatal: Tom died alone, a funny, friendly man with a beautiful partner and young son.

Those who stay "clean" are pulled into busy lives, but without a buffer, reality becomes more shocking. There's no off-switch.

At some point, in everything I've done this week - even something as mundane as mowing the lawns - I've thought: "Tom won't ever be able to do this ..."

And life, even in its most trivial moments, seems very precious.

ENTRY 110, July 11, 2015: A cheerful, noisy fellow I know slightly stopped me on the Lighthouse track the other day to tell me he had been diagnosed with cancer - of the colon, or bowel, from what I could gather.

He was as bright as ever but spoke about his disgruntlement at the new age ethos - common to the Northern Rivers - that permeated some of his friends' responses to the news.

One tendency, he said, was to attribute the disease to some out-of-balance emotional condition - such as liver cancer having its genesis in anger. A knowing, and slightly pious nodding of the head often accompanies such diagnoses, with their moralistic sub-text.

Alternatively, equally well-meaning types immediately pronounce that they know a miracle cure: the gonads of a Burmese civet, dried on the banks of the Irawaddy, powdered by dung beetles and ingested nasally thrice daily for 11 days will kill cancer cells completely, they rant. Or, "our niece cured herself of cancer through meditation".

My mate was not amused, and I too find much conversation about my condition tiresome. But I would far rather people say something than quietly move off. No matter if it's clumsy, I welcome the attempt to connect -with its freshness and potential for surprise. The most unlikely people offer their support.

Others move off permanently, for their own reasons, and I have withdrawn too, because some people can be tiring and socialising quite stressful … and those states aren't recommended in recovery.

So I have become something of a recluse - except that a few long-standing friendships are becoming richer, and new ones have arisen - affectionate, respectful, just like that.

Good people have reached out, like the piano teacher in Broadwater who offered me a term of lessons for free, sharing the "soul vaccine" music provides and "to fulfil an unmet yearning in your life".

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Steve's music helps premature babies breathe and stroke or dementia victims stir with life. He teaches kids with autism and other disabilities - and a woman who says it helps her handle chemo.

He will also teach me meditation using personal mantra notes and relevant keys.

It's new age, but it has the ring of truth to it: music, the voice, expression through song, is self-evidently therapeutic. Hum, or sing, or even whistle and you feel better.

It's exciting, encouraging the healing phonons to flow, and will be fun as well.

ENTRY 109, July 4, 2015: It's a distressing time for surfers after a great white shark tore a body-boarder's legs to pieces at a Ballina beach this week.

The man survived, but was critically ill at the time of writing.

Such attacks are disturbing for all of us who are devoted to the sea: they vividly refresh our knowledge that local waters contain at least one massive predatory animal, perhaps lurking nearby, in its element, invisible and lethally fast, and with a tendency to savage humans, often fatally.

I try - and fail - to not think about it when I'm dangling out there, hyper aware of the wounded animal signals my thrashing limbs and flippers are giving off, an easy lunch option, semi-adrenalised for fight or flight.

I know the vulnerability of the small board and share an empathic link with the latest victim; I wish him a full recovery.

Such incidents are traumatic for everyone closely involved and I have a lot of respect for the people who have to deal with them - lifesavers, police, the paramedics who treated the body-boarder on the beach.

Respect too to all the recent victims' fellow surfers, who stare down the risk of themselves becoming the next on the block to rescue their mates from the roiling, blood-thickened sea.

It's such a brave act, and respectful of the dignity - the decorum - of human life; and illustrative of our essential decency.

The human spirit triumphs again when such people return to the surf, honouring those attacked and refusing to be dictated to by fear - although some are too traumatised to go back into the water.

I learned of the incident after I had emerged from a long swim, which felt slightly eerie. But I won't let it keep me out of the water. The risk of being attacked is real but tiny, and anyway, there's no ocean activity - from infant paddling to big wave surfing - that doesn't offer a frisson of danger, a thrill.

It's a stepping out of the comfort zone, taking a chance.

No matter how at ease one feels in the sea, it is still an alien element: cold, powerful, ever changing and treacherous. It's a delicious challenge - and to take it on is a hugely life-affirming act, second only to making love in boosting physical vitality and spiritual glee.

Immersed in it, I sense not the proximity of a great white, but of a greater power still.

ENTRY 108, June 27, 2015: Bouncing around on a mini-trampoline with four young children in my nephew's back yard in Auckland was one of many highlights of my brief holiday in New Zealand.

It was as life-affirming as a splurge in the ocean, with the added bonus of joyful, uninhibited contact with the youngest members of my family. Shyness was laughed away during the raucous (and marginally dangerous) activity. From then on they clung to me, and I was reluctant to leave them, feeling greatly moved by the loving connection that had been created.

My grand-nephews' and nieces' families are a multicultural mob but there is a blood tie that I have not always valued, and it made our moments together all the more meaningful. Family has been a troubled concept for me: in its extended form, I see it as the most effective basis for a society, but my personal nuclear unit was deeply flawed and damaging to each of its unhappy satellites.

I've been unable to establish one as an adult, tending to attach myself to other more successful, though often equally wacko, groupings. A week with the Angel's fairly ancient Dad - lucid, amusing, affable - established another warm familial link. Over a few sleepy days, we came to love each other.

There were highlights aside from family (and the comfortable, lengthy gas-bagging with mates of 50 years), of course.

Bush walks and late-night rambles around Wellington, my hometown, bounding down zig-zagging steps into the city; saunters along the wharves; an emotional visit to the Te Papa museum. Here is my turangawaewae, the place where my feet feel most firmly grounded.

But a birthday celebration with my son in Melbourne was the icing on the cake: I love him - imperfectly - and enjoy watching him evolve. He has provided, at times, my reason to be. And perhaps still is: flying home I realised I want to know him at 30, and that I should start planning my life as if that will occur - instead of some of my recent "endgame" maunderings about wills and funeral requirements.

It was a revelation, decisive and liberating.

After two weeks of cold, I was glad to drop down through lilac skies into Coolangatta, and emerge into the mild evening. I was in the ocean - and my vegie patch - the next day, firmly grounded here too.

But while away, giving attention to others, I felt normal. Cancer was rarely mentioned. I've returned energised, with a fresh perspective. Now I need to work. I want to be able to visit those adorable little rellies again soon.

ENTRY 107, June 6, 2015: Just before he succumbed to lung cancer, the fiercely expressive saxophonist David Ades urged his friends to "be bold" - to live and create fearlessly.

He was typically bold in his response to the disease: defiant, refusing to lie down. He travelled to Germany for treatment - twice - then flew to New York to record a final album of exuberant free-form jazz.

But I'm afraid that cancer has made me rather timid - exhibiting the sort of fussy self-protectiveness that often accompanies old age.

It's as if I'm trapped in the Northern Rivers bubble, a healthy comfort zone, with life reduced to maintaining itself, survival the primary purpose.

It's a bit limiting, though. I've already given away most work, with its inevitable stresses, but overseas travel is especially daunting.

Firstly, there's the flying. I no longer have the stomach for the long haul, lack the thick skin required to handle the blare of airports, the milling crowds, each individual intent on their own wants and needs, the human proximity and effluvia of the aeroplane.

Most significantly, what would I eat overseas? Food is my main source of "medicine". Am I forever restricted to this region, where I know where to source the organic lemon, ginger and turmeric for my eye-opening morning cuppa?

This garden of Eden, where the bread is sourdough and quinoa and kale and organic avocadoes and beetroot are all around? How can I possibly cope without my Celtic sea salt, hand-reared tofu, brown-rice pasta?

Can I survive, away from here, where everything is fresh - and familiar?

My cancer seems to be very responsive. I follow a few simple routines and I remain well. If I get lazy with the food, work (or play) too hard, become run down, my arms flare up with a maddening itch as the liver fails to dispose of its bile salts via the usual channels and they reflux into the blood.

I want to avoid that: but where does self-nurture start to shrink the enjoyment of a "normal" life? Without work and travel, what is the point of me? To stay alive?

Maybe it's to learn to be a human being, rather than a human doing. To find peace in stillness and simplicity. To go "inside" rather than seek outside distractions.

Having said that, I'm off to NZ with the Angel next week. I'm sure they'll have steel-cut oats there, and I may even enjoy myself.

ENTRY 106, May 30, 2015: Winter is coming: at least that is what is regularly intoned by one of the grim-faced characters in Game of Thrones, as if this motto of House Stark had some bottomless significance to it, instead of just conveying in a poetic the need to Be Prepared, like some battle-scarred Boy Scout.

But I won't see it arrive. In the middle of a recent episode I was suddenly overcome by disgust and switched the thing off. It was self-disgust as much as anything - an aesthetic response, a queasy shame that I should be seduced by the series' stunning, and expensive, design - the landscapes, architectures, mise en scene -and its brutal dramatics, and not admit that it's simply rubbish and a waste of my time.

It was more than just my usual reservations about fantasy, where the labyrinthine plotlines elude me and the characters' (and creatures') names prove impossible to retain. In GoT, so few of them elicit any sympathy: they're one-dimensional, already frozen.

But a deeper reason for my switching off is that there's a limit to the horror I want to let in these days. I once made myself watch a beheading by the al-Qaeda psychopath al-Zarqawi because it was my "duty", as a journo and, um, a fully paid-up adult. It still haunts me, as does every image of cruelty and violence I have seen, unable to look away.

I don't need any more such pictures in my 4am head.

The decision came before Ramsay Bolton's rape of his new wife Sansa Stark, and was not a reaction to it, as if this time GoT had gone too far. It has always gone too far and I have always experienced some nausea watching it: the sadism, the weird sex and torture porn, the unrelenting vileness of the protagonists.

It was simply an "enough" moment: there's already an abundance of horror in the world. If I want to watcha man being burned alive I'll switch on the news and catch up with ISIS's latest refinement.

But I'm starting to ration the news, too, and when it comes to entertainment I'm opting increasingly for the light and fluffy (alt-comedy TV series) or the more solemn, but seriously good, such as Clive James's recent collection of poems, Sentenced to Life, and ravishing new music by Sufjan Stevens, Phosphorescent, War Against Drugs.

Their stories may be sad but they offer something beautiful to the world, and God knows, the world needs more of that.

ENTRY 105, May 23, 2015: "I believe in miracles," sang Errol Brown, the much-loved Hot Chocolate frontman who died recently of liver cancer - and I do too.

I have to, otherwise the negative power of this disease would overwhelm me.

Predictably, fear and despair came trundling out during my recent bout with whatever it was, and took some shifting.

Reason alone can't return me to a place of serene acceptance, though reasonable action helps.

I returned my little stash of high-end opioids to the prescribing chemist. I don't like having them around and I had a disagreeable time with them during the illness.

They took away the worst of the head pain - a great relief - but they also set my mind swarming with a phantasmagoria of words and images and sounds and voices, competing, overlapping, few of them friendly.

I backed off as soon as possible, shorn of any fond imaginings of a pain-free exit lying pillowed in the arms of Morpheus. But the drugs teamed up with the ill health to leave a residue, a stain on my psyche.

It's passing, as I go "back to basics" in the campaign against cancer, with nutrition, rest, stepping aside from stress. As soon as I was well enough I took action: modest ocean swims, walks, exercise and meditation.

As the body repairs, my mind follows, but the necessary attitude adjustment, from "I'm dying" to "I'm alive", takes time, and needs me to identify what lies underneath - fear and fatigue; neither of them to be trusted.

Trust has keep me going so far. Trust in miracles and in my job maintaining the ground from which trust can spring forth: refreshing the commitment to health, but also embracing fellowship, love, laughter … fun.

I bring the situation into the now, into true perspective: yes it was rough but it wasn't that bad; it was endurable; I am alive.

I remember gratitude - the emphasis on what I have, rather than moaning about what I've lost. Or may have lost (I decide to give time the chance to heal, to restore).

I encourage the faith to come back - faith in the reality of my physical robustness; I feel well again. And faith in the fact that anything can happen. Miracles do occur. I'm not doomed, as my mind would have it. Death isn't knocking on my door. I have a future.

There's too much life still going on to be fretting about how it all ends.

Entry 104, May 16, 2015: I have reached an age - or state - when those who are speaking to me lean in a little closer, holding my gaze. They pause at the end of sentences, to check that their meaning has been absorbed. If necessary they repeat themselves more slowly. I can almost feel the reassuring pat on the knee.

Often it is the preserve of the medical profession, but this week's encounters with doctors, nurses, radiologists was almost free of it, as they responded to my muddled efforts to communicate a rather complicated chain of events, and an attack of something multi-faceted and strange.

Quite simply, I thought that the cancer may have spread from the liver into the brain, where it was torturing me with frequent, unpredictable gushes of excruciating pain.

Eventually, unable to stand it any more, I took myself down to Byron hospital, where the service was exemplary, starting with a shot in the arm.

The condition is on-going: heavy meds dealt with the pain in the short term, and it is much reduced, though still lurking about, like a pedo at a swimming carnival.

But two brain scans have revealed nothing sinister - it may have been a virus after all - and, though bruised and wary, I imagine myself to be in the recovery phase.

I hope I bounce back completely: I will be saddened if I no longer have the strength to swim, go for bike rides. I'm sure I will, but it will be as a wiser man. I realise I can't "go hard" at anything anymore.

Wisdom. It's acquired painfully.

There are other bonuses in this latest skirmish.

The Angel and I have never really looked into the abyss. We may go there alone - I know I do - but not together. We're frightened it will give the cancer extra power.

This time we did, acknowledging we could be seeing a catastrophic shift in the game.

We talked about my going, admitting an early death as a real possibility. It didn't give it any more power, or make it more likely, as we had feared. Quite the opposite: it's the truth and accepting that empowers us, sets us free.

It felt good; something of a relief.

We haven't given up; far from it. And there is no valid reason to do so.

By talking about the unthinkable, we have achieved a new level of intimacy, and it adds sweetness - poignancy - to our strength.

It's painful, but so is silence.

Entry 103, May 9, 2015: Fear paid a rare visit this week, sticking its ugly mug through a window in my psyche, as brazen and unwelcome as ever, but egged on by its two thuggish cronies, pain and exhaustion.

The physical misery included nausea and jabs in the liver but was otherwise diffuse, though overwhelming enough to set me thinking that it spelt the beginning of the downhill slide: I pictured deterioration, humiliating eructations and revolting discharges as the liver exploded, weeks of agony, death.

It could play out like that … a tactful friend informed me early on how excruciating this cancer can be.

But as time passed, the symptoms began to be more specific: pounding headache, rings of pain behind the eyes, restricted breathing - all indicating some kind of viral infection.

I was the most unwell I've been in years (excluding the month-long chemo aftermaths), soaking seven T-shirts in sweat one night and having to strip the sodden bed linen in the wee small hours, shaking and shivering with cold, pain swarming all over my head.

None of this mattered though - at least for the first night. In fact, it was to be celebrated: this wasn't cancer upping the ante but an everyday illness, afflicting hundreds of people in the region. I was normal! Hurting, weak and wretched, but still stumbling along and in no real danger.

There was even a certain grisly pleasure in it: being forced to self nurture, reduced to the animal basics of warm bedding, food and rest, survival becomes the simple priority.

No doubt I picked up the bug from the many carelessly snotty people it's impossible to avoid, but in a way it was my own damn fault.

Feeling healthy, I recently joined a gym (places where the aura of unhappiness is like an infection in itself), and hooked up again with Ryan, the excellent PT who helped get me strong for surgery in 2012.

Motivated entirely by vanity and wanting instant results, I ignored his advice to take it slowly and one day pushed myself too hard. Some days I did yoga too - Yin yoga, the "feminine" form, in which nothing is strained, you just sink into the posture. Well, I hurt my back.

Then there are the attempts to surf - really just exhausting myself thrashing breathlessly about in the white water, cursing and struggling. I even went down for a swim in the middle of it, thinking it would kill or cure. It did neither but the following two nights were the worst in living memory.

This relentless pushing of the body isn't healthy: it's more like punishing it for having cancer, and it made me vulnerable.

More than once my father, seeing me the morning after the night before, said to me 'when will you ever learn?' Soon Dad, I hope.

Entry 102, May 2, 2015: As the roaring rain and sturm und drang of these past days abates, it becomes possible once more to listen to music.

But even when the showers are more gentle, I usually choose the rain. Its sound offers a sensual embrace at a cellular level, an atavistic pleasure deeper than music - at least to the inhabitant of a cosy bed.

It sharpens gratitude for warmth and safety - the satisfaction of the burrow - sweetened by an appreciation of its life-giving qualities, the awareness that on the North Coast we are blessed with plentiful nourishment.

The garden is lush and green once more, the earth softened; very soon it will be overflowing with richly nutritious and tasty vegetables.

Life here is good, and not only because of the natural bounty and beauty. The region is also culturally rich, with a vibrant Bundjalung community and more arts festivals than you can shake a baton at.

Within weeks of each other we've enjoyed film festivals from France, Spain and Germany: the world comes to us with its music, drama, literature.

It makes travel redundant, and anyway I'm reluctant to expose myself to the charms of aeroplanes, airports, the stink and stress of cities and the teeming herd.

I love the life I have here, and love the fact that it continues - against the odds, quite unbelievably.

Living with cancer requires a constant adjustment to go on without expectation, without plans, without even the illusion of hope (while avoiding sliding into purposelessness). But waking every morning feeling healthy and strong - intact! - never fails to delight and surprise. I don't take life for granted - and soak up its small moments as well as the gob-smacking miracle and mystery of it.

However, it has been (another) week of death, and as Donne wrote, "any man's death diminishes me".

The execution of the rehabilitated heroin traffickers in Indonesia has provoked widespread high emotion - even hysteria - and I too deplore the cruelty and waste of it, the obscenity of extinguishing life.

But in Western Australia last year a young Aboriginal woman with outstanding traffic fines died after several days of agony in a jail cell as police ignored her calls for help: in 2008, also in WA, an elder died a "ghastly death" in the back of a paddy wagon from heat and dehydration, as oblivious guards ferried him from one lock-up to another. With third degree burns from the vehicle's hot metal floor, the man essentially "cooked to death", the coroner found.

These are also Australians, effectively innocent, killed by a system founded on contempt, as loathsome as any foreign power's judicial antics. Their stories are profoundly disturbing and I'll save my tears and outrage for them.

Entry 101, April 25, 2015: Lest we forget? Only an earthworm could have missed the calls to remember that today is Anzac Day, given the welter of publicity surrounding Gallipoli and the birth of the Anzac legend.

I will remember them: my grandfather served in WWI, my father spent most of 1939-45 fighting on foreign soil and my maternal uncle was killed at Monte Cassino aged 22, making April 25 and many other days of my childhood dank with grief and bitterness.

My grandmothers life was forever disfigured by that event, so I won't forget the suffering caused by war.

But there's plenty of forgetting going on, amid the vulgar rush to be seen to be grateful for the "sacrifice", otherwise, why would we keep doing it?

Fifty years and four days after the first Gallipoli landing, Menzies dispatched troops to Vietnam, where more than 500 would join the 8000 plus who died in the Dardanelles campaign. Another half century later, tough-talking Tony sends 330 servicemen to Iraq, to attempt to train up an army that even its American handlers say has gone to the pack since 2009.

The donkeys are still in charge, blithely shipping young people off to die in situations no one has any real clue about.

Least of all defence minister Kevin Andrews. Always a ridiculous figure, with his fake hair and Catholic marriage counselling, Andrews confirmed his place among the cabinet heroes when he couldn't name the leader of ISIS during a television interview, using the weasel formula that it was an "operational matter". As with his mate George Brands on metadata, he simply didn't know.

Peanut Shorten made the predictable populist play, adding his share of patriotic platitudes to the troop send-off but just establishing himself as Mr Ineffectual.

The soldiers will not see combat, but if any are killed then, yes PM, "shit happens, as you so empathetically observed. But there are many other ways to be damaged in war, the wounds invisible.

The 2003 Iraq invasion was based on a gross lie, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. The carnage in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon is a direct result of it.

Like Gallipoli, it was a costly failure. The reality is these military adventures were (are) entirely pointless.

To say that our troops in Iraq are working for peace and will make Australia (and NZ) safer is another blatant lie, a cultivated delusion, and it angers me that they should be sent window-dressed in the Anzac colours, and worse, that the same donkeys use it to strip away the freedoms our troops supposedly died for.

We will remember them: but I also remember that our "leaders" are supposed to have compassion for their own people, not serve as gleeful catamites presenting their rear ends to rapacious global corporatism while pretending that the killing and dying are done to defend our way of life.

Entry 100, March 21, 2015: This is my 100th Topic of Cancer column and, with a few AWOL weeks added in, marks two years since I started to chronicle my dance with the disease.

It would be a cause for celebration even if the 24 months had not been the most challenging, rewarding and, yes, happy, of my life.

But an event this week gave me cause for even greater celebration - witnessing a performance of Aboriginal primary school students using story, song and dance to express their identity and pride in their culture.

I'll get back to these impressively literate and confident kids, but first I need to observe the passing of a dear friend.

Virginia lived with breast cancer for seven years, seeking solutions far and wide after medicine ran out of options.

She suffered more than I can imagine, but whenever we met she was cheerful, funny, feisty. Assailed on all sides by the disease and its fifth columnists, she continued to defy them, determined to live as fully as she was able - a loving mother, wife and friend, and a great example to me.

She died last week … not lingeringly from cancer but instantly, shockingly, in a car crash on a road near Lismore.

If there's a gift in such an outrageous occurrence, it's that Virginia's pain has ended, although devoted partner Nick is devastated by the loss, and by the snatching away of the chance of sharing, of intimate conversation, before she went.

He is pouring his grief into preparing a celebration of her life - wear bright colours, he says. There will be music, children, and probably her dogs. She would have wanted it this way, to be joyful in the face of capricious fate.We will celebrate and will go on, despite heavy hearts, strengthened by having known her.

She would have loved the "deadly" Cabbage Tree Island Public School kids and their artfully expressed demands for recognition, for equality in a culture in which they are routinely ignored, and even despised.

She would have seen the hope here - in the songs in language the students write and perform with such poise, in their care for each other in the playground, and in the devotion of the staff.

Principal Dyonne Anderson's "stronger, smarter" approach has created a healthy school. Her students are learning to treat the canker of racism eating away at the nation's heart, and that's something to rejoice in.

Entry 99, March 14, 2015: The cat is back. Ariel, black and white and very pretty, was rescued by a journalist from a drain outside the Goonellabah office of The Northern Star about six years ago.

Sight unseen, I put my hand up to look after her "until a permanent home could be found".

When the editor delivered her to our place later that night, she padded in and stretched out on her back before us, trusting and sensuous. She had found a home.

It turned out that those initial blandishments belied her true nature, which was nervous, capricious in her trust: her most common expression being an ears-pinned-back, wide-eyed mask of alarm.

I didn't want a cat because of their depredations upon wildlife but Ariel's nervous nature means she scares herself chasing a moth, any initial skirmish being aborted forthwith, in favour of a complacent stare at the offending insect.

It seemed like a good idea for the boy to have a creature to look after and love - and he did. She has been a great asset and even now, quite aged, she is encouraging me to slow down, stop and connect with another being, at once so in tune with us, yet so immutably alien.

A gregarious and fickle animal, Ariel has for some months chosen to live with my excellent neighbour June, who I imagine is more demonstrative towards her. With June on holiday, the shameless minx strolls back in, no apology.

Now the teenager's gone, Ariels' return is welcome, and synchronous … I have company.

There's been more synchronicity and cause for celebration in the film festival work I've been banging on about.

Death emerged as something of a theme of the festival, especially in two standout works, Dying to Know, about Timothy Leary and the guru Ram Dass, and Zen and the Art of Dying, whose makers studied the work of local life-and-death celebrant Zenith Virago.

Further, BBFF patron, Paul Cox, presented his new film, Force of Destiny, which is a dramatized account of his experience of having liver cancer and a transplant five years ago.

There was nothing morbid about these films: I found them uplifting, liberating in their critique of the taboos around dying, in their focus on acceptance and celebration.

"The moment of death is when the deepest secrets of the universe are revealed," says Ram Dass in the film.

I can get that. Enraptured already at this brilliant documentary, I resolved never to fear death again. Time will tell.

Entry 98, March 7, 2015: The feverish activity leading up to the Byron film festival came to its climax with the Red Carpet Opening Gala last night, the culmination of months of intense work for the main organisers, and weeks of it for me. It was a huge success, and personally exhilarating.

Not long ago my health guru advised me to shut the door, turn off the phone and eliminate all stress, as far as possible.

So I immediately took on a role that required a wider skill set than I possess, called for constant interface with innumerable strangers, long hours and the juggling of infinite possibilities and demands over which I had little control.

Stressful? Not many, as they say in East London.

But I succumb readily to the intoxicating pleasures of stress, and even believe there are positive - healthy! - aspects to it. Pressure makes procrastination untenable, for a start: things have to get done, people are waiting.

And new skills are needed. I can no longer ignore the world of SEOs and hashtags.

There's teamwork here too, and a place - a function - within a community that is working, ant-like, towards a common goal. There's enormous satisfaction to be had from this and, despite occasional bouts of panic, previously untapped sources of creative energy discovered.

It is also distracting - the true drug for workaholics the world over - and I'm glad to have had it. It has almost been enough to anaesthetise me against the teenager's absence.

Almost. Because sometimes when the sky darkens and the day's busy-binge suddenly runs out of juice, I've found myself standing there, alone, casting about me for a meaningful purpose.

At such times the memory of cancer oozes up - the death imaginings return, and with them the minor hysterics, the self-centred melodramas.

Despite recent blatherings about prayer and meditation and gratitude, there's nothing spiritual about these moments. I am not serene, accepting. I think "I have inoperable liver cancer" and become Lear's poor bare, forked animal, frail and fearful.

So when David J, a fellow cancer warrior and wise and loving friend, offered the loan of a surfboard, and fixed it up a bit for me, I was greatly touched. It was an act of kindness that punctured the self-absorption and isolation, provided balance.

When the festival is over I'll schlepp this unwieldy beast down to a quiet beach and learn to float. Mortal, yes, and still alone with my intimations of mortality; but distracted from them too, though now by the demands of the moment, the pure animal challenge of dancing in step with the sea.

Entry 97, February 28, 2015: The spiritual program I'm supposed to have been following for the past 30 years enjoins me to practise prayer and meditation as part of a daily ritual.

I've not been able to develop the habit of it, due to a lack of both inclination and discipline. In prayer I've always felt a colossal phoney and my monkey mind has resisted all efforts to try to quieten it down.

Except when it comes to water: looking into a basin of the stuff I'm occasionally struck by its miraculous, mysterious qualities - so tangible yet invisible, tasteless, odourless; and in the shower, catching it in cupped hands, a symbol of the perfect cycle of nature; and when immersed in the sea, out of my element but revelling in the sensation of buoyancy, immersion, vastness.

There's joy there too, and it's where what prayer I'm capable of finds an outlet, nearly always just an expression of gratitude, for life, to life.

There's plenty to be grateful for, in and out of the water: in global terms, I'm a privileged being, with shelter, food and, yes, clean water. I also have health - like any of us, for today, at least - and the willingness to sustain it through practices that do require discipline, and some inconvenience.

And, as I go about my daily business, I'm struck by something else I have: community. I can't step out of the house without bumping into someone I know, many of whom I could call friends.

And within that community, a fellowship - a global one at that, of bruised souls trying to make the most of what in many cases are fairly grim hands to play.

So giving thanks comes easy enough. Sometimes now, when I leave these people, I find myself putting my palms together in front of my chest in the Eastern gesture of gratitude and respect. It's very yoga, very Byron Bay but it expresses what I feel more clearly than any words. There's a depth of connection I want to acknowledge.



Prayer has expanded recently - though not into asking for stuff for myself, which seems childish, ludicrous, but for other people, those with whom there is conflict.

With varying degrees of reluctance, I send out wishes for their wellbeing, prosperity, peace. It's what my program advises me to do and it goes against the grain but it's a necessary act of surrendering of self-will, in the face of my resentment and blame.

It's probably self-seeking: the other person may or may not benefit. But I believe I will, by eventually becoming free of these sclerotic feelings.

Entry 96, February 21, 2015: I celebrated another birthday this week - my third since the diagnosis, which tends to be the way I measure the passing of time these days.

And very glad I am to be able to mark such a milestone, with a walk to the Byron lighthouse, running up the steep steps (just because I can), and a happy little gathering on the angel's deck.

The teenager made a damn fine choccy cake and permitted me half a teaspoonful and one strawberry, which I savoured, feeling only slightly deprived.

Because I accept that if I want to stay alive (and most of the time I do) I have to stick to the straight and narrow and I believe, more and more, that diet is the key.

That means, primarily, no sugar in any form - which sadly includes all fruit. But I can be a bit ambivalent about other yummy things - until recently, when I came across an article in a British newspaper about a woman named Jane Plant, a professor of geochemistry and a specialist in environmental carcinogens.

She is also a cancer veteran, having survived repeated bouts of the disease - a survival based on her "revelation" that the women in China had historically very low rates of the disease.

The difference between them and women in the West? The Chinese don't drink milk.

In 1993, given months to live, Prof Plant underwent chemo but also switched to a dairy-free, Asian-style diet overnight, low on animal protein.

Within a year, she was in remission and remained cancer-free for the next 18 years. Convinced that her diet had helped, she devised the Plant program - a dairy-free diet, relying largely on plant proteins such as soy.

In 2011, Prof Plant's breast cancer returned for the sixth time.She went back on her strict regime, as well as walking and meditating regularly - and doing chemo. After a few months, her cancer was again in remission.

Her message is that a diet that totally excludes dairy products can help stop many forms of the disease "in its tracks", by depriving cancer cells of the conditions they need to grow.

Cancer cells flourish in an acidic environment, she says, and the foods highest in generating acid include eggs, meat, fish and dairy - with cheese the worst of all.

I love cheese, ice-cream and chocolate cake too. And I have been practically addicted to yoghurt. But I'm more addicted to life and I want to enjoy many more birthday parties.

Entry 95, February 14, 2015: It was my late father's birthday this week: he would have been 99, but he died 20 years ago at what is today a relatively young age.

I noted the date with some wistfulness but there had been no cause for great grief, no prolonged mourning or regret at the passing of either of my parents - and not for a dearth of love.

Dad had wandered lost in a fog of dementia for many years and my mother, who died this month in 2006 aged 87, became suddenly acutely ill and was happy to go.

It was time for them both, and death provided the oft-invoked "blessed" release.

Death and loss have disfigured this past week: as someone who aims to get into the sea most days, and marvels at those riding the waves, I was affected by the shark attack that killed the surfer at Ballina. And last night the two men in prison in Bali were moved into a death row cell from where they will be taken out to face a firing squad.

There is no sympathy for them in many hearts, I know, but the outpouring of rage and contempt in some social and other media is simply nauseating.

Does their stupidity deserve such self-righteousness and loathing? Let those without sin cast the first stone …

I experienced a little "death" myself when my son left home on the first leg of his journey to the city, and university

The leaving was premature, as it happens, and far from ideal: in fact it was ugly, explosive. Perhaps such a rupture was needed to expel the bird from the nest but I regretted it and am grieving. Not only does the house feel empty but somehow mutilated, and pointlessly large. I am alone in it.

But my loss was put shockingly into perspective by a phone call from dear old friends telling me their daughter had died - a young woman and mother of small children.

Her passing was made all the more cruel because my friends also lost an adored son several years ago - both kids in their prime.

Their grief is unimaginable and words are inadequate. What possible meaning can be salvaged from it, what comfort offered?

The father and I share a birthday: he will be 80 next week, but so what? The light has gone out.

I don't know how people survive such blows but they do.

I've been walking the coast path, talking, jumping in the ocean - treasuring life in all its sadness and beauty. "Being here" and caring is all I have to give them.

Entry 94, February 7, 2015: I played an hour of early evening tennis last weekend, my first time on a court in many years.

It wasn't characterised by hard, competitive sets, and much energy was spent chasing balls that had been skyrocketed into the adjacent court and mouthing "sorry" at the initially sniffy club members playing there.

They suffered us well enough and the experience was life-affirming and delightful on every level: above all, we laughed, the angel and her boys and I, which added to the glow of rude good health the game lit in me.

I breathed a little heavily to start but was soon running easily about, and thrilled to be doing so: there's life in the old dog.

While it was as far from the Djokovic-Murray final as two things that share a name could possibly be, I was reminded of why I love the game.

It's outdoors, and allows players time to listen to the birdsong, admire the changing sky; it's civilised and elegant yet still competitive. It calls for timing rather than toughness. And it requires a stillness of mind, the effort to master oneself.

Murray's mental game collapsed. He lost his rag, and after witnessing him swearing and snarling at the camera, there was an element of schadenfreude to enjoy while watching his rapid downfall.

It was a week of such dramatic slumps in fortune. Hubris has played a part in two Lib leaders' decline, but these are no classical tragedies, where great men and women are punished for overweening pride or ambition. Without greatness there is no tragedy. And these two shifty, weird, bottom-line obsessed moral midgets, pathologically rigid and empathy-reduced, fall well short.

The Open and the tectonic shift in the political landscape were energising, and added to the flow of good fortune that has come my way since the recent realignment of my perspective, away from cancer, from sources of doubt. Friendships have been refreshed; old lovers met in a spirit of affection and respect.

Out of the blue I was offered the job as the PR guy for the Byron Bay Film Festival and seized the opportunity: I knew it would be intensely busy, even stressful (we have five weeks to opening night) but also a fantastic experience.

I'm working in a small asylum of brilliant new people and the sudden social and intellectual relocation can make me feel slightly mad some evenings.

I'm challenged, galvanised, addictively, usefully engaged. Like tennis, it requires mastery of self, to maintain discipline, confidence, balance and a sense of fun.

Game, anyone?

Entry 93, January 31, 2015: Sleep is an obsession of the alcoholic - or the "sedativist", as I was once diagnosed - and a pre-eminent one. It could even be said to be at the heart of the syndrome, which is the pursuit of oblivion.

Sobriety, for this reason, holds a special terror - the anguish of the night spent awake, subject to a phantasmagoria of doubt and fear, focusing obsessively on the morning to come, and the need to function.

The very bedsheets and pillows, usually so soft and seductive, become an enemy, entangling feet and arms. The recent 90% humidity added further refinements to the misery: stickiness and mozzies on steroids.

Sleeplessness drags many a recovering addict back into using, but of course "normal" people suffer the nightmarish affliction too - and take drugs to treat it.

I've had it bad for weeks now, and randomly, without cause. I'm not worried and go off quickly but soon wake and lie there, writhing around, over-thinking, playing out little dramas in my head, trying to remain calm. And, I'm happy to say, generally succeeding, by accepting that willpower won't solve it, and using breath and other meditative techniques to sink into a state of rest, if not unconsciousness.

It also helps to know from experience that a doom-laden dawn, and the dreaded long hours of dysfunction ahead, are rarely realised. Some of my most energetic, upbeat days have followed a night of twisting and torment.

But the night can be especially hellish when the cause of wakefulness comes from without. Next door, bellowing and shrieking revellers, heedless of their racket, gather most weekends at a "holiday let" - just the latest exploitative enterprise sticking two fingers up at the community.

I want to sleep but I lie galvanised, hyper-alert, a seething and self-righteous victim, impotent and angry about the effect of the stress on my health.

It can make for a heavy entry into the day: the selfishness and greed white-anting our communities are tiring, depressing.

But I need to take control of the mood: a quick self-survey reveals a viable organism. The limbs are functioning; entrails remain pain-free; brain seems to be coping, after a fashion.

I roll over into child pose and mutter my thanks for today, for life and physical wellbeing, then get up and pull the chaotic bedding into order.

The kitchen beckons, with its promise of lemon, ginger and turmeric in warm water. The whip bird's call drives me forward. It's a new day and the darkness quickly dissipates.

Entry 92, January 24, 2015: There was a new moon in Aquarius this week and, as an Aquarian, I feel absurdly pleased about it.

There's good reason to be, if the explanation offered by mysticmamma.com is any indication.

The marvellous Mamma says the first new moon of 2015, which is also the first perigee, when it is closest to Earth, "calls for a visionary outlook, courage in the face of the unknown and a willingness to persevere as we step boldly and consciously into the new".

The potent energy of the supermoon "represents new beginnings … You may take risks ... All things are possible for you now when you trust your instincts. Lead by your intuition. Liberate your mind first and your freedom will follow…"

It could not be a more pertinent event, because the members of my little posse are all on the brink of big changes. They, variously, are moving house, joining high school, exploring work, leaving for the city.

They truly are stepping boldly into the new.

My new beginning is really nothing of the sort; it's more a confirmation of my vows to my chosen approach to managing cancer - but it feels like a bold step.

It began with recent blood tests, whose results were mainly pleasing but with the figures for tumor activity and platelets going in the wrong directions.

It was suggested I have a CT scan "to see if it has spread" and consult local oncologists, to find out if anything new was available so they could, now, do something for me.

Spooked, I made the pathology appointment and, through a busy weekend, tried to absorb the sudden development.

It took 48 hours and myriad life-affirming moments (including seeing my son "get" body-surfing) to re-establish my own truth. I feared becoming captive to a one-size-fits-all prognosis, with death the inevitable "outcome". But every case is unique: I prefer chance. I cancelled the CT gig and will not seek specialist help.

I double-checked my decision with a wise practitioner whom I trust, and was supported in it.

I also bowed out of my cancer support group, because to remain healthy I need to be able to censor the information that comes in. Other peoples' stories - like research - are not always helpful.

These are my choices - naïve, arrogant, delusional perhaps, but instinctive, and mine alone. I'll take responsibility for the consequences. It feels exhilarating, brave: the thrilling embrace of freedom.

Entry 91, January 17, 2015 : My son and I had a discussion this week about whether it is better I know the true state of my medical condition, or carry on blithely uninformed - "true state" being in the white-coat measurable way of things.

He is of the knowledge-is-power persuasion while I see it as not very helpful, and coming at a price.

I'd had a blood test that morning, the first for six months, one of whose purposes was to measure tumour activity. This simple act had introduced a frisson of anxiety into an otherwise serene week.

The sporadic flutter in the solar plexus at the thought of what might be revealed, the cloud flitting across the mind, were reason enough not to have the tests, I said.

But the boy argued that such wilful ignorance was selfish: it could deny him, and others, the chance "to prepare".

Maybe he's right, and my Panglossian skipping-along in the sunshine approach is irresponsible. The delusion could end rudely with a physical slump and too-quick pegging out.

Knowing one is unwell, on the other hand, allows for a lovely long - or at least longer - lead-up to the grave, plenty of time to get things in order, and oodles of it for whoever wants to prepare - including, oh joy! - me.

That sounds a bit grim, though I am drawn to the idea of having a say in my funeral and have already given considerable thought to the music.

But I'm not expecting end-game results and anyway, I digress: what made me seek out the crumpled pathology form, which had sat in my car for months, and take it down to the clinic that day?

While there's dietary-type info I need, it's the alpha-fetoprotein tumour marker that I'm focused on, although nowadays I rarely focus on anything cancer-related.

In fact, it feels as if cancer is a thing of the past: my daily experience of myself is that I am recovering. This isn't just a silly insistence on positive thinking; it's in the sinew and sap of me. I usually trust it.

However, I've been talking a lot with others on the C-squad and have allowed their medi-centric approach to unnerve me.

Of course knowledge is power. If the results are bad I can take certain actions.

But instinct - spirit - tells me how I truly am.

I shouldn't need external proof, shouldn't question my organic knowing.

Entry 89, December 27, 2014: Time has not flown this year, despite plenty of it being devoted to having fun. And who would want time to fly by? Every second of impatience, of pushing ahead, is a slight upon life, a headstrong rush to its end.

The 12 months have been packed and the events of last Christmas seem as distant in the memory as those of my childhood.

Then, more than half a century ago, almost overwhelmed with excitement, we opened presents on my parents' bed, until coming to the bottom of the pillowcases that doubled as our Christmas stockings. There, sitting quietly, would be an orange - at once a remnant of post-war austerity and glowing symbol of a prosperous future.

But last Christmas was tough, much of it best forgotten. A family was disintegrating; kids were without a home; fear and uncertainty infected us all.

And their and other loved ones' challenges continued throughout the year, pushing my cancer into the shadows, demanding I step away from the role of "sufferer" to one of supporter. My health problems were no longer at the centre of others' lives: they had to survive too.

Surviving remains the priority for me, but the gradual return to some kind of stasis, where death is not lurking in every corner and where one's being alive is taken for granted, brought both relief and my fair share of life's "normal" responsibilities - as parent, partner, mentor, grown-up.

It's been a year where the willingness to rise above self was required, again and again.

These past few weeks provided a fresh opportunity for character building, as I dipped my toe back into fulltime work.

It was an experiment and a challenge: would I be able to handle it? Putting myself to such a test has plenty of grim stoicism about it (and masochism, and egoism) but the result was a success.

I did handle it; and despite tiredness, anxiety, a blooper or two and some hard partying thrown in, my confidence was restored. I enjoyed myself.

Such serenity could only be founded in gratitude, including for the opportunity of work itself; and for the support of my colleagues and the vast skies and open landscape I drove through every morning - the simple pleasure of the unrushed journey; and for the health (and motivation) to jump in the ocean in the evening to wash the day away.

It was a test of physical wellness but also of resourcefulness, resilience and attitude control.

I had to dig a little deeper and I liked what I found - more than mere survival strategies but a capacity for grace under pressure that I learned from my dance with cancer.

I feel fortunate to have passed the test, but life shouldn't be an endurance event.

This Christmas was simple, quiet, drama-free, and full of fun. I want more of the same throughout 2015 and, dear reader, I wish the same good fortune for you.

Entry 88, November 29, 2014: I would love to be able to report - with appropriate ego-free humility - that the experience of cancer had transformed me; had helped me to live in the moment, see every day as a gift, radiate kindness and empathy. In short, to realise the meaning of life and emerge, unblinking, into the sunshine of the spirit, an enlightened being.

But, although the fear, the frailty and powerlessness have knocked off a few of the rougher edges, the truth is I am largely unchanged. The blemishes of character, unremarkable enough, remain. Indeed, vanity, impatience, indolence, temper, may even have been enhanced.

Then there's the arrogance - the response to cancer that didn't say "why me?" but did say "what, me?" and somewhere down deep refused to accept that I would be taking the drearily predictable exit route of those of my ilk - Hep C, cirrhosis, liver cancer. That was for the others … those lacking in a certain indefinable quality which I believed made me somehow special, and possibly even immortal. But, as Dylan sang: "For them that think death's honesty Won't fall upon them naturally Life sometimes must get lonely."

Loneliness can be endured, self-sufficiency can even become a point of pride, something that adds to one's "specialness". But in time it becomes boring, uncreative, miserable, and an evident expression of lostness, of fear and ancient hurt, which can, with luck, be overcome.

The process of swallowing the truth is hurried along by cancer. It enforces the need for others and once that need is acknowledged, love becomes possible, starting with letting it in.

As difficult as that is, as reluctant as one is to accept it, the adventure of it is irresistible.

And thank God, because among all the remedies, the potions, powders, oils and unguents, the prayers, the meditating and "manifesting", the bizarre foods and self-discipline, the real healing has been brought about by another's love for me.

If there has been any transformation it is in response to this: the indefatigable, selfless, generous, forgiving love that has been shown me by the woman in my life, the angel who has fed me, held me, listened to and played with me, kept me honest and, without fail, brought light into the dark days, found cause for hope, kept her faith and strengthened mine.

Beyond all deserving I have been blessed with this, and beyond all else it has kept me alive.

Entry 87, November 22, 2014: Newspaper office work, with all its appurtenances - the screen, the swivel chair just so, the personal rubbish bin, the teamwork and the banter - grips one quickly, like an old habit, and demands to be fed.

The surrender to the yoke is swift and absolute. Pavlovian. Institutionalised.

For the first days, one arrives home late, skimps on dinner and family time to get back in front of the computer (for "research") until way beyond a healthy bedtime. Result: fatigue, and with it the knee-jerk lust for coffee. The addictive nexus is complete.

But a stronger need soon makes itself felt, the craving for fresh air, exercise, play. Night three of the working week, dark and stormy, and I'm back walking on the sand, feeling the honeycomb rain-pattern under my feet, finding transparent jellyfish which sport an inner layer of leopard-skin.

Then the sea, the ritual torso-bashing against the breakers, roaring defiance into their unpredictable violence, open mouth welcoming the sluice of minerals. I swallow some.

The ocean romp, vitality celebrated at the puppy dog or dolphin level, takes on a sacred quality: it is innocent, instinctual, pure sensation. It's the body at play.

The day is washed away and the blood surges through the veins. Order is restored, adding lightness, calm and deep gratitude to the physical exhilaration.

I have undergone a further tectonic shift into robust wellbeing, more mental than physical, and preceded by a rapid series of episodes of "letting go", outpourings of emotion after drawn-out and dreary weeks of uncertainty and indecision. The liminal time has passed. My son has survived his HSC and finished high school: there have been his farewells and some of my own as I return to work.

I see how the sharing, with my group, my mentor, my lover, although impelled by desperation and involving breaking down, creates room for change, for new possibilities, new depths.

Reaching out brings help, but it's not through any guidance given. The opening up, the tears themselves, embody the solution.

And they can be tears of relief, of release and closure. Last weekend began on Friday night with Noah's school formal, my boy's metamorphosis into adulthood, an evening of pride and completion. He (we) made it.

The angel and I left him there and went home exhausted but rallied for a late night of laughter and music; listening in the dark to a poet with guitars, astounded, dazzled by the sad beauty of his songs.

I replayed that music as Sunday drew to an end and a new phase loomed, and I bawled with happiness, overwhelmed with gratitude for everything that has happened to me, and for everything I have.

Entry 86, November 15, 2014: Cancer isolates the people who have it - and I imagine other life-threatening diseases do the same. We, the sick, are immediately refracted from the mainstream, and find ourselves both at the centre of your concern and on the margins of life.

One isolating factor, for me at least, was the inability to continue working. A job, no matter how much I grumbled about it, brought gifts of social intercourse, identity, status. It also gives each day some structure and purpose.

With cancer, each day is reduced to survival, but one of the points of surviving -- to seek fulfillment and earn a living -- is removed.

Such stripping away is no doubt good for the soul: who am I, if this or that role is removed? But time can hang heavy: one is not as resourceful or as motivated as one imagined. Meditation is not regularly practised, the guitar gathers dust, Anna Karenina remains firmly shut on the bedside table, Conversations with God lies where it has been flung.

Friends are not as fascinating, as available, or as desired as you imagined. A lot of time is spent alone.

I feel a sense of inadequacy about not having been able to forge a colourful, vibrant alternative life with all the free time I've had. Too often the devil has made work with my idle mind, which, as minds do, enjoys being able to focus upon itself. Inevitably, thoughts veer towards the negative, concentrating on what's missing, rather than what there is.

It has been many years since I would laughingly proclaim that "work is the curse of the drinking class". Now it's more like "If I don't work, I won't eat". It may be Buddhist but there is a punishing Protestant ethos behind it.

All this is a rambling preamble to the news that, after weeks of feeling in limbo, no longer disabled but uncertain of ability, I am about to dip my toe into fulltime work for a short while.

I'm grateful for it (I want to eat and the work is there, which is not the case for everyone) but I also have fears. What if I have lost my edge? Will I be strong enough to handle a 40-hour week? Will I be consumed with envy when I see people heading off to the surf, or idling in cafes?

Probably. We'll see. It's a necessary step out of the shadows: I will, of course, keep you posted.

Entry 85, November 8, 2014: I had the pleasure this week of talking with two men who are refusing to take their cancer diagnoses lying down.Twinkly-eyed and light on their feet, despite many decades behind them, David Young and Ken Connell are instead putting time and energy into setting up a support group for men and women with the disease. It sounds altruistic but they admit to having some selfish motives as well.

"We will be facilitating, but we will be there as people with cancer: it's a place for us to share and find support too," said David, a well-known local photographer.

The group, starting in Byron Bay next week, will be "closed" - for those with the disease only - its primary purpose to provide "a safe place for people with cancer to share their true feelings and to connect with others with the disease".

Its emphasis will be on providing emotional support rather than as a casual info swapping and chatty type gathering, says David, who was diagnosed with a type of non Hodgkin's lymphoma about two years ago.

He is following a Western medicine path and is currently "doing very well" on a low-dose chemotherapy regime.

Wilsons Creek grandfather Ken was diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this year and says he is now "learning to navigate the next chapter unfolding in my life".

He is trying to decide whether to have surgery or not, but in the meantime is taking a positive view of his situation.

"A crisis such as cancer gives us the opportunity to meet ourselves.

"Life has brought me this potential to evolve; it's bringing me to new edges of growth."

He says this journey is teaching him that "one of the gifts of life is in bringing all of our lives to each other in a caring supportive way" and riffs on the lessons of quantum physics. My consciousness expands just listening to him.

Both men have deep backgrounds in personal development, meditation, psychotherapy and group work and they recently undertook fresh training with the Cancer Council on leading support groups.

David has spent 18 months with Petrea King's Quest for Life Foundation and says he sees the new group as being based upon that model.

The two men may be taking different approaches to the disease but they share similar therapeutic - and spiritual - goals.

Inspiration, intuition, love will provide the basis for the group - and ideally will be enhanced by it, says Ken.

David puts it this way: "Growth, love: that's what it's all about."

If you are interested in learning more, call Ken on 0411 233 755 or David on 0428 187 025 or email kengabe@linknet.com.au or david@davidyoung.com.au or

Entry 84, November 1, 2014: I enter my third year as a cancer victim (horrible word, and an egregious label, to be shunned by anyone diagnosed and everyone around them; it implies a state of powerlessness and permanence). So let's say, a cancer bearer … I've been carrying it around in me, and may still be, for all I know. I'm not really game enough to have the tests, get the statistics.

It's a choice, and having that freedom is the best indicator that I am not powerless, and am not a victim.

It's the freedom to make bad decisions too, naturally, but it seemed to me (wrongly) that there was no choice once I heard the diagnosis. The surgeon offered a clean cut - a final cut - and the human response I think would most commonly be, "yes, get the thing out of me."

But I did have a choice when the surgeon's accomplice told me there was nothing more they could do to help me: that I was going to die.

I could have taken his prognosis as gospel, gone home and curled up into a ball and wept: and I did that, for a few hours.

The other choice was to take this sh*t and use it to make compost, as my old acquaintance Tony Barry said this week.

In other words, choose to use the time, whatever time there was, to let go of what was not conducive to my thriving, and to grow, to make life healthy and happy, so that even if the cancer "won", the last weeks or months would be as rich, as meaningful, as possible.

And, of course, to hope or believe that my body could repair itself too, so that I would, in fact, live.

I have to pinch myself occasionally when the experience of the past two years is expressed in its most concise form: "Should be dead; still very much alive." In other words, a bloody miracle.

Regular readers will know that the "happiness" quotient has been variable and volatile. I can accept that this may go on for some time.

But passing the two-year anniversary has provided a surge of confidence; I now wholeheartedly believe I'm going to live. And I've chosen to see a homeopath to improve that happiness ratio by targeting some of the sh*t behind the sh*t that led me to having this disease.

The healing just keeps going deeper.

Entry 83, October 27, 2014: I had to peek through my fingers during this week's TV doco, Ice Rush, Four Corners' sensationalist but compelling report on the spread of meth-amphetamine use in country Australia.

The scene of a middle-aged woman shaking uncontrollably while trying to find a vein in her knotted arm to inject into made for brutal viewing (and disinterred ancient memories).

One kid had got off the gear and escaped from his criminal handlers (read bikies) who fed his habit while he cooked. He looked traumatised - and doomed - eyes like pools of black oil, sitting chain-smoking in a darkened room while his buddy sucked on the pipe.

These individuals' stories are desperately sad, but they are just a few among hundreds of thousands trapped in ice addiction, digging imaginary insects out of their arms and faces, pulling their teeth out with pliers and causing mayhem in the lives of their families and community.

Ice makes for good shock horror television and Ice Rush was really just an update of Four Corners' The Ice Age, its 2006 study of inner Sydney meth-heads. As then, the film-makers focused on the underclass, as if addiction was restricted to bogans and ferals.

The new angle was that ice abuse is no longer confined to the big cities but is oozing out into rural areas. No surprises there: a similar trend has occurred in the US.

The program concentrated on regional Victoria and Tasmania but ice is here too, and not just in Struggle Street towns like Kyogle and Casino, but in affluent Byron Bay and la-de-dah Bangalow.

I know a decent, hard-working man in his 40s who has for weeks been holed up in a caravan park, sweating and spending every cent he has -and all of his emotional and spiritual capital ­- on getting and using the drug. He is powerless: except for the brief relief offered by the drug he is increasingly shaky, jumpy, paranoid, his mind a churn of despair and self-loathing.

I fear for his safety, even his life.

He's committing a crime but his addiction is a mental health disorder, not a legal problem, and please, not a moral weakness.

The wide uptake of ice points to a terrible impoverishment in people's lives, in society, though it's not new: consider Hogarth's Gin Lane from the 1750s.

Four Corners' use of the inevitable cliché "epidemic" may be justified by the statistics.

But the war on drugs isn't working: meanwhile, as the program showed, treatment programs are struggling for funding, overwhelmed by demand.

They need more help, but prevention is preferable, and that is everyone's responsibility.

Some Northern Rivers parents made their teenagers watch Ice Rush, to scare them off the drug.

That may work, but broader, deeper, smarter tactics are called for. Fight the suppliers, by all means, but tackling the causes behind the demand should be our main goal.

Entry 82, October 18, 2014: The Australian photo-journalist Nigel Brennan has returned to Africa five years after being released by Somalian militants who held him prisoner for 14 months.

Beaten and brutalised, Brennan was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder upon his return home. Four years later he was said to have undergone "post-traumatic growth phenomenon" - a life-changing psychic shift - telling journos that "in some respects, I'm incredibly grateful to have had this experience".

He has emerged, not unscathed but sane enough to head back to the region, this time to raise funds for fistula sufferers and midwives in Ethiopia.

I cannot comprehend the resilience and courage demonstrated by this man (and by Amanda Lindhout, the woman kidnapped with him) during their captivity -­ and afterwards.

As someone who, on a clear bright morning, in the comfort and safety of his own bed, can feel defeated, overwhelmed by life's everyday challenges, I am slightly ashamed by such stories.

My experience with cancer pales in comparison with their suffering, yet this week I've been forced to conclude that I'm either bipolar or that the disease has taken a toll I hadn't reckoned on: there's not a lot of "post-traumatic growth phenomenon" apparent. Not to me, anyway.

Brennan's story points up a gap in my approach to dealing with cancer, or any of life's vicissitudes.

"Positive thinking", a good attitude, are wonderful defences against disease, great medicine, and I've been able to mobilise them for short periods, although I suspect that often it was nothing more than minimisation, denial, even pretence: a happy face hiding a fearful heart; the response of one of Eliot's human kind, who "cannot bear very much reality".

Denial (backed by laziness and scepticism) has extended to a reluctance to fully employ the power of my mind to improve health, boost my immune system.

Yet everywhere today someone is extolling the virtues of "positive psychology". Even rugby league teams are using "mindfulness" to win games.

A friend has just learned that the cancer he cleared in February has returned, this time to another part of his body.

He meditate