KNOWING THE DIVINE
I found this quote on a website that I was researching. If you reflect on my past blogs you may recognize strains of it when I talk about my love of sitting in stillness by the river. With simplicity and elegance Buddha expresses a truth that I have experienced in the past, but without fully understanding. I share it with you now as my Christmas gift to you:
IF YOU WISH TO KNOW THE DIVINE, FEEL THE WIND ON YOUR FACE
AND THE WARM SUN ON YOUR HAND.
Buddha
I am writing today feeling more my normal self thanks to my weekly steroid boost. I have been too depressed to write before. I was truly dark. And afraid. In the three years that I have been aware of living with this cancer my attitude has been predominantly positive and relatively accepting. And here I am still alive and loving being alive and living with kidneys that refuse to quit on me despite the chemo onslaught necessary to restrain the proliferation of the cancer.
The past three weeks or so, however, have been very different. I couldn't sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning, I was emotionally volatile, but worst of all I felt hopeless, angry and negative. I would be constantly having thoughts that could be summarized as: "What am I doing, eating and waiting to die? Why bother?" Quite apart from feeling unhappy and often miserable, I knew I couldn't survive with this despairing attitude. After some time, about four o'clock in one anxiety-ridden morning, I realized that I had unwittingly done this to myself!
I have taken 1mg of klonipin at night for the past three years to help me to relax for sleep. Then on the suggestion of my oncologist I let my klonipin run out and tookattavan instead. This despite forty years of work as a therapist and knowing the dangers of rapid withdrawal from such medications! Last night a friend loaned me some klonipin and, voila! - I slept for nine wonderful hours. I plan on returning to the klonipin regimen and, hopefully, to that attitude and sense of self that has gotten me this far.
That attitude wherein that which I most cherish is sitting in stillness by the river feeling the breeze on my face and bathed in the warmth of the sun...
************
May you awake to being enveloped by the Divine during this season and throughout the coming year. This is my heartfelt wish and blessing for you, my beloved friend and reader, in the deepest gratitude for your prayers, good wishes, and enriching presence in my life.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
BACK BY THE RIVER AGAIN
I returned to Florida a few weeks ago for the holidays and here I shall remain, most of the time, through the next few winter months. By the time I left Boston to return to Florida I was cold all the time and I contracted another case of salmonella, albeit much milder than that of last August. I have recovered from the illness and the effects of the medicine and for the most part feel okay. While Cyclops is fairly gentle with me I do have a low grade fever almost every night. But most of what I feel is the intense discomfort of the neuropathy and a deep fatigue that interferes with doing very much at all, and so I sit by the river.
I am experiencing some type of profound internal change as I sit here. Perhaps it is a result of the fatigue; perhaps something else. I don't feel like making lunch or dinner plans and I can't do much else. I seem to be lacking a certain kind of energetic inclination to talk very much most of the time. When I do go out, as I did yesterday with three friends to Art Basel in Miami, I am often very quiet. And yet I am not bored. And I answered "No" quite honestly to a therapist friend when he asked if I thought I was depressed. Most of the time I feel content...just as long as I am physically comfortable, and all I need for that is cushioned furniture.
Sometimes I answer email, or read, or most recently I sorted through all the photographs of my family, friends, and various times and places of my life. Apart from the delight of seeing the faces of friends from the past sixty years, the photos that moved me the most were of the garden I created out of a driveway at my house in Brookline. It was probably late September and the garden was full of flowers while the ivy had just begun to change color. They were very sweet photos and reminded me how much I loved that city garden for more than thirty years. Ironically, I also turned part of the driveway at Treetops into a garden; another place that I cherished. Paradise Point was never a driveway but I guess I'm still at the gardening thing; even if I don't do the work myself.
The bridge demolition is now complete and I am very much okay with it. The secret garden is completely gone but in its place there is an amazing openness that gives me views of a huge and beautiful tree on the opposite bank of what I have decided to call Paradise Pass! And being able to see water surrounding the point of my property has created an entirely new and beautiful feeling to the garden. I will post photos after we do some finishing landscape.
Speaking of finishing, to my considerable relief Blue Cross has decided not to cancel my health insurance. So while in many ways this has been my own anno horribilis, it is finishing well. As I sit here writing and listening to the sound of a far off train whistle reverberate over the silent water there is a new and deeper peace on the river tonight.
Thank God!
I returned to Florida a few weeks ago for the holidays and here I shall remain, most of the time, through the next few winter months. By the time I left Boston to return to Florida I was cold all the time and I contracted another case of salmonella, albeit much milder than that of last August. I have recovered from the illness and the effects of the medicine and for the most part feel okay. While Cyclops is fairly gentle with me I do have a low grade fever almost every night. But most of what I feel is the intense discomfort of the neuropathy and a deep fatigue that interferes with doing very much at all, and so I sit by the river.
I am experiencing some type of profound internal change as I sit here. Perhaps it is a result of the fatigue; perhaps something else. I don't feel like making lunch or dinner plans and I can't do much else. I seem to be lacking a certain kind of energetic inclination to talk very much most of the time. When I do go out, as I did yesterday with three friends to Art Basel in Miami, I am often very quiet. And yet I am not bored. And I answered "No" quite honestly to a therapist friend when he asked if I thought I was depressed. Most of the time I feel content...just as long as I am physically comfortable, and all I need for that is cushioned furniture.
Sometimes I answer email, or read, or most recently I sorted through all the photographs of my family, friends, and various times and places of my life. Apart from the delight of seeing the faces of friends from the past sixty years, the photos that moved me the most were of the garden I created out of a driveway at my house in Brookline. It was probably late September and the garden was full of flowers while the ivy had just begun to change color. They were very sweet photos and reminded me how much I loved that city garden for more than thirty years. Ironically, I also turned part of the driveway at Treetops into a garden; another place that I cherished. Paradise Point was never a driveway but I guess I'm still at the gardening thing; even if I don't do the work myself.
The bridge demolition is now complete and I am very much okay with it. The secret garden is completely gone but in its place there is an amazing openness that gives me views of a huge and beautiful tree on the opposite bank of what I have decided to call Paradise Pass! And being able to see water surrounding the point of my property has created an entirely new and beautiful feeling to the garden. I will post photos after we do some finishing landscape.
Speaking of finishing, to my considerable relief Blue Cross has decided not to cancel my health insurance. So while in many ways this has been my own anno horribilis, it is finishing well. As I sit here writing and listening to the sound of a far off train whistle reverberate over the silent water there is a new and deeper peace on the river tonight.
Thank God!
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