Thursday, September 15, 2022

A tiny inkling...

So, I am working my heart and mind and body and brain, with help from my insiders, to exit my stuckness.
A stuckness which I have finally identified.
Maybe, I think, at least in part.
A stuckness in ever-hardening clay, if I allow it.
The clay is still supple, so I can still make my way out. 
But even if it dried, I'd probably still try to figure a way out.

In some regards I am fortunate to have "won the cortical lottery," (to quote one of my favorite thinkers Jonathan Haidt).
That is, I was born with a genetic set-point where happiness and positivity come more easily than folks born with a lower set-point...
But, but, but...I suffered through years of deep depression, suicidal ideation, emotional suppression, and wearing the positivity mask which sometimes (maybe mostly?) wasn't a mask; it was real and authentic...to look for and try find the bright side of life.

Yet, when I look back at Mom and Dad and what they not only survived but managed to even thrive through, making the best of every ounce of energy that they could....
 
I just shake my head in almost baffled disbelief. 
Because I know what it took.
Not only was I physically present through those years, helping out...
But now, in my years of nerve damage with incredible weakness and fatigue...
Yet, in my "knowing," I can only relate experientially an inkling, just a tiny inkling, of what they went through...

My god, it's really incredible... 

~*~

"Really incredible" brings to mind a song by Miten and Dema Preval, There is so much magnificence...
Life is really incredible...
There is so much magnificence,
Not only near the ocean, but also in my backyard....

"There is so much magnificence
Near the ocean
Waves are coming in
Waves are coming in
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
There is so much magnificence
Near the ocean
Waves are coming in
Waves are coming in..."

Me again: 

Despair into diversity...

September 14, 2022

Wow. I haven't typed on Versions since 4/24.
My blood clots manifested on the CT scan on 4/28.
Life has been downhill since then; and not in a good way.

I've not been writing or drawing lately
Or dancing
Or burning candles 
I'm not expressing
I feel no one really understands what I go through
And most people don't; they can't

They can imagine, just like I can imagine their suffering though I don't know if I can truly understand their suffering. Or if anyone can truly understand another's suffering, even if they have been there. There is understanding to a point. Our shared humanity, the emotions we all experience, or most of us anyway. Those emotions -- we can relate to them, embrace them, feel them -- but words are often lacking in trying to describe them. And the reasons behind the individual's experience of those emotions...well, they are complex. 

Life is filled with diversity
Every single day
Every moment
Every tiny, itsy, bitsy point 
In space
In time

And flash
It's gone 
To make room for
The next....

The wall, stagger-stacked...

August 26, 2022

Gray and large
They line up
Stagger-stacked 
From the surface of the sea
Down to its sandy floor
An undulating wall
As the whales
Ever so slightly 
Move their giant bodies
As slowly as land-turtles

Ocean-ripples fan outward

The stagger-stack changes
As the lower whales need oxygen
And trade locations
With the whales on the surface

I observe from another realm

The whale wall is not far 
Out into the ocean
It appears that, if I were able,
I could swim to the wall from the beach
The ocean is very calm
There are no splashing waves

The fishes swimming in the water
Between the whale-wall and the beach
Converse...

"The whales are protecting us"
"I wonder what from?"
"I don't know, but I wish they could go free. 
I want the flow of water again."
"Yes; me too. We need the flow.



Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Up and down

6/28/22
Week 12, Day 2

How do I write what is happening?
Random bits of symptoms.
My brain scrambles.
Creativity hard to find. 

My body...
It's too exhausting to try to put into words.
Pain.
Weakness.
Lameness.
The conscious effort required for simple movements.
 
Such as folding the small, bendable, wired tab that seals the coffee bag.
I consciously have to slow down to perform that movement.
Else pain shoots through my right bicep causing my arm to go lame. 
Pressing the pump on the liquid soap dispenser?
Impossible.
Unless I move very, very slowly and deliberately, concentrating. 
The bicep muscle is used in the smallest of human movements.

My forearms...
Undulating waves of pressure.
The song "Under Pressure" by Queen comes to mind. 

My hands...
Slight ache and soreness.
Slight pins and needles.
Tender palms. 

But an observer can't see these sensations within me.
They can see my tremors and my slowness.
It takes a moment for the signal to get to my hands and fingers when grasping something small, like a receipt from a clerk. 
Every clerk who has serviced me the past 10 years has always been kind and patient. 

My legs...
I whisper or talk to my legs and hips and torso,
"Don't do the limp. Stop."
So, I stop.
I set my face and my posture.
And then I consciously walk through the house, without the limp. 
Hum-buzz in my lower legs.
Feeling that too often-feeling I've lived through the years...
That my shins will splinter.
But they never have; so, I ignore it.
Pain in my left hip and calf from my two falls last week.
Tenderness in the soles of my feet.

I told my self this morning, 
Week 12. Don't fight it. You can't fight it. 
Lean into it. Roll with it. 
Remember, discovery and curiosity. 
You have got to continue. 

I cannot fight my own body.
It would be easier, though that's not the right word, if my cognitive faculties could work better. 

Monday, March 21, 2022

Did I know what I was doing...

Prompt: I didn't know what I was doing or whatever pops up...
~*~

As far as I can remember,
I was born vaginally.

I'm kidding about the remembering.
Though I believe that our bodies do remember being birthed.
Surely, somewhere inside the body resides the imprint of that experience.
Or maybe it is all the way through us, in every tiny corpuscle, whatever a corpuscle is.

How much does our birthing process influence our ability to feel safe in this world?
After all, being birthed from the womb is our first entry into this realm, at this time.

Did I know what I was doing? 

It was April 1959.
I imagine my surroundings were sterile.
I imagine my human carrier, that is my mom, was sedated.
It had been the mainstream way at the time.

I imagine I was immediately taken from the canal, wrapped quickly in a blanket, then cut off from my life-cord which had fed me and kept me breathing until my exit some nine months later.

Then I was probably whisked away to a be placed in a wicker or plastic box alongside other first-timers.
All of us neatly lined up in our boxes in a room that has at least one wall with the upper half all glass.
Onlookers can view us like animals in a zoo.
Each box has a name tag.
Each first-timer, a wrist bracelet bearing the same name.

Did they know what they were doing?


Monday, March 14, 2022

And she asks her friends to blow away her cells of ingratitude...

Timeframe of event: July early 2000s...
As I slept under the stars at an overlook... 
The Saddle on the Blue Ridge Parkway...

***

I came here angry this evening 
And the old bare tree which no longer bares leaves 
Meets me
As she always does

She has stood here for decades 
On the east side of The Saddle
Where the sun rises
The wind blows and blows
But she doesn't move with the wind
For she is old and no longer flexible
But neither does the wind break her

She is twisted and gnarled by the winds of these mountains 

Some may call her ugly 
But even through my anger
I momentarily notice her beauty
Yet my anger is stronger than my notice-of-her
Anger at husband and children
Anger at feeling used 
Anger at the illness that wracks my body

And the old tree is sad
Sad that I don't embrace her beauty, her sacredness
My anger prevents me in its moment

But she does not retaliate; it is not her way
Instead, she witnesses my anger as I pull out the camping lounge chair
From the back of my green Dodge Caravan
And set it up between her and the vehicle
Huffing and puffing and cussing at life

As she watches 
She asks her friends, the trees
To blow away my cells of ingratitude 
She asks them to heal my heart

I traipse across the small, asphalt parking lot
To the west side of The Saddle 
I watch the sun set behind Buffalo Moutain
I notice the tree on this side of The Saddle
Its branches filled with leaves and swaying in the wind
Singing a tune

That night as I lie under the clear moonless sky
On the east side of The Saddle
Next to the old bare tree that no longer bears leaves...

Dozens of shooting stars streak across the sky!
Dozens!
A spectacular display of light trails!
Star dust...

For hours, I gaze
Amazed, in awe
Just me, and the wind, and the trees
And the clear, moonless night sky
Singing with streams of light 

I think of Abraham in the Bible
And how his offspring would number more than the stars of heaven
More than the grains of sand upon the earth
Gratitude fills my heart

I am of this one blood dating back millennia
Dating back millions of years to stardust
From which I was born

These stars and I are kin
The wind and I are kin
And the old bare twisted, gnarled, beautiful sacred tree
Who no longer bears leaves
Who gives witness to me 
Little ole' me

She and I are kin...




Flames upon laurels...

Prompt...write a fantasy of that which resonates with me. Of being the damsel in distress or the heroine....

~*~

My dapple-gray unicorn...
You have rescued me multiple times...
We fly to the far end of the rainbow...

Like Atreyu upon Falkor in...
Neverending Story...
Rescuers Down Under...

Witnessed by my inner helpers that tend the campfires...
And recently a new helper has come on the scene...
Grief carrier, whose palms are made to carry the flames of grief...
Which he gently places upon leaves of laurel...
Which he gently places to float upon a pond...

The flames are not extinguished, at least not yet...
Instead, they burn continuously, each upon their leaf of laurel...
Floating upon the pond like lilies...
Reflecting their beauty under the clear night sky... 
Filled with stars and sliver of moon...
Which are aflight above my grief vessel...

Palms of Grief...
He is so very blissful whenever he visits...
In my inner world...
He and the Campfire Keepers...
And me...

We all gather round Sol Disc...
Which glows like the sun...
Located in my solar plexus area...
We are all fed by Sol Disc's halo of warmth...
Blanketed but in no way suffocated...

Once fed by the disc...
Palms of Grief returns blissfully in his continued job of witnessing the flames upon the laurels...
Campfire keepers, return to their work...

And my soul is rescued in those moments...



Sunday, January 9, 2022

Palms of Grief: This Fire and I...

My meditation choice today. 
Instructions I've followed before.

"...Close your eyes...and try to sense within yourself the source of power from which your own breathing and life forces come. ...When you feel within yourself this source, then try to sense this power flow outward through your entire physical being, through the fingertips and toes, through the pores of your body, all directions, with yourself as center....."


So, I did
Close my eyes
And try to sense the source...

But all I see is my self as Munch's Scream
Face long, melting with anguish

Sinking into the dreaded, red-dirt hole
Fingernails caked with dirt from scratching the walls of the hole
As I've tried to pull myself up and out without success
I melt down, down, down
Tears stream around me
Cascading down the surface of the red-dirt walls
As I am pulled deeper, no longer resisting

My heart, my gut,
So much pain and grief and loss
Pain...
Pain...
Pain...

Then I see my grief vessel
Today shaped like a vase
At the top of the vessel, instead of an opening,
Is carved a shallow bowl for burning sacred oils
In the sides of the vase, geometric shapes are carved so I can see into the vessel
Clay balls rest on the bottom, inside the vase
They have not been fired into beautiful marbles
They are drab, neglected, lifeless

I look around outside the vessel for all the parts of me that typically live here
Inside me, in my torso area, in my heart, my gut
The parts of me that tend all their various campfires
Parts of me that have come out of hiding over the past fifteen years
They too are all lifeless
Strewn on the ground in the darkness of the hole
Exhausted, without strength

It hurts
I begin to panic
I have nothing of substance to grasp
I feel confused
I scream inside

WHERE ARE THE CAMPFIRES!?!
WHY!?! WHAT IS THE POINT?!?

A gentle thought answers...
This is your source of life
This grief
This suffering

I don't understand!

But, within a moment
My panic is replaced with curiosity

One stick Entity arises
As he rises, for it has a masculine feel,
A flame begins to burn in the small bowl that is atop the grief vessel

What do I do with this? I ask

The Entity calmly and serenely approaches the flame
With his hands cupped
He scoops up part of the fire
It does not harm him
For this is what he was made to do
To carry this Grief fire in his palms

What are you going to do with it? I ask

He serenely walks through the dark, clear, starry night
Into which we have emerged, from the red-clay pit
I walk with him to a wilderness pond
Surrounded by trees of Laurel and Balsam and Rhododendron

NO! 
Don't douse it! 
I cannot just kill it!
It must be honored
Must be honored

My heart sinks at the thought of drowning the fire
I am wearied

I witness as
The Palms of Grief carefully place the flame onto a Leaf of Laurel
The leaf does not burn, because it was created to carry the Grief flame
Grief then gently places the Laurel upon the waters
And Leaf of Laurel floats with its fire like a lily upon the pond
Its flame dancing under the night sky
Reflecting into the water

It's beautiful...
Beautiful....

Grief and I observe its beauty, its tranquility
In my mind's eye I see many flames upon Leaves of Laurel and Rhododendron
Scattered upon the waters of the pond
Floating and reflecting
I feel a peace within my soul

Then all the parts of me that had been strewn with exhaustion
Begin to rise
And they begin to tend their various campfires
With joy, satisfaction, purpose
The daylight dawns
And they waltz
We waltz

This suffering
This Grief
It is your source of Life
Its flames to burn upon the waters
Giving light, reflecting beauty

But I do not understand how grief and loss and suffering are my life source...
And maybe I never will...
And that's okay...
I can honor these flames...
And we can waltz into eternity...
This fire and I....

~*~
Loss happens every day to every living creature.
It is as common as breathing.
Breath is vital for life.
What about "loss"?
~*~