The Queen loves to meditate. Somehow driving to downtown Boulder and sitting in Shambhala meditation with others is just the ticket she needed to calm the demons that overtake her mind with busy thoughts of doomsday, loneliness, children's doctors and orthodontics appointment and ten thousand other things.
But amazingly, meditation puts some space and distance between those thoughts. And also the Queen is tired of thinking them and feeling bad with them. It's so easy to indulge! the thoughts cry, but every time she practices in the morning or with the group, those anxieties and fears tend to slip away faster. They don't have much power. Demons begone! Amazingly they slip away, defeated. Meditation leaves such clarity, openness. But you do have to practice. So every day now, the Queen has gotten up early, gone down stairs, lit the fireplace and practiced. Amazingly, all she is left with is the present. And the present becomes delicious and powerful. As if those grooves of the past the demons carved are finally lifting, the demons are bored and are packing up and going home, because the Queen doesn't pay any attention to them anymore.
Even though my ex-husband let the house go into foreclosure and it's looking pretty dismal that I will ever see my $30k i was owed, I'm not feeling that bad any more. I refuse to be pulled into the past or worry about the present. Meditation is pretty powerful, and I'm convinced that something will come out of this by being so present. Like I'm pulling out of my long depression since all this happened (and since the King left on a long trip.) And thinking that, well, I can maybe pull through. Gloom and doom and bankruptcy are not the only possibility. I might just be able to be inspired and sit down and write something creative again and get the creative juices flowing and reapply myself to my work. Because I have been doing not much more than lots of yoga, meditation, tending to the children's myriad needs and pumping myself full of wonderful ayurvedic herbs and vitamins. Sabbaticals are sometimes a good thing. The creative well springs up. Especially when you slow down, take good care of yourself and children. Not much can get done if you are not well! So healing does happen. All the deep grief, unfortunate events, you can finally pull ahead of them and look back and say, "ha!" What an experience! Sure glad that is done!" and you can revel in the present moment. The creative present moment and look ahead, as if one chapter is really, finally closed, and there is new life ahead. And the possibilities are endless.
I went to regular Anusara class today. My psoas is still killing me, and it seems like I am more tight from all the Bikram yoga, that did get deeper into my muscles, but because they use the same poses over and over again, I am weaker in the regular asana routines! So much mother came up during practice. The "Waterfall" of thoughts as the Buddhists call it. But it's the practice that helps. All of her negativity and rage. It has been helpful also to practice agnosticism. There is no "god" or "karma" to gloss over the pain of life. You just accept it. I don't have to go boo hoo, why did I have a violent schizophrenic for a mother? Because you wonder about those Ft. Hood soldiers. What did they do to deserve a massacre? Or the women murder victims of the crazy man in the Ohio house. Life is ferocious. The idea of God puts such a buffer on things. But it also gives you a crutch to stay protected from your pain. Because really when you accept it, you are happier. There was an article in the paper about a psychology study of people who had this procedure in which their bowels had to be on the outside of their bodies. Half of the patients were told that there was the possibility that their bowels one day could be put back inside of them and they would be normal. The other half were told that this is what their situation is and there is no other possibility. The people with "Hope" suffered more, putting their life off in the future. The people with no hope, were actually happier. They accepted their situation. So we don't put any hope for God to save us. We just accept life. And somehow it actually becomes more beautiful, more amazing. You just love your story, your past, your demonic mother who is actually helping you amazingly to clean yourself out. Clean all the last drops of whatever is holding you back.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Deeper Cleaning
Two nights ago I had a dream about cleaning out my father's house. He wasn't there, but other people were there to help. It was great having the help, and even my mother was there. But then in the dream I realized, my mother's dead, and asked other's if they had seen her there and they said yes.
The next day I went to my father's house and began cleaning again. I removed the junk I had taken out of the back bedroom that my mother used to occupy and threw it in the dumpster. Most of it I threw away: an old rusty trunk, old newspapers, ripped up clothing covered with cat hair, ripped up old suitcases. You could hear a music box chime go off. It's as if it were here from the dream, helping, approving, chiming in. My mother was always collecting music boxes from garage sales.
Her bedroom was finally cleared out of mounds of junk for the first time in 35 years. You could see the floor finally - old yellow shag carpet. This was my mother's bedroom and it reminded me of before she died she would just urinate over the side of the bed. Or throw her used leenex over the side and they would pile up. Social services finally stepped in, because my father could not deal with her, guilty as he felt. But my mother was so beligerant that no public geriatric, psychiatric nursing home would take her, except one far down in Englewood. I had other memory flashes as I threw stuff out. I threw out old pictures, a broken glass, travel books that where 20 years old. Crash it went into the dumpster. I remembered the time we sat on the edge of her bed after a particularly big screaming fest when I was a child. She said she was sorry, and told me about her electric shock treatments as a 19-year-old in 1949 when she had a nervous breakdown because of her violent father. She said it was like a piano falling on top of her head.
I started pulling up the filthy carpet. It could tear like tissue paper it was so old and dusty. I stopped, sneazing. I figured to take one step at a time. I needed to empty out first.
Later, I went to a Bikram yoga class. The layers of emotions can be peeled away by doing this yoga, as most yogas. A big memory of Frank's suicide note came to me. "Now she's going to have to work." I remember being so traumatized from being penniless that yes, I have to work. How stupid of me to be dependent, to trust anybody. To be abandoned so terribly. I started working and never stopped. And now in Shavasana after the yoga, I cried. No, I don't have to work. I can relax now. I can just take care of my children. I can heal myself. I can go back to the prima materia, before the wounding, and be a mother. I am cleaning out my father's house, cleaning out my emotions. I will go back to being a mom, cooking, gardening, and taking care of my children and my father now. There is a huge relief.
So yesterday my father's friend Julia, the maid, showed up. What relief! Just like my dream. To have others helping me. Because every time the dust and dirt and memories over whelm me. The bathroom mirror, dirty and stained with toothpaste from our childhood. The mirror I looked into as a teenager, getting ready for a date. And any boy who came over never came over again.
And later, more friends showed up at my own house. Dreams do come true. Because old stuff does get cleaned out. Ever so slightly, it really does. Even in meditation, you get further and further away from those disturbing thoughts. I had a meditation class today. Even though it was irritating to sit there. My psoas had frozen up in the left leg. It's been terribly painful for about a month. It's letting go a lot of stuff. A lot of trauma. Things do get healed. You just have to let go, let go of all the resistance, and most of all let go that there was ever anything wrong with your life. It's just one great beautiful story. And it's healing. I believe my mother gets healed by the cleaning of the house. That's why I dreamed her.
The dumpster was filled up. I called to have them haul it away, and my father said it was all taken away. I feels so much lighter now. All those emotions are gone. Because they dissolve in meditation, dissolve and leave the body, and they have gone physically as well.
The next day I went to my father's house and began cleaning again. I removed the junk I had taken out of the back bedroom that my mother used to occupy and threw it in the dumpster. Most of it I threw away: an old rusty trunk, old newspapers, ripped up clothing covered with cat hair, ripped up old suitcases. You could hear a music box chime go off. It's as if it were here from the dream, helping, approving, chiming in. My mother was always collecting music boxes from garage sales.
Her bedroom was finally cleared out of mounds of junk for the first time in 35 years. You could see the floor finally - old yellow shag carpet. This was my mother's bedroom and it reminded me of before she died she would just urinate over the side of the bed. Or throw her used leenex over the side and they would pile up. Social services finally stepped in, because my father could not deal with her, guilty as he felt. But my mother was so beligerant that no public geriatric, psychiatric nursing home would take her, except one far down in Englewood. I had other memory flashes as I threw stuff out. I threw out old pictures, a broken glass, travel books that where 20 years old. Crash it went into the dumpster. I remembered the time we sat on the edge of her bed after a particularly big screaming fest when I was a child. She said she was sorry, and told me about her electric shock treatments as a 19-year-old in 1949 when she had a nervous breakdown because of her violent father. She said it was like a piano falling on top of her head.
I started pulling up the filthy carpet. It could tear like tissue paper it was so old and dusty. I stopped, sneazing. I figured to take one step at a time. I needed to empty out first.
Later, I went to a Bikram yoga class. The layers of emotions can be peeled away by doing this yoga, as most yogas. A big memory of Frank's suicide note came to me. "Now she's going to have to work." I remember being so traumatized from being penniless that yes, I have to work. How stupid of me to be dependent, to trust anybody. To be abandoned so terribly. I started working and never stopped. And now in Shavasana after the yoga, I cried. No, I don't have to work. I can relax now. I can just take care of my children. I can heal myself. I can go back to the prima materia, before the wounding, and be a mother. I am cleaning out my father's house, cleaning out my emotions. I will go back to being a mom, cooking, gardening, and taking care of my children and my father now. There is a huge relief.
So yesterday my father's friend Julia, the maid, showed up. What relief! Just like my dream. To have others helping me. Because every time the dust and dirt and memories over whelm me. The bathroom mirror, dirty and stained with toothpaste from our childhood. The mirror I looked into as a teenager, getting ready for a date. And any boy who came over never came over again.
And later, more friends showed up at my own house. Dreams do come true. Because old stuff does get cleaned out. Ever so slightly, it really does. Even in meditation, you get further and further away from those disturbing thoughts. I had a meditation class today. Even though it was irritating to sit there. My psoas had frozen up in the left leg. It's been terribly painful for about a month. It's letting go a lot of stuff. A lot of trauma. Things do get healed. You just have to let go, let go of all the resistance, and most of all let go that there was ever anything wrong with your life. It's just one great beautiful story. And it's healing. I believe my mother gets healed by the cleaning of the house. That's why I dreamed her.
The dumpster was filled up. I called to have them haul it away, and my father said it was all taken away. I feels so much lighter now. All those emotions are gone. Because they dissolve in meditation, dissolve and leave the body, and they have gone physically as well.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The Queen of Bohemia Cleans Her Father's House
It has been a while since I have written. Not out of lack of substance, but out of lack of capacity to express what has occurred in the past month.
I started cleaning my father's house. The house I grew up in. I also started taking Bikram Hot Yoga classes. Somehow I think the two are related. The house and my body.
I was at the Cordillera Spa and Lodge a few weeks ago in Edwards, Colorado giving a workshop, and I had a wonderful massage, swim, whirlpool, and I decided to sit in the sauna. I usually am reluctant to be in saunas or hot rooms or anything because it makes me irritable and claustrophobic. Somehow this time I loved the heat, loved the sweating. I felt like something deep was melting away. The detox. And the spa place was so beautiful. Ultra luxurious, but a not conspicuous. Just nice, remote, even though I could not help but wonder what the heating bills were on these monstrous houses dotting the landscape that remained unoccupied!
Unfortunately, the drive back was so stressful because of snow, overturned trucks on I-70 and I feared they would close the tunnel and I'd be stranded. Worse, it was return traffic from the casino towns. Major bummer. It took me all day the next day to recover. But then I started cleaning my father's house.
He said it was time. That I would be able to come and live there if need be. He has a third acre in east Boulder. A nice bit to grow a lot of organic food, our favorite past time. But of course I would have to tackle the mess that is his house. When my mother died, I helped him clean it out. The piles and piles of old clothing, junk in every corner, the clogging of the entire house, buried in stuff. That on top of it that it had not been cleaned in 30 years.
He said it would probably make his migraine headaches go away, let everything go. That and maybe the big blockage at his navel area. A large weight held there, probably from emotions but also too much chocolate.
We started in the hallway, where he uses cardboard boxes to fill up each with old bills, magazines, junk mail, odds and ends. He was afraid to throw anything away. So we went piece by piece, paper by paper. I had ordered a big roll off for all the stuff. We just started dumping it, and recycling some, because he says he gets credit for the weight. But we filled up the recycling bin in a matter of hours, and it only comes once every two weeks. So piece by piece we went. I even found the Liberace autograph my mother said she had and had not found the first time I cleaned out the house when she died.
I had made a box of items that could be stored. My father's biggest problem is simple disorganization. Zillions of items just scattered around the house. I went in this storage area to put the box there. Mice had gotten into his end of the world food supply or wheat and what not that was there. It has been there since 2000. I saw two dead mice in traps, screamed, and dropped the box I was carrying, which upset another, untripped mouse trap. The box fell to the floor, which was covered in mice feces. I screamed again. I wondered, am I able to really clean this place out? It's so overwhelming the mess, the filth. The emotional layers there.
I went to my first Bikram class and made it through. I dripped with sweat. I felt dizzy at times, but did pretty well. Afterwards I was exhilarated, like the best high i've had in a long time. Natural, gorgeous. My skin was glowing. I had energy. I signed up for the two-week special for $25 bucks. Price is right. So I went again, felt better and wasn't dizzy. Again, dripped off sweat, like layers and layers of emotions and negativity and fear. Afterwards, felt great again. It was impossible to feel negative. I could deal with my father's house. I had to.
I came to my father's house again on Halloween. It was all abuzz with a friend of his who was a professional house cleaner. She was helping him go through tons of stuff. I was amazed they had cleaned out the back dining room area, which used to be the living room before the garage was made into the living room. But the back room was just tables piled high with tons of papers and stuff. She removed it. you could see the floor, which was previously covered. You can now see the original orange and yellow shag carpet from 1973. Although dust fills all the corners. Julia, the housekeeper, vacuumed up the dust, which I'm usually covered in when I help clean, sneezing the whole way through. Huge progress was made.
Trick-or-treaters came by and I dished out candy. I was amazed that kids come up to this house, since it's so run-down on the outside too. Maybe they think it's spooky, or dare each other to go up there, or maybe they are just greedy for candy. A Rotor Rooter truck was outside on the driveway too, blocking the way, because sadly the concrete in the back sank down so much because of a lot of rain and because the builder was cheap and didn't set the concrete correctly and it crushed the sewer pipe. So the toilets were unusable. Julia and I thought it was symbolic. THE SHIT CAN'T GET OUT.
So I went to a Third Bikram class. Sweated out some more. I haven't drank alcohol in many weeks either in a gung-ho attempt to cleanse. Went to a Shambhala meditation class. I can look at the shit clearly. I can see things arise in my mind. I know it's there. I can choose to get swept up in the shit, yes, I do sometimes and I pay dearly for it. And other times I can let it go. Is that what being human is about?
Somehow, though, seeing reality can be intense. It can also get a little boring. Or am I covering it all up again? Do you ever break through? Are you ever completely cleaned out? Or would you be dead? In reading Becker's The Denial of Death, it's about realizing how intense life is, that we are really half earth and half angel. Our bodies complicate things, even horrify us. We make up myths and religions to get around the death thing. But die we do. And to face death, and reality, is heroic. And that our society doesn't really offer us, especially youth, any opportunity to be heroic, as we barely face death anymore. We just watch it on TV and gawk at the body count piling up in the headline news. We cowardly wait in the shadows at some horror of life, hoping it won't happen to us. But it does happen to us. All the time. And somehow cleaning that out and really looking at it, to not deny anything of yourself, the filth in your father's house, the gunk in your body, that is good. You love it all. Every dark corner of it.
I wonder what the next hot yoga class has in store. And when I will find the courage to clean my father's house again.
I started cleaning my father's house. The house I grew up in. I also started taking Bikram Hot Yoga classes. Somehow I think the two are related. The house and my body.
I was at the Cordillera Spa and Lodge a few weeks ago in Edwards, Colorado giving a workshop, and I had a wonderful massage, swim, whirlpool, and I decided to sit in the sauna. I usually am reluctant to be in saunas or hot rooms or anything because it makes me irritable and claustrophobic. Somehow this time I loved the heat, loved the sweating. I felt like something deep was melting away. The detox. And the spa place was so beautiful. Ultra luxurious, but a not conspicuous. Just nice, remote, even though I could not help but wonder what the heating bills were on these monstrous houses dotting the landscape that remained unoccupied!
Unfortunately, the drive back was so stressful because of snow, overturned trucks on I-70 and I feared they would close the tunnel and I'd be stranded. Worse, it was return traffic from the casino towns. Major bummer. It took me all day the next day to recover. But then I started cleaning my father's house.
He said it was time. That I would be able to come and live there if need be. He has a third acre in east Boulder. A nice bit to grow a lot of organic food, our favorite past time. But of course I would have to tackle the mess that is his house. When my mother died, I helped him clean it out. The piles and piles of old clothing, junk in every corner, the clogging of the entire house, buried in stuff. That on top of it that it had not been cleaned in 30 years.
He said it would probably make his migraine headaches go away, let everything go. That and maybe the big blockage at his navel area. A large weight held there, probably from emotions but also too much chocolate.
We started in the hallway, where he uses cardboard boxes to fill up each with old bills, magazines, junk mail, odds and ends. He was afraid to throw anything away. So we went piece by piece, paper by paper. I had ordered a big roll off for all the stuff. We just started dumping it, and recycling some, because he says he gets credit for the weight. But we filled up the recycling bin in a matter of hours, and it only comes once every two weeks. So piece by piece we went. I even found the Liberace autograph my mother said she had and had not found the first time I cleaned out the house when she died.
I had made a box of items that could be stored. My father's biggest problem is simple disorganization. Zillions of items just scattered around the house. I went in this storage area to put the box there. Mice had gotten into his end of the world food supply or wheat and what not that was there. It has been there since 2000. I saw two dead mice in traps, screamed, and dropped the box I was carrying, which upset another, untripped mouse trap. The box fell to the floor, which was covered in mice feces. I screamed again. I wondered, am I able to really clean this place out? It's so overwhelming the mess, the filth. The emotional layers there.
I went to my first Bikram class and made it through. I dripped with sweat. I felt dizzy at times, but did pretty well. Afterwards I was exhilarated, like the best high i've had in a long time. Natural, gorgeous. My skin was glowing. I had energy. I signed up for the two-week special for $25 bucks. Price is right. So I went again, felt better and wasn't dizzy. Again, dripped off sweat, like layers and layers of emotions and negativity and fear. Afterwards, felt great again. It was impossible to feel negative. I could deal with my father's house. I had to.
I came to my father's house again on Halloween. It was all abuzz with a friend of his who was a professional house cleaner. She was helping him go through tons of stuff. I was amazed they had cleaned out the back dining room area, which used to be the living room before the garage was made into the living room. But the back room was just tables piled high with tons of papers and stuff. She removed it. you could see the floor, which was previously covered. You can now see the original orange and yellow shag carpet from 1973. Although dust fills all the corners. Julia, the housekeeper, vacuumed up the dust, which I'm usually covered in when I help clean, sneezing the whole way through. Huge progress was made.
Trick-or-treaters came by and I dished out candy. I was amazed that kids come up to this house, since it's so run-down on the outside too. Maybe they think it's spooky, or dare each other to go up there, or maybe they are just greedy for candy. A Rotor Rooter truck was outside on the driveway too, blocking the way, because sadly the concrete in the back sank down so much because of a lot of rain and because the builder was cheap and didn't set the concrete correctly and it crushed the sewer pipe. So the toilets were unusable. Julia and I thought it was symbolic. THE SHIT CAN'T GET OUT.
So I went to a Third Bikram class. Sweated out some more. I haven't drank alcohol in many weeks either in a gung-ho attempt to cleanse. Went to a Shambhala meditation class. I can look at the shit clearly. I can see things arise in my mind. I know it's there. I can choose to get swept up in the shit, yes, I do sometimes and I pay dearly for it. And other times I can let it go. Is that what being human is about?
Somehow, though, seeing reality can be intense. It can also get a little boring. Or am I covering it all up again? Do you ever break through? Are you ever completely cleaned out? Or would you be dead? In reading Becker's The Denial of Death, it's about realizing how intense life is, that we are really half earth and half angel. Our bodies complicate things, even horrify us. We make up myths and religions to get around the death thing. But die we do. And to face death, and reality, is heroic. And that our society doesn't really offer us, especially youth, any opportunity to be heroic, as we barely face death anymore. We just watch it on TV and gawk at the body count piling up in the headline news. We cowardly wait in the shadows at some horror of life, hoping it won't happen to us. But it does happen to us. All the time. And somehow cleaning that out and really looking at it, to not deny anything of yourself, the filth in your father's house, the gunk in your body, that is good. You love it all. Every dark corner of it.
I wonder what the next hot yoga class has in store. And when I will find the courage to clean my father's house again.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Memoir of My Body
My soul experiences existence through my body. As my body, I feel the energy of the universe pulsing through me, entering from my pelvic floor, moving up the spine, through the chakras, into the heart, into expanded awareness and vision from the third eye and transcendence in consciousness.
All because of my body. It houses me and my Beloved. It is my vehicle, my house, my companion. It is my experience, my art. My story.
This is the memoir of my body.
When I was six-months old I was admitted to Dover General Hospital in New Jersey for a spinal tap. I had a high fever and the doctors didn’t know why.
“There is something toxic in her bedroom,” test results showed.
My father found the culprit in the Shell pest strips used in 1967 to catch flies. It’s long, brown curl was emitting nerve gas, hanging next to my crib. I was in an incubator for a week.
“You almost died, baby Sparky Patti,” my mother said, retelling the story many times during my life.
There has always been this low-level anxiety within me. I noticed that anxiety subsided when I was rolfed in the psoas. There was no longer any upward pulling tension. I was grounded. I was safe.
A recent New York Times article explained how some babies are wired for anxiety and grow up as anxious adults. But it’s that anxiety that makes them such good workers. Controlling their environment, planning ahead. Ready for anything. The yoga sutras say that even the sage feels fear. So I knew fear from the very beginnings. My body entered the world anxious.
I had always thought it was because my mother was the wire monkey mother. That famous Harlow and Harlow experiment about how monkey babies who were held by their real mothers were well adjusted. The wire monkey’s who got a mother that was a bunch of wire with terry cloth on it turned out sort of normal, and those with only the wire monkey mother were psychotic.
My mother didn’t touch me much. If I leaned forward to hug her, she would resist, saying that she was afraid that I would “pull on her earrings,” and rip them out of her ears. The only time I remember her holding me was when I was about 6 and I had an earache and was crying and she held me and rocked me until it was time to go to the doctor appointment.
Although she gave me books and religiously took us to the library, my mother went to her own stack of books and she never read to me. My older sister by six years, Nancy, taught me how to use my fingers to flip through the card catalog and search the metal stacks for home making books. I read by myself.
My father’s body was always wracked with pain. He was a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp on Java during World War II. No he is not Jewish or Japanese. It was the Dutch East Indies experience under Japanese occupation. That whole experience was still in his body, the post-traumatic stress, still in the muscles, that were always tense and giving him severe migraine headaches. The dark-orange prescription bottles of heavy narcotics overflowed on his night stand, rolling under the bed where somewhere he lays incapacitated for days in the dark, a washcloth over his eyes and the whole world shut out.
I would massage his upper back. His neck and shoulders. I gave him Indian head massage, like Babu, the Javanese nanny from his childhood, who could pull the hair in the right spot and relieve a headache, or give some Jamu for his health.
In his head massage, I imagined pulling out the pain, pulling out the memories, the snakes and tigers, volcanoes, airplanes and gunfire, death and violence. The death of his father – he starved to death at a Mitzubishi forced labor tin mine outside of Tokyo. We know the story by heart, for my grandfather’s picture watches from above my father’s bed.
"Shake out the pain from your hands," my father instructed me. It didn't leave my body. It just lodged itself in my heart.
Still, today, as I sit here and write this. I feel his body memory. The fear, the pain, the expectation of disaster. Of a mother blinding you with the light in the middle of the night, threatening to cut your hair off with scissors because you dared to groom the dog. And you thought she wouldn’t find the evidence buried at the bottom of the kitchen trashcan.
I am aware of some grief, some deep and distant collective wail. All the families who have suffered a body trauma, be it through war, cruelty, insanity, domestic violence - there is that anxiety in the body, pulling you up and out of the body, away from life. But it's a part of life that is raging on inside you. The shadow, begging and wailing and crying to be seen and loved and not denied. So we look at its story. We look at the story in the body so that we can see that the Devil is truly God's most beloved, and be at peace.
All because of my body. It houses me and my Beloved. It is my vehicle, my house, my companion. It is my experience, my art. My story.
This is the memoir of my body.
When I was six-months old I was admitted to Dover General Hospital in New Jersey for a spinal tap. I had a high fever and the doctors didn’t know why.
“There is something toxic in her bedroom,” test results showed.
My father found the culprit in the Shell pest strips used in 1967 to catch flies. It’s long, brown curl was emitting nerve gas, hanging next to my crib. I was in an incubator for a week.
“You almost died, baby Sparky Patti,” my mother said, retelling the story many times during my life.
There has always been this low-level anxiety within me. I noticed that anxiety subsided when I was rolfed in the psoas. There was no longer any upward pulling tension. I was grounded. I was safe.
A recent New York Times article explained how some babies are wired for anxiety and grow up as anxious adults. But it’s that anxiety that makes them such good workers. Controlling their environment, planning ahead. Ready for anything. The yoga sutras say that even the sage feels fear. So I knew fear from the very beginnings. My body entered the world anxious.
I had always thought it was because my mother was the wire monkey mother. That famous Harlow and Harlow experiment about how monkey babies who were held by their real mothers were well adjusted. The wire monkey’s who got a mother that was a bunch of wire with terry cloth on it turned out sort of normal, and those with only the wire monkey mother were psychotic.
My mother didn’t touch me much. If I leaned forward to hug her, she would resist, saying that she was afraid that I would “pull on her earrings,” and rip them out of her ears. The only time I remember her holding me was when I was about 6 and I had an earache and was crying and she held me and rocked me until it was time to go to the doctor appointment.
Although she gave me books and religiously took us to the library, my mother went to her own stack of books and she never read to me. My older sister by six years, Nancy, taught me how to use my fingers to flip through the card catalog and search the metal stacks for home making books. I read by myself.
My father’s body was always wracked with pain. He was a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp on Java during World War II. No he is not Jewish or Japanese. It was the Dutch East Indies experience under Japanese occupation. That whole experience was still in his body, the post-traumatic stress, still in the muscles, that were always tense and giving him severe migraine headaches. The dark-orange prescription bottles of heavy narcotics overflowed on his night stand, rolling under the bed where somewhere he lays incapacitated for days in the dark, a washcloth over his eyes and the whole world shut out.
I would massage his upper back. His neck and shoulders. I gave him Indian head massage, like Babu, the Javanese nanny from his childhood, who could pull the hair in the right spot and relieve a headache, or give some Jamu for his health.
In his head massage, I imagined pulling out the pain, pulling out the memories, the snakes and tigers, volcanoes, airplanes and gunfire, death and violence. The death of his father – he starved to death at a Mitzubishi forced labor tin mine outside of Tokyo. We know the story by heart, for my grandfather’s picture watches from above my father’s bed.
"Shake out the pain from your hands," my father instructed me. It didn't leave my body. It just lodged itself in my heart.
Still, today, as I sit here and write this. I feel his body memory. The fear, the pain, the expectation of disaster. Of a mother blinding you with the light in the middle of the night, threatening to cut your hair off with scissors because you dared to groom the dog. And you thought she wouldn’t find the evidence buried at the bottom of the kitchen trashcan.
I am aware of some grief, some deep and distant collective wail. All the families who have suffered a body trauma, be it through war, cruelty, insanity, domestic violence - there is that anxiety in the body, pulling you up and out of the body, away from life. But it's a part of life that is raging on inside you. The shadow, begging and wailing and crying to be seen and loved and not denied. So we look at its story. We look at the story in the body so that we can see that the Devil is truly God's most beloved, and be at peace.
The Queen's Eyesight and BODY MEMOIRS
The Queen realizes that without regular contact with the King she experiences a great deal of anxiety. That aloneness overwhelms her. That’s why she has the Queen’s Court. Who is there for her? This community and connection with others is so essential to her well being. To share in life and be intimate and care for one another -- friends, family, neighbors. It really does take a village, and what really is missing in the Queen's life is a village. The King sent her pictures of Italian Plazas with people congregating for no other purpose than to congregate and EXIST rather than to purchase something and go home alone and consume it in front of a glowing TV shrine with flickering Gods and Goddesses programming them about what to purchase and consume next. The Queen yearns for plazas and her soul yearns to start gardening again and eating with the village people. Yes, she’ d really like that.
I was reflecting on my eyes last night. I am so left-eye dominant, even though I am right-handed. The right eye is significantly poorer in sight. I photograph with my left eye and take pictures with my right hand. Inwardly I see my left half of my body lighter and brighter, and the right side dark and more gross and unaware, more solid. I lay in bed last night with my left arm over my left eye. I used to be the opposite, my entire life. I'd spend a lot of my time looking with just that left eye!
My left eye is smaller than the right, a little droopy. My daughter has the same characteristic and has been going through special education testing. She’s had trouble reading and writing despite intervention the past three years. Although as a child I excelled at reading and writing, I continued to fail math. I realize that I have the same problems as hers. Could the eyes be key to this issue?
We don't learn by auditory alone and we have poor short-term memory. It’s hard for her to grasp syntax and thus read and write. She is getting the info real fast, but processing it and understanding it are hindered. She is very visual.
I heard Carl Jung had the same problem with math. Are we so far into the right brain that we are in danger of falling into and being swallowed up by the unconscious? Like Pollack and Plath? I find it no small coincidence that Jung’s Red Book is being published now. Indeed, Mythic Yoga is an intuitive and collective grasp into his thinking and experience and is a continuation of his work, without my having ever been fully educated about his work beforehand. I have been a hobbyist Jungian ever since my psychology 101 class at CU Boulder.
I will be working on developing my right vision more. What is the story behind it? As a child growing up in the 70s, my six-years older sister, Nancy, wore glasses and hated them. I did palming exercises with her. By sixth grade I purposely flunked the eye exam so that I could get glasses. But then by junior high school I was so self-conscious and wanting to be pretty I stopped wearing them and couldn’t see the leaves on the trees anymore. It was just a Monet blur. But I could read so that was OK and in school I just squinted to see the blackboard by putting my index fingers to the edges of my eyes and slanting them Chinese-style.
I suffered through contact lenses into adulthood, having gotten some at age 16 and was amazed I could see the leaves on trees again. In my young adulthood I developed a conjunctivitis disease in which I could no longer wear soft lenses, because I slept in them so much. I endured the pain and irritation that comes with wearing hard contact lenses when of dust and dirt slip in. When my husband was still alive, I had Federico Peña help me search the dark floor of our box seats at the Pepsi Center during a Disney On Ice show of the Little Mermaid for a popped-out contact lens. I’m sure I was rubbing my eye or sucking on the lens moments before because of irritation, watching the show with one blurry eye.
I read Aldous Huxley’s book about his healing his eyes, and had prayed as a child that one day my eyes would be healed. I did eye exercises, palming. I wonder if my eyesight was an unwillingness to see the world ahead of me. Not to see the clutter and squalor and emotional chaos that was my childhood home. If I have a headache I focus on the eyes where a lot of tension occurs and make them relax deeply.
I remember when I had Lasik surgery on my eyes. I was told I had such extreme stigmatism that it would take longer with the laser cutting in my eye. I remember the smell of my eye under the laser. I remember the healing, protective eye gear during sleeping and around my then 1-year-old daughter.
Just yesterday while snuggling with my daughter she looked up at me and said, “I can see your third eye,” and she pointed right in the middle of my forehead. I had never spoken to her about that before until she said that, and I explained what the third eye was. I swear she has psychic abilities. We’ve played games where she guesses exactly what you were thinking. And a few days ago I was trying to place a movie actress and couldn’t verbalize it but had a picture of Sandra Bullock in my inner body. She said, “The lady in the Miss Congeniality movie.”
My daughter is getting the great team of educational help she needs. Yet the transition has been hard on her. She came to bed with me last night and cried how much she missed Creekside, her old school. She missed Lindsey, the after-school computer club teacher. How perfect I had childcare every day after school until 5 there, I also lamented. She misses her friends and knew everybody there. At the new school she likes her teacher a lot but is slow to find friends in established groups. I agonize with her all over again as I remembered my childhood experience of feeling on the outside. That deep emotional inferiority that arises. To really trust the self and have confidence. Sounds like I need to do a little yoga practice to affirm this new belief and myth in my life. To trust the self and remember my value and worth as a human being.
I told my daughter that her old school she wasn’t getting her educational needs met, as there were a lot of kids there not getting their needs met. How important it is that she must learn. And learn now. I must say it’s a disgrace that the children at lower-income schools don’t get the help they need like my daughter is at the high-income school. Such a disgrace. I had a dream once when I still lived in Arvada, because the local school had poor test scores. The poor woman in front of the school said, “What about my son? Doesn’t he have the right to education too?”
And as I teeter on the edge financially myself, is my child to be labeled poor and suddenly undeserving of education after falling through the monetary floor during the recession? The poor neighborhoods very well shortly be flooding the streets and starting a revolution, demanding health care and education for children as a focus of priority in this country and the world.
As I get ready to leave for Pine Ridge and a long week of travel, I must remember this. We shall see.
I was reflecting on my eyes last night. I am so left-eye dominant, even though I am right-handed. The right eye is significantly poorer in sight. I photograph with my left eye and take pictures with my right hand. Inwardly I see my left half of my body lighter and brighter, and the right side dark and more gross and unaware, more solid. I lay in bed last night with my left arm over my left eye. I used to be the opposite, my entire life. I'd spend a lot of my time looking with just that left eye!
My left eye is smaller than the right, a little droopy. My daughter has the same characteristic and has been going through special education testing. She’s had trouble reading and writing despite intervention the past three years. Although as a child I excelled at reading and writing, I continued to fail math. I realize that I have the same problems as hers. Could the eyes be key to this issue?
We don't learn by auditory alone and we have poor short-term memory. It’s hard for her to grasp syntax and thus read and write. She is getting the info real fast, but processing it and understanding it are hindered. She is very visual.
I heard Carl Jung had the same problem with math. Are we so far into the right brain that we are in danger of falling into and being swallowed up by the unconscious? Like Pollack and Plath? I find it no small coincidence that Jung’s Red Book is being published now. Indeed, Mythic Yoga is an intuitive and collective grasp into his thinking and experience and is a continuation of his work, without my having ever been fully educated about his work beforehand. I have been a hobbyist Jungian ever since my psychology 101 class at CU Boulder.
I will be working on developing my right vision more. What is the story behind it? As a child growing up in the 70s, my six-years older sister, Nancy, wore glasses and hated them. I did palming exercises with her. By sixth grade I purposely flunked the eye exam so that I could get glasses. But then by junior high school I was so self-conscious and wanting to be pretty I stopped wearing them and couldn’t see the leaves on the trees anymore. It was just a Monet blur. But I could read so that was OK and in school I just squinted to see the blackboard by putting my index fingers to the edges of my eyes and slanting them Chinese-style.
I suffered through contact lenses into adulthood, having gotten some at age 16 and was amazed I could see the leaves on trees again. In my young adulthood I developed a conjunctivitis disease in which I could no longer wear soft lenses, because I slept in them so much. I endured the pain and irritation that comes with wearing hard contact lenses when of dust and dirt slip in. When my husband was still alive, I had Federico Peña help me search the dark floor of our box seats at the Pepsi Center during a Disney On Ice show of the Little Mermaid for a popped-out contact lens. I’m sure I was rubbing my eye or sucking on the lens moments before because of irritation, watching the show with one blurry eye.
I read Aldous Huxley’s book about his healing his eyes, and had prayed as a child that one day my eyes would be healed. I did eye exercises, palming. I wonder if my eyesight was an unwillingness to see the world ahead of me. Not to see the clutter and squalor and emotional chaos that was my childhood home. If I have a headache I focus on the eyes where a lot of tension occurs and make them relax deeply.
I remember when I had Lasik surgery on my eyes. I was told I had such extreme stigmatism that it would take longer with the laser cutting in my eye. I remember the smell of my eye under the laser. I remember the healing, protective eye gear during sleeping and around my then 1-year-old daughter.
Just yesterday while snuggling with my daughter she looked up at me and said, “I can see your third eye,” and she pointed right in the middle of my forehead. I had never spoken to her about that before until she said that, and I explained what the third eye was. I swear she has psychic abilities. We’ve played games where she guesses exactly what you were thinking. And a few days ago I was trying to place a movie actress and couldn’t verbalize it but had a picture of Sandra Bullock in my inner body. She said, “The lady in the Miss Congeniality movie.”
My daughter is getting the great team of educational help she needs. Yet the transition has been hard on her. She came to bed with me last night and cried how much she missed Creekside, her old school. She missed Lindsey, the after-school computer club teacher. How perfect I had childcare every day after school until 5 there, I also lamented. She misses her friends and knew everybody there. At the new school she likes her teacher a lot but is slow to find friends in established groups. I agonize with her all over again as I remembered my childhood experience of feeling on the outside. That deep emotional inferiority that arises. To really trust the self and have confidence. Sounds like I need to do a little yoga practice to affirm this new belief and myth in my life. To trust the self and remember my value and worth as a human being.
I told my daughter that her old school she wasn’t getting her educational needs met, as there were a lot of kids there not getting their needs met. How important it is that she must learn. And learn now. I must say it’s a disgrace that the children at lower-income schools don’t get the help they need like my daughter is at the high-income school. Such a disgrace. I had a dream once when I still lived in Arvada, because the local school had poor test scores. The poor woman in front of the school said, “What about my son? Doesn’t he have the right to education too?”
And as I teeter on the edge financially myself, is my child to be labeled poor and suddenly undeserving of education after falling through the monetary floor during the recession? The poor neighborhoods very well shortly be flooding the streets and starting a revolution, demanding health care and education for children as a focus of priority in this country and the world.
As I get ready to leave for Pine Ridge and a long week of travel, I must remember this. We shall see.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Bear
My son said he recently saw a mountain lion one morning biking to school, and that it was as big as a couch. We have deer poop in the backyard, and my dog, Sergeant Pepe, is extremely interested and alert over another strong, new scent there. There was a black bear on our neighbor's driveway last night. The sheriff came around, the lights swirling in the darkness as if there were some arrest. It dawned on me that this time of year, living so close to the foothills, that the apples mushing on the ground in our back yard were attracting bears. As is my compost experiment of just chunking food scraps into the bushes.
There is something deep about all these animals appearing at this time of year. As the trees put on their gorgeous cloaks of red and yellow leaves, and the chill fills the air, I sense and feel a different energy. That dying and going within. Something transitioning, something coming up from the darkness that is emerging as it hybernates. And this energy connects me with all things.
I remember my body as container and as a protective shield. That being so deeply sensual, present and self-aware of how my body is feeling at all times puts me in tune with the now and with nature's rhythms. I walk a lot in the foothills of Boulder with my dog, Pepe. To be in glorious nature is my church, and that brisk, full alignment of the body walking is such great yoga. And to be out with nature there is the edge of sublime. Truly nature - trees, rocks, animals - they put you instantly in touch with the spirit world because they connect you instantly with the deepest archetypes of being. They point to the depths and you get in touch intuitively with that great beyond. You feel it moving through your body, as you, participating in duality. It's like the High Priestess card in the Tarot. I understand the dark side, the negative feminine. I accept my dark side and integrate it into me. I don't reject it. And once you do that you are whole, and you can pass through duality to the transcendent easily on the royal road. And then you become the Magician, in full power of all nature's forces. Whatever your psyche is pulling up from the unconscious is done with great awareness then consciously projected and manifests. But then there is other stuff that you can't quite control, that keeps coming at you.
In yoga practice, I have opened my hips considerably. Tight upper inner thighs are opened with extreme stretching and a good block. Tucking the tailbone and really achieving Mula Bandha opens you up and lets the heart come forward. I do snake pose and mermaid pose, in honor of that heaven and earth union. Then the bird poses, that heaven, and squats, the frog. I am totally into sitting on my sit bones. Even in the car (how those things take the spine out of you!) You really have to make an effort to sit up straight, but that makes all the difference. That and deep breathing. I am really into the legs, janu shirsasana, upavishta konasana. I can actually get my head to the floor, although I know the heart should be there first. But something is opening. Something is changing, transforming. It's the root chakra really connecting again to the body, to nature, to the container and the energy there.
But bear is big now in its presence. I remember I had a dream once of my mother, what was wrong with her? I asked. In the dream I saw her seated at a table and a big bear came along and swiped off a chunk of her head. I interpreted that dream as the powers of the unconscious - the bear in hybernation and its powers, and how my mother was swallowed up by it - in the head with too much thinking, insanity. So somehow the bear, with its eternal cycles of life, hybernating, awakening, has a message for me. This time of year, all the dark stuff can come up from the unconscious. Like you have to accept the most disgusting aspect of yourself. Today walking on the trail Pepe pooped twice, and I had only one plastic bag, already filled. I scooped the poop up with the bag, and had to carry it. It was messy, disgusting. But there is nowhere to dispose of the plastic and it's so damn unsightly on the trail, as people do leave their plastic-wrapped poop on the trail but I could not bring myself to do it. So I carried the poop. I thought poop is sacred too, so the natives even eat poop to say all this is of the creator, of Shiva. I certainly wasn't open to eating eating it so just carried it. I thought about the movie the Matrix. How Neo knew that everything - even Mr. Smith - was part of him. All the dark parts. So carrying the poop was just that too.
All around me on my walk the natural world was so pristine, I could not dump the dog poop not even in the man-made cylinder guiding a flow of the creek water. I just walked with the poop and I forgot about it eventually. Pepe reminded me of duality - his black and white body, the trickster. He comes when I call him 50 percent of the time. The other half you are not sure what to expect of his behavior. Isn't life like that? You just never know what is going to happen. Even if you are conscious. Sometimes you can predict, other times you cannot. So you just surrender to the moment and navigate from there. And you sense the energy changing and make a choice.
Picking up my daughter today at my father's, my father said he hasn't been feeling well. In his gut area, the third chakra. He has begun to throw things out again. That's what's blocking him; to really clean out that house. It came up again that I would have him live with us a little while, enough time in the next 9 months to gut the house, clean it up, start massive gardening on his third acre for our food and self-sufficiency, and we'd move back in by the time my lease is up. So we shall see. We shall see what bear has in store for me this fall.
There is something deep about all these animals appearing at this time of year. As the trees put on their gorgeous cloaks of red and yellow leaves, and the chill fills the air, I sense and feel a different energy. That dying and going within. Something transitioning, something coming up from the darkness that is emerging as it hybernates. And this energy connects me with all things.
I remember my body as container and as a protective shield. That being so deeply sensual, present and self-aware of how my body is feeling at all times puts me in tune with the now and with nature's rhythms. I walk a lot in the foothills of Boulder with my dog, Pepe. To be in glorious nature is my church, and that brisk, full alignment of the body walking is such great yoga. And to be out with nature there is the edge of sublime. Truly nature - trees, rocks, animals - they put you instantly in touch with the spirit world because they connect you instantly with the deepest archetypes of being. They point to the depths and you get in touch intuitively with that great beyond. You feel it moving through your body, as you, participating in duality. It's like the High Priestess card in the Tarot. I understand the dark side, the negative feminine. I accept my dark side and integrate it into me. I don't reject it. And once you do that you are whole, and you can pass through duality to the transcendent easily on the royal road. And then you become the Magician, in full power of all nature's forces. Whatever your psyche is pulling up from the unconscious is done with great awareness then consciously projected and manifests. But then there is other stuff that you can't quite control, that keeps coming at you.
In yoga practice, I have opened my hips considerably. Tight upper inner thighs are opened with extreme stretching and a good block. Tucking the tailbone and really achieving Mula Bandha opens you up and lets the heart come forward. I do snake pose and mermaid pose, in honor of that heaven and earth union. Then the bird poses, that heaven, and squats, the frog. I am totally into sitting on my sit bones. Even in the car (how those things take the spine out of you!) You really have to make an effort to sit up straight, but that makes all the difference. That and deep breathing. I am really into the legs, janu shirsasana, upavishta konasana. I can actually get my head to the floor, although I know the heart should be there first. But something is opening. Something is changing, transforming. It's the root chakra really connecting again to the body, to nature, to the container and the energy there.
But bear is big now in its presence. I remember I had a dream once of my mother, what was wrong with her? I asked. In the dream I saw her seated at a table and a big bear came along and swiped off a chunk of her head. I interpreted that dream as the powers of the unconscious - the bear in hybernation and its powers, and how my mother was swallowed up by it - in the head with too much thinking, insanity. So somehow the bear, with its eternal cycles of life, hybernating, awakening, has a message for me. This time of year, all the dark stuff can come up from the unconscious. Like you have to accept the most disgusting aspect of yourself. Today walking on the trail Pepe pooped twice, and I had only one plastic bag, already filled. I scooped the poop up with the bag, and had to carry it. It was messy, disgusting. But there is nowhere to dispose of the plastic and it's so damn unsightly on the trail, as people do leave their plastic-wrapped poop on the trail but I could not bring myself to do it. So I carried the poop. I thought poop is sacred too, so the natives even eat poop to say all this is of the creator, of Shiva. I certainly wasn't open to eating eating it so just carried it. I thought about the movie the Matrix. How Neo knew that everything - even Mr. Smith - was part of him. All the dark parts. So carrying the poop was just that too.
All around me on my walk the natural world was so pristine, I could not dump the dog poop not even in the man-made cylinder guiding a flow of the creek water. I just walked with the poop and I forgot about it eventually. Pepe reminded me of duality - his black and white body, the trickster. He comes when I call him 50 percent of the time. The other half you are not sure what to expect of his behavior. Isn't life like that? You just never know what is going to happen. Even if you are conscious. Sometimes you can predict, other times you cannot. So you just surrender to the moment and navigate from there. And you sense the energy changing and make a choice.
Picking up my daughter today at my father's, my father said he hasn't been feeling well. In his gut area, the third chakra. He has begun to throw things out again. That's what's blocking him; to really clean out that house. It came up again that I would have him live with us a little while, enough time in the next 9 months to gut the house, clean it up, start massive gardening on his third acre for our food and self-sufficiency, and we'd move back in by the time my lease is up. So we shall see. We shall see what bear has in store for me this fall.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Focus on Humanity, not Caesar's Coins
I remember a friend of my father's; He was a concentration camp survivor, yet he hesitated to have his wife call an ambulance for fear of its expense when he felt chest pains. He died while his wife was driving him to the hospital.
Late one night my daughter had a fever and she had trouble breathing. The bumps on her looked like chicken pox and I thought she should see a doctor. Yet I paused.
I'm a self-employed widow and I have a $5,500 deductible on my family’s health insurance policy, so really everything comes out of pocket. If you’ve ever raised kids then you know how expensive it can get as kids get sick all the time. So I hesitated. I hesitated between life and death of my child because I feared I could not afford it. She was OK through the night, and in the morning I took her to the doctor and it turns out she had a bad virus.
Like me, millions of American have to hesitate or live in fear simply because they cannot afford health care. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that does not allow for the well being of all of its citizens. Liberty and health is denied to American’s who are poor, self-employed, elderly or have pre-existing conditions. Here is where the true death panels exist – in health insurance companies.
The sign of a great society is that which focuses on humanity, rather than its material profit. America, once the home of the brave and the land of the free, is now America the corrupt and home of the greed. Corrupt is a rupture of the heart, a misguided system and wrong priority. Life should not be about monetary gain of Caesar’s coins but about the rapture of the heart and living and being in community. When health and education is for all, then the and arts and sciences will flourish again. But we live in this dark age of the former, and our world suffers because of it.
My son has flat feet and he has great pain in his knees and feet. He cried when he couldn't play football. The CAT scan costs $2,500 per foot to get orthotics. I was going to pay the non-insurance, self-pay rate of $1,245 per foot, but the administrator reminded me that if there is something really wrong with his feet and he needs more care, the insurance company could deny coverage, as then it would be a pre-existing condition. I wondered if that would be considered extortion. I wondered if this could be some plot to eliminate liberal artistic types like me who tend to be self-employed and can’t afford a lot of health insurance. I left without getting my son the scan and wondering what to do.
Weeks later I rebooked the appointment. My son is in pain. I don’t care if I have to use every credit card or declare bankruptcy I will get my children the health care they need. My daughter needs tutoring for special education. Whatever it costs it will be paid. I will find a way to pay it. We have to find a way to pay for health care and education in America because that’s what every man, woman and child needs. That’s what makes a healthy society and that’s what makes a society great.
It’s time to focus on the human, not the profit. When our society once again is community-based, rather than profit-based, we will then emerge from the darkness of the past and shine in the renaissance that this country will experience.
Free health care and education for all people.
Late one night my daughter had a fever and she had trouble breathing. The bumps on her looked like chicken pox and I thought she should see a doctor. Yet I paused.
I'm a self-employed widow and I have a $5,500 deductible on my family’s health insurance policy, so really everything comes out of pocket. If you’ve ever raised kids then you know how expensive it can get as kids get sick all the time. So I hesitated. I hesitated between life and death of my child because I feared I could not afford it. She was OK through the night, and in the morning I took her to the doctor and it turns out she had a bad virus.
Like me, millions of American have to hesitate or live in fear simply because they cannot afford health care. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that does not allow for the well being of all of its citizens. Liberty and health is denied to American’s who are poor, self-employed, elderly or have pre-existing conditions. Here is where the true death panels exist – in health insurance companies.
The sign of a great society is that which focuses on humanity, rather than its material profit. America, once the home of the brave and the land of the free, is now America the corrupt and home of the greed. Corrupt is a rupture of the heart, a misguided system and wrong priority. Life should not be about monetary gain of Caesar’s coins but about the rapture of the heart and living and being in community. When health and education is for all, then the and arts and sciences will flourish again. But we live in this dark age of the former, and our world suffers because of it.
My son has flat feet and he has great pain in his knees and feet. He cried when he couldn't play football. The CAT scan costs $2,500 per foot to get orthotics. I was going to pay the non-insurance, self-pay rate of $1,245 per foot, but the administrator reminded me that if there is something really wrong with his feet and he needs more care, the insurance company could deny coverage, as then it would be a pre-existing condition. I wondered if that would be considered extortion. I wondered if this could be some plot to eliminate liberal artistic types like me who tend to be self-employed and can’t afford a lot of health insurance. I left without getting my son the scan and wondering what to do.
Weeks later I rebooked the appointment. My son is in pain. I don’t care if I have to use every credit card or declare bankruptcy I will get my children the health care they need. My daughter needs tutoring for special education. Whatever it costs it will be paid. I will find a way to pay it. We have to find a way to pay for health care and education in America because that’s what every man, woman and child needs. That’s what makes a healthy society and that’s what makes a society great.
It’s time to focus on the human, not the profit. When our society once again is community-based, rather than profit-based, we will then emerge from the darkness of the past and shine in the renaissance that this country will experience.
Free health care and education for all people.
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