Guanyin/Kwan Yin/Kuan Yin

Good Medicine

Many spellings, same Buddhist goddess of compassion.

My mala arrived yesterday. White jade. My sister was going to stay over last night - the timing would have been perfect for her to juice it up with her reiki mojo. But she had to get back to the Cape. I wore it last night for a bit, the kept it on my bedside table. Coincidence? I slept like a baby.

No news to report from yesterday. I saw Lauren and told her how I've been feeling. She was not alarmed and we agreed to wait for scans until next month. She said if I feel any acute pain between now and then, that I would go in for an x-ray. To evaluate for a broken bone. As in pathological fracture.

But mostly we talked about our mutual love of boots. She said she likes my style. LOL.

I find her comments very helpful. She explained that the radiation I did last September can cause muscle tightness in the back and hips. The other culprit could be my right knee. I had surgery at age 17 for cartilage tear. (I was playing powderpuff football, a one-off game between the junior and senior high girls. Remember that, Betsy and Elizabeth?) My knee feels quite unstable and stiff and painful at times. That pain can radiate up to the hip.

I'll get scans in late March and see The Vix the first week in April. And will try my best to forget about it in the meantime. You never want to "live" between appointments.

Nicholas Nixon

ICA, Boston

A few days ago my high school friend Betsy from Harlingen, Texas emailed this to me. I had posted it on my blog back in 2008. At the time I was receiving daily emails from Tricycle magazine. You'd sign up and every morning there was something inspirational. Not sure what happened to that - maybe I stopped the subscription when I stopped blogging regularly? I think I'll sign up again!

A teacher was asked, "What is the secret to your happiness and equanimity?" She answred, "a whole-hearted, unrestricted cooperation with the unavoidable." The writer goes on to comment, "this is the heart of mindfulness and compassion. To no longer hold ourselves apart from the
unpredictable nature of all our lives; it is to culrivate a heart that can unconditionally welcome all things. We bow to what is, to all of life. The bow is a way to the end of suffering, to an awakened heart."

This morning I have an early appointment for blood work, then will see the nurse practitioner. This teaching is very comforting. How to welcome it all. ALL.

Initially I was dismissive of her - the only person I wanted to see was The Vixen. But over the years and particularly the last year, I've learned that her Fellow Phil has a lot to offer, and so does the NP Lauren. She explained things to me last time that I had not understood before. I feel great other than what seems to be a tightness in a certain external rotation of my right hip. And a tightness to the hip flexor. I will tell her - this is not new. I hope it's a result of the intense radiation I did in September. Or aging. She might send me for scans... I don't want to say anything but that would probably be foolish... 

The photo is from a show at the ICA. You can see my Converse and Glenn standing next to me. We biked over on Saturday. We have a membership so we often pop in on the bikes. 

One of the shows we saw was photographs by Nicholas Nixon. He wrote a pretty well known book "The Brown Sisters". He married one of the 4 sisters, and since the 1970's he has photographed them annually in a group. He is a neighbor and I often see his wife on her bike. She's an oncology social worker at the Dana Farber and I know them from the dog park. In 2015, around our 1 year anniversary, he caught Glenn and I smooching on the street. He said he was a photographer, he grabbed my cell phone, and took some wonderful pics of us together. Smooching. That part was posed. Later that spring he took black and white pics of my garden, and left an envelope on my front stoop with an 8.5" x 11" print. I didn't realize until later who he was until I googled him. What a fun surprise!

Morning reiki

Early morning faces

My sister stayed over last night. We both got home late but she prepared wonderful Buddha grain bowls. We were too tired to do much of anything but eat, but we woke energized this morning.

She did more reiki on me. On the right hip. I felt relaxed going into it and even though it was brief, it was powerful. She had never felt such heat in her own body, and could not tolerate more than a few minutes. She sensed that it was time to stop. She offers me her jade Quinyan to hold while she works on me. I decided I should get my own, so we went to the same shop on Etsy where she got hers. I ordered a white jade Quinyan mala, just like hers but white rather than green jade.

Afterwards I felt great - my hip felt stable and comfortable. It's quite mysterious how reiki works. When she was done she ran her (I don't know what it's called - a pendant that swings?) over my chakras and my heart chakra was spinning like crazy. It was cool.

I'll go back to the NP on Monday for blood work and physical exam. In other words, nothing. But I will dutifully go. The scans will be a month later.

I am baffled by what's going on in my body. Sometimes when I lie in bed at night I feel a lot of sensation in my hips and things. It's not pain but like energy moving around. It's so strange. I don't know what it means - is it healing? or is it the cancer that is moving around? It definitely scares me but kind of intrigues me at the same time.

In the meantime I practice yoga, meditation, eat well, love well, create, work.

Dahn Vo

At the Guggenheim

For Christmas, Glenn got me a subscription to The New Yorker. For most everyone, its daunting to keep up. They pile up. And being a Luddite, I prefer the magazine. But I'm learning to not feel compelled to read absolutely everything - to skim through and choose what is most appealing. I don't usually like short stories - kind of a tease or something - but a few weeks ago I really loved the Jeffrey Eugenides story "Bronze". Haunting. I read it twice.

A few weeks ago there was a long profile about Dahn Vo, a Vietnamese-born artist with a show at the Guggenheim. I was intrigued. So we decided to take a day trip on Sunday and met up with Suzanne - a dear friend of 30+ years. What a show! It's difficult to describe and I'm glad I'd read the profile beforehand or I would have been totally baffled. I was mostly baffled. Glenn was our interpreter and Suzanne and I hadn't seen each other in a long time and were chatting to catch up. He read most of the descriptions and told us what he gleaned. In this photo, we are standing in front of a glass-paneled wall. Each block contains spoken lines from the film "The Exorcist". As a kid, Vo's mother loved horror movies but was scared, so her kids watched with her. There were several references to that film throughout the show.

I re-read the profile when we got home, and was able to understand more about him and his work.

He lives between Berlin and Mexico City so I'm thinking I'll try to find his workshop in Berlin when I go in June. If it's open to the public. I can only imagine what his warehouse must look like.

As we left the museum, there was a sign that included his Instagram hashtag. I am now following him!

Happy Valentine's!

Happy Valentine's!
Last weekend my friend Claude, a personal chef in San Francisco and foodie extraordinaire, send an email with a link to her blog. She featured 7 Valentine's cocktails with great names such as Between the Sheets, Silk Stockings, Sex on the Beach. That got my attention! I shared the link with Glenn, and in a toss up between Blue Angel Kiss and Between the Sheets, we decided on the second one. The garnish is burnt orange rind. For a pyromaniac (that would be me) - ask my brother - the idea of lighting orange rinds on fire was perfect. You make the drink - cut small coins of orange rind - heat up the outside part with a wooden match and squeeze the oils over the drink. You get a dramatic "pop" and flare as the heat hits the oils. Perfect. Thank you Claude!

Glenn gave me an early gift. An African elephant hair bracelet - silver with 4 gold knots. I love jewelry that I can wear and not take off. It's a sentimental gift because when we were together the first time - starting in 1979!! - he gave me a similar bracelet. But no gold. Neither of us had any money back in those days. So it's a complete circle. I have no idea what happened to that bracelet. How I wish I still had it!

My sister came over on Monday evening. We had grain bowls and she did reiki on me again. She asked me my intention - I said to be with her and to relax. Maybe I should have higher expectations - take away the cancer!! Please! She balanced my chakras, then worked specifically on my left femur just above the knee, and my right upper femur where there is the newest tumor. She didn't say much about the left side. But the right side she said she felt a lot of healing happening. For her it's intense - she said she could feel it in her own body the next day. Her hands become crazy hot while she works. I remember practicing yoga with her back in the 90's and she always commented how hot her hands felt during meditation. Turns out she has had that healing hand gift forever.

I still feel very uncertain where I am. Worse? same? better? as she worked on me I could feel all kinds of weird sensations - little bursts of energy in my upper legs and belly. Some pain and heat on the lower right femur. But when she finished, I felt much better in all aspects.

Let the mystery be.

An old friend

With Michelle

On Saturday we got invited to a double 60th birthday party hosted by a college friend. 6 of us were from Grinnell. It was a house party with a full band. We danced barefoot and drank very good local draft beer. Really fun.

One of the other guests was Michelle who lives next door. She bought this painting - and another one as well - from me many years ago - maybe 2002. Her daughter is now heading off to college to study art, and has long been asking her parents who made this painting. I asked Michelle if we could go to her place to see them again. Old paintings are like long lost friends. She said it was fine to photograph us together in front of it.

I haven't made big paintings in many years, since I left the studio in East Boston. In 2012 I switched to encaustic, and it's physically challenging to make big pieces due to the need to keep the wax warm enough to work with. But seeing this piece again inspired me to paint big again.

Since I was accepted into New England Wax, I'm committing time to it on Fridays. It's not much but better than not getting into the studio at all.

Thursdays with Sarah Jane

Roxbury Land Trust
Roxbury, Connecticut 

My work schedule is heavily loaded Monday - Thursday. So by the time Thursday night rolls around, I am pretty much done. I work at the hospital job Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then Wednesday night I rush home to take care of Sasha, then see patients from 6-9pm. And Thursday I work ALL DAY - meaning 9am until 8 or 9pm. Yesterday I lost control of my schedule - the way I wrote in my appointments, I didn't notice that I was scheduled to see 11 people. With a break at lunch. My private office is a mile from my house, so it's easy to bike back and forth to get Sasha out. Fortunately - thank god - my 8pm cancelled - so I saw "just" 10.

Sarah Jane and I had agreed to get together to play guitar and sing - and even though she was getting over a cold and I'd put in an intense day, she came over and stayed quite late. It was a great ending to a busy week.

I've been teaching myself "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness" by John Prime - thanks YouTube - using Travis picking. Sarah Jane is an accomplished musician - she sings, plays and writes music - she is also a book editor, yoga and meditation teacher and much more as well - but willing to play with me anyway. She taught me another picking pattern - there is a whole world of that - and I played her my new song that's still in progress. It doesn't have a title yet but it's based on a dream I had while on vacation with Glenn last September in Maine. She said it was haunting, it gave her shivers.

Living in the body as it is

Macricostas Preserve
Washington, CT

Since I learned about the new "area of concern" at the very top of my right femur bone, I have sensation there. It almost feels like muscle tightness - I'm stiffer there. A bit achy. Not exactly pain. Just a subtle sensation of that area. And even stranger - sometimes it's "there", sometimes it shifts location.  I didn't feel anything amiss there until January 2 when I saw The Vixen and she said there was a new tumor. I am going crazy with worry - is it real? anxiety? And as a counter-point, until this scans on 12/29/17, I was convinced I had cancer in the right knee. It was killing me. Now my right knee doesn't bother me at all.

When I'm biking around the city, hiking in the woods, ice skating, I am perfectly fine. When I lie in bed at night - that's when I freak out. It can keep me up with worry sometimes. Imagining one terrible scenario after the other. This, too, is "normal", I guess. How can you not "go there"?

I'm pointing at my own suggestibility. And the challenge of keeping calm and balanced about all of this. I just saw the NP last week. Labs are good. And I'm trying to live in the body just as it is.

I was reading The New Yorker last night and there's a personal essay by Michael Chabon called "The Recipe for Life". He too grew up with a doctor father, with the expectation that he, too would be a doctor. He described his father's 1960's black leather doctor bag perfectly. "The mouth of my father's bag opens and closes smoothly on the hinges of a secret armature, clasped by a heavy brass tongue that slides home with a satisfying click."

It reminded me of being a young teenager, convinced that I had bone cancer on my lower left leg. When I ran my fingers over my lower leg, I felt the muscle and tendon slide over the bone . I thought it was a tumor. And promising myself that after we took the motorcycle trip from Iowa to Colorado when I turned 16 - me on a bike, he on his Harley - that I'd tell him. But he died when I was 14 and I never got bone cancer. Kind of a weird thing to recall. But I'm trying not to catastrophize, to live in my body as it is. With all it's [inexplicable] sensations.