The naked kingdom
Author: puma100 (Tatyana)
"The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic, but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies."
- Joanna Macy
I hit the turning point. My Medicare card came in the mail. I will be officially on Medicare starting November 1. Now I'm old. Sent out to pasture. What's real about it, my left thigh and left thumb, my right hip and right big toe, my broken L5 vertebra, I think it is and my heart and bronchials, my upper right sinus, certain parts of my systemic regulation and the teeth in my mouth all agree. The line up of prescriptions on the counter taunt me. I once paid no attention to my body. Now I notice the consequences of oxidation all the time. I am rusting like an old bridge. Considering all that I don't feel so bad.
I went to work again today, worked all day. I come home worn out though, and wonder if I will have to pull over to the side of the road to have a nap before I continue my drive home after work sometime soon. Some days, like yesterday especially, it is very hard to do the last three miles of the commute in the afternoon traffic. I can barely stay awake in the forced idleness of sitting in traffic.
Slipping Through My Fingers
I tried to hold time
in my hands no matter what
even though you said
that's impossible
and I kind of thought
so too, so I grinned sheepish
as you inspected
my stiffened talons
and the piles of lost minutes
building at my feet.
July 30, 2009 11:29 AM
The poem is....very very good. very!
ReplyDeleteWhat does medicare card mean, besides the fact that you are not doing so well physically.
A big hug to a great soul; rust can be beautiful too, and bridges take us beyond.
ReplyDeleteJozien, Medicare is the name of the government program that gives partial medical insurance to older people and other qualified people. 65 is the turning point on that program. There are two primary parts. The catastrophic and hospital part is automatic and free. Another part covering doctors and lab work is optional and costs a modest amount, with a penalty attached if you don't qualify to skip it by having other insurance. There are a couple other optional choices, which include pharma. I am forced by the conditions of my work provided insurance to take the optional coverage which means I pay a new bill now that I am 65. My employer has paid the cost of insuring me til now.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, Lucy, bridges take us beyond. Thanks for saying so.
I'm smiling deep at what Lucy says. I agree. It is a curious thing, these bodies of ours, and what happens to them.
ReplyDeleteBig northern bear hugs to you.
xo
erin
(and your piece my way yesterday caused me to smile deep too. i was swallowing something then and with the pressure of a spontaneous laugh it came out through my nose.)
Thank you for your big northern bear hugs. I need them.
ReplyDeleteLove you, Erin.
I see old age and "forced idleness" as synonymous. Hope I'm wrong, but it is a great fear and I watch that fear played out in my parents.
ReplyDeleteThe poem was delicious, a needed mind picture. If spiritual warfare could be seen...so the wasted minutes, if piled as visual evidence, would make the hairs on the back of my neck shreek!
you too, christopher.
ReplyDeletei had an opportunity to meet a few people who reflected bits of (perhaps?) you back to me in some ways. i've learned a greater respect for you. i am glad for the opportunity.
xo
erin
Annie, maybe. If you mean "to have dynamic involvement in the social mainstream (by job or service or whatever)" then old age might be "forced idleness". The computer changes everything though, doesn't it? If I never told you, I might be wheel chair bound and barely able to function but I can still think and type. Thus I break free. My poetry has changed everything for me now.
ReplyDeleteAnd too, I have quite dynamic daily involvement in AA. That would continue of course as long as I can get around or have them come to me. This is not idleness. Not to me.
Erin, I am not sure I know what you mean about meeting people who know me. Who? Email me.
ReplyDeletehahaha, i laugh. not that they know you but reflect you. i met some very open minded people on the east coast who are learned and push their minds in terms of study and reflection. there is an abbey there where many study and spend time. i picked up a book by pema chodron called Comfortable with Uncertainty, and although it is an introductory book for the Buddhist path, it helped me to clarify a few things, and it lent great light and perspective into what you write here. or at least, how i perceived it. i could hear you speaking in the background while i read, and while Robert and i talked our own paths out.
ReplyDeletexo
erin
Yes. That works for me. There are aspects of Buddhism that are in my heart naturally, it seems. I am not Buddhist, at least not very much, but I am without question sympathetic to their approach to the nature of soul. One thing that happened, when LSD hit the West Coast, back in those days, not like today, there was a common experience of spirit that seemed most like a kind of mix of Taoist and Buddhist visions. I was completely convinced by that and that conviction has never wavered. I believe it stripped away confusion and revealed a natural state.
ReplyDeleteIt is too bad that the setting as they called it then, or the spirit of the drug, like the spirit of Casteneda's Peyote, turned on us. I don't think that pure spiritual essence is possible any more.
It is very much a part of the thrust of western Buddhism that so many folk found that echo compelling and stayed with it to do the Buddhist work. I have stayed with it too to find my way.
You seem so comfortable with the actual that this is likely superfluous. But: if you need to stop (or think that you might need to stop) by side of road, just stop. We like you in one piece.
ReplyDeleteYou are very kind, Ms. Martin, to let me know you are there.
ReplyDeleteI realize this of course and what I fight is more than pride. The harder it gets the more determined I am because I so want to be home, to not be that vulnerable in a public place. It seems an animal thing, like my little cat who did her death run when I ran her over by accident. She needed to be somewhere safer to die. So do I. I don't mean I think I am going to die, but that instinct is what kicks in and instead of stopping I get intensely whiny and irate that this is happening.
It is very hard to go against such a thing. In fact it is designed to be hard to go against. That kind of get home at any cost impulse probably saved lives on the savannah.