~ comrads *to & of life ~
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comrads~
moth & mountain
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Little matters when the essential engine of our lives--the body--fails. Once I almost drown. Yesterday while showering water ricocheted into my inhale and my throat closed. Can you spell p-a-n-i-c ? My lungs started heaving inside me against the locked windpipe. I couldn't scream, couldn't make my throat open, my nose was stuffed, i bent over, tried to focus; hot water streamed obliviously over me.
It took loooong seconds of focus before a surreal patience came. I was weazing more water drops into my lungs, almost smothering and almost passed-out. My mind seemed like a passive observer witnessing someone else. It was weird. A third part of me (not my body or mind, but soul maybe) in a soft voice said, "relax, either way, you will live." It was like a loudspeaker in my head, the words. I experienced a shift, relaxed, and somehow knew, I am not just this body I know as "me: and mine" but am also a living consciousness.
To live or die, my mind didn't panic; my lungs played the part of lungs and acted to live; they really tried to get the air... the throat acted --it closed against the intrusion of water--and the me of me who has lots of plans for tomorrow, she didn't want to stop living either, she was pissed off while this was happening! That's when I knew...Anyone sick to the point of wondering if life will be taken from them must be pissed off.
I have heard people talk about experiences where they are aware of the mind's "indifference" to living, Heroes forget themselves when they act to save another person's life and drop their own in the process. I was no hero. When I could, I simply breathed, dried off and immediately went into the mode of normal, of taking life for granted. But later, cooking and talking and eating last night, I felt something deep pulling me by the arm; asking me to go off in the corner and pay these moments some attention. Something real shifted in my consciousness and I hadn't honored it. I was alive... I hope you are alive--really alive when you read this. In a breath not taken, a step, life can just (yes, its true...) life can just end. Its strange we forget this at all. But necessary, too. Don't you think? Its easier to forget in order to live?
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"What would happen if one woman told the truth about herself? The world would split open." ~Muriel Rukeyser
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comrads~
moth & mountain
.
Little matters when the essential engine of our lives--the body--fails. Once I almost drown. Yesterday while showering water ricocheted into my inhale and my throat closed. Can you spell p-a-n-i-c ? My lungs started heaving inside me against the locked windpipe. I couldn't scream, couldn't make my throat open, my nose was stuffed, i bent over, tried to focus; hot water streamed obliviously over me.
It took loooong seconds of focus before a surreal patience came. I was weazing more water drops into my lungs, almost smothering and almost passed-out. My mind seemed like a passive observer witnessing someone else. It was weird. A third part of me (not my body or mind, but soul maybe) in a soft voice said, "relax, either way, you will live." It was like a loudspeaker in my head, the words. I experienced a shift, relaxed, and somehow knew, I am not just this body I know as "me: and mine" but am also a living consciousness.
To live or die, my mind didn't panic; my lungs played the part of lungs and acted to live; they really tried to get the air... the throat acted --it closed against the intrusion of water--and the me of me who has lots of plans for tomorrow, she didn't want to stop living either, she was pissed off while this was happening! That's when I knew...Anyone sick to the point of wondering if life will be taken from them must be pissed off.
I have heard people talk about experiences where they are aware of the mind's "indifference" to living, Heroes forget themselves when they act to save another person's life and drop their own in the process. I was no hero. When I could, I simply breathed, dried off and immediately went into the mode of normal, of taking life for granted. But later, cooking and talking and eating last night, I felt something deep pulling me by the arm; asking me to go off in the corner and pay these moments some attention. Something real shifted in my consciousness and I hadn't honored it. I was alive... I hope you are alive--really alive when you read this. In a breath not taken, a step, life can just (yes, its true...) life can just end. Its strange we forget this at all. But necessary, too. Don't you think? Its easier to forget in order to live?
.
"What would happen if one woman told the truth about herself? The world would split open." ~Muriel Rukeyser
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