Alive

This is a bit of a personal post. I have reached out successfully to friends on some of these matters, yet feel like unpacking here. It has been quite a week.

My vacation time began a few days ago, after an exhausting nine-week run of full time work, with an inspired 4 1/2 hour drive for a blind date. I arrived depleted, but with medication, successfully negotiated an adventure in getting to know a goddess of a woman and her fascinating community of characters. The interpersonal dynamic between she and I was strong for me. It has led to some significant reckoning with myself the last few days, needs in me for greater personal clarity, commitment, discipline and strength. I hope we continue to become allies in our mutual interests in generating a healed world. Or at least finish that pool deck.

I returned by way of Burque and visited a couple friends. With money used up, I realized I would have to wait another day for the paycheck to arrive before I could consider the San Diego leg of my vacation. After sleeping 14 hours, I spent the day in Santa Fe with another close friend who is feeling overwhelmed by the possibility of losing his land to a huge balloon payment due this month to the bank. I offered empathy and support, as we moved between the cafe and the rose park. It is beautiful land, providing him a base to continue to be here and father a growing teen. Yet it is also the land that gave him the uranium poisoning of his brain and bones that he has been dealing with for a decade now. I hope Spirit finds Its way in directing the process to an appropriate outcome.

A couple other friends bought me beer in the evening, as we conversed in deep ways about farming and relational insecurities. I received some great support and reassurance from a kind woman with whom a trusting friendship is developing. The beer helped me socialize without otherwise medicating, as I sensed it might be time to take a break from that cycle I had been in for a couple weeks. Too much mellowness knocks down the fire I need to create my life with.

The paycheck arrived this morning, just in time, and I sorted out my fuzzy-headed travel plans over coffee. I still had not heard from my San Diego connections, so my drive to get there was waning. Indecisive on what to do next, I began to get really pissed with myself to just get over this wimpy phase I've been in the last three months. After the insect-ridden food-poisoning-heavy Nica travel, there has been subsequent culture shock, money woes, and physical loss of both body mass and chi. But until I saw a photo taken of me the other day, I hadn't realized how rail-thin I'd become.

I decided I would immediately invest in a yoga or tantra retreat to begin strengthening chi. I searched online and found a yoga weekend I could get to in Colorado by tomorrow. At that point, a friend visiting from back east came by the cafe. We caught up over burritos before heading out into some needed fresh air and sunshine to play some disc golf.

By the time I got back to the cafe to book the retreat, my computer blew up and I could not get online at all. I felt frustrated and began to wonder what it was all about. A resignation overcame me, which had an unexpected benefit: I felt a release of all expectations around my chi. So I considered my options: I hadn't heard from my new love interest, so I didn't see any follow-up time happening right now; San Diego wasn't carrying much juice for me; Colorado was also looking less likely. I was heading out from the cafe lot, when I received a call from my sister back on Long Island.

I knew she had recently had a fight with her boyfriend, who had called her therapist and then the police to bring her to the hospital. She has MS, which has ravaged her body and emotions. She's long lost the use of her legs, and now her upper body is fading as well. She's been in the hospital a couple weeks, while the staff supposedly looks for a nursing home for her, since the boyfriend has had enough. Well, this call was a hard update. It explained why I hadn't been able to get through to her for a couple of days.

My sister told me she had been in the ICU the night before last, as she had stopped breathing. A tube had been forced into her trachea to resuscitate her. I wonder if she has entered the last stage of her life. She is very scared, off all medications, and with her boyfriend pulling away she has no one to support her. I told her to try to meditate on something beautiful. I would look into nursing homes, find out who is coordinating her care, and would try to book a flight out to see her in the next couple days. So that is what I am doing with my vacation.

It may seem odd for me to have then gone out to ecstatic contact-improv dancing night. I needed to feel my strength, in lifting women off the floor and in dancing with abandon. I brought my visiting friend who had a great time. I gave myself to the dance, contributing to a fun evening of group energetic connection by starting with some contact right from the start. I felt my strength of core chi coming back to me, delightfully. I felt my heart open to all the other dancers, men and women. I had a healing encounter with someone I'd imagined a rift with. I cuddled playfully with a friend.

I danced because my sister cannot dance now. I danced because it is perfectly okay to love with abandon. I danced because right now, in this moment, I am alive.