JOURNAL
Preparing for return to the Great Field and enjoying existence while doing so.
DECEMBER 2, 2009
Irony was the theme of this Thanksgiving; as in water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink. And as in three people made me Thanksgiving dinner, and all three were delish and would give me wonderful tastes for the entire Thanksgiving weekend -- but my digestive system revolted and went to war. In the messiest of ways, which as I detail to close friends turns out to be normal in illness. But not normal for me. Later a friend came by and suggested a virus, as many were cooking food for me and the health and hygiene of the cook is not known. It had not occurred to me that an infection may have caused the digestive havoc, and the minute she reminded me of that possibility I began taking colloidal silver, a natural antibiotic. Lo, my system seems to be cooling down and able to digest the food without embarrassing and nauseating moments. I did, however, change my Kitchen Angels diet to Vegetarian, which I tried tonight for the first time. The vegetables in the veggie stew were cooked perfectly. I hope this continues; I imagine vegetarian meals to be more creative and more perfectly cooked than the 'regular' meals. But this ironic Thanksgiving clued me to the necessity of eating more lightly. As a friend expressed what she too is going thru, at a certain age your body just can't do what it used to, and you have to give up the complicated foods for the simpler ones. And pay attention to food combinations.
This Thanksgiving was not my usual feast. Usually I set the table with candles, have a bottle or two of excellent red wine, and a bottle of Khalua on the table, and lay out all the food family style -- even if it's just me. No Khalua this time, and but a glass of so-so wine. And no laying out of platters of food. I knew I wouldn't be able to eat for long, and liquor intake has greatly diminished. Feasting has always been a ritual of spirit for me. No more. At least no more with food feasts. I'll need to find another kind of feasting, or another way of looking at it.
To me this is a perfect example of the Old vs. New (Saturn vs. Uranus) opposition we're astrologically going thru. Resistance is futile, I learned first-hand this Thanksgiving. Reality of antiquation (Saturn) yelled and I have no sane choice except to listen and change (Uranus).
Beside the three meals people made for me, there was even more generosity. An old friend brought me a case of my favorite red wine -- that one glass I drink nightly does help relax me. I was blown away by this gift, and fortunately still use and enjoy wine, tho in more limited amounts: the pain eats the high. And in this generosity I have received a surfeit of everything, more abundance than I can physically relish. It's good to have a full refrigerator, and generous friends, but it would be better were I able to thoroughly enjoy all of this in full health. Of course, if I had good health, I wouldn't have garnered the surfeit. Irony is alive and flourishing in my life. I'd give the definition for irony here, but the fluffy white cake one friend made for me (I've dreamed of a white cake, fluffy white icing, not to sweet, and the baker nailed it, and delivered it with one of the three Thanksgiving dinners) is sitting on the dictionary, and the cake cover is too heavy to lift this late into tomorrow (1:45 AM). So please look it up yourself...you'll enjoy the contemplation.
NOVEMBER 19, 2009
Pain,
never know which or how much,
blocks the Light,
forcing one to stand on tiptoe
to catch a glimmer of the setting sun,
to stretch: silver lining!
NOVEMBER 12, 2009
Yesterday my doctor and regular Ambercare nurse came to pay a house call...yes, they still happen in this early part of the 21st century! In that session, the nurse, one of the goddess-sends of this entry into the Corridor who I have come to know well, and like, asked me a question I haven't asked of myself, or answered. It was: If you know that you can use the dark side of magic to take yourself to death's door, why not use the light side of magic and make yourself well?
I had expressed to her in our talks since knowing her that when I was desperate to move back to Santa Fe last year, I took myself down to the core of death, as far down and deep into the feeling of not caring as I could get without actually taking knife to wrist or poison to mouth. When I speak of dark magic, I speak of the emotional travail drummed up in desperate times, like when the rent is due and I have no money; or in this case, needing to move and not having means or help. I reached such a point that inside of me I felt the absence of zest for life or desire for it. I meant it. And I moved. That dark magic always works, for me anyway, and I think for anyone. That's why in olden lore of magic, sex was used: it stimulated great passion, and that kind of passion is necessary as a force to carry the message into the subtle and not subtle planes. That's my theory, anyway. Armed with my statement of that theory, the nurse asked me the question about turning the magic around.
My answer was: I really don't desire to fight death, or to live longer than my body can handle without interference from needles and cold steel tests. I don't want to hasten death, but I also don't wish to stand in its way. I went on to say that actually I feel I've lived my time, and very fully. I'm ready to leave, I don't have unfulfilled goals and desires, and even more than that, I do not feel relevant in today's civilization. Elders are not held in respect, but disdain, and my work -- metaphysical advice -- is not relevant either. The young are 'divining' for themselves, and have a more jaundiced, jaded attitude toward astrology and tarot today than when I started. I don't have many, if any, clients who are under 40, for instance. Plus, being in public with a hunched back and having to walk with a cane, looking like a concentration camp evacuee, is not an attractive option, and being in public has always been the greater part of my work.
I don't know what's actually causing my weight loss, and now the accompanying nausea, and as I've said, I'm not willing to test to find out. If it's my time, fine. If it's not, I sure don't want this pain to last a long time. I asked the two of these helpers if they thought I was hypochondriac-ing, and they resoundingly said no, they were just calling me on my 'magical' mindset. The weight loss did concern the doctor, and it is a definite active problem: I weighed 105 yesterday, down a pound from the last weighing of 106 two months ago. The rate of loss has slowed, but still I am losing, not gaining, weight. Why this is happening is a mystery to all of us, and that's after MRI and blood test (which I'm taking another of soon to see what more we can see or what more has developed).
But I am moved to write this now because for one, the admission of inner truths is the point of a journal, at least this one; and I'd welcome your thoughts on my attitude. Do you understand not really wanting to continue and letting the body run it's course to discontinuation, rather than going to heroic healing modes? At the seersucker-skin age of 73!
One medical fact did come to light in my conversation with doctor and nurse yesterday. Because my kidneys are not as strong as they need to be, I always have concern about the pain meds I take affecting them adversely. The doctor said no, not now would they harm me, but down the road with more use they might start to. It's the acetaminophen in Hydrocodone that is harmful to the kidneys. They said they'd look up other pain killers that do not have this in them and let me know. I hope there is something that works as well on pain but doesn't slowly slaughter kidney function. I'll let you know what is found.
NOVEMBER 11, 2009
"Travelling Home," the collage, is done -- at last and yay, I say! It was rougher than I expected to spend so much thought and time on this issue, especially since it was my own travels I was charting; but interesting and worth it. The thrill in it for me was finding where I wanted to go, which means the exact right picture to depict it, as well as accomplishing the space ship aspect of my after-death vision.
Home is where I want to go, but I hadn't really included it in my vision. That original vision had me truckin' around universes in my little spaceship, looking in on civilizations and planets but not getting involved. In conscious thought, I'd given up expecting to get to my home planet.
Thirty years or so ago, when I'd been in Santa Fe for less than two years, I went to a 'channeler,' a popular aspect of soul searching at the time. I was a believer then. This channeler changed her accent when she went into, or let come into her, the out-of-body entity she was speaking for -- very impressive and cementing of belief. She told me one thing that has stayed with me because it felt so right: I had been here a long time, she said in a heavily accented voice, but I didn't mean to be here at all. I got drawn in by the forces of nature, my spaceship got caught in the waves of gravity; and that very trapping gravity shocked me, I could not get over the strength of gravity, and never have, in my time here, gotten over my awe and distaste for the density that is earth life. So many decades have gone by since this original reading that I'm sure the words I now use are my own interpretation of what she said. But, the words struck true, then and now. Since that reading, I have given imagination to what my home planet was/is like. Creative, joy filled, light, thought, nothing carnal. I even wrote of a new earth race with these qualities; I called them the Onshay.
So, while working on the part of the collage that had passed all the bardos tempting one back into physical form, I had to find my little spaceship. I have made the bardos on either side of the canvas, and 'I' have become light blue dots of molecules winding my way upward, protected by truly gossamer-looking bodhi tree leaves a friend gave me. And lo, I came upon a gold and purple orb -- a small golden orb in the center, that surrounded by a much larger purple orb, or perhaps aura, which in turn is encompassed in a much larger golden halo. Immediately I knew this to be my home planet. And right after that, I saw that the spaceship would be molecules, and they would be mostly golden molecules as they entered the ray of the golden home planet, for I would revert to my core elements. I left two blue molecules in the configuration, taking back home with me my experiences here, but not enough to taint that universe.
These are the thoughts that were conjured in doing this collage, and these connecting thoughts are what make me love the art and craft of collage. If nothing else, collage is high art for the soul.
When I stood back and looked at the shape of all this, I realized I needed a golden beam to guide me in to the planet, to protect a gap in the bardo protection. I found one, and when I stepped back, the shape was perfect. It was, in fact, the shape of a bird, turning his neck around 180 degrees to nestle in his soft wings, as birds do. Perfect, and naturally arising, I had not planned this. But, because my weekly talks with the Buddhist priest Ambercare provides have caused me to, grudgingly, acknowledge that I may not be able to get out of this dense field of humanity; and if I cannot, I need to know now what I want to move in to next time around. I decided I wanted no more blood and linguine living, I'd be willing and even happy enough to guide birds, from afar, a bird deva if you will. So to see that the home planet travel also had the shape of a bird was a beautiful solution.
Now that I've finished working on this map out, I have only to laminate and hang it, and then to study it. I hope for this to be a constant reminder of where I want to go once I leave this corridor.
And this corridor isn't bright. Walking through it is eerie, weird, strange and colorless. When the activity of the day is done, late in the wee hours I love to be awake in, the oddness of this walk strikes me. Like the limbo of pregnancy, I'm waiting, treading water, biding time, and feeling no inner link to ceasing, to leaving this Georgelle; death as something I'm approaching doesn't seem real. I read an article yesterday in the NYTimes that said people approaching death and knowing it tend to behave as they always have: the bookreaders continue reading, the entertainers continue entertaining. None lose their sense of self; they too are in the limbo of waiting for the unknown and unthinkable. Achievement in the world is no longer part of the game, however. Continuing in the way you know, without desire for any reward save to brighten the moment, is the achievement.
I haven't felt like writing while doing the collage. Didn't feel a pull toward expressing. The thinking that went into the collage took up all my time. Half the creating time was spent just looking at the work, creating the next steps in my mind. Finally, it's really my obituary. It would be nice if obituaries could be visual. I'm sure if I had the moola I could get it published as my obituary. But, when it's time maybe someone will decide to do so; or maybe by then I'll have some set aside for just this.
An old and significant friend is coming
here for a day to visit with me. I was very touched by that: driving for
two days to spend one with me. He has ways of gambling and spoke of doing
so in my name and sending me the proceeds. That would really touch me!
Not to worry about needs being covered is the background wish of my life.
In a general sense, thanks to Ambercare, and actually to Medicare which pays for
it, my physical needs are being met. But, back to food in particular, what
I'm eating from Kitchen Angels is free but too often I can't eat it. It
doesn't feel healthy to me to be serving meat every day to people who are
homebound -- the primary recipients of their meals -- and/or ill. At any rate,
it's wrong for me. I continue because mainly it's free, and when I can't
eat the main course, the desert and fruit they send are worth it. But next
money cycle I do expect to cancel if the food doesn't improve, and to stock up
on things I can prepare easily and that enhance my appetite, healthily.
Appetite proves to be the ever-growing problem.
OCTOBER 28, 2009
Angels on earth are alive and well in Santa Fe and working with Ambercare Hospice and Coming Home, an adjunct of Ambercare that gather and send a volunteer to help with chores and things one is unable to do. Yesterday, they sent to me an angel woman named Terra, once a lawyer, now a professor of theater. That such kindness, and true from the heart kindness, can move through a person and inspire them to volunteer help, cheerfully, makes me think so much better of this human race: at least in this corner of the planet, consciousness and caring are alive and well. She cleaned up my closet, something I thought would take three hours (it took one), washed and vacuumed the floor, cleared up a crowded table in my kitchen, closed my windows tight (something I didn't have any strength to do), took out the garbage...and told me of her own near death experience.
That near-death -- well, really, she died and came back, one of those -- she described as beautiful, a melding into bliss and yes, it felt like home she said. No need to fear, she said, because what you are entering is beautiful and feels like where you belong. It's just the preamble of fear that takes awesome time, and at the moment of her near-death happening, she did not have much fear so that was out of the way soon and the bliss took over. Very helpful to know this, especially while I'm doing this collage about the subject. What she described is very much in tune with what I'm portraying, and she now has added to that portrayal.
And, this angel named for earth will come back and continue to help me when needed. I am overwhelmed and so very grateful. I still give all thanks to my daughter, who is back in that bliss and who I feel is watching over me and responsible for all of the grace I've been getting, from rent money to angels on earth. Of course, I have no logical proof it's my daughter's doing, but I like to think it is. Here and now, tho, it's the grace of the people who work with Ambercare and Coming Home.
Now, if only the helpers named Kitchen Angels would start to cook appetizing meals instead of the gross food they've been sending for the last three weeks! Something has changed with them and food has been under and overcooked and not planned for health or for the people they serve, all of whom are home-bound or not well. Yes it's free, but what's the use of free anything if you can't use it? And clearly, Kitchen Angels is not operating these days with the consciousness inherent in the people at Ambercare and Coming Home...Kitchen Angels has become Kitchen Gnomes in my book!
OCTOBER 20, 2009
Travelling Home is what I've come to call my collage on death. That word, death, is far too loaded with pain and awe and fear, and those are the feelings I'm sorting through; as indeed I begin travelling home. Right now, as I write this, is part of the journey. The moment we know that this dreaded transition is close, we begin traveling down the corridor of the terminal. And dreaded is really at the back and root of the word death and our attitude toward it, no matter how much we say we're 'ready' for it. With this collage I mean to draw a map both of what this life has in essence been for me and where I want to go.
I basically want to get in my little space ship and bop around the universe for a long while; looking in on different worlds, but not getting involved: the voyeur. Which is really what I am right now, a voyeur watching the news about this world I'm in. CNN is my background music, with a little Current TV and Cooking Channel thrown in; and of course a sprinkle of CSI-Wherever. In my collaging, tho, fitting in the spaceship doesn't seem to work. I'm more serious than that. I find, thru the process of doing the collage, that I'm looking for the narrow way out of the influence of this world, this solar system, and maybe more; my mind cannot conceive of what that might be however. So far, it's more nothing than any thing, color or pattern.
If you run across a small picture of a spaceship, please let me know so I can get it from you. Perhaps if I have the illustration in hand I'll know where to fit it; and know it's right to include in this map for my travels.
OCTOBER 8, 2009
Hospice comes to visit once a week. It's pleasant because the people themselves are intelligent and aware, and affirming. On this visit I learned that the required legal physical reason for hospice accepting me is extreme weight loss. This has set my mind into a tizzy. Damned if I do damned if I don't. If Kitchen Angels' delivered meals do not fatten me up, then my condition is 'stable,' my life is threatened and I can stay with hospice. If I do gain weight, I'm off hospice, but I have a new lease on life. This is the penalty for not wanting any cold steel tests to affirm the name of my physical problems.
So I had to stop myself this morning from tizzying around. And I'm using this writing to help me clarify, for myself. In adamantly making this choice -- not to louse up my life with medical tests and proddings and the ensuing worries and energy depletion -- I have to stand by that choice and not give in to any confusion. Naturally there's confusion when 'not knowing' is present. But just because I don't know the name doesn't mean I don't know my condition.
Though I don't feel like death is upon me; by which I mean I am still very invested in day to day living; I do feel my body's unhappiness. I reflect on life before hospice, and how life would be without it, and I definitely experience the life-affirmingness of having them to help. They take a big worry off my mind in that I know someone will always be there if I am in real need. And the food burden has been lifted. I am not physically able to cook, I mean concoct a delicious meal. It's hard to stand, my kitchen is teensy and the workplace counter even teensier. Plus, I have no appetite to eat what I cook; I seem to have lost my talents in cookery. So to have balanced, full and delicious meals presented to me every night is to have nourishment I've not had in at least a year; not to mention the no dishes afterwards aspect, which frees up lots of time and energy. Sick or not sick, cooking for just yourself is a laborious endeavor from start to finish, which is of course the cleanup.
It's standing for my choice and not getting spun into doubt that I want to encourage. Putting my action where my speech is. I would advise anybody to do the same. So, thank you for reading, it has helped me to write this and know someone is listening.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2009
Since calling in hospice, generated by my realization that if I really believed I was close to death, I had to take that more seriously, and more deeply so, than I had been doing; since taking the hospice step, I have been thinking more about the mortality of my life. It comes up in flashes, at unexpected times. When I get up to piss in the wee hours of the morning, I see snapshots of my childhood: I see the childhood room on Central Park West in New York, me getting up from bed and seeing I'd wet it, and hearing my mother call me "Pisha." I see that vignette at the smallifying end of the telescope, and the scope of then to now is clear, and I am confronted by the fact that my story is at an end; my story that in flashback seems both distant and present. But the mortality of it all and the shock of realizing that now is the end of that story...so what do I make of it, and am I to make a more contiguous story for myself about my life, an inner obituary; or is it just the fact that my story is ending that I am to grapple with; or both? So much on this emptying plate.
The first Kitchen Angels meal came last night. It was surprisingly satisfying and nourishing. At first it looked not appetizing: Barley, nice, and some meat piled high and chunky on top of potatoes. I made a lovely little tarragon mustard, lemon and garlic, with fresh chopped plums from a friend's orchard, sauce for the meat, heated it and it was delish, with even some leftover, which I froze. They also sent along a container of chopped cantelope, celery soup -- homemade, not canned -- and a lovely pear crumb cake. Hope it keeps on pleasing and inspiring my appetite. I am now worried most about the rapid loss of weight: 106 at last weigh in, a 10 pound loss in 4 months time. The frailness of weight loss is where danger can creep in, like colds and flus. Clearly, tho I'm preparing to leave the life of Georgelle, I'm not ready right now.
I've always been early for great events. I recall when I was to be in a first-grade play. I'd gotten a new, flower-print dress to wear, and I had a line in the play: "je suis fatigue/I'm so tired" and the actress in me was excited. So excited I got up at 4 in the morning, put on my beautiful new dress, and sat in my chair rehearsing the future event for the next 4 hours until we left for school. That's what I've done by calling in Hospice now. I need the practice.
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009
The other morning I woke up thinking: "If I really believe I'm in the corridor that leads to the Great Field I'd better make some arrangements for that time when I'm closer to the end of the corridor. In the examination by my doctor the next day I mentioned this to her and she gave me the number for Ambercare Hospice and for another group connected called Coming Home. Ambercare, she had told me before, takes people in as long as a year before their death. As it happens, that's how long I think I have. My doctor also is on the Board of Ambercare. And so I called and have spent the week getting to know nurses and volunteer for both groups.
Ambercare also has a Buddhist priest on board, which is just what I wanted. I visited with him this week too. I told him I wanted to be chanted out, and he does know and have death chants, even for the hours after one has gone, similar to the Tibetans tho probably shorter in duration. Further, he is himself in the midst of being interested in learning new death rituals from other traditions. We are going to meet once a week. We'll meditate together, and he'll show and teach me chants. I want to know the chants myself in case that moment comes when I'm alone.
The women of Ambercare that I met are women I would have made friends with were I well; often during our visit I thought they were clients, there for a reading! They are intelligent and caring and interesting. (They come to me, even at that hour of death, I do not go into a 'hospice home.') They also know of my work as Writer in the Window and as an astrologer, which shines a good light on me in their eyes, which is really pleasant and rejuvenating. I was feeling irrelevant in my world. These Ambercare women made me feel relevant again, with their interest in not only me as someone to care for but in my ideas and knowledge.
The very excellent practical gifts of Ambercare include them paying for my medications -- and having them delivered! They even offered me a pillow, which I'm fitted for by the pillow person as they use an air pump to bring the pillow to the height and firmness I need! They also connect me, thru Coming Home, with volunteers who will help me clean, shop or do anything. I asked if I could do such shopping orders as coffee from Ohori's and a good French wine, and they said of course, the whole point is quality of life. And that's the whole beauty of Ambercare and all they offer: their main focus is the quality of life, making it as joyful and painfree as possible. Isn't that amazing? I feel embarrassed to be receiving such care (of course I had to be at death's door to get it!!)
AND, perhaps best of all, Ambercare and Coming Home connect me with Kitchen Angels and their seven day a week meal delivery. I'd been wanting that, but I was too old to receive the meals. The woman who started Coming Home is very good at gathering volunteers, a talent gained thru her own personal tragedies. When those tragedies were over, she moved to Santa Fe and started the service of Coming Home. She is a Celtic healer in demeanor. She had to finesse getting Kitchen Angels to include her 'clients,' and she succeeded where many before her hadn't.
Sweet generosity all around. I can't quite believe it. But I will.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2009
Beef, I didn't know how much my body needed it until I ate a big cheeseburger the other night; and another the night after that. I deliberately have denied myself satisfaction for my craving for a green chili cheeseburger -- since I researched the alkaline diet and learned that beef was highly acidic. However, this year I was diagnosed with anemia, among other things. I looked for liver, couldn't find it in any store I shop in; tried beets, but I think I'd have to eat a bushel to get a big enough shot of blood building Vitamin B. So when I shopped today, I bought beef and will probably have another green chili cheeseburger tonight. It was my neighbor who brought me the first cheeseburger, bless his young soul: it's so nice to have a man (who cooks!) somewhere around the house.
I also realized today that since I started this journal I've been working slowly to find my own, natural, way of 'exercising.' People told me at the start, don't sit so much. I resisted furiously. I sit for a living, always have since I began working for myself, I've never been an exerciser, and that's the way I am. And in the beauty of natural evolution/realization through time, I see that I have arrived at a new level. Innately I stand up at my desk more, and move more, and use time at the sink washing dishes to sway and arch. That's big, because it's intention that fuels action, and intention is a natural phenomenon. My knowledge that indeed my body needs stretching and more action has grown a true desire to do so.
THIS TIMELESS MOMENT, by Laura Huxley, Aldous Huxley's wife, recently came into my hands and I've been reading it avidly. I first read it when it came out, when Aldous was at the top of his game and fame, back in the early sixties. Huxley wrote BRAVE NEW WORLD, APE & ESSENCE, DOORS OF PERCEPTION, ISLAND, and many essays that became part of the foundational thinking in the sixties. His thoughts and books were formative for me. As I read about his life I see how my ideas came from his. This book is a record of his last years and of his actual dying process. I remembered him in my own search for the best approach to the end of existence as one knows it. I haven't gotten to the actual death passage yet -- I believe he took LSD for that moment -- but what I've read so far has uplifted my mood, and started me being deliberately grateful for every moment and aware of the value of each moment. It has helped me not give in to despair.
And, I've started a new collage, so my creative playful mind is well engaged. As well, a friend helped me over the big hump I've had with the e-book process. He loaded the files into the program it needed to be in, and now I can start the actual book creation. It was a grueling six hours of sitting together with this man and watching him learn what I was unable to learn. Eaters of time, computers...and all while Mercury was retrograde!
All in all, it's been a fortunate week in my world.
AUGUST 31, 2009
Awoke feeling deep depression, very deep. Accommodating to this depleted physicality is depleting spiritually and emotionally. And yes, not knowing exactly how much more is wrong with me does add to this depression. Pain is a constant, tho endurable and most of the time bearable. Even if I knew what was exactly going on in my body, tho, I still wouldn't know when or how this life of Georgelle will stop. Really, the life I have known as me IS over. The social aspect is pretty much gone, and solitariness is here. Every day I go thru the dialogue of how much of it I've brought on myself by basically not tolerating fools, or what I have determined to be so. I would not change my separating actions of the past if I could, but that doesn't change the stark realization that I've gotten my wish: solitaire it is. I'm not writing today with any feeling of upliftment, but with a need to express this, which means to get the feeling out of my inner corridors and out into the fresh, tho electronic, atmosphere. That's why I started this journal, this public airing of my inner and outer progress in this station at the end of life: to release the negativity, and usually to create something positive from it in these writings. Today expression is as creative as I can get.
Constipation sets not only in the emotional and spiritual body but in the physical; of course. Aging is a process that replaces the bliss of a good orgasm with the satisfaction of a good shit. So, in that sense, writing this journal may not bring the ecstasy of live performance -- a big part of my life and work -- but it does allow me a satisfying release. I really am experiencing a heavy relearning of something I realized decades ago while living in California's Venice Beach: our work and process as humans is to transform shit to roses. Carrots too.
AUGUST 25, 2009
QUIRKY NECESSITIES:
Puffs Ultra -- The only facial tissue worthy of the title! Since a friend brought me a box of Puffs fifteen years ago, I've been addicted to Puffs. Puffs Ultra, not Puffs Plus (has lotion in it and you can't clean your glasses), nor Puffs with Vicks (has lotion plus Vicks Vapor Rub in the tissue, don't dare wipe your eyes with it, and ditto on the glasses). Puffs Ultra is soft, softer than any tissue I've tried. I turn away all other tissues, and make the giver try the difference between what they offer and Puffs Ultra...the softness of Puffs Ultra makes other facial tissues feel like sandpaper. Puffs Ultra are so important to my everyday necessities that they were the first I thought of for this list. They keep my nose from getting sore and act as a Peanuts' security blanket when I go to sleep -- clutching a clean, cloudlike Puffs Ultra!
Q Tips -- Gotta have Q Tips, or cotton swabs as they are generically referred to, they're a fab tool. Along with the ear and nose cleaning they're meant for, Q Tips are good for applying ointment or cleansers to small sores, for cleaning the face with oil or cleanser, for scooping the last drops of Amber oil from the bottle, for blending colored chalks and pencil. And, my feathered companion, Jenji, loves to use them like dogs use bones: he twirls them in his beak and goes into a mewling doggie melody.
Index Cards -- I'm a list maker. I have a list for "things to do today," a list of when and how many meds I take, noted when I actually take them, a list of who to call that day. I began making lists at least fifteen years ago, when I realized my memory was getting fuzzy around the now things. I make lists of what I want to write in this journal, lists of how much money I need to accumulate the rent that month, and of course shopping lists galore. Index cards are perfect too for 'notes to myself' regarding a single idea I don't want to forget. Of course, half of those index cards turn out to contain things I DO want to forget about, and they go into the fugettaboutit file. Index cards are perfect for this because they don't take up much room on the desk and can be tossed out one at a time once the the idea is satisfied; and if you want to be more ecological, they can be cut up into confetti, for your collage, or next wedding. Unlined index cards are best, but one side of the lined cards is blank, so whichever, lined or unlined, you get, they are wonderful, efficient helpers. My daughter used to, when she was about seven or eight, draw gorgeous pictures, with vibrant colors from magic markers, on separate index cards, then tape twenty of these together to make an unfolding, snakelike gallery. As I recall this, I don't remember why I used index cards then; it was before I began writing, before I understood the efficiency of having a real desk to work at. I guess I at least used the index cards back then for grocery lists. Or, subliminally, for my daughter's self expression?
Saltines -- My doctor suggested that I take some nourishment before I took my pain pills. I said saltines. She said she felt they weren't nourishing enough, and recommended one of those Energy drinks sold in Walgreens and ilk. Inwardly I said yuk, but I tried it and my whole body said yuk, and I bought saltines. I remembered my pregnancy, and how saltines had cured the nausea that is morning sickness. Nausea was indeed the point of eating something, taking nourishment, before I took the pills; at least that was my point. They have only lately become a necessity for me -- I make sure I have some not only in my cupboard but also near my desk. I get them with no salt on top, as salt isn't good for a congested heart, and I do eat the saltines last thing at night (to fill my tummy enough to weather my 6 in the morning pill dosage). I've gotten to really enjoy their blandness, and to feel appreciative of their calming effect on my digestive system.
Plastic beverage cups -- They've become such a habit that I am repulsed by real glasses! As in, don't serve me water in a glass, I don't know how clean it is except it doesn't look clean. Glasses leave water spots, at least mine have them, and scrubbing seldom gets them sparkling. I've been using these plastic cups for about a decade now. I make sure I have a bag of jumbo plastic cups always. And, they save dishwashing time, thus water. Or, so I rationalize it.
And how can I leave out Ohori's Coffee -- I've tried all the coffee beans around the stores these days, from Allegro to Trader Joe's Volcano Dark to Sunflower's espresso roast -- all are pisswater compared to the richness evoked in the roasting Ohori's does. A friend recently brought me a Sunflower espresso roast, and I compared the darkness of it with what I had left of Ohori's espresso: Ohori's was deep black brown, Sunflower was brown, and tastes like pisswater with a little edge. I've been able to go without Ohori's in my house when people bring me these other blends, but I'm always dissatisfied and first money I get more Ohori's, saving the pisswater for an empty cabinet time. Ohori's isn't convenient, tho. It doesn't allow one-stop shopping; but the excellence of the coffee warrants the inconvenience.
I'd enjoy hearing what your quirky necessities are. Send me an e mail of your list. Personally, I've not met anyone who has my particular necessities, I wonder if that will prove true about yours!
Medicare-A, turning to an absolute NON NECESSITY, pays for only hospital visits, I found out. All the doctors' visits and tests I had are not covered. Now, who is going to pay for that $1000 total? You, the taxpayer, the young, even the Republicans who don't believe in Medicare. For me to get covered for doctors' visits and tests, it will cost me $95 a month, and even if I could afford that, it isn't open for me to enroll in that program, Medicare-B, until January next year, and only from then thru March. Every time I hear Prez Obama laud Medicare as the template for his "Public Option" I feel disgust. How can a system be maintained that requires you to be in the hospital, using a hospital bed, to avail yourself of all the tests you need? Seems backwards to me. I've heard that Medicare was a wartime invention, meant for hospital-needing injuries. Why haven't we changed it by now? This morning an Obama health-care forum worker called and I told her how I feel and asked that she express my thoughts to her higher ups. I am, I said, one of the progressives who is unhappy with Obama's plan; I'm for what is called 'single payer' option, and nothing less will satisfy me. When a doctor's visit will cost out of pocket no more than $35, I'll work for healthcare changes. I'm glad that I've spent a lifetime self-healing and eschewing doctors; I have found in this allopathic round I've been in during 2009 that I know as much as the doctor's when it comes to what's wrong with me. As I've written here before, the pills are the reason to see the doc. And I don't believe this country, with its love of and devotion to only-for-profit health care, will ever guarantee quality health care for all Americans. I think more and more that Kruschev was right when he said decades ago that America will be its own downfall.
Remember to e mail me your Quirky Necessities list.
AUGUST 16, 2009
Collaging: What I like most about collaging is covering a mistake to make it work; not erasing the mistake, but covering, embellishing, it. Life and gestalt-solving is like that. At least it has been for me. I've never believed one can eradicate, erase, a flaw, but we can learn to use and direct it for a creative and positive purpose.
Collage for me is symbol making. Currently I'm working on "Molecule." It might look like an egg to some, and in a sense this Molecule has become an egg. Or a DNA Molecule. Today's work got this egg inseminated -- by rays and concepts from the Dark Matter it's floating in.
I've been substituting the word "Molecule" for the word "God" for many years now, ever since my semantics regarded closely the language I, and we, use. I wanted a more realistic sense of what we mean by "God" and, while I considered Quark and Atom, Molecule had a friendlier sound -- I think it's the "M."
AUGUST 15, 2009
Awoke feeling shunned. Isolated. Abandoned. Trying not to kvetch -- such a fine line between whining and reporting -- either inwardly or outwardly. I've known for a long time that in these later years I'd be alone, known from my metaphysical study of numbers, and the fact that I'm in a 7 cycle right now -- 7 is a number of isolation, study, introspection and little interest in money and its gathering. And I know, as I review this deafening absence of friends, that I've contributed to it: by speaking the truth as I see it and not apologizing, mainly; and by not tolerating arseholeness. I don't need the visits, but a phone call would be refreshing and uplifting. Seldom does my phone ring anymore, either with a friend or with a client on the other end.
I think everyone in elder years has this sense of aloneness, as I've noted before. Early friends have passed away one way or the other, family too. The death of my daughter means to me that all my bloodlines are gone from earth. If there's no blood connection, there's no net to catch you when you fall over. Blood relations are obliged to help, spirit relations are not. My daughter used to help me financially when there was no rent or too many bills in my pocket. Now, no one is there to call upon.
So I'm left to my own resources, few and great as they may be. Thank my lucky stars I'm creative and have a need to express myself. That keeps me interested in 'projects.' Those projects are, for deep pleasure: collage; for future business, putting my Tarot book into e-book format. In the in betweens, I manage pain and diet, and strive to give my dear little feathered companion, Jenji, as much attention as he needs. I falter at that, especially when absorbed in fending pain as I am in the nighttime hours after sitting and working at my desk all day.
Still, the aloneness and lack of a friendly circle depresses my spirit and forms a mighty wave to overcome. And as I said, I know I've earned this separation from erstwhile friendships. Two friends came by with food a month or so ago, which I'd asked them to bring. But they brought their own dinner too, all from Tomasitas, and I was horrified that they planned to have dinner with me. I said no, I was not wanting to have company, but they were starving, and were being generous too, so soon I said, oh, okay. There was the conundrum: I want to have the circle, but I don't want the interaction in such a large dose. Same when I think of end of days time: I am so used to being alone and doing things alone that the thought of having anyone around me at such an important time is horrifying, truly; yet I am told it will be difficult to be alone at a time when physical strength is gone and help to go pee is needed, no less to take pain meds, etc. Perhaps that's not true, I argue with myself. Perhaps I can manage alone at the end. But I'm having trouble handling it now, when I CAN fend for myself, so how will I be when I can't?
Thanks for reading and understanding.
AUGUST 7, 2009
More and more I see how true and efficient it is to take life one day at a time, if not one moment. The bills, the nitty-gritty everyday snafus, the devil is in all the details. If they cannot be handled/cured at the moment they arise, I put them in the "to be done" stack. Of course, I do actually address them, when the time and my mind are right for it. I'm often in this regard minded of Obama's mother's battle with the health insurance companies while she was also battling Cancer. It is this consternation that I want to avoid, and that I think every ill person (and maybe every person, ill or well) needs to avoid. One snafu that prompts this entry is: Medicare does not have me registered, though I've been receiving social security benefits since I was 62, for eleven years. How can that be? I thought Medicare and social security eligibility went together.
But: that's for next week's activities.
I've been in much less pain since I ceased the water therapy, and able to walk much straighter. One lesson the water therapist goddess gave me that has been most helpful, and easy to do, is not to give in to the forward bending my twisted spine innately moves toward, but instead resist, arch back, consciously moving to a straighter posture. I also have grokked the efficiency of getting up off my dufus every fifteen minutes or so, taking the pressure off my spine.
In line with this thought, I investigated inversion therapy, which entails a special table that turns you upside down; and recommends you hang that way for fifteen minutes twice a day. This, inversion therapy literature says, both takes the pressure off the diseased and compressed discs but recirculates the fluid that cushions the discs. Something like that. I'm not going to rush and get a table, but I'm looking for some demonstration access here in Santa Fe. Also still looking for a Tai Chi DVD, which will strengthen my core torso muscles.
I saw Leonard Cohen's 2008 London concert, on PBS, the other night. What a joy to see this wrinkled man still singing his heart mind and soul with grace and great musical accompaniments. Leonard has been a teacher of mine since I read his book "Beautiful Losers" and heard his first album, the one with the woman in flames on the cover, and Suzanne, the song, inside. That song, along with LSD, a truly weird lover and single motherhood all led me to the therapist and self awareness. (Now that life seems in the terminal, waiting for this ship to sail to unknown waters, scenes from the past do rise up; the memories fill my mind like a movie; like the death scene in "Moulin Rouge," the one with Jose Ferrer as Toulouse Lautrec, when all the characters he painted rallied round his bedside and said goodbye.)
It is a grace that I did manifest the e-book program and am now getting absorbed in setting up my Tarot Book for electronic publication, from my website. The absorption is what's important to my experience. Learning this new program is a time eater, as is any computer learning, and takes my mind away from pain and the laziness pain incurs. I read a brilliantly written article in the NYTimes the other day regarding the bliss of absorption. Here's a taste:
"It is this state that rock-climbers and pinball players and libertines are all seeking: an absorption in the immediate so intense and complete that the idiot chatter of your brain shuts up and you temporarily lose yourself, to your relief." (by Tim Kreider NYTimes Aug. 4, 2009.)
AUGUST 2, 2009
Musing on a Sunday morning -- I notice that I'm clinging and getting absorbed in life and its finite doings; rather than spiritual connection. I know I've noted this before, but seeing clearly that I'm doing it has arrived. Still surprised. But, if kundalini energy is to rise through the spine, how can it do so with my twisted compressed? I cannot even sit in my old meditative positions.
On the bright side, several readers of this journal, friends, have sent me words of appreciation, of my relevance in the world; or at least in theirs. That was like a shot of Vitamin B, it really energized my spirit. I think feeling irrelevant is part of growing old, and of being physically feeble. That's the perfection inherent in getting involved in existential endeavors. I did get the e-book program, and am now producing my completed Tarot book, which I hope to have for sale by end of this September. It's a tedious process, but as is all computer engagement, it's an absorbing process, one that eats time and pain. Productively.
Though I know company is good for me, I still shy away from it. But I realize that those few who do come to see me care, and I need to open to that caring they are offering. Since my daughter's death I have not wanted to feel too deeply the sorrow, the grief. About anything. It's a slow opening. But I must begin and be very grateful that there are those who care about me and still find me relevant (having a bearing on or connection with the matter at hand. From Latin 'relevere,' to relieve, to raise up).
JULY 30, 2009
This week's healing conundrum is: what to do when exercise, as in water therapy, creates pain afterwards. The water exercises are followed by pain in the upper middle of my back. It lasts always, and feels as if a band of nerves were exposed every time I move. Sometimes, on a sudden movement, it feels as if that portion of my back is going thru a severe muscles cramp. Since the therapy is not to cure my back problem -- it's not curable, just adjustable -- then why give myself more pain?
I'm back to looking at the way I naturally do things, to figuring on myself as the major director of my well being. Yes, I forgot that, and was relying on instruction from the water healer goddess that water exercise was good for me. Maybe it is, but the pain it engenders isn't. It moves me from a comfort zone into a painful one.
So I'm experimenting with dancing in my chair, the premise being that I sit and am demonstrably unwilling to change the preponderance of sitting time I spend. Desk is my major tool, whether writing, collaging, eating dinner or giving readings. Getting up and dancing at my desk is something I do, but not enough. Being aware can cure that, I hope. Being aware that I need to get body moving, and of which movements build strength and not pain. I'm choreographing the move while you sit ballet.
And, as the news blares that health care is deadlocked in argument, I do wonder again if more people will resort to holistic medicine, or will resort to folk remedies and self healing. It's more affordable, and I'll betcha it's more effective.
JULY 25, 2009
It's a fine line between depression and positive attitude. I turn this journey public because knowing you'll read this makes me have to reach a positive conclusion. Of course I know we always have to do that to make life work, as I know that we, this human race of energy, tend to prefer wallowing in the negative.
It's the little things that tie me up: how much can I shop for groceries and still have enough for rent? Shall I or shan't I spend half of what I've got for the salve that really does quell pain? How do I increase business, self publishing e-books of my writings from my website, without having the price of the program that can make that so? Finite problems, solvable by juggling (even the government of California juggled the budget to get it to pass), turning nothing into enough.
But there's also the aloneness. Most people I know equate aloneness with lonely. I don't, I like being alone. But not 24/7. Once a week it would be nice to have a little company. I put out a call for what I term "the sisters of mercy," asking that people look in on me from time to time, and maybe consider preparing meals (sometimes I'm not strong enough to stand at the counter, drain a spaghetti pot, or even saut�). I got a strong response, with visits and many meals, all within two days of my call. After that, nothing. I did learn who would and who wouldn't be around when something drastic happened. And I put out the call because the pain was so constant and disabling I got scared. That and I live alone. I don't think that looking in on someone will even serve the need of a jalopied elder, but at least the body won't lay there so long! An elder really does need constant supervision, like a camera, or some form of emergency communication. Such devices are available, but they connect you to hospital, which is definitely where I never want to be.
The New York Times online is doing a lot of articles about health care lately. The latest, today, spoke of the private ownership of hospitals, making them for-profit institutions, and the fact that doctors get paid in fees, the more tests and procedures they prescribe, the more fees they earn. Achhh, the world is in such bad shape it's a wonder anyone clings to it. Oh, yes, the beauty, it does lure us, it lures me back into appreciation for existence, even with the pain. Bill Maher wrote a wonderful editorial about profit and health care -- and the basic premise of profit: does everything have to be for profit, he asks, since when was profit equatable with democracy? You can read it from the Huffington Post or watch his show on HBO, which will re-run all this week.
The yogis I read about in my youth blessed their illness, even and especially their cancers. Always mindful of the beauty of life, and calling it forth in everything.
JULY 22, 2009
Health care is the topic of the day, at least on CNN (I can't live without Wolf Blitzer!) There's no right way with health care in the capitalist system. Caring for our health is not a for-profit event. Even Medicare doesn't do it though. I was amazed to receive a bill from my doctor's office -- for $300; and that after a deduction of nearly the same amount, I assume paid by Medicare (they didn't say why that deduction existed). When you're ill, and old, $300 interferes with the little good quality of life that you have. Health care should start with prevention. Did you know that John Hopkins hospital has reversed itself on the merits of chemotherapy? Yes, two days ago I received a copy of a memo John Hopkins sent out, advocating diet, supplements, exercise over chemotherapy and radiation.
My daughter died of brain cancer this June 19 -- an event I am not at all ready to speak about. She underwent chemo and radiation for a year and a half. And what happened? The cancer moved somewhere else: to the brain. She was due to turn 50 this month, but didn't make it. I do think the chemo and radiation was more than her body could handle. When I read the John Hopkins memo the other day, I thought, NOW they tell me! Armed with that information from an established institution I might have been able to convince her, as I subtly tried, not to do chemo but to work with nutrition and diet. The diet given by holistic sources for defeating cancer is specifically the same that Hopkins recommends in it's current memo.
Illness prevention isn't taught to us today, so medicine has a lot of dis-eases to mend; and we the people are the ones in need of that mending. But the mending doesn't exist. Pills and tests and severe treatments do. So, as a mendee myself, I know that comfort is up to me, and is part of my healing. To spend that $300 on merely two doctor's visits; not to mention the $400 as my share of the tests, is to totally break the comfort part of healing, and probably even the nutrition aspect. At 73, I cannot hope for help from other sources, or to meet a man who will take care of me financially -- can't any longer flirt my way into solvency. That's so for the majority of women my age. It seems to me the slow but sure payment through taxes, into what they're calling a single-payer system, is the best and proven way to care for the health of us all. But Americans are far far away from the caring-for-all frame of mind...too socialistic. I wish some respected public persona would open the question: "What's wrong with socialism?" As I wish they'd asked: "What's wrong with liberal?"
JULY 15, 2009
Polynesian goddess water therapist reminds, and teaches, that we all have the ability to heal our bodies, it's built into our system. You may not get back to where you were twenty years ago, she says, but you can be better, healthier than you are now. This is as important for me to hear as her water exercises are to do. The exercises themselves strengthen my body, and allow me to stand up straight, very hard to do outside of the water. Practicing stretches in the water does carry over into the next day out of the water.
Practicing is the key word: it's necessary to keep the water-walking a constant. I hope to go to the pool three times a week, without the therapist (it's far cheaper) but using the same pool with its fine water machines. Since I am not an exerciser of any kind, just the activity in the pool helps, and helps my mood too.
This therapist also totally
understood how living, sitting, on a slanted severely sloped floor for eight
years slowly but surely compressed my discs. She's the first person who
instantly saw how this could happen. She referred to the Chinese water
torture, saying if you merely applied finger pressure to that spot on the
forehead for thirty minutes steadily, that spot would be sore from the pressure
applied for so long.
JULY 11, 2009
TAKING care of my needs has become guilt free. Not overspending and neurotically shopping do I speak of, but choosing to have what a smooth life needs rather than letting the counting of pennies pinch me (there's always a silver lining to the storm cloud). Nourishing the temperament is as important as nourishing the body.
(Your comments are welcome.)
JULY 9, 2009
I read today, in NYTimes online, about a group of nuns who have organized a place and helpers to assist those wishing to spend the waning days of life with illness without medical tests and meds, and with the tender care of their fellow sisters. They, like me, also opt for the natural life even at the end of days, without the cold steel allopathic medicine proffers. They don't know when the last day will be or how long it will take to reach it, but they are sure of how they want to spend the remaining time.
Surprisingly, knowing time is short has not made me a saint or changed my personality. I used to think that when I knew time was near I would set about to being the yogini I'd aspired to being in my youth. I'd get seriously spiritual and start meditating and eating yogurt and fruit. Nope. I still want desert and a glass or two of wine with dinner, foods that are full-bodied like Chili Rellenos. While Linguine with Marina sauce doesn't provide as much delight now as it did in my youth, when it was my fave comfort food, I prefer it to yogurt! It's the hot spice that whets my appetite.
I used to fault the way that Zorba the Greek died (in the great novel by Nikos Kasansakis, "Zorba the Greek"). He jumped out of bed and with his last breaths looked out the window at the land he loved and said his goodbyes, with regret and rage at leaving it. Then, in my holier than thou youth, I thought any conscious soul knowing life was about to end would dedicate their thoughts to the afterlife they would soon face and eschew the attachments of earthly existence. Now I see, not so. We are what we are, til the very end. The personality responds as it always has and is not magically reshaped into somber contemplation of the hereafter.
SO the question of how to proceed from here on out is no longer unanswered. I will proceed as me, saucy and as decadent as my physical condition allows. (Cheeseburgers are off the agenda, but as I said, Chili Rellenos, or chili anything, isn't.) In philosophy, I have come from the yogini phase of believing to the agnostic phase of believing in Nothing -- Nothing being the seat of All and not an empty realm, the Field we are all stretched and sprung from. And in this, I am here at the end of the rainbow appreciating Existence in all its hues and not thinking about returning to Spirit and all that hokey comfort. I am presently contemplating what pain may come in the last few days, and whether to have a chorus of voices chant me out or whether I'll be better off doing this alone. I have some ways to go to sorting that out.
JULY 3, 2009
Jalopy -- "An old dilapidated motor vehicle" -- is what my physical body has become, an old Packard now antiquated after 73 years of use and abuse. Pain, of course, and all the names medical tests can offer attach to life now. And there are no mechanics left to fix it.
That's my experience with the medical business. Doctors no longer heal. They prescribe pain killers and tests. Tests galore, tests that require radiation to be injected into the veins, or Barium; tests that place your body in steel tubes or under the penetration of X-Rays. When these tests are done and the labels given, what do they offer you? More medicine that disrupts your feeling of health and takes a heavy side-effect toll on the other organs. I have always opted out of the allopathic hallways of medicine. I have avoided them for the past fifty years, during which went to a doctor only once, and that for a sprained ankle. This year, at 73, my back condition was so painful and long lasting that I gave in, met with a doctor, took the x ray, blood and mri tests, and concluded I'd skip the rest. What did they find? No lumps, but a lot wrong with the system. I saw in this traipse through the medical system that doctors are not healers anymore. They only prescribe for pain and tests. Recently I read in the NYTimes that back problems have risen to high levels in the last decade, but doctors don't know what to do about them -- except prescribe painkillers. And so I opt for healing myself.
Which comes down to quality of life, and that's what this journal is for. How do I keep joy in my experience, and creative interest, while knowing that my time is probably more limited than I'd expected; all the while in pain and weakened physicality? Or: what do you do when linguine with marina doesn't make a party in your mouth anymore?
YOUR comments are welcome; punishing judgment isn't. It's via e mail, cumbersome by today's blogging standards, but as I said, I'm a jalopy and that carries through even in my computer use. I'll be adding to this journal frequently, so do come back if this topic interests you.
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