This is the view from the patio outside the bedroom where the poem below is set.
Meditation:
Where do I feel it? High in the chest. Up and down my breathing. Allergies. Sore throat and uncontrolled coughing, sometimes all the way to unconsciousness. That's how I had a bad accident with a telephone pole eighteen months back. When I am stressed, sometimes I find that I breathe so shallow that I am starved for air. This all is the state I was in before my heart trouble. This heart trouble affects my breathing. Oddly, since my heart trouble surfaced in breathing difficulties, the allergies have receded. That intrigues me.
I have seen that before in others, that a chronic issue goes away when some new thing starts. (It is very difficult to notice this when it is happening to me. I suspect it might be difficult for you to notice this too.) I take that to mean there are emotional components in disease and that these can withdraw from one system of disease when they are invested in another. This is actually good news because under rigorous emotional honesty there is a chance for me to untangle an old knot.
"Grace means more than gifts. In grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace means accepting the abandoned one. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transforms guilt to trust and courage. The word grace has something triumphant in it." - Yrjo Kallinen
George Henry Kallinen (Yrjo Henrik Kallinen, June 15, 1886 Oulu - 1 january 1976 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish Social Democratic politician and a Counsellor of Education. He was known first and foremost as an advocate of the idea of a neutral and peaceful Finland. He built his career mainly by maintaining close alliances with other compatible politicians.
The Good Fight
I used to fight it
as if I could win the fight
but I knew better.
So she tickled me
and whispered in my ear, make friends,
she said. What?? You mean
take that old foe in?
Fuck that! No, really, she said
touching me like that.
So I tried. Bravest
thing I ever did.
December 3, 2009 8:21 PM
boo hoo on the lost poems of the previous post, but great faces.
ReplyDeletei can relate on the breathing difficulties....for me it's asthma and totally based in environmental conditions... there is something quite elemental about having that next breath as a focus.... so much moves to the periphery
lovely poem, this.... feels like acceptance... or forgiveness or willingness... godspeed on the untangling
That asthma was my childhood and was maintained by an undetected food allergy to potatoes. Potatoes were of course a staple in our American West California Coast diet. They went undiscovered until I was twelve. I was so asthmatic at times that I was unable to exercise without bringing on an attack.
ReplyDeleteDiscovering the allergy, removing potatoes from my diet in a total abstinence, having desensitization shots for the other allergies, that removed the asthma and most of the hay fever too until the last maybe fifteen years.