Our family of four is visiting the Hoh Rain Forest. I think my husband is a relatively normal person and that he and my daughter are just being silly.
Suddenly they morph into dinosaurs! Pterodactyls! Ferocious long toothed beaks and weird speckled feathers! My son looks at me and gives me a hug. “Thanks, mom.” He morphs too and they are in flight, off in to the rain forest!
They weren’t being silly. They were practicing and apparently my daughter has now learned to fly.
I still miss them terribly and hope that they are well. Be careful, and do not marry a pterodactyl.
I miss my Salish Sea. At home I can’t see it from my house, but stand in the middle of my street and there it is.
All that water. There are mountains here and trees, but they are very different. Here it is high desert, 4600 feet and up. The Grand Valley is at 4600 feet and the mesas rise from here. I miss Port Townsend Bay, and the big trees.
Gold sky and blue water. Look! A grebe! Catching breakfast!
Rumi writes about the wound being where the light gets in. Leonard Cohen says the cracks are where the light gets in. My poems about being reborn or changed seem to involve either burning or the sea. I wrote this in 2009.
Forgiveness
I want to forgive something Someone In fact a group Something that hurt a lot I’ve tried logic I tell myself “It was an expression of concern”
My heart doesn’t agree It is sullen Immobile and grumpy It whispers “They have not apologized” It whispers “When people say you’re crazy It could be a joke An expression of concern It wasn’t It was a palm held out At arm’s length To distance me.”
My head argues “That’s what it felt like to you. You don’t know their intentions.”
I want to write A poem of forgiveness Hoping my heart will follow
My conscious doesn’t write my poems My conscious wrestles with an idea The poem comes out of this struggle I look at the poem I’ve written I think, “That is what I would like my conscious heart to feel.” My poem is often more generous than my conscious feels
My poems are not mine They are a gift From the unconscious It is much larger Than the small conscious me I dream of feeling envy I climb into a bathtub And transform myself To battle a trickster We are transported To the bottom of the ocean
In the ocean The trickster and I are one It is unlimited It is not my unconscious There is no separation It is all unconscious
I did not think A poem would give forgiveness But pain drove me Into the sea I am connected You gave me these pearls Thank you
Facing a wall or lying in bed
breathe slow: four seconds in
one two three four
four seconds out
one two three four
keeping count
or facing a wall sitting
on a zafu, bell rings to start
how can forty minutes be so long?
fall asleep and body weaves
waking me up OH don’t hit the wall
adrenaline then slithering down
towards sleep again
zen mind, blank mind?
my mind wanders off again and again
what is for dinner? grocery list?
that annoying thing or person
at school or work
the mind busy as a squirrel
burying nuts and digging them back up
bring the mind back again
again again again
to the breath the wall letting go
of this well trodden mind trail
only to have the mind wander off
down another: this with briars
and falling into a pond
that has ice and cold
back shake like a dog
shake it off
focus on the breath the wall again
vivid multicolor cats
with paisley and stripes and spots
there is the BELL
forty minutes
Bow to the wall
and stretch
get up
ready zafu for the next time
meditation
mind
I keep wondering at the stubborn part of me that will not let go. That wants to reconcile with all, no matter what they’ve done. I go inside, deep and deeper, in the depths all is slow. That part is the holy part that longs for the One. I have been told to let go of things, forget, no more longing. But the longing is a sacred place, a longing for the Beloved. I think that excising it would be a horrid evil wronging. Handle gently, with care, with love, and gently gloved. I meet someone who says, “You are very in touch with your inner child.” I know it’s not a compliment, I smile and pay little mind. My Child is my connection to the Beloved, fierce and mild. Jealous judging rolls right off, people can be unkind. I won’t excise the holy core, the Beloved inner child. I feel the Beloved’s laughing play and joy, heart running wild.
Human behavior doesn’t surprise me, really. Sometimes it disappoints, depresses, demeans, dispirits and demoralizes. And it’s not the patients. It is the corporate workplace and how it abuses people. And circles the wagons against a threat. Including against employees that it views as threats.
I think all of my patients are smart. “You got this,” I say. I explain what carbohydrates are and that they are in everything, practically, except meat and oil. And some meats have carbohydrates too: shrimp, for example. But my patients can figure this out! My patients rise to the occasion! I am not saying that they do smart things all the time. No one does, including me. Even the smartest ones can do things that are not a good idea or are a really bad idea. Growing up in an addiction household, I think I escaped addiction mostly because I had decided that no adults could be trusted by the time I was three. I thought they loved me but I couldn’t trust them not to give me to someone else. Ironic, that the distrust saved me from taking the same path. My sister took it and is gone. My patients are smart and all I have to do is share my education and experience! They take the ball and run with it! Not all. Sometimes it’s too late and everyone dies eventually.
Corporations, on the other hand, are infuriatingly stupid.
The photograph is me in 2015, sailing my father’s boat with my daughter, in Port Townsend Bay.
Something is happening all around me Something unpleasant is creeping around I trust that feeling, that core that is free I go quiet and listen, I will stand my ground I am told no problem, this is routine Nothing to worry about, averting their eyes Lay down and be walked on, take it for the team Blind-sided, I walk through a jungle of lies. I walk very slowly then take to the trees. I swing on a vine past the river of tears. Wave to the gators with teeth to eat me, Routine bad treatment not surprising nor feared. In the treetops I sing to the stars quite alone I am happy and making my quiet way home.
Suddenly I am thinking about home. Travel does that sometimes.
I call a friend yesterday and sing, “Happy Day Before Your Birthday to You”. It sounds silly. She has just gotten Covid and this cheers her up.
She is telling me about her summer and about a class at a camp. Some for adults and some for children, but one where people really dropped their masks and just got to be themselves.
What identity is your deepest self? She is talking about her nine year old self. I think mine is more like four and rebellious and skeptical of adults, adulthood and all of their rules. I don’t think I am ever out of touch with this identity, though I don’t let it talk out loud in clinic. Mostly. A rebellious four year old informed by medical school and years of experience is a pretty frightening thought, isn’t it? Or the basis for a great cartoon.
That part of me is very observant and quite smart. It does not care what we are supposed to see or the cues people give. Growing up in an alcohol household, it looks for what people do not say. This can be terribly helpful in clinic and also a bit weird. It is body language and tone of voice and what questions a person shies away from answering and the puzzle pieces that do not fit.
Last week I see a small child with her parents for vomiting and coughing and fever. I am interviewing the child and asking if things hurt. “Do your ears hurt?” I ask. She shakes her head no. I point to my throat next and she nods. Yes, that part hurts. Her toes do not. I include toes or something silly to find out if the child is saying yes to all of it. I tell the parents that we will do a strep test, that mostly people don’t cough with strep except when they do. The strep is positive. My medical assistant grumbles, “They didn’t tell me that,” but I think the parents were more worried about the vomiting and she may not have complained about her throat.
Are the masks we wear always bad? I don’t think so. I think it is frustrating if we believe our mask or never ever get to drop it. There is some formality to my role in clinic and I tend to get more formal when I am worried about someone. That has been interpreted as anger or brusqueness, but it isn’t. I am wearing a real mask with all patients because we are seeing at least one person with Covid every week. The literal mask does not help me connect with people, but sometimes I can anyhow. I have to take it off for the 90 year olds because most of them are hard of hearing and lip reading helps.
Sometimes clinic feels a bit like Sisyphus must feel. Rolling the stone of illness up the hill but it is eternally rolling back down. I can’t stop it. People age and people die and otherwise there would be no room for young ones.
The last two weeks of clinic has worn me out a bit. A friend says that I take too much of it home, worrying about people. How to let go of this?
I make connections in clinic. Not all the time. Sometimes I fail. I made a connection with more than one person with diabetes this week, but one was funny. The connection is that he mentioned that he is an elk hunter. Oh, and flies to California to fish and has a very lot of fish. I said that I’ve had elk and like it. That was when the connection engaged: he was very pleased that I am not horrified by hunting. Hunting elk is not at all easy or cheap and cleaning the animal and carrying it out, well. He is coming back about his diabetes and left cheerful.
If I go home trailing those connections and spend my time worrying about this people, I’ll wear out. I don’t want pneumonia number five. So how do I connect but let it go when I go home?
I will think of the connection as much smaller than the boulder that Sisyphus deals will. Not a boulder. A small piece of the rock. I can suggest how the person can lighten the load a little. Then I must stand aside and let them go. They have to decide what to do about their health. It is between them and the Beloved, they can try what I say or not.
Now it is not a boulder that I am trying to keep from rolling down a mountain. Each person has their own mountain to climb in their life, their own habits and histories, good or bad, trailing them like Marley’s Ghost in A Christmas Carol. I can suggest a tool to loosen a link of diabetes, or a slightly different trail up the mountain. Then it is up to them. I can’t carry them and should not carry them. Maybe they are approaching a patch of scree and I can suggest an easier or safer path. And then stand aside, stand down, let the people go.
Now I am not pushing a huge rock. I am standing on my own mountain, quiet, and looking at the path behind. I am resting a little and on my own path. I don’t know what will be around the next bend in the path. But I love the mountain and the forests and the birds and the ocean. All of it.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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