Monthly Archives: January 2016

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Go on

I must go on without you
the Beloved opens the path before me
let the past fall behind, the clear parts
and the murky, we alter each memory when we
pull the file in our brain and refile it,
I have duty you see, though I will miss you
terribly and keep inviting you along
as our paths diverge by millimeters
I wonder if you mind perhaps you are relieved
or perhaps you refuse to feel whether you mind
or not, we walk in parallel for now and can still
touch fingertips across the gap, more than
fingertips actually, but not for much longer.
I am still small compared to you yet when I said
to the Beloved that I don’t see how to
carry all of this, my back was infinitely broad and strong
for a period, as if a dream. Kiss me and leave, then,
if you must and I will love you always.

The picture is of early morning fog clearing 1/10/16.

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Armour Suit IV: Walk like a toddler

At each massage, one every two weeks, I have locked my hips back up in the Armour suit. This is really annoying.

My massage person says he wants to be able to lie face down like a baby: head, arms and legs all lifted and playing. That is core strength. Babies can do that… why can’t we? He says that when he does play therapy with kids, by a certain age they lose that. He picks them up and flies them around lying on his arms: by age 4 or 5, they fold up. They have lost touch with that core.

I think about that.

During a massage a few months ago he pokes my lower belly. “Tilt your hips using your abdominal muscles.” Feels weird, but I do. “You aren’t engaging your core.” I find it really annoying to have to relearn how to walk.

Engaging my core. Little children who have just learned to walk do lead with their bellies. And they can still lie on the floor on their bellies, all limbs up.

I am trying to picture an adult who walks with their belly. Who? The Buddha’s belly comes to mind. But I can’t see him walking. Who? Toshiro Mifune: the old samurai movies. He and the others walk like small children: from their core, from their bellies.

I try it for two weeks. I flatten the arch of my lower back by using my abdominal muscles, not my gluteus maximus. I walk with my feet apart a bit, my belly leading. I am trying not to walk with my toes gripping the ground. I walk with toes up. He says I have walked with my toes gripping the ground for years, and that is the only place that I have early arthritis.

It feels a bit silly to walk like a samurai. When I do it right, I can feel that engaged core and my legs and hips feel looser. It is not elegant, not a catwalk uptight shake your ass walk. It is more of a loose free walk, like a toddler, like a buddha. I don’t care. I have to concentrate to keep my abdominal muscles flattening the arch of my back, and so I walk slower.

After two weeks I am back: it’s worked. Partially. My hips are LESS locked. The metatarsal phalangeal joints, the big toes, are less sore then they’ve been for years. And I can feel that abdominal core.

Skiing I try to do the same thing. Engage the abdomen and keep it engaged, and ski with my toes up. I ski slowly and with great swooping turns, letting the skis do the work. Rentals. They give me 158s the first day, I talk them into 165s the second day and then I am on 172s. Finally feels stable. I am getting used to that core feeling. I quit when I get too tired, going in before my kids.

Walk like a toddler, walk like a samurai, walk with core engaged.

First published on everything2.com January 7, 2016. I needed the right picture: this is my sister and me about a month before she died of breast cancer. I miss her so.

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Wean yourself

SoFarSoStu has tagged me for the three days, three quotations and tag three other people. This is day three, only I am a day late.

β€œThe rules are to post 3 quotes over 3 days and nominate 3 bloggers each time to carry on with the challenge.”

Today I choose Rumi’s phrase “Wean yourself” and post his poem. This is one of my two favorite Rumi poems.

Wean yourself
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

There is no ‘other world’
I only know what I have experienced.
You must be hallucinating.

_____________

I love this poem. To me it’s about our human development and I love that we go from a searcher after wisdom to a hunter of more invisible game. Have you ever had the feeling that you have figured some part of your life out, that aha! moment? Smooth sailing now, you think…. only to find out that new challenges present.

I use this poem in clinic. When I am talking to a new patient I have to find out where they are, what some of their medical beliefs are, what their level of education is, what their prior experience with allopathic medicine is, do they see a naturopath, are they taking ANY pills? Prescription, over the counter, alternative, herbal, homemade? I read Rumi’s poem as a discussion about our levels of development: we come out of the dark to be an embryo. Where do we go from there? I have to understand at least some of my patient’s background in order to communicate with them: I have to meet them halfway. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes my doctors fail…. we experienced that when my mother was in hospice. We were not given instructions for how to take care of her nasogastric tube at home…. and it got blocked. I think that the inpatient nurses made assumptions and the hospice nurses may have too… or just didn’t know.

This poem also relates to how my thoughts about healing and health keep evolving. Currently I keep reading on the internet and hearing from patients that they want a stronger immune system. There are all sorts of “immune system boosters” being sold. I think this is interesting and I think it is a wrong approach. Why?

I have gotten seriously ill four times. Each was triggered by severe stress in my life: mononucleosis at age 19, influenza in 2003, systemic strep A in 2012 and systemic strep A in 2014. So… do I think that my immune system needs boosting? No. When I got symptoms in 2014, my thought was “I am so stupid.” My father had died in 2013. His will confused me, the house was full of his things, my mother’s things, my sister’s things, my grandparent’s things, all dead. I would work in clinic and then go out there and try to get things done and mostly sit and cry. I did deal with the estate, but what is wrong with this picture?

I ignored what I would tell a patient to do…. I did not take time off to rest and to grieve and to take care of myself. Rather than a failing immune system, I pictured my immune system marshaling troops. “She won’t rest. We are going to have to take her down AGAIN. Won’t she ever learn to listen to her body? When will she learn to REST? Let’s see, who doΒ  we have to knock her down…. ah, strep A! Great! Here, the door is open, take her out.”

And boy howdy, did it. I was out for ten months and ten months later am still on half time work. And I could have kicked myself! How stupid I am! If there is a major emotional loss in your life, cut back and rest and take time to let yourself heal!

So when people say, “I need an immune booster,” I wonder. I wonder what is happening in their lives, what their level of stress is, are they taking care of themselves. I worry that our culture thinks that we just need the right combination of supplements and then we can keep going and drive our bodies into the ground, instead of stopping and saying: “Oh. I am really cumulatively tired. I really need to rest, and sit at the beach and stare at the waves, or lie on the couch and read a silly novel, or just have a cup of tea and do nothing.” I don’t really like pills. I think that pills are often a band aid on a deeper wound than we admit. If I had rested, I would not have needed high dose penicillin: though I am deeply grateful to have another try at healing and health.

And three people to tag to do the three days of quotations if they so choose… everyone may be too busy at this busy time of year:

hargunwai

mindlovemisery

ohmyglai

The pink edged cloud looks like a giant paramecium or other bacteria, up in the sky….

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Burning daylight

SoFarSoStu has tagged me for the three days, three quotations and tag three other people. This is day two.

β€œThe rules are to post 3 quotes over 3 days and nominate 3 bloggers each time to carry on with the challenge.”

I learned this phrase from my friend Gary E. He and my then husband would go on week long bike tours. They often stayed in graveyards in small towns because there was a water source. They’d have to leave early because either someone would get annoyed or else the sprinklers would come on.

My husband said that as soon as it was light, Gary would say, “Burning daylight.” and they’d have to get up and ride.

I rode a four day tour with them twice, down the C & O Canal. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal runs from West Virginia into Georgetown, MD, 185 miles. If you start in West Virginia, you are riding along the canal very gently downhill all the way….

But “Burning Daylight” is older that that. Jack London’s most popular book in his lifetime, published in 1910, is Burning Daylight. It is about the Yukon Gold Rush. I haven’t read it…. yet. Now I need to ask Gary E. where he got the phrase. Films based on the book were made inΒ  1914, 1920, 1928, and 2010. I’ve found the 2010 one… but I would like to read the book first.

And tagging three noders to consider sharing quotations for three days:

Wy of WysJoyful

plato’s groove

cowboy’s girlfriend

Thanks to SoFarSoStu for the tag!

….I am burning night at the moment, up before the sun…..

I took the photo early in the morning at the ski area last week.

 

 

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The enemy

SoFarSoStu has tagged me for the three days, three quotations and tag three other people.

“The rules are to post 3 quotes over 3 days and nominate 3 bloggers each time to carry on with the challenge.”

I have to say quotation because I can hear my sister scolding me for “verbing” words.

My quotation is from Walt Kelly: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo Possum says this while he is looking out over the dump, and all the trash that humans have created and thrown away. This was a late strip in the series and earlier other swamp characters were complaining about the dump: then trash is identified from each character.

Last night I hoped I would remember a dream. I dream that I am in flowing water and I keep seeing creatures in the water. I pass over one at last that is huge and black. I think, a whale? But it is a gigantic crow, in the water, waiting to rise. A crow, a trickster, a giant black bird. It is not dead or drowned, it is awake and watching.

Three bloggers to continue quotations if they wish:

trablogger

ompong

Amanuensis Sobriquet-Reverie

I took the picture from the top of the mountain, skiing last week. I suspect skiing is not the best activity for my carbon footprint, but I do love it… and the world is so beautiful, isn’t it?