Don't look back

I never look back
After we've kissed goodbye.

You think it's because
I'm quick to move on to other things 

My gait along the sidewalk strong, determined.

If you only knew.

I treasure believing you want to look at me for as long as possible.

I am certain I feel your eyes on the back of my neck
As I walk away.

I don't turn around because I couldn't bear to be disappointed.

To twist and find instead your back to me 

Your strong, determined gait far along the sidewalk

And realize that so quickly 

You've moved on to other things.

The seed

The photo you see above is the seed of a redwood tree. Sequoia Sempervirens. It's nothing short of a miracle. A minuscule, hard, unassuming package that contains - not the potential - (such a tired word, bland promise, assumption that weighs the recipient down with a vague sense of having to do something grand, but what?) but the ingredients (affirmative, inarguable, scientific, like chemistry) - needed to become one of the most majestic forms of life on the planet.


Have you ever visited a redwood tree grove? It's a religious experience, vast and peaceful, a thousand times more powerful than the most impressive man-made cathedral (with my respectful apologies to St. Peter’s Basilica.) 

Redwoods are the largest organism the world has ever sustained. They are so big that when you stand up against one, hug it (do it) and look up, it blocks out the sky.

The seed of a redwood tree does not sprout easily. It needs a combination of very specific conditions. All of what you would expect: nutrient-rich soil, and water, and humidity. But here is the astonishing thing: a redwood seed cannot germinate without fire.

It works more or less like this: nature makes certain that sooner or later, fire sweeps through a forest. Redwood trees tend to survive it because their thick, moist, textured bark is rich in tannins, which are burn resistant and protect the redwood. The fire clears the space (by burning everything around the redwood), allowing sunlight to reach the seed. Everything the fire burned turns to an ashy mulch, which provides nutrients to the soil. And, now, for the Pièce de résistance: The very life of the fire, its heat, cracks open the otherwise impenetrable shell of the seed.

And there you have it: previously dormant, this seed is free to become what it was meant to.

Despite their remarkable resistance to fire, redwoods can be fragile. They're often covered in (burn) scars (which I suppose add character). They hate the cold. But, a redwood can survive in places too dark for any other tree. In deep shade, it doesn’t die. It waits. Once hit by light, a primal command tells it what to do. It sprints for the sun, growing up to two feet per year.

A redwood tree is so much more than what you see, even if what you see is nearly overwhelming in its splendor and dignity. It's actually a vertical universe (Richard Preston, in his magical book The Wild Trees, calls it a vertical Eden.) These trees, that predate most human monuments, have a kingdom of plants and animals living in their branches, lichens and ferns and salamanders that cannot be found in any other ecosystem. In Preston’s words “Their mysterious canopies are rich with hanging gardens, blackened chambers hollowed by fire, and vast, aerial trunk systems fused into bridges and towers”.

The purpose implicit in the seed of the redwood is not just a redwood tree, but a glistening green planet teaming with life in its endless combinations.

What is my point here? My point is that we each have a similar kernel of divinity, indestructible and perfect, within each of us. That its magic branches out into everything we set out to build: our lives, our relationships and families and careers. This force inside all of us could be dormant, waiting for the right conditions to unfurl into something so extraordinary that it would be impossible to grasp or even begin to understand.

But it’s there. In you. In me. You just wait and see.

Changing

I grounded terrestrial logical overachiever dependable a loner a planner sole master of my fate haven’t seen her in so long this girl her bare feet secret diaries her free-fall eternal possibly calamitous her reverse swandive/skydive (not to fall but to fly) outlookless

Her vigor carnal adolescent irrational social inventive un-analytical she is unafraid chaotic kinetic keeps me up with her incessant dreaming wants to move to a fragrant country has taken up praying

I hope she stays a while

(Photo: realsimple.com)

Longing

For the feeling after yoga to last all day grounded and peaceful for one night of deep uninterrupted sleep for a dark corner in a hotel bar (or any sacred place) where your hand might touch my arm again for a pause button (I could have said rewind) a stop button for the way things used to be back when my parents had superpowers framed my paintings tucked me in tight for how fresh everything looks for travel for music my headphones for a place to hide or not need to for good food we never shared but most of all for Sundays with you

Imaginary friend

I have always had imaginary friends. The first one’s name was Clementina. She had chin length orange hair, smooth and straight, and when she came to visit the first thing she would do was stretch out alongside me on our bedroom floor and help me design blueprints for future department buildings.  

I picked my most recent imaginary friend out of a catalog, and now he lives within me. Instead of coming and going at will like that childhood friend who only visited every other week, he is ever-present and exists in what feels like a thick rope wrapped around my spinal cord. 

He runs the flat palm of his hand over my upper arm even though I have never told anyone that is the only part of me that feels empty. He whispers answers into my ear before any of the thousands of questions I want to ask have been formulated, or when in my apartment I am kept awake by the sound of floorboards creaking under the weight of dreams I haven’t had yet.

The structure of his thoughts is very different from mine (his ancestral, labyrinth-like, horizontal, elaborate; mine recent, smooth, simple, vertical) and yet his heart and mine pulse so similarly it’s hard to tell them apart.

In the early morning, when I can’t sleep, he repeats in that rhythmical way of his, always out loud, everything I try to hide, like a mantra, like an affirmation, like a lone witness to this new person I am becoming.

And this is how I know for certain I need nothing beyond the strength his presence brings me - clear, saline and invisible. 

I don't remember

You'll be with someone else someday

She'll ask you about me you'll search inside your head and look back at her with those liquid eyes and say I honestly don't remember

I don't remember her why I loved her what we did on Saturday mornings why we fought why we left each other you'll look at our life together thousands of photographs and wonder why you saved them you'll keep the ones I took of you against so many ruins all that sand and delete the ones with our arms around each other

Make a note of this put it somewhere where you won't lose it

I will always remember

Photo - Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Sick

About eight months ago, after exhibiting a rather odd assortment of symptoms, I went to see a doctor. My regular medical practitioner was not available but I got a last minute appointment with her partner to get checked out.

15 minutes later I was diagnosed with a progressive, painful, long term, incurable disease that affects, among other things, your internal organs (like the heart and lungs) and is one of the leading causes of complete disability in the United States.  (“But, are you certain?” I asked. “Pretty much”, he replied. “I’m sorry”.)

The side effects of the medication prescribed to control the symptoms (such as liver damage) left me questioning if the cure was worse than the disorder.  Not taking the medication early leads to irreversible damage and deformity.

Before leaving the doctor’s office I made another appointment with my regular MD to get a second opinion. Then, I took a deep dive into learning everything I could about the diagnosis.

I have always considered myself clear-headed. It didn’t take long for the information I was taking in to turn me into an ineffective mass of nerves.

Have you ever felt a full-blown panic attack? Heart beating out of your chest, a thirst impossible to quench, shaky hands, burning eyes, a stress-induced fever? I felt like that every second of the following four days. I couldn’t sleep more than two hours at a time. I lost half a pound a day.

I arrived a few days later for my second opinion. My regular doctor began by saying it had been inappropriate to arrive at the above conclusion without running the corresponding tests, yet conceded the symptoms I was still experiencing where consistent with the diagnosis. I went to the lab, drew three vials of blood, then had to wait 7 days to get what she said might be inconclusive results.

I left the office and did more research. When you investigate a medical condition on the Internet, there is a fine line between “information is power” (my regular modus operandi) and driving yourself crazy. I crossed it. I could not stop myself.

By Monday evening, I had not slept in four nights. Wednesday morning, I felt like death would be an optimistic outcome.  This feeling was more pragmatic than depressive.  The disease leaves you crippled. Which meant not only that I’d be in unbearable pain and unable to do anything for myself, but that I’d take down with me the people that I love, who’d have to take care of me. Full time. I’d had a wonderful life. Would it be worth living unable to clean myself after going to the bathroom? (Sorry. Too graphic?)

A few days later I went to another doctor, a specialist in homeopathy, because I wanted to explore all my options.  The gradual process of finding other alternatives (and feeling better as a result of them) gave me a spark of hope, not just in that the diagnosis might be incorrect, but that if it was accurate, I’d find my way.

I got my blood test results ten days later. They were clean. No evidence of the disease. No evidence of many others my doctor had decided to test for to “rule out”. I cried.

To this day, I still have unexplained symptoms and am under homeopathic treatment, taking my health – what I eat, how I approach exercise – more seriously than ever. Most of the time, I don’t even think about the fact I still don’t feel 100% like myself.

I can’t summarize – not today, maybe not ever - all the things that went through my head when I believed my life was over. The fatal sadness and terrifying empathy I now feel for people who are correctly diagnosed with the most terrible illnesses.

How the cornerstones of our lives are so intolerably fragile that we are conditioned to not think about it in order to make life bearable.

For now I’ll say this much: if you have your health, everything else is solvable. Everything.

Photo: www.healinghomeopathicremedies.com