It's a lovely fall day in Maryville, MO. Leaves are finally falling off trees in acceptable numbers, my mother can't leave the house without a hat, and all of the mouth-breathers in town are much easier to spot as they have yet to change into pants and jackets, thereby assuring that their baby-making bits will shrivel up and cease functioning.
I love autumn. I love a season that is so fantastic that it has two names. I love knowing that in less than two days, it will be pitch black night at 1 in the afternoon because of the time change, and that by the time March rolls around, I will have lost the will to live in the sunlight entirely and have to be dragged screaming and inebriated into the light.
Because this is the season that is the setup for my springtime krazy fest. It's awesome to know me during April when I can't stop the lucid dreams or make complete sentences or keep from drooling at the sight of anyone without a shirt on. My friends totally earn their bribe money that month.
It is also the season of The Cold. The Cold that inflames your throat just enough to keep you from actually enjoying that cigarette, or wine or whiskey, or whisky, or pretty much anything that you would really like to be enjoying because the weather is on crack and there's nothing you can do about it. This one has also laid an egg just below my right eye and slightly out of reach of my right nostril. It's going to be disgusting when that hatches.
And so, on a trip out of doors and to the grocery store with my mother, I casually tossed in a bag of the only thing in the world that I know will make me feel better: Peanut M&M's.
Yeah, there's a story there. It goes like this: Summer Youth Group retreat thing leads to strep developing in my young throat while we head, as a family, to Isle Royale in Lake Superior where the only doctor on the island was on the other side of it tending to a hiker with a broken arm. (Later we learned that everyone breathing at the retreat got strep (because teenagers are germ-factories-without-hygiene) and all of them but me went to the doctor Right Away) I got on a ferry with my family, got to the island, went to the doctor's office (minus the doctor, of course) and then went to the c-store at the hotel to find something to help me feel better. I was 13 and chose to medicate myself thusly: Orange Gatorade, Peanut M&M's (the bigbig bag) and a work of unparalleled literature called something like Midnight Affair by someone called something like Alberta Nunn. (I found it! Midnight Affair by Nan Ryan!)(It's a terrible book - no one read it)(Really, I'm completely serious. The sexual stereotypes alone are awful, add to them the cultural, ethnic and socio-economic ones and it's just a fucking mess of bad.)
That book stayed with me for the next 7 or so years, and I read it every time I got sick, sometimes more than once. Every page, every time. It was the touching and stereotypically horrifying story of a young woman half-bastard-pirate who falls in love with a slick Rhett Butler type named, no seriously this is one thing I remember perfectly: Hilton Courteen. Yep. Named after a hotel. *head shake*
Anyway, the thing was set in some mythically idyllic New Orleans and there was a costume ball and lots of random sweaty sex and a lottery and a storm and people died and the only gay character was also made of pond slime and driftwood, but you know, it was something to read.
Until. Until my father threw it away. The bastard. (He also threw away the jean shorts that were made of safety pins holding seams in place and the tennis shoes that were little more than the suggestion of uppers with soles made of squeaky mold, and okay so I get the point Now, but That's not where I'm going with this, so just stop reading here and get on with it!)
So. My Novel That I Read When I Feel Like Dingle Slime got tossed. Sad.
Orange Gatorade. It has no flavor. It is, in fact, utterly unredeemable and made entirely out of plastic (the bottle is just less liquidy). I am unrepentant about changing my consumer and consumption habits to fit my personal belief system and so have quit the Gatorade. It will always hold a place in my heart, along with Ultra-Strength Rave Hairspray and Pseudo Echo, as something that was good to have, but really there were better options.
The Peanut M&Ms are all the remain of that first terrible moment of ill. All that I can hold on to as part of my I Have No Insurance And So Must Heal Myself medical plan. Everything else of that trip has gone. Well, okay, so the Lake is still there and so is the island and the hotel, and Gatorade still exists, but Dammit! I slept for 36 hours while my family wandered about the wilderness and ooo'd and ah'd and oh'd at nature. Sleep and showers and the healing power of sugar-coated mediocrity got me through until we were back on the mainland and in a doctor's office getting diagnosed and then not running over the drunk guy lying across our path on Axe Murderer Highway.
Now the M&Ms are gone, and everything that I was going to write about today instead of this personal wandering has poit!-ed itself to a future date. There is tepid tea and the comfort of sleep. Oh! and something a little creepy and wonderful also:
Come Into My Parlour from Moog on Vimeo.
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
Friday, 5 November 2010
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Lent Day 4
Fourth day of yoga will be practice late today, as I've not eaten for several hours and had quite a long walk home from work. Rice reheated with ghee and a side of cottage cheese. After yoga, I may have a bowl of soup. Such good soup.
Much as been on my mind today. Dreams crowded and alive and more unremembered than usual. Places in the day where instead of doing one thing, I do another - interesting how right now the temptation is not so strong, as I just have rules and am to follow them. Confidence in full acknowledgment of fragility and human weakness. No room for arrogance.
Nor any room for apathy, neither. As I discovered in terse conversation with a sort-of colleague today. "Except that I love what I do, so it's not like any other job."
My now assuaged hunger in conjunction with teh delay in yoga practice brings the memories of my first husband even closer. That terrible night when he left. For six hours he was gone and I could have left him then. I could have been home with my mother and on my way wherever and I stayed. And the hurts layered. And he read my journal. And I stopped registering the pain. I know that I must have lashed out in anger and hurt, though I've no idea at whom. Or for how long. We were a couple of people made of reactions to each other.
It has never been comfortable for me to feel that he was fully aware of himself, that he was completely reasonable; and yet I do pin responsibility on him for his actions. My own lack of awareness does not remove culpability. All it does, and this is not small, is serve to remind me that I have the right (and responsibility) to make better choices now that I am aware. It is time to change when the time happens. I believe that I have a certain degree of input there, but I do not have the ability to understand a thing, I will have to gain that understanding before learning can be said to have happened.
Gentleness and patience are not at odds with persistence and honesty. And there is already such joy in life and in living. To be able to fully involve myself, that may be additionally joyful.
It is not necessarily possible, I believe, to exert complete control over thoughts and attention. it is not impossible to be present and engaged most of the time: even in the even that 'present' is somewhere .... else.
Much as been on my mind today. Dreams crowded and alive and more unremembered than usual. Places in the day where instead of doing one thing, I do another - interesting how right now the temptation is not so strong, as I just have rules and am to follow them. Confidence in full acknowledgment of fragility and human weakness. No room for arrogance.
Nor any room for apathy, neither. As I discovered in terse conversation with a sort-of colleague today. "Except that I love what I do, so it's not like any other job."
My now assuaged hunger in conjunction with teh delay in yoga practice brings the memories of my first husband even closer. That terrible night when he left. For six hours he was gone and I could have left him then. I could have been home with my mother and on my way wherever and I stayed. And the hurts layered. And he read my journal. And I stopped registering the pain. I know that I must have lashed out in anger and hurt, though I've no idea at whom. Or for how long. We were a couple of people made of reactions to each other.
It has never been comfortable for me to feel that he was fully aware of himself, that he was completely reasonable; and yet I do pin responsibility on him for his actions. My own lack of awareness does not remove culpability. All it does, and this is not small, is serve to remind me that I have the right (and responsibility) to make better choices now that I am aware. It is time to change when the time happens. I believe that I have a certain degree of input there, but I do not have the ability to understand a thing, I will have to gain that understanding before learning can be said to have happened.
Gentleness and patience are not at odds with persistence and honesty. And there is already such joy in life and in living. To be able to fully involve myself, that may be additionally joyful.
It is not necessarily possible, I believe, to exert complete control over thoughts and attention. it is not impossible to be present and engaged most of the time: even in the even that 'present' is somewhere .... else.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Bits from Sunday pm
It is not so easy to recapture the silence and movement of yesterday in the chatter and chairs of this afternoon, but I will do my best.
The television is not where it will be, though it is also not where it was one step closer to ready for the summer's heat escaping from the sunny funk in the kitchen that was the whole reason to move the television in the first place.
Every goal must be achieved through a series of steps as I reconnect with my home after it or I have been ill, usually both together and similarly. The funk must be identified and eliminated, it does violence to my healing senses from its invisible perch lately placed somewhere near the kitchen sink. It could be from the dishes.
The dishes get done last.
In order to move the cookbooks and the cat food and the table, the television, DVD and VCR must take space from the radio, writing desk, telephone and lavender which have been dislocated to the chairs for the duration as Pledge wipes make their way and the broom sweeps up litter and I mop the rugs of cat hair, glad to be free of the vacuum that sits in the almost way and has and will until I get around to letting go. Sets of altar decorations (for every horizontal surface is an altar) move together and are cleaned together and rearranged as I make plans to do this again in two months, only hoping that my apartment tetris skills allow me the mental space to work again, tho I have the had space for days and have not used it but for sleeping. The refrigerator top, the table top, the boards and blocks and stove-top and burners and door handles the hyphens between movement.
And all of this accompanied by dancing and a grace the felines do not acknowledge to my face. It is the grace of knowing where everything is or will be, how to get there and how to make things happen. The invisible part of housework and homemaking and living in rooms defined so specifically. This is my little cave and I the bear, groggy and dreaming and unwilling to tolerate tripping over shit in my way and tired of litter under my feet and in the cats' fur and sensing the absence of friends and comfortable surroundings.
The sunlight in rays inaccessible to small cats leaves the kitchen warm, spreads the smell of something. The discomfort is no longer bearable.
I have not been well enough to dance through the mess, cleaning. Today is different, legs and back and arms and focus working, though slowly, and the sink is clean, the stove white, the trash out and in the late evening I find quiet in the chair too large for the living room, and my home settles.
The funk is still present.
The dance continues.
The television is not where it will be, though it is also not where it was one step closer to ready for the summer's heat escaping from the sunny funk in the kitchen that was the whole reason to move the television in the first place.
Every goal must be achieved through a series of steps as I reconnect with my home after it or I have been ill, usually both together and similarly. The funk must be identified and eliminated, it does violence to my healing senses from its invisible perch lately placed somewhere near the kitchen sink. It could be from the dishes.
The dishes get done last.
In order to move the cookbooks and the cat food and the table, the television, DVD and VCR must take space from the radio, writing desk, telephone and lavender which have been dislocated to the chairs for the duration as Pledge wipes make their way and the broom sweeps up litter and I mop the rugs of cat hair, glad to be free of the vacuum that sits in the almost way and has and will until I get around to letting go. Sets of altar decorations (for every horizontal surface is an altar) move together and are cleaned together and rearranged as I make plans to do this again in two months, only hoping that my apartment tetris skills allow me the mental space to work again, tho I have the had space for days and have not used it but for sleeping. The refrigerator top, the table top, the boards and blocks and stove-top and burners and door handles the hyphens between movement.
And all of this accompanied by dancing and a grace the felines do not acknowledge to my face. It is the grace of knowing where everything is or will be, how to get there and how to make things happen. The invisible part of housework and homemaking and living in rooms defined so specifically. This is my little cave and I the bear, groggy and dreaming and unwilling to tolerate tripping over shit in my way and tired of litter under my feet and in the cats' fur and sensing the absence of friends and comfortable surroundings.
The sunlight in rays inaccessible to small cats leaves the kitchen warm, spreads the smell of something. The discomfort is no longer bearable.
I have not been well enough to dance through the mess, cleaning. Today is different, legs and back and arms and focus working, though slowly, and the sink is clean, the stove white, the trash out and in the late evening I find quiet in the chair too large for the living room, and my home settles.
The funk is still present.
The dance continues.
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
I have had to quit smoking
and I don't know when I'll be able to go back to it. It upsets my stomach too much. I am sad. I miss it.
The nurse at my surgeon's office (her name is Colleen) tells me that it could be up to a year before my body is done recovering from the anesthetic and the surgery, assuming I quit pushing it too far.
Taking things slowly is something which is an ideal for me, rarely realized as my own impatience has been conditioned by years of discomfort at intensity or building tension (yes, I am blaming my ex's, I learned it from them and their inability to function around me)(also, yes, I do get that I am the only common denominator in all of my relationships, that does not make it my fault that most of the men in my life have had no ability to let a moment happen or be without fucking it up or making a joke or breaking the tension and then apologizing lamely). It's a Pavlovian response and will take time to be unlearned.
It's funny, when I got the call that Joe was in jail and began the single oddest and most fucked up summer of my life, I knew that things were different, but I had no idea how different they really were, how much went away that night, how easily lost everything was. And I was nuts, drinking whiskey, sleeping with boys who had girlfriends, not sleeping at all, wearing really odd clothing and hanging out with some of the most disrespectful unethical people (okay, person) I have ever met. (I blame the whisky myself. tequila leaves my discriminating tastes in tact.) I don't hang out with her anymore.
Point is, it took a while for me to realize that I was nuts and why.
This time it's a little less difficult to follow given the straight line leading 3 1/2 inches down from my belly button.
Everything is different. It's just that way. There's nothing I can do about it. My body needs to recover from the sickness from before surgery and then the surgery and the anesthetic and the drugs after the anesthetic and the antibiotics and probably the world's worst cottage cheese, as well.
I am separated from the two people I love most in the world (outside of my parents, of course) because I have no idea "where I'm at" and will likely not have a clue for quite some time. which wouldn't be that big of a deal except that we live in the same house. It is too much to listen to the constant whining of a reformed martyr.
I know to walk. To get into the sun. To eat. To rest. To sleep. To not lift anything for a while (ug). To pet the kitten (I adopted one, she is called Ethel Katherine Humphries. I call her Ethey). To read. To make lists. To learn. To work at my jobs to the best of my abilities. To do some dishes when I can. To clean the litter boxes at least once a week.
"Master, how do I follow The Way?"
"Did you have breakfast this morning?"
"Yes."
"Did you wash your bowl when you were done eating?"
"Yes."
"Well, then."
The nurse at my surgeon's office (her name is Colleen) tells me that it could be up to a year before my body is done recovering from the anesthetic and the surgery, assuming I quit pushing it too far.
Taking things slowly is something which is an ideal for me, rarely realized as my own impatience has been conditioned by years of discomfort at intensity or building tension (yes, I am blaming my ex's, I learned it from them and their inability to function around me)(also, yes, I do get that I am the only common denominator in all of my relationships, that does not make it my fault that most of the men in my life have had no ability to let a moment happen or be without fucking it up or making a joke or breaking the tension and then apologizing lamely). It's a Pavlovian response and will take time to be unlearned.
It's funny, when I got the call that Joe was in jail and began the single oddest and most fucked up summer of my life, I knew that things were different, but I had no idea how different they really were, how much went away that night, how easily lost everything was. And I was nuts, drinking whiskey, sleeping with boys who had girlfriends, not sleeping at all, wearing really odd clothing and hanging out with some of the most disrespectful unethical people (okay, person) I have ever met. (I blame the whisky myself. tequila leaves my discriminating tastes in tact.) I don't hang out with her anymore.
Point is, it took a while for me to realize that I was nuts and why.
This time it's a little less difficult to follow given the straight line leading 3 1/2 inches down from my belly button.
Everything is different. It's just that way. There's nothing I can do about it. My body needs to recover from the sickness from before surgery and then the surgery and the anesthetic and the drugs after the anesthetic and the antibiotics and probably the world's worst cottage cheese, as well.
I am separated from the two people I love most in the world (outside of my parents, of course) because I have no idea "where I'm at" and will likely not have a clue for quite some time. which wouldn't be that big of a deal except that we live in the same house. It is too much to listen to the constant whining of a reformed martyr.
I know to walk. To get into the sun. To eat. To rest. To sleep. To not lift anything for a while (ug). To pet the kitten (I adopted one, she is called Ethel Katherine Humphries. I call her Ethey). To read. To make lists. To learn. To work at my jobs to the best of my abilities. To do some dishes when I can. To clean the litter boxes at least once a week.
"Master, how do I follow The Way?"
"Did you have breakfast this morning?"
"Yes."
"Did you wash your bowl when you were done eating?"
"Yes."
"Well, then."
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Facing the future
It is almost impossible to think of tomorrow while stretched out on a hammock feeling the sun like a blanket and the breeze from all sides. It has been a lovely respite from attempting the impossible, being here. My mother mows in a straw hat with a black band around the crown. She has cleared something like 4 acres of yard and mows it in sections as often as she can. My father has potted plants and planted flowers all around the house. He bought mums for the pots on either side of the driveway. The cats give love and chats with very little meaning to me or any other human. The feral cats adore my mother and her gentle voice and manner. They stand still and let her pet them, rubbing against her ankles and throwing me dirty looks.
I walked out into the world of the trees last evening and watched the clouds rush in, changing and growing and billowing and going gray and white. The sound of the rain and the flashes of lightning filled the room in which I sleep. It is the room in which I slept when I lived here so many years ago. I thought it was green, maybe it was, now it is tan and the bed is much smaller and while I am not sure how well I will take to being in the world again, I miss my bed and my room.
I am dreaming oddly, the hospital dreams have stopped, but there are more people than I am accustomed to and last night there was a man on my arm, and it was good. And Brad was stocking up on water cooler jugs filled with wine and there were smoked turkeys and platters of fruit and I asked if he was throwing a party and said if he was I'd like to know so that I could not be there and he said something about how O'Neill was always saying how if anyone's hungry he's the one to feed them and Brad was pissed and decided he would feed the hungry for a while and see how O'Neill liked it. I thought he meant Thanksgiving and was even more confused as it is not yet September. Upon waking, I thought I would have to remember to ask Brad if he was talking about Jack O'Neill from Stargate or someone that I've never met. Then I fully woke up and realized that wouldn't make any sense at all.
As a younger person I always resented the reality of chores, the day-to-day crap of job and laundry and dishes and cleaning my room. Now it is going to be my life line. I do not know what has happened to my brain, but something is different, bound to show up at some point on the scanner. I have a guess, but I know too much about electrons to believe it can be all true.
Have decided to cut back on the ibuprofen. It works to cut my pain, but my pain is no longer great. I am tired and somewhat more stiff than I would like, but in no way incapacitated or stalled. The only real issue with me being tired is that I am now much more emotional than I am used to being. Still fragile. Not in the mood to fight it anymore.
It is odd to think that today next week I will be thinking of different things, sitting in a different place, using a different computer, reading different books (okay, maybe not), facing the future as me, still, but differently. Why that strikes me today so much more strongly than it has struck me in the past is quite beyond my comprehension, but then, right, there are many things which are.
I am looking forward to the world and the me that I am become, mostly because that's the way my feet are headed.
I walked out into the world of the trees last evening and watched the clouds rush in, changing and growing and billowing and going gray and white. The sound of the rain and the flashes of lightning filled the room in which I sleep. It is the room in which I slept when I lived here so many years ago. I thought it was green, maybe it was, now it is tan and the bed is much smaller and while I am not sure how well I will take to being in the world again, I miss my bed and my room.
I am dreaming oddly, the hospital dreams have stopped, but there are more people than I am accustomed to and last night there was a man on my arm, and it was good. And Brad was stocking up on water cooler jugs filled with wine and there were smoked turkeys and platters of fruit and I asked if he was throwing a party and said if he was I'd like to know so that I could not be there and he said something about how O'Neill was always saying how if anyone's hungry he's the one to feed them and Brad was pissed and decided he would feed the hungry for a while and see how O'Neill liked it. I thought he meant Thanksgiving and was even more confused as it is not yet September. Upon waking, I thought I would have to remember to ask Brad if he was talking about Jack O'Neill from Stargate or someone that I've never met. Then I fully woke up and realized that wouldn't make any sense at all.
As a younger person I always resented the reality of chores, the day-to-day crap of job and laundry and dishes and cleaning my room. Now it is going to be my life line. I do not know what has happened to my brain, but something is different, bound to show up at some point on the scanner. I have a guess, but I know too much about electrons to believe it can be all true.
Have decided to cut back on the ibuprofen. It works to cut my pain, but my pain is no longer great. I am tired and somewhat more stiff than I would like, but in no way incapacitated or stalled. The only real issue with me being tired is that I am now much more emotional than I am used to being. Still fragile. Not in the mood to fight it anymore.
It is odd to think that today next week I will be thinking of different things, sitting in a different place, using a different computer, reading different books (okay, maybe not), facing the future as me, still, but differently. Why that strikes me today so much more strongly than it has struck me in the past is quite beyond my comprehension, but then, right, there are many things which are.
I am looking forward to the world and the me that I am become, mostly because that's the way my feet are headed.
Thursday, 23 August 2007
What the Dr. Said
My incision is healing just fine, I get to take the tapes off as they start curling up. My scar will be very neat and tidy, I think, with a little tear drop at the bottom.
I am very tired, which is what my life will be for the next 5 weeks, I am told. Particularly given "what you went through." There are only so many times a person can hear that from members of the medical profession before wondering just how bad things were that I am not expected to be fully recuperated a week and a half after surgery - it's just an appendix, right? So, I asked:
"How bad was it?" (this from me)
(my doctor said) "It was bad. If you'd waited any longer, you might not have survived the surgery."
I keep remembering that the important thing is that I'm alive, and that everyone involved in making me not die was good at their job and available at the time. However: I'm an emotional, mental, spiritual and physical shadow of my former self, I cry at the drop of a hat, my temper is shorter than a bald man's hair and I miss my cat.
Today is one of those days when I really wanted a sweetie, someone to tell me that the important thing is that I'm still alive and loved. Just to keep me from dwelling on the melodrama of "how close was it?" you know.
I am told that this all takes time. I am unused to allowing for time. I nap all day and find that eating takes more energy than it gives. I feel that this is become whining, it is all new to me, I am uncomfortable with my present state.
I am allowed to go back to work in about a week. I will have to start looking for jobs again.
My father, the person to whom I am listening for the first time in my life, suggests that it is more important to focus on healing than on anything else. He offered me the chance to come out here to rest and recuperate in safety and relative silence. I think it didn't hurt that I was bawling at the time and needed more than I could articulate.
This is just not my way. I need to be taken care of. Not emotionally supported, not believed in, not anything nice and intangible and cheap like having people around who have faith in me. I mean actually taken care of, with the laundry and food and reminders to bathe and a room in which I can sleep that is removed from the rest of the house and gentle conversation and time, lots of time.
I don't need to tell you that I am reminded of the people in this world who do not have the friends and family that I do who have been available and who have been gentle with me and given me space and safety and silence. I cannot imagine what the lives of people who do not have time to recover from something like this must be, how tired and worn down they must feel. The bills will be bad enough, at least my day-to-day isn't piling up on me as well.
I am alive to complain and hurt and read and feel. One of these days it will sink in and then my temper will explode and the rest of my life with it.
I am very tired, which is what my life will be for the next 5 weeks, I am told. Particularly given "what you went through." There are only so many times a person can hear that from members of the medical profession before wondering just how bad things were that I am not expected to be fully recuperated a week and a half after surgery - it's just an appendix, right? So, I asked:
"How bad was it?" (this from me)
(my doctor said) "It was bad. If you'd waited any longer, you might not have survived the surgery."
I keep remembering that the important thing is that I'm alive, and that everyone involved in making me not die was good at their job and available at the time. However: I'm an emotional, mental, spiritual and physical shadow of my former self, I cry at the drop of a hat, my temper is shorter than a bald man's hair and I miss my cat.
Today is one of those days when I really wanted a sweetie, someone to tell me that the important thing is that I'm still alive and loved. Just to keep me from dwelling on the melodrama of "how close was it?" you know.
I am told that this all takes time. I am unused to allowing for time. I nap all day and find that eating takes more energy than it gives. I feel that this is become whining, it is all new to me, I am uncomfortable with my present state.
I am allowed to go back to work in about a week. I will have to start looking for jobs again.
My father, the person to whom I am listening for the first time in my life, suggests that it is more important to focus on healing than on anything else. He offered me the chance to come out here to rest and recuperate in safety and relative silence. I think it didn't hurt that I was bawling at the time and needed more than I could articulate.
This is just not my way. I need to be taken care of. Not emotionally supported, not believed in, not anything nice and intangible and cheap like having people around who have faith in me. I mean actually taken care of, with the laundry and food and reminders to bathe and a room in which I can sleep that is removed from the rest of the house and gentle conversation and time, lots of time.
I don't need to tell you that I am reminded of the people in this world who do not have the friends and family that I do who have been available and who have been gentle with me and given me space and safety and silence. I cannot imagine what the lives of people who do not have time to recover from something like this must be, how tired and worn down they must feel. The bills will be bad enough, at least my day-to-day isn't piling up on me as well.
I am alive to complain and hurt and read and feel. One of these days it will sink in and then my temper will explode and the rest of my life with it.
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