oh...just me: June 2006 Archives

Mom meant my workout but that "it" implied all of everything else we discussed yesterday afternoon. Comps, travel, home, history, relationships. Wow. One cool part was her telling me about going to Tripoli - must have been in the 1950s (?) and Jerusalem in it's Christian configuration. At that time, she said, folks couldn't travel between Palestinian and Israeli areas. She mentioned that you couldn't enter Tripoli if you had an Israeli stamp in your passport. This applies to Iran, still. I haven't been to Israel so that's one hurdle I don't have to jump. (No word on authorization yet except that it is officially in progress.)

Yesterday was so full! I managed several important phone calls (procrastinated since forever) and some radical thinking. :-) Had a couple of serious/fun appointments...then was invited to dinner (spontaneously) and had the most wonderful time in the midst of an Indian-AfroBrazilian-American jazz jam session. Delicious food, happy people. It pushed me past my bedtime (!) and cut into some writing time but I have no regrets. I think I needed the break?

One amazing thing. There were two or three moments during the evening's festivities when I felt "this is enough." The impulse wasn't attached to preferring to be somewhere else or occupied with something else, it was about capacity: I'd taken in as much as I could. Each time the experience was shortlived; what struck me is how the sensation of being maxxed-out paralleled - exactly! - the feeling I had during acupuncture yesterday morning. The "IA" (intuitive acupuncturist) poked me only in two places (right foot and left wrist) and then left me alone "to cook" for at least 45 minutes. There were two or three moments when I felt, viscerally, "I'm done now."

I know it's an accomplishment to keep stretching beyond the limits of capability, capacity, endurance . . . I keep coming up against the conditioning of the past. I have the image of Dan as Macbeth, roiled by voices; the transformations of Professor Lupine turning into a werewolf, and other movie-generated images of painful metamorphosis. But, I'm pleased to report that the IA also said my "energies are balancing out." I've observed my reactions to some recent events that historically would have triggered me or otherwise inspired some form of acting out. And I didn't. :-)

So said the intuitive acupuncturist at my appointment this morning. She’s been “encouraging the shift [I’d] already begun” – regarding the connection between my “life-purpose” (liver area) and “intimacy”(heart area).

This was after she decided to ignore the wonkiness of my stomach pulse. (An "important technical term in Chinese medicine," she explained.) “Did you just eat?” “I had some chai, real Indian chai.” “That would do it.” “It had a lot of ginger in it.” “Yep, ginger heats things up.”

I told you it was perfect!

Last night, I arrived (unusually!) early to work, giving me time to walk the labyrinth (built in the classical style).

It was cool. It took longer than I anticipated (oops), but was a strikingly parallel experience to the process of receiving feedback on a paper earlier in the afternoon. My pace was slow, measured; my mood contemplative. I wove through its curves, following the path. I wasn’t conscious of time passing – or I thought I wasn’t – until the moment I thought I’d arrived at the center and realized there was another circuit to complete. A visceral feeling of shock rippled through me. Ah, I’ve already felt this today! In retrospect, the event and interaction around it were unfortunate, but possibly (?) not avoidable? Different sets of expectations and priorities. Two strong personalities. Crash.

But the morning was incredible. I had a massage (first one in three years or so) and the masseuse said it was a pleasure to work on me because my body was so responsive. She could see the muscles sussurate while she worked some of the pressure points. I was struck by the fact that even though I was tired and nearly fell asleep, my jaw remained clenched throughout. I couldn’t keep it relaxed. What? Me worry? It has to go somewhere, so they say.

At the end of the appointment I asked if she happened to know a tattoist. She hesitated, thinking. Yeah, she said, this guy Gabe. He just opened a shop in Easthampton. As she was digging out his phone number she added, “His body is covered with birds. He has a pair of lovebirds on the back of his neck.” He’s the one, I thought (actually felt) to myself (recognition?) The masseuse hadn’t remembered the name of his shop and didn’t have his work number so when I reached him on his cell phone he suggested I get directions by checking out his website. It doesn’t get more perfect than this!

I wanted her to identify the most concentrated point of lifeforce, vitality, energy etc in my body. There's "something important" going on between my liver and a point in the back of my head at the neck joint; and things are still "bound up" in my liver - "moving, but not done, yet."

I have an issue (!) with the "male principle", something about balancing the dominate (dominating?) traits that have helped me survive with more female traits. :-) Here's the unexpected part: an expansion of my heart that's "actually quite lovely." Gosh. Very specifically located, toward the back, lower left lobe, close to the spine. This was before she had me stand up and - after taking a good long look - said, "You've had a hard time." Yeah, well, not as hard as many, but hard enough, thanks.

changing forget-me-not

this might be the one: water forget-me-not

I need to remember that they are very, very tiny
(proportional photo: field forget-me-not.)

Which are native to Vermont? The wood forget-me-not seems limited to Britain.

Of course I had no idea there are so many different kinds!

Is this one tufted because of the arrangement of flowers on the stalk?

"One may, and in fact, one must memorialize with artistic language only that which is worthy of being remembered, that which should be preserved in the memory of descendents; an image is created for descendents, and this image is projected on to their sublime and distant horizon. Contemporaneity for its own sake (that is to say, a contemporaneity that makes no claim on future memory) is molded in clay; contemporaneity for the future (for descendents) is molded in marble or bronze" (Epic and Novel, p. 19).

Or inscribed in cyberspace? ;-)

My best friend, RAL, is still freaking out that I am trying to go to Iran. She's convinced Bush will bomb in less than 60 days. It's true that if G.W. Bush is set on hastening a worldwide conflagration that might simulate the biblical end times this would be a way to do it. What a wager that is, eh? I think he's too rational for that, despite his version of megalomania. We'll see?

My mom told me last night she wasn't going to say anything about it. She had already told me that during her global travels she'd had the opportunity and chosen not to go to Iran (in the late '50's), deeming it too dangerous. Last night, however, she told me she did go to Jerusalem "between the two wars" - after WWII and the Six-Day War. My grandmother also was bold during her teens, driving from Illinois to California with a couple of girlfriends one summer, at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties.

Granted, I'm a bit older than my teens - although some friends still dispute my developmental age. :-)

Bill Maher has an interview in Time (June 5, 2006) in which he laments people's reluctance to be provocative:

"I wouldn't say there's censorship in this country. But there's a lot of peer pressure. Because when anybody says anything that's the least bit feather ruffling, everybody just goes nuts. If anybody in this country is forced to undergo a single moment of discomfort, the person who caused it just must go away."

sigh

Later in the issue, Joe Klein encourages Obama to run now while he's still fresh, before he is "wizened by the accepted limits of the possible."

My host of last evening, a Gardenfaire, turns out to be a travel agent (who knew!) and turned me on to more info about getting a visa to Iran.

I need to be invited (1) via "special authorization in the form of a reference number issued by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran."

I also need to renew my passport (even though it is still in effect) with a new photograph: "Women must wear a headscarf (covering their hair but not their face) in the photos or else they will be rejected."

Time may run out :-( but I hope not . . . the recent change in US policy makes this an even more opportune time to go.