Monday, August 22, 2011

My mistress is the sea

Today a friend of mine spoke, on her blog, about the need for some silence for a while, and that that got me thinking...in the slow, lazy way that thinking happens after some great acupuncture, which I also had today.
When she said she needed more silence, less busy-ness in her world, my mind began a series of associations like an old movie flickering on.

The scene opened in my clinic 14 years ago. 1997 was full of "the adventure of healing" I had 2 abnormal PAP smears, followed by an abnormal biopsy, followed by an in-office surgery to my cervix.
After healing, the should've-been-perfect PAP was abnormal, as was the next biopsy, followed by a big ol' in the hospital surgery.
The quarterly PAP's the next year, & the biannual ones for the next two years & every one after that have been fine.
But a ten days after the second surgery, after having flown across the country and back, and jumping back into my clinical schedule that was unmerciful (though I still couldn't feel that then) I began hemmoraging at work.
I called my doctor, who, of course, had me come right over. When he examined me he said he was at a loss to understand what he was seeing. All the hemmoraging and clotting, which had started out of the blue, was coming out of a wound the size of a pinhole, he said.
"I don't know why that would happen.", he mused.
As soon as he said it my body told me, in words in my head, why & I simply replied "I do."
There was nothing medical to do so he sent me home.

My body said "You have to stop."
I knew what it meant. Stop working every waking moment six days a week.
Stop making my life about what everybody else needed.
Stop ignoring myself.
It took years and years to turn that ship around, but I started then.

So when my friend spoke to slowing down, being more silent, and that movie appeared out of the recesses of partially learned lessons, I asked my body, "Is this more of that? More needing to be present for me? More dropping of context? More silence inside?"

Yes. It feels like a yes.

I don't think it will take as long this time to turn that ship. I used to kid with my friends that I was trying to turn the Queen Mary back then; that you could yank on that wheel a long time before any movement would be seen in its path on the sea.
I sail more a 20 foot yacht these days...
Still not a speedboat, but not a behemoth.

When I look at my compass, so far, I see the moon.
I am slowly moving my head, trying to understand what the bright reflection, the craters, and the lunar pull of all tides means. I am used to seeing  North South East West.

I hear the moon as she swishes the oceans within.
There will be a new sailing.

6 comments:

d smith kaich jones said...

yes, yes, yes. the moon is true north. and you are he as you are me and we are all together . . . i sail by the same moon.

xoxo

mrs mediocrity said...

it's so easy to get distracted by life sometimes, so distracted that we forget where WE are. the moon is always there to guide us. and i love that we are all here, under the same moon, even when we are so far away.

Jean J. said...

.... you ladies are beautiful moon-driftng sailors & poets & you (we) (I) are comforting ourselves on the rough seas all around us.

My body told me for Years to slow down - so I slowed down. Not realizing I would just fill one kind of busy-ness for another. Now I know that it is the internal smile that I crave. It is the internal "ease". It is like sailing the rough, magical, mysterious seas by the light of the moon.

I know now that I recognized it first in Walt Whitman; & now he has come back to me at 61. Bless him! What a sailor he was! I looked at the old, battered book & the notations I made when I was 20 - and it is all there. How to sail smoothly (or not) under the moon. So, from Walt to each of you: "And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful...And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and starts, is equally wonderful..."

Miss Gracie's House said...

It can be so difficult to slow down...but oh so necessary!
THANKS for the visit!
Rene

d smith kaich jones said...

Jean J. - Thank you for this bit of Whitman. It is perfect for this internet age, where we still sail under the same old moon. And feels gorgeous on my tongue when I read it aloud. :)

Debi

Jean J. said...

Yes - Walt is all comfort and acceptance (that's why I thought of sharing "Leaves of Grass" with you now Skye) & I hadn't thought of it Debi -- but he is just as perfect for this age of remote communications between strangers (of course he would disallow we are strangers), as he was when it took days to get a message to someone at all! And, he, like Skye, has a big, bold, intelligent, and humane heart!

"O the pensive aching to be together -- you know not why, and I know not why." xoxo