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Summer

Feels like I’ve been away FOREVER.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s certain blog suicide to talk about one’s posting or lack thereof, but dude. I’ve been conspicuously absent from my writing gigs, especially this one. Time to limber up the (two) fingers I use for typing, kwim? And get some grey matter out there splat on the page.

Summer has hit here in the chilly, damp, pacific Northwest. I should know, because I bought white jeans that don’t even cover my ankles. I know I’m the only person in the PNW who still wears sweaters and socks when it’s 70 degrees out (why aren’t I complaining about being “hot,” wearing tank tops and jumping into the bay like everyone else?), so it takes a lot of sun to convince me to bare my body, any part of it, to the elements.

Last week we drove north from Portland toward Bellingham and took the long way through some of the Columbia River Gorge and past Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. Rainier, when seen driving south on I-5 past around Seattle, always appears magical to me, a floating mountain shrouded in white and a looming presence that must have figured prominently in ritual and presence years ago when people remembered their connection to the earth and the life upon it. I expected the east side of Rainier to have even more presence and meaning for me, but no. It was St. Helens that captivated me.

You could feel the earth humming at its feet.

I heard the mountain speak.

We crossed a small bridge over a river and I slammed on the brakes. “We’re stopping here,” I said. We got out in the cold wind of the altitude and found sand at the river’s edge, so we lay on sun-warmed sand next to the vibrating river. I felt alive. Warm. Filled.

Last night I drove to Vancouver and we biked down to Kits Beach to watch the fireworks amid thousands of people. The crush riding back was huge, like a slow tidal wave. I felt sucked into it, a part yet not a part of these people who all had homes to go to, cars to drive in. By the time we found space apart, away from the crowd, you still couldn’t hear the night-quiet that I love when biking alone after dark. There were too many of us escaping the crowds, using the bike-highways. I felt battered, alone, yet not-alone. I longed for a cool breeze, the sound of my single set of tires buzzing along the street, the exhilaration of riding in the dark when all the world is inside.

I think I’ll go for a ride tonight. It’s summer.

Past Blast

I’m holding a ring in my hand. Actually I’m not really holding it, since to type and hold simultaneously would be awkward, difficult, and likely result in larger than the usual number of typos. But I was holding it a minute ago. It’s large, gold and has a royal blue stone in the center. The ring isn’t mine, yet it’s been in my possession for more than 30 years.

The ring belongs, in my opinion, to someone else. It was given to me once as a symbol. That symbol connected to things. Promises. But life got blacker and I fell down a rabbit hole and drank a potion making me small. The ring grew too large to fit my finger. It wasn’t mine. That life wasn’t mine. I didn’t know what my life was then — not at 17 — but I knew what it couldn’t be. So I ran.

The first thing they tell you in Life School is that running doesn’t help. I missed that day.

It occurred to me, three weeks ago when through a series of events the ring’s owner became a real person who, inexplicably, lives not far from me — what are the odds?? of all the places on this planet! — that the running finally caught up with me. Here were things I haven’t wanted to see in 30 years (yet surfaced continually anyway), and now they were in my back yard.

Today we had lunch.

I tried hard not to have expectations. Expectations can ruin things. I know that much. Expectations either good or bad. Or in between. I tried, actually, not to think about it at all. When I caught myself thinking about it anyway I returned my thoughts to the present. What am I feeling now? Weird and awkward. Like I am 15 again.

This is sounding like there is romance here. I’m not seeing that, no. But there are memories. And a sense of continuation of something that was begun. Not down the path begun once, but a different path. I have met with people from my distant past before and there has been a feeling of warmth, of connection, of familiarity-yet-not.

Lunch was pretty good. Better than expected. It started this morning with a phone call that startled me with recognition of a voice that spoke to me from hours spent in a green-walled kitchen, lying on a black faux-leather sofa, yellow touch-tone phone glued to my ear.

I’m still filled with feelings. A lonely scared child in a woman’s body. Snips of pictures, words, one after another like waves crashing on rocks. What might have been but wasn’t. What was instead.

The message is that there is something to take from this. Something to take and a lot to let go of. I felt the rumblings three weeks ago when I lay awake one night in panic, feeling the volcano trembling underneath. I feel them still, closer and less frightening. I can lay open the doors, gates and walls bolted down so long ago. It’s just a dragon, after all. Nothing to be frightened of.

I channeled once that this relationship, my first, lay the groundwork for all that came after. I saw that, felt bound by it. Now I see it doesn’t have to be that way. Patterns are reversible; plaid turns into paisley. Undo what was done. Create something in its place. This opening, then, is a gift.

Hi, I have a blog

Well no, I haven’t been kidnapped by aliens who sucked out my brains like Paleo man sucked the marrow from bones. Why do you ask?

I’ve been BIZZY. RULLY RULLY BIZZY.

With cancer and stuff. Doctors who cut things and then cut things some more. With discovering that despite the seeming accuracy and convincing confidence of a surly fictitious television doctor, Vicodin is not the strongest painkiller money can buy or that people will let you have and still walk around all legal-like and stuff (though I am cautioned not to drive cars or operate heavy machinery). With finding out that FEET are the foundation of everything. It all comes from your feet. Start off on the right foot, my friend!

Ha.

I’ve been writing about all this over at my spiritual blog, but there are some things I can say here as well.

Pain hurts. Ow.

Friends are good. Who knew people would loan me wheelchairs, canes and crutches and bring me yummy soup, scrumptious organic out-of-season fruit and whole lasagnas? The friend thing can’t be underestimated.

I’m impatient. I know this is a Big Learning Moment and all, but jeez. Can’t it go quicker?

Short story:

Once there was a woman who had a thing on her foot. Side of the heel. The thing, let’s call it Spot, started looking different and the woman said to herself, “Huh. Looks like cancer!” But since the woman 1) had no health insurance and 2) had disgust for doctors who give you the runaround, she chose to let it go. Run, Spot, run! And Spot did. Spot grew and grew. A friend is forgiven for once saying, “This isn’t cancer (but you should get it looked at),” because the same friend later said “OMG! Cancer! Dude!” and of course the woman, having Free Will and all, always knew deep down inside what was up with Spot.

Eventually, and this is months of thinking a lot about Spot because gradually Spot grew and grew and took up way more than his share of room inside shoes and whatnot and one day refused to heal (heel?) any longer, the woman decided to Have Something Done About It. She went through the seven layers of acceptance for bad things that happen to you and envisioned possibilities like no longer having a foot and chemotherapy and all sorts of dire things. Finally she heard the word “melanoma” and read the pathology report, in which Things Did Not Look Good.

There was a lot of cutting out of a foot-piece the size of Kansas. Also some lymph nodes, just for fun.

Later, after the pain the woman has now partially forgotten ever happened, they took some of her own skin and stuck it to Kansas.

Things are getting better. Doctors have stopped using the word “amputation” and instead caution the woman about coveting three-inch high heels.

Pain prescriptions run out and it’s not a national emergency.

Things go on. Still breathing.

I must be dreaming

You could not make this stuff up.

I can’t really tell you what’s been going on with me lately because, well, I can’t really tell. I hate not being able to tell, because not only could I make it into a good story but there’d be a certain poetic justice in the telling that would be immensely appealing to me. Like chocolate cake. But I can’t tell.

But this world I’ve been living in as a result of the [redacted] situation I seem to be in that is the fault of the [redacted][redacted] is surreal. Life is but a dream. Add to that the thing that is going on with me on a physical level, the one I am snarling about over on Facebook about the state of the United States health care (oxymoron) system, and there you have it.

I am so tired.

Tired is not the word. Who can sleep ten hours and then need a nap later in the day? Raise your hand if this is you. Oh, not you? It must be me then. And my day is punctuated by the Things I Must Do, like work, which occurs amidst the Things My Body Tell Me To Do, like lay on my bed meditating. (Staring at the ceiling through closed eyelids.)

Rest has not come easily to me in the past, and I fight it still.

My brain feels like it is under water. Or perhaps that someone sent it out for cleaning. Is it a bad sign that I can’t tell which?

I am sure this must have something to do with reorganization of priorities, but so far everything is being shuffled to the bottom of the pile and nothing is on top. Is this what non-attachment feels like? Because I just feel like lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, drifting slowly away.

Proof of my powers

An actual IM conversation with my son, 14. He had a headache and I said I could fix it for him:

Karen: Go to sleeeeep, you are getting sleeeepy

NW: yes

Karen: look into my eyyyyyyyyes, you are very sleeeeeeeepy

NW: yesssssssss i am sleeeeeeepppyyyyy

Karen: you will do everything I sayyyyyyyyyyyyy

Karen: you arrrrre in my powerrrrrrrrrr

NW: yessss i will follllowwww commanndsss

Karen: cluck like a chicken!

NW: bock bock

Karen, to herself: IT WORKS!

THREE HOURS GO BY

Karen: when you awake, you will not remember anything. You will not remember being a chicken, or robbing that bank, or running naked through the halls at school. But you will trust me completely. 1-2-3-  AWAKE!

Karen: there, feel better?

NW: what just happened?

Karen: oh, um, er, nothing.

The time I blew my nose and brains came out

I’ve been sick as a horse. Wait, do horses get sick? And how would you know? Whenever you ask them questions, they just say “neigh.” Ba dum bum. You can tell I am feeling better, because my really bad jokes only emerge when I’m feeling pretty good.

So I went down to Portland a couple of weeks ago, the place that was built atop an ancient unicorn burial ground (I did not make this up — it’s on Facebook so it must be true — but they only bury the really really ancient ones so they leave the perky young ones to prance around and make rainbows)(unicorn euthanasia)(don’t you love alliteration that doesn’t even start with the same letter? Am I a word nerd or what?) and that pulled me like a magnet all the way down I-5. I awoke that morning, my voice two octaves lower than usual (Matthew said, “Ooh, sexy!” and meant it) and my throat feeling like someone had taken a barbecue grill brush to it during the night.

I was sick.

With a job to do.

Meeting people and being all Professional In a Suit. Also wearing New Riding Boots, even though I had no idea there would be actual horses. Which made my hand muddy when I stroked their muddy necks and tried to avoid their long yellow boot-eating teeth, also teeth that mistake fingers for carrots. Hey, it happened once. Could happen again.

So for two days I was perky and also wise, and talked and talked and talked. Three hours non-stop on Saturday. NINE HOURS non-stop on Sunday. In between sleeping in the Room of No Sleep, the one everyone said casually the next day that, “Oh that? Everyone we know who has slept in that room had trouble sleeping there.” Thanks. Yes, it had a bathroom of its own, which I appreciated. Considered sleeping in it, too.

And then I drove back up I-5, a whole state’s worth of I-5, afterward.

And then died.

But wait! Then I had to pack! And drive again on I-5 to an airport! And sit on a plane with wadded-up airport toilet paper in the pocket of my Holt Renfrew stylish trench, because I had forgotten real tissues that weren’t made of sandpaper.

And then flew and died some more in someone else’s house.

Like I said before, I am an awesome guest.

(By Day 5, I was doing the dishes, so be kind.)

But all that was TWO WEEKS ago. So why am I still sniffling and coughing? I thought I could blame the trees, which burst into blossom while I was away and stand there, smirking and covered with pollen, but for four days I stayed indoors and didn’t even breathe, so it can’t be that. I am tired of coughing up gooey lumps and I forgot to buy real tissues even though I have now been to the store TWICE this week with tissues on my mind and sill I came home with marked-down Valentine’s candy instead. Twice.

Why?

Why am I still sick?

Is a breast pump adaptable for noses?

I do have a nice vase of pink tulips, though. You don’t think it could be those, do you? They’re so … pink. Innocent. Even though I watched the water level get lower and lower and the one tulip with the really short stem drooped over the side of the vase, head down. Downward dog tulip. But I gave them all a drink and what do you know, he’s (yes, I made the tulip a him) standing up again! Yay tulips!

It’s not eBay, is it? Because I left the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show thinking I surely had not spent nearly enough money and by the way I needed two silver chains for the pendants I bought as a combination Christmas – New Year’s – Valentine’s Day gift for myself, maybe with my birthday thrown in. Plus I needed new Tibetan prayer flags, you can never have enough. Also probably something else. You know how it goes when the bidding gets crazy. So I hope it’s not eBay that is causing me to cough and gasp.

Maybe it is eBay. I should pretend it is and that could be my excuse to weaning myself away. I hate eBay anyway. It’s so yellow. You know that eBay yellow? Awful color. Probably causes uncontrollable urges. And coughing. It’s probably the yellow.

Yellow is the color of mucus. Not my mucus, exactly (I haven’t been checking — should I check? What if it’s, like, brown? or black? Sign of the plague? Is this plague?)(IS THE PLAGUE CONTAGIOUS THROUGH THE INTERNET?)(Maybe you;d better stop reading now, just in case)(Hey! Maybe that’s how I got sick to begin with!!!!!!!!), but general mucus.

[Insert military joke here. "General Mucus?" the officer coughed, "Slimy fellow. Slippery."]

Yes, as of tonight I am approximately 6% done with the book I am writing. Congratulate me!

Sick no longer means sick. That’s sick.

Seething with a virus, I stumbled on to a series of airplanes the other day that took me from northwest to southwest. I coughed and tried not to blow my nose with too much proximity to anyone else, but after a two hour drive, a parking shuttle, an amble through security (which really was an amble and was eerily quiet), and a wait at the gate my inner energy reserves had become depleted and it was Time To Die.

Oh, figuratively. Whatever.

So I brought my virus to my friends, who are cheerfully helping me either feed or quash the little buggers, I’m not sure which.

I have been in bed two thirds of the time I’ve been here. I am a great guest. Quiet, they say. Go ahead, invite me to your house and see.

~~

If you spend any time on Urban Dictionary or listening to anyone who a) has a sleeve tattoo or b) is under 30, you’d know that “sick” has now taken on new meaning. Tell that to the Brits who think it’s a synonym for throw-up. But no, sick now means awesome, which is a word that no one who a) has a sleeve tattoo or b) is under 30 would ever say. Because it’s been replaced. So pay no attention to the arbitrary age screening devices here, it’s nothing personal.

Words are sick.

~~

There’s something awesome — er, sick — about being comatose in a strange bed where people are plying you with strange substances. You give up ownership of your body, your outcome, and just flow with the go. Like turning a dream inside out.

Highly recommended, though maybe with less coughing and nose blowing. Also I would like my sense of smell back, please.

~~

There are still deals to be had at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show. To you it might be a bunch of rocks but to me it’s pieces of the planet.

Sick.

Drifting

I think this is what they call flow. Either that or I can’t be paid to care about much. When I say care, I don’t mean care. I mean get my panties in a twist. And that just isn’t happening.

Nope, I’m afloat on the Wonder Barge of Life. Somebody up ahead (it might be me but I can’t be bothered to get up and go look just now to see for sure) is poling us gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily. And along the sides of the stream I see the things we slowly pass, but I’m not grabbing for any brass rings these days. It’s okay just sitting here in the sun, floating down this stream.

My days are pinpointed by whatever is on Google Calendar, and most days are pretty full. Not a lot of time for floating, but I’m managing meditational runs and meditational baths. It’s okay that I don’t actually sit in the Zen Room and meditate. I don’t need to answer emails, but mostly I do. The bills are paid. Phone calls are made. Songs are sung. Life flows on.

The walls could be crumbling around me, and for now that would be okay. Let tomorrow take care of itself, right?

If there’s anything I feel I could be missing, it would have to be passion. Is this what life is like on anti-depressants? The top and bottom of the graph are cut off? I remember telling someone long ago about the huge advantages I saw to having big emotional ups and downs. I strove to live my life that way. No, he said, he preferred a straight line across the graph. I wondered how anyone could live that that. Now I know.

Everything changes.

Tomorrow I might wake up with my panties in a twist. You never know. The Wonder Barge probably isn’t a permanent fixture, as much as I’m (bemusedly) enjoying this Time In Between. Either way, I’ll enjoy the purple irises on my coffee table.

Just like an ordinary day

I have lost my pendulum, or it’s conveniently misplaced, so instead I decided to use a pendent I wear sometimes (when I can remember to put on jewelry). It’s a ceramic disk that hangs from a black cord. The disk is green and blue in a Celtic design and I can almost remember where I got it. Ireland? Maybe. Anyway, I asked it if it would stand in for my pendulum, which I rarely use anyway but prefer to use over my Tarot cards, which I never really got into despite having the beautiful Robin Wood deck.

The pendant said yes.

My questions tumbled out in a heap, and the pendent hung quivering, black cord taut. I calmed down and breathed and asked my questions slowly, one at a time.

I’ve been so tired. Tired and not caring and not sleeping. Not doing. Keeping the blinds closed, especially on sunny days where the slap stings — wasted sunlight? how dare I? — and I close my eyes and sink into the next hour and the next. Some days I eat, and some I don’t. Google calendar tells me when and where I must go, when it is absolutely necessary that I do.

I’m starting to avoid things, like Tai Chi. And people.

Someone who didn’t know me would point diagnostic fingers at me and hurl prescription meds in my direction, but I know myself. This isn’t that.

Last week I freaked out a little about the future and dependency and the next day 100,000 people just perished, just like that. The smoke of 100,000 hearts wisped up into the air while the dust of buildings and crushed bodies and  hopes of today, or tomorrow, or even the sun were blotted out in an eyeblink. And people texted money and wrote and got on airplanes and did something to keep from feeling the WTF and the OMG. And that day I knew that my day-before freakout was a premonition, a getting-ready, and I thought fine, well, you’re done now, you can get back to normal.

No.

I told my pendent-pendulum to get me the hell out of here. I’m done, finis, finito, kaput. Please.

Not that a pendulum that isn’t even a pendulum has any power like that.

Today I went to the beach. Sorry, not a sandy warm, sunny beach. My beach, one of them, is a tumble of lush volcanic flow, suspended in time where it once met the edge of the water. Rock, meet water. Water, meet rock. Hi. The sun was waning but still evident. I squinted at the sea birds rafting on the water’s surface, and closed my eyes and held my face to the light. Breathing. All the while, cells in my body are multiplying, changing, readying themselves for The Next Thing.

The next thing.

Not alone

The room was spare. The single bed, covered in a mauve quilt, was pushed against the wall. A gray and white stuffed dog sat atop the nearby dresser. A single, empty chair filled the space next to the bed.

The woman lay on her back with eyes closed and mouth open, her body slight under the quilt. Her breaths came hard, ragged, with spaces in between. The sound of her labors filled the room.

We quietly arranged ourselves on chairs we had brought for the occasion, facing the woman in the bed. She kept on with her breathing.

One of us whispered. “We’re here to be with you on your journey.”

Hearts lifted in song, quietly, softly.

Out. In.

Above her body, the woman greeted us, smiling, welcoming. We sang.

Others gathered above the woman’s body. A boy she had played with as a child. Family, friends. All her selves through the years. They crowded in above her, waiting. We sang.

Out. In.

We watched for the fall and rise of her chest, our notes matching a dwindling cadence. The people waited.

“I’m glad you’re here, ” the woman said to me. “No one else here can hear me.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. “This can be time. Look, they’re here.”

Out. In.

Our repertoire complete, we gathered our coats and chairs and left the now crowded room.

Out.

Copyright © 2009 by Karen Murphy. All rights reserved.

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