Falling in Love Again

Single or coupled, we can feel alone at times. Ours is species of connectedness, not isolation. When we connect to one another, particularly to those we love, we feel vital and expanded. When we are in a state of disconnection, we long to find our way home. Last night, over a chicken breast, I was warned not to recycle old pieces of writing. But are they old to one who never read them, or to one who had, but forgot the content? Here is one such resurrected piece.

Not a single log burned in the fireplace that winter. It felt like sacrilege to sit there alone, rather than curled up in the arms of a beloved. She tried the usual schemes of romancing herself, but even they grew old. It was in those moments that she came to terms with the pain of a solitary existence. No matter what she offered herself as appeasement, all proved to be a thin replacement for the love and intimacy she longed to express and receive. Simply put, she wanted to fall in love again.

It’s not that she minded being alone, but sometimes, she reflected back on the times in her life when the heartbeat and breath of another were more precious than her own. And as a woman who collected rare perfumes from all over the globe, she knew this: there is nothing more intoxicating than the scent of the one you love.

The idea of love is at best a rough sketch, a pencil drawing on a ragged piece of paper. With each fold and tear, the image mutates. She had all but thrown away the image, yet an impress was still left upon her. It would have to catch her by surprise, of course, when override had gone off on holiday. It was tough work to come this far in love, to keep her heart open. She wanted to go the distance. Would it matter in the very least who she loved? Or was love sufficient in its own right? Could she, a butterfly at the dusk of its life, open her wings one last time and soar? She had hoped so, she had believed so, but now, she was not so sure. Override sticks close to home.

It was hard to shed a skin that no longer fit her. She was emerging but resisted becoming something unfamiliar. It is always this way, until a love affair is consummated with the Unfamiliar itself.

There is no other way to be known than to open wide from the depth of one’s being. It will eat away at us, until we muster up enough courage, beyond our pain and limitation, to trust, to open, to explore, and to love with the full extent of our souls. I know this. We all know this.

And yet, we wait…

9/09/09

While getting fitted for my new eyeglasses at Costco, I mentioned to Tim, the optical guy, that today was 9/09/09. “Yes, I know!” he replied. He had thought the very same thing upon rising. I suggested it had mystical meaning, and he thought so as well. I felt today was going to be an auspicious day and I shared that with him. “I hope so,” was all he said.

It wasn’t an hour later when I realized all the money I had with me was gone, as well as the gift and merchandise credit cards from varying stores I had stored in my desk for years and decided to spend today. I deliberately placed the cash and cards in a separate cloth purse, which was placed inside the satchel I carried cross-breasted. In addition to the small cloth purse was a can of Macadamia nuts I intended to return. I had carried them into the store with me, stuffed into the satchel, as the return line was way too long when I arrived. I figured I’d do it on the way out.

When I discovered the small Guatemalan cloth purse, carrying some 300 dollars in cash and an indeterminate amount of money in merchandise credit, was missing, I backtracked. I went to the last place I had been: Costco. No luck. Had it fallen out of my satchel somewhere? Had it been on my lap in the car when I opened the door, falling to the ground unnoticed? Had it been pick-pocketed out of the top of the satchel while I was distracted shopping? Had it been swept up into a 4th dimension vortex? Given my vigilance and organization, misplacing it was out of the question. It had either fallen out of the satchel, been stolen, or dropped to the ground when I got out of the car. Which one was it? If it were stolen, would I wish the thief good or ill will? If it had dropped to the ground outside Costco, would the person who found it be a thief? After all, it was just money and money-equivalences. My credit cards, driver’s license, ATM cards or any sort of identification saying the contents were MINE were absent. Is it really stealing if you don’t know there’s a person attached to it? Is it like finding a hundred dollar bill in the gutter? Or is finding a purse with money on a counter, on the floor of a store, or next to someone’s car actually stealing because the inference is that the person is nearby and will come back to look for it?

Stealing is one thing. Finding a treasure another. How do we distinguish? On the one hand, stealing is morally and ethically wrong. On the other, finding a treasure is good luck. So which was it? I’ll never know. What I do know is that the recipient’s intention will determine the outcome, good or bad.

Maybe 9/9/09 is an auspicious day after all.

Wrong Number

This morning I received a call from a man whose voice I did not recognize. “Is this my lady friend?” he asked. “I don’t know…possibly,” I replied cautiously. I was hoping to tune in to the voice and identify the person behind it, but what was running through my mind was that a “suitor” was disguising his voice to pull one over on me. Others had tried, unsuccessfully. But maybe that just gives them incentive to try harder. “I’m thinking about shaving my head,” he said, “like a cue-ball.” I was still rummaging through my head to think who would have the audacity to call so early in the morning, not even nine o’clock for God’s sake. I drew a blank.

“So, whaddaya think?” he said. “I’m not sure you have the right person, who are you trying to reach?,” fishing for an answer to quench my puzzlement. Silence. And then, “May I ask who’s calling?” He glossed over my questions. “So whaddaya think? Would you like it? Will you boycott me when my shining head blinds you?” This was too much, it had to be a joke, but maybe it wasn’t. Then, he called me Jean. I was in over my head at this point and decided to play along, as he obviously didn’t care who he was talking to. Then, it dawned on me. He was both hard of hearing and had dementia. Perfect. If I was looking for some early morning entertainment, I got it. Better than Good Morning America any day.

“So, will you still like me if I shave my head like a cue-ball?” repeating the same question over and over again." It doesn’t matter if I will like it, it matters if you will like it. What do you want to do?," I said, throwing the ball back in his court. “I guess so. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it today. “I’ll see you at 11, then,” he said in parting, “but 11 is a long, long time away from now, isn’t it?”

Eleven, I thought to myself. I’d better get the house ready in case he shows up at 11. I’ll be Jean and invite him in for tea.

Remembering Lee

When your time comes, it just comes. In one instant, you will draw in your last breath, in another, you will “expire.” Everyone does this. Everyone who sees and knows and feels himself to exist, does this.

I have been keeping the death vigil for my dear friend Lee, armed with the knowledge of others who have gone this way. Still, there is no knowing ahead of time how it will unfold. We cannot orchestrate this event called death. The guru says, “You are very close.” Thus, the aspirant lives in anticipation of ultimate freedom and continues on. This is how I kept the death vigil for Lee.

The eyes tell us much about the inner state. When words and actions cease, the eyes whisper and tell us what is needed next. We are afraid but cannot speak. We are not even sure of what we are afraid of. We resist this passage, this inevitability called death. Who will tell us that it is okay? We, who have not yet approached the portal? Yes. We do just that. Death is as natural as birth. It is a laboring. It is a difficult effort besieged by uncertainty. Death is a mystery.

I am looking at her breath and counting. I am watching closely for what I know to be the signs of imminent death. I see them but I do not know the hour or the moment it will come. Death is not a thief in the night. Death is not the enemy. It is a sweet Wing of Light, slipping through mortal flesh and carrying the soul toward eternity.

I tell her, “The universe is infinite and inexplicably beautiful.” “You will fly free now.” I say all the things of love and worth and forgiveness and release. And realize I am all of those things come alive to be given away as gifts for the journey she must take.

I wait for the moment the Wing will come. I surround her with sacred chanting and the sounds of ocean waves breaking upon the shore. I sing to her and am taken in to the chamber of my own heart ~the One heart~ by the sweetness of it all. Now, there is only love. I hold her, and stroke her hair like her mother never did. I tell her I love her. I thank her for her life. I let her go and bow in gratitude, slipping away myself to let the Wing of Light come in and carry her toward eternity.

And She does.

Not THAT End You Idiot!

If anything, years of spiritual practice make you recognize injustice when you see it. They also promote equanimity. Equanimity, when put into daily life, tempers and hopefully overrides the instinct to go out and throttle people. This is a good thing.

Those who have been following my personal life know that I go off on rants every now and again. Writing is one of the ways I stay sane. As my fingers need to be near the keyboard, the rest of my body can’t be elsewhere. The end result is that the world and its inhabitants are safe, for the time being.

When I worked for the University, I had a great medical insurance plan. I rarely used it. If I had been smart, I would have had every non-essential organ removed, lined them up on a buffet table, and crawled on top of it to let them follow up with a lobotomy for dessert. There would have been family photos of me looking gloriously happy in my pre-corpse stupor. I know, it’s not the same image as that sexy naked woman laid out with sushi artistically placed on her perfect breasts and other inviting parts, but it’s an image nonetheless. Somewhere, probably in childhood, I got the notion that I should keep my bodily parts intact, save the one kidney that went by the wayside in 1974.

When I left my job to move near my mother who was dying of ovarian cancer, I left an entire life, including my job and its accompanying benefits. Little did I know that getting health insurance on my own would be prohibitively expensive for anything approximating what I had. I also quickly learned that the name of the health insurance game is exclusion. Question # 591: Have you ever had a nosebleed? If you see that question, lie. This could be used against you. Your prothombin levels could be low, or you might have a platelet problem. It could be serious and more importantly expensive. You will be turned down and shunned. I know this for a fact. Just lie.

There are certain things that I believe in. Health screening is one of them. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona (BCBS) claims to be a non-profit organization. I made it through underwriting after single-handedly lowering my total cholesterol 150 points. The plan looked adequate. Preventive services were covered without touching the deductible. It's what they don't tell you that matters.

Hooray! I get to have a screening colonoscopy! The bad news is that I find out it will cost me somewhere between 3,000-4,500 dollars. BCBS will pay 80% of the physician charges, which happen to be $860.00 for the privilege of sticking a tube up my rear orifice. That's it. I checked. Still can’t get a figure on the anesthesiology charges, as apparently no one can determine what they might be. Just to walk in the hospital and get naked is 2,500 dollars. If one or two polyps get squashed under a microscope ...... who knows? The health insurance worker bees are pretty much silent on the issue and have varying degrees of information over and above their brainwashing. At the high end of the spectrum, they are very good at telepathic communication. At least I can appreciate that. Even if they could, they are not allowed to think on their own. So here I am. The physician won’t administer the procedure without anesthesia, nor will he perform it along side a well-lit taco stand. No, they want to stick it to me on their terms. I will be rendered unconscious or consciously incognito. A cloak of invisibility will be cast upon me. Who then will tell them they’ve got it ass-backwards?

The good news is that the medical model, for the most part, is anti-health and some of us are out of the loop! Just look at the industry. (Hint: We call it an industry). How many people go in fine and come out compromised? Hospital acquired infections (HAI’s) are on the rise. Infection Control Today (9/2/09) states that "Healthcare-acquired infection rates are about 5 percent of all admissions at the moment and with bed days valued at $1,005 each, the total economic burden is close to $1 billion per annum." And this is just in Australia. The federal Centers for Disease Control estimated that in any given year 1.7 million patients will get a hospital-acquired infection during their hospital stay. Out of those 1.7 million, 99,000 people, or about 270 per day, will die. These were the findings in 2002. More recently, the CDC estimated the annual medical costs of healthcare-associated infections in U.S. hospitals to be between $28 and $45 billion. Maybe that’s why my premiums are so high. Or maybe it’s because all those people who never paid into the system are now drawing from my investment (not to mention yours) to the tune of gazillions of dollars. Clearly, the factors are complex, maybe too complex for any of us to understand. It’s also just not right. Why is it the honest people who play by societal rules get penalized? This is the Era of Entitlement. Wake up America!

My fatality fantasy is being run over by a kosher meat truck, but that is unlikely in Arizona. I may need to modify it. In the unlikely case I'm not killed instantly, I hope to cost my insurance company so much money, they disappear from the face of the earth.

Blog Bog

I want to write about John the Shoe Shine Boy but it will have to wait. It's a story I hope is worth telling; there were volumes screaming out from his steel-blue eyes. And then, right around the corner, was Colonel Sanders. Trapped in a time warp, these two and others took us in. But that will be told another day, perhaps in the 'morrow. For now, I’m in a bog. A blog bog.

Caught up in a rapturous lucky streak of my own making, I was going full bore with the Zir Effect until ‘THEY” came. They, those people from a past still part of me. The children, grandchildren, lovers, friends. The sundry others that can’t or won’t let go. Admittedly, it’s a two-way street; the door swings both ways. I’ve always had an open door policy when it comes to my past and an open door policy when it comes to my future. That allows me, for the most part, to stay present in the now. But I do slip up. Like you, I get dragged into my past like an unwilling, blindfolded prisoner, shored up against the wall of her own self-execution. Spinning 180, the future appears nothing more than an embryonic abstraction, though I often paint it bleak and foreboding or idealistically simplistic and quaint depending on my mood. I let others speak for me when I tire of explaining the inexplicable; a dishwasher packed to the gill tells me all I need to know about my existence. And yet I yearn for those things that will crack my porcelained view of the world and open me further.

I am angry with those who take advantage of others yet I allow myself to be taken advantage of. If I can see the thread of perpetual bondage can I snip it and put an end to the madness? Or does that very thread hold me together?

My eyes are fine, the doctor reported. Early cataracts. I knew my vision was partially obscured so why did I pay to have this knowledge substantiated? Other than that, nothing has changed. Why do they not see that my left eye is appreciably different from my right? It’s blurry, for God’s sake! Are their assessment tools so archaic that they can’t detect the obvious? Because of this anomaly, everyone sneaks up on me from the left, like apparitions encroaching on my sanity. By the time I see them, they’ve already made themselves at home. I don't mind, they're my family after all.