October 30, 2010

Today I used my maximum available doses of Morphine. In so doing, I was successful at participating fully, sitting up, at my 61st birthday party. A multitude of people came from as far away as British Columbia and as close by as the same floor I live on in my Co-op building. It was all beautifully orchestrated, a lot of fun, and yet another demonstration of abundance. I am not the only one who is over fed today.

The third dose of Morphine was to give me the capacity to finish my dinner and do my writing in bed, this late evening. Writing and Morphine don’t go so well together in my little body. I have heard that it enhances the artistic experience in others. I have not found that intoxication of any sort assists me in that way!

Today’s party and the last few days of Facebook acknowledgements have more than amply conveyed to me others’ appreciation of my existence and my contributions. I am affirmed, a little overwhelmed and a touch frustrated. I have reached the point where several plans are emerging. It is clear that my continued contribution is desired. At this point, my body is far, far, far from being up for it.

There is a somewhat macabre thought running through the last few days. Tomorrow is Halloween so perhaps this is all appropriate. I have thought in the past that I would love to have a great funeral but – Dammit! – I would have to miss it, wouldn’t I? The generous outpouring of affirmation, appreciation, intimacy and abundance that I have experienced in the last couple of weeks while I lie in my fragile and weakened state has made me think that, yes, I have gotten to experience what my wake would be like. And yes, thank God, I didn’t have to die to get it. Or at least not yet!

As more and more people are becoming aware of my efforts to manifest my expression, my unique perspective, I am learning that others have secretly been writing or thinking about writing in a similar vein. The difference is that I have just been putting it out there. How odd it is that I have such little sense of privacy. The theme has emerged and re-emerged over the past eight days, with a number of people quizzing me about whether I really want to let it all go to the public so freely. It has caused me to ponder a question that I would not have ever come up with on my own. Should I be more circumspect?

Well, in fact, from my perspective there is no “should” about it. Privacy doesn’t exist, or rather, exists only periodically and in short lived moments in my life.

No day has gone by when someone else didn’t wipe my butt, put food in my mouth, moved my limbs around, dressed and undressed me and otherwise handled my body as part of their own life path in some way – for better or worse. One of the consequences of this is that the “I” of Judith Snow tends to exist somewhat separately from my physical person. The flip side is that I easily enter into other people’s space – actually into their physical aura on occasion. What is privacy?

This has become somewhat of a theme in these writings. Boundaries.

I have rather enjoyed being on a urinary catheter for the past several weeks. This has given me much longer periods of time when I don’t have to interact with another physical person. For example, today after the party, I lay for over an hour in my bed by myself, mostly awake and shifting between watching the goings on outside my window and being with my thoughts. This provides for a certain kind of gathering – me giving myself a sense of continuity. It is a fiction of course, but a very interesting and useful fiction nonetheless. What is it that I am gathering? I suppose you could say that I am piecing together a new story of who I am and who I will be – a story that conforms both to the vast outreach that my life as achieved so far and at the same time the miniscule capacity that I currently have as a body.

In the past I have not reconciled these two bookends of my experience very well, though I am sure many will argue with this statement! I have either overtaxed my body self or I have (more commonly) forgotten how far my dreams and my expressions have reached in favour of thinking of myself as an unaccomplished person.

It would be awesome in Cycle 3 to willingly reach out as far as possible to bring peace and inclusion into the world and at the same time live as the physical being that I truly am – a small and ethereal albeit chubby body. Mother Theresa kind of pulled it off. She was a shrimp!

It puts me in mind of dreaming of just how to enjoy and take care of my body. In the past I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to keep myself participating, but not that much about how to keep myself comfortable and happy. This is a space I would like to explore more as I am laying around and recovering both from my illness and from the tests that I will shortly go through.