Arrive where we Started
I'm leaving for Spain today! I'll be gone for a couple weeks. It will be a great trip. I've oscilated between extreme excitement and suppressable anxiety and melancholy. Change is always hard for me. I'm better at it, but it stretches my comfort circle. Good for me. And Barcelona! I think it's still not completely real to me. I'll be meeting a friend there and hanging out with her. Staying a hostel for the first time and renting a car for a trip for a while. It looks beautiful. My mom got me the ticket for my birthday. Regalo fabuloso!
She was down here yesterday briefly. J., J., mom and B.S. went to a peace lecture and medidiation by Hahn. "Peace in Every Step" is his book. About mindfullness in the moment. You take it with you. You take your peace with you. I'll take mine to Spain. There is beauty and peace everywhere if we look--rather if we choose to perceive it that way. If we remember that we breathe and in breathing unite our mind and body and become aware of our present. We only life in that moment.
It is always only ever now, after all. I've said it before...somewhere in these ramblings.
In preparation for the trip, I've been thinking about books to read. Some of them not for now, but someday. Spent some time at the book store. I'd like to read "My Antonia." J says that Les Mes is a must. I'm taking "Man's Search for meaning" and a few others. Sill working on a few here, also. Richard Bach has been a favorite lately. He writes a lot about releasing your mind to allow yourself to be. At least that's how I'm thinking of it in this moment. Have also been missing my poetry some. Writing and reading. I was looking up Dante the other night when I couldn't sleep at 3 am. Sent some to S. He got a kick out of that. "You're nothing if not interesting," he wrote back the next morning.
I've been mostly on the night shift at work. Had a couple day shifts these last few days. Sewed up some lacerations. Lots of ortho stuff. Belly pain in a very patience-trying patient yesterday. They were there they entire shift and wanted everything and I kept my cool with them pretty well I thought. Kept going back to myself and reminding myself to smile and take it in stride. It's not so hard. It was a good opportunity to practice it, too.
I feel out of the depression for a while now. I remember it enough to know it's still there, but I also see it and am aware of it and so can leave it where it sits.
Hahn said you have to hold your anguish and sorrow and recognize it so you can move thorugh it.
He also said that "the lotus does not grow without mud." Wish mud as a metaphor for the challenges and pains of life and the knowledge that the flower will bloom out of that and because of that in the end.
I wonder if I'm seeking out these things more, or letting them touch me more, because I was afraid that I was going to die.
Once you are no longer afraid of death, it has no hold over you. He told stories of people recovering from "terminal" cancers.
Medicine is really supportive care for the body to heal itself much of the time. I told J. that the other day. We do our best to guide it toward healing, but really it comes down to the body and the person. Cellular level be damned.
Of course, as a doctor, this is a struggle for me--this balancing act of science and mindfullness. I accept whatver works for that person. I accept whatever works for me.
My INR was 4.3 yesterday. Too high again. I got to skip a day or eat a salad. I ate a salad. Will be better for me to be a little high with a long plane trip ahead anyway. Course clotting in my legs wasn't the problem. It was the head they were after.
They? Who? Why? Random? Lesson? Growing. "What is to give light must endure burning." I don't know why this happened. Or if there even is a why. Or if the why matters. Or sometimes what does matter.
Balancing between living like time is limited or pouring the present into plans for the future. It's odd that I titled this blog what I did when I did. Before a lot of this had happened. Of course everything is a balance. It's the fine line between self and other--between now and then. It's the line that I try to expand. Make it a beautiful path to walk along and enjoy the red glow of the setting sun on the hospital I saw as I rushed to the lecture yesterday.
It's appropriate that I'm a Libra. The scales.
There are four of us living here with birthdays this month. And one who just moved out so that makes five. Maybe that's why the vibe around here is so good and close. BK is the 16th, J is the 17th, JL is the 18th, B is the 8th, then there's me on the 14th.
Twenty-nine this year, four of the five will be turning the same age.
Dad sent me a card the other day. I hope it means that he's finding himself again and getting out of his depression. It was a picture he'd taken with a quote inside from T.S. Eliot
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
That makes me feel deeply now. Maybe from Dad in transitions and the promise of something circular and knowing.
I remember when I read "Sidhartha" in high school and wrote an essay about the circular nature of the book. The thought for the thesis of the essay came to me like a flash of insight and I was on fire writing the essay--mostly with the thoughts I wanted to get out with it. I remember making the first thesis and conclusion echo each other so the essay itself was an expression of the meaning it was trying to convey, coming back to itself and seeing more with every revolution. J says that "100 years of Solitude" does something similar. I'd like to re-read "Sidhartha."
She was down here yesterday briefly. J., J., mom and B.S. went to a peace lecture and medidiation by Hahn. "Peace in Every Step" is his book. About mindfullness in the moment. You take it with you. You take your peace with you. I'll take mine to Spain. There is beauty and peace everywhere if we look--rather if we choose to perceive it that way. If we remember that we breathe and in breathing unite our mind and body and become aware of our present. We only life in that moment.
It is always only ever now, after all. I've said it before...somewhere in these ramblings.
In preparation for the trip, I've been thinking about books to read. Some of them not for now, but someday. Spent some time at the book store. I'd like to read "My Antonia." J says that Les Mes is a must. I'm taking "Man's Search for meaning" and a few others. Sill working on a few here, also. Richard Bach has been a favorite lately. He writes a lot about releasing your mind to allow yourself to be. At least that's how I'm thinking of it in this moment. Have also been missing my poetry some. Writing and reading. I was looking up Dante the other night when I couldn't sleep at 3 am. Sent some to S. He got a kick out of that. "You're nothing if not interesting," he wrote back the next morning.
I've been mostly on the night shift at work. Had a couple day shifts these last few days. Sewed up some lacerations. Lots of ortho stuff. Belly pain in a very patience-trying patient yesterday. They were there they entire shift and wanted everything and I kept my cool with them pretty well I thought. Kept going back to myself and reminding myself to smile and take it in stride. It's not so hard. It was a good opportunity to practice it, too.
I feel out of the depression for a while now. I remember it enough to know it's still there, but I also see it and am aware of it and so can leave it where it sits.
Hahn said you have to hold your anguish and sorrow and recognize it so you can move thorugh it.
He also said that "the lotus does not grow without mud." Wish mud as a metaphor for the challenges and pains of life and the knowledge that the flower will bloom out of that and because of that in the end.
I wonder if I'm seeking out these things more, or letting them touch me more, because I was afraid that I was going to die.
Once you are no longer afraid of death, it has no hold over you. He told stories of people recovering from "terminal" cancers.
Medicine is really supportive care for the body to heal itself much of the time. I told J. that the other day. We do our best to guide it toward healing, but really it comes down to the body and the person. Cellular level be damned.
Of course, as a doctor, this is a struggle for me--this balancing act of science and mindfullness. I accept whatver works for that person. I accept whatever works for me.
My INR was 4.3 yesterday. Too high again. I got to skip a day or eat a salad. I ate a salad. Will be better for me to be a little high with a long plane trip ahead anyway. Course clotting in my legs wasn't the problem. It was the head they were after.
They? Who? Why? Random? Lesson? Growing. "What is to give light must endure burning." I don't know why this happened. Or if there even is a why. Or if the why matters. Or sometimes what does matter.
Balancing between living like time is limited or pouring the present into plans for the future. It's odd that I titled this blog what I did when I did. Before a lot of this had happened. Of course everything is a balance. It's the fine line between self and other--between now and then. It's the line that I try to expand. Make it a beautiful path to walk along and enjoy the red glow of the setting sun on the hospital I saw as I rushed to the lecture yesterday.
It's appropriate that I'm a Libra. The scales.
There are four of us living here with birthdays this month. And one who just moved out so that makes five. Maybe that's why the vibe around here is so good and close. BK is the 16th, J is the 17th, JL is the 18th, B is the 8th, then there's me on the 14th.
Twenty-nine this year, four of the five will be turning the same age.
Dad sent me a card the other day. I hope it means that he's finding himself again and getting out of his depression. It was a picture he'd taken with a quote inside from T.S. Eliot
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"
That makes me feel deeply now. Maybe from Dad in transitions and the promise of something circular and knowing.
I remember when I read "Sidhartha" in high school and wrote an essay about the circular nature of the book. The thought for the thesis of the essay came to me like a flash of insight and I was on fire writing the essay--mostly with the thoughts I wanted to get out with it. I remember making the first thesis and conclusion echo each other so the essay itself was an expression of the meaning it was trying to convey, coming back to itself and seeing more with every revolution. J says that "100 years of Solitude" does something similar. I'd like to re-read "Sidhartha."
posted by S. at 12:10 PM
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