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Turtle Dance

On December 26th, the TURTLE DANCE is performed at the nearby San Juan Indian pueblo.

I think of it today as all the schools are closed here because of the snowstorm which passed through last night.

IT IS COLD!

Like it always is when I see this dance.

White people continue to embarrass me with their disrespectful behavior at native gatherings of any kind so I don’t usually go anymore.

But this dance is different.

I keep thinking of it as kind of a secret as so few anglos attend.

The mood is reverent.

Everyone is on their best behavior; native and anglo alike.

This is solely a male dance.

A long line of men in two’s dressed only in deerskin around their waist, snakes through the plaza so you can’t see the opposite end from where you stand.

The sound of singing and turtle shells jingling tied ’round their ankles and smoke from pinon tree fires and the men holding pine boughs and the constant rhythm of voices ascending and disappearing as they move out of sight and the clouds of frozen breath from their heavy exertion as they dance is an experience of a lifetime.

The Turtle Dance marks the beginning of their year..everything new and fresh..

A time to pay homage to what matters and move forward into the unknown.

With hope.

Always with hope.

And respect for what was.

Early this morning, a woman I hired to help me with chores around the house showed up.

I thought our appointment was tomorrow morning.

I was not dressed and the house was a mess.

This was our first meeting and I was a total wreck.

I acknowledged my mistake after a bit of prideful fantasizing that it wasn’t me who had made the error.

But it was.

And this kind of thing is happening more frequently.

My cognitive capabilities are now clearly affected.

Crying doesn’t help.

Humility seems to be the ticket.

And letting my small ‘self’ be moved into her bigness.

And guiding her with utter tenderness toward hope and beauty and mystery and forgiveness and the innate promise of the new…

And as I write, the tears dry and are replaced by a spaciousness that can include it all; judgement, humility, recognition of change, tenderness and above all, the solace in shifting one’s point-of-view toward some place open-ended and compassionate; inclusive of it ALL.

I will let the Turtle Dance help move me there.

It can’t come soon enough.

MS.. Marginally Sure

My ability to upload photos is acting up. Please bear with me.

Many people I know in the MS world have had their world shaken recently with the possibility of other-than-MS-diagnoses or brand new ways of looking at the disease and options for treatment.

I wrote recently about Lyme’s disease and my testing positive for that.

It has taken me awhile to digest what exactly that means for me.

What I have settled into is this:

MS seems to be the name we have chosen for a group of symptoms that behave like an autoimmune condition for which the medical community has not isolated a cure.

Each person diagnosed has a body which reacts wildly differently as host to these uninvited guests.

My experience has led me to discover that diet, stress level, over-exertion, under-use of muscles, intake of particular supplements and drugs, simplicity and peace quotient in my life, ability to contribute and be an active participant in society, self-worth and connection to Spirit each have a decided effect on my well being and quality of life.

I find it seductive business to wear a name tag of ANY kind..

I abhor even the thought of it but notice the weird draw.

It feels soothing to say: “My name is………… I work at……….. I live…………. I believe in…………… My friends are……………….

For myself, the grand gift of this mysterious illness continues to be the act of peeling away all the name tags and sitting with what is left.

It feels like a BIG DOSE OF NOTHING!!!!!!!!!

In the very best sense.

The thing is that from there I seem to be able to take myself outside the pre-programmed schedule of ‘symptom-alleviating, terror-tainted-watching, numbing KNOWINGNESS’ that comes from set beliefs and lazy living.

It is HARD to be present to a demanding physical existence!

Easier, sometimes to take a diagnosis to bed; coddle it, feed it, soothe it.

Honestly, I am really looking at how much easier it is to take someone’s word for something rather than REALLY SIT with what wants to occur.

People, doctors, friends,books tell me all kinds of things that are at odds with one another.

WHAT is a girl to do?

I am forced to listen to my own intelligence and move from there.

Educated by the knowledge I sense is correct for me, I move forward.

I will, have already, will likely continue to make incorrect choices.

I sometimes wish I could rest comfortably within the familiar confines of a diagnosis of PRIMARY PROGRESSIVE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS.

But the outcome prescribed there is markedly dim and I am not.

And so.. I wonder and open and listen and watch and see where I am led next.

I am not saying no to the diagnosis of PPMS.

But I AM moving forward with an eye toward possibility.

All I can count on is CHANGE..

And, oddly…that is now a reality I seem to be thriving in more often than not.

Compartmentalized Enlightenment

I’ve had a few extraordinary teachers in my life but one in particular leads the way in the ‘get real’ department.

I took a class in calligraphy which I loved.

Part of the class was a private moment with the teacher as he came up behind me as I was seated and poised with pen dipped in black ink ready.  He proceeded to gently lean in over my shoulder and take my hand in his,  guiding me to make the mark on paper.

In those few seconds, I experienced what felt like his effortless transmission to me of the eons of cultural, individual and spiritual archives he held in his old Japanese body of the knowledge of calligraphy.

A great sense of perfect emptiness widened in me.  I needed nothing more.

Needless to say.. I wanted more of THAT.

To make a long story short, I worked on creating an email correspondence with him over a year’s time and he surprised me one day with an invitation to visit his family on the West coast for a week.

I WAS ELATED!

MY EGO WENT WILD WITH THE SPECIALNESS OF IT ALL!

He met me at the airport in his buddhist robes.. so small in stature.. unsmiling..perfectly fitting into the rarified fantasy I had concocted for this experience.

I brought gifts..

My most cherished ceramic piece for him and a lovely carved rock vase for his wife.

His home was filthy…

Mold grew on the walls of his basement studio.

I was given dirty sheets with holes in them to make up my couch bed in a freezing room.

We all sat down to dinner and I felt the searing emotional distance between he and his wife.  Two strangers co-habitating.

After 4 days, I gave myself symptoms of the flu in order to get the hell out of there with a modicum of grace…

…My BEST piece of art residing in their dingy and yellowing kitchen.

OK… what was THAT?????????

It was a brilliant experience of wishful thinking on my part and the delusion that if a person exhibits a thread of enlightened behavior in one arena, THIS HAS A GOOD CHANCE OF TRANSLATING INTO THE REST OF THE PERSON’S LIFE!

NOT……………….!

I wanted his energy.

He wanted mine.

Human….very human.

Disappointing but very ENLIGHTENING!

Oh, so very enlightening….

The Delicacy of Forgiveness

I am hard on myself.

Louise L. Hay, a forerunner in the alternative health realm, has a book where you look up a symptom or disease and you find Louise’s take on the emotional genesis of said symptom.

Under MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS it says:   “Mental hardness, hard-heartedness,iron will, inflexibility, fear.”

I don’t really relate to the hard-heartedness but the rest I can see in myself.

The affirmation that she gives is:   “I am safe and free.”

I can’t even relate to those words, actually.

So, I see I’ve got some work cut out for myself…

I never take what ANYONE says as the be-all / end-all.

But I look to see if there is some relevance for me there.

If I feel totally neutral and bored, I move on..

But if my attention is caught in some way, I try to stay with it and look to see if there is something for me there.

I don’t discount ANY messenger these days as I make my way through this health maze.

My true cutting edge seems to be forgiveness of myself these days.

Were I to describe the general tone of my beingness all these years it might be that I am a perpetual student of life.

There is a distinct difference between opening to guidance and learning,

And putting one’s self in ‘second seat’ as I call it.

The second seat has a general disregard for what I actually have first-hand knowledge of and positioning myself as the perpetual ‘gleaner-of-knowledge’

Instead of taking responsibility for actually ANCHORING my sense of knowingness and moving from that place with grace and assuredness.

In my upbringing, it was dangerous to call to much attention to one’s self.

This reticence is surely leftover from those days of cloaking myself in juvenile delinquency.

Take a depressed and dirty girl and let her loose in the forest and TRY to find her.

I’ve been disappearing most of my life in various ways.

It really took an ‘iron will’ as Louise L. Hay mentioned.

Now, I really think I’ll forgive myself the disappearing act and show up.

I still have one side of my body that works pretty well.

Others have done it on far less.

Teeth

Pretty much everyone I know is having teeth issues..

Losing them, changing them, veneering them, crowning them..

Teeth are power tools.

They don’t like being messed around with or forgotten.

I went to the dentist for a cleaning yesterday and left angry.

His attention was SO ELSEWHERE.

So much so that at the end he left me in the extreme recline position with my bib still on.

I gyrated best I could and got myself out of the chair and left to pay the giant bill.

What was missing here?

A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL RELATIONSHIP.

There was not much I could do there in the chair with instruments poised in my mouth as he cleaned my teeth.

But I did not go away.

Psychically speaking.

I was THERE.

Gave it my all.

And then left feeling empty and bereft, somehow.

Then, I had to PAY for it on top of that!

So.. what’s the point here?

The whole thing reminded me what happens when I withdraw my energy from ANY experience.

Good stuff, important things get missed, overlooked or passed by.

Things that may never happen again.

The dentist guy missed me entirely.

I didn’t get the chance to experience him either.

Before MS, stuff like this wouldn’t cross my mind…ever.

I was BUSY.

Wonder what I missed?

Disappointment

When I got divorced, I had a slim thread of myself intact.

How would I find my way back to the Cathy I know and love?

I decided to take a piece of clay each day for a year and do a sort of 3-D journal to begin to reacquaint myself with myself.

I worked in an unedited way and did this for no one’s eyes but my own so I could really see what was THERE.

This is one of those pieces.

She has a bird coming out of her mouth but she is in the middle of a scream.

This is really how I feel, lately. Not always but sometimes.

I am disappointed in myself for a number of things.

I can sense my family’s deep disappointment in me for not following through on some things and not letting them know how they can help me.

I am sure, were it they in this situation, there would be a whole different scenario going on and likely, it would look more pulled together on the exterior.

If I were to pick JUST ONE THING from this entire health challenge I face, that I have a sense is what God might desire of me, it would be this:

“Cathy, the YOU that you were was an act for others. Use this graduate course in CHANGE I have developed for JUST YOU, and let go the old girl.

This will be MESSY AND HUMILIATING AND YOU WILL DISAPPOINT!

Remember who is important here.

YOU.

And forgive yourself as you shed the old skin.

It may look tattered and ugly.

But be patient.

And expect the miracle of the new.

But let me decide what that looks like..

Leave it to me and I will not disappoint.”

Chapters

I think Joseph Campbell said: “When I look back on my life, I see that it opened up just perfectly, chapter by chapter. I didn’t think so at the time but it did.”

As an artist, I know that instead of the glamorous life some continue to think it is.. it has been for me, really, just a series of making marks and then correcting them, balancing out the one I just made or pulling out a spanking new sheet of paper when all feels lost.

Begin again.

Begin again.

Fall in love with beginners mind.

And begin again.

My heart gets a workout.

But I see it become toned and fit.

Ready.

Discriminating.

Lighter.

More room.

Wider.

Less afraid.

Generous.

Transparent.

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