Good morning, crescent moon… gliding gracefully into the roiling, icy cold Pacific Ocean at high tide, smiling at the rising sun in a bowl of delft blue ebullience… behind the mossy grey pearl limned cloud breakers. Good morning, ribald ravens caw-caw-cawing over the broken Brio’s seeded epi bread I left you last night now moist again from another night of rain. Good morning, faithful Apple desktop computer. Good morning Pages>>New>>14 pt>>Untitled 2. Good morning, bowl of Los Bagels La Granola with Redwood Hill Farm Plain Goat Milk Yogurt, an organic opal apple and… Of course,
Good morning, warm pot of Silk Roads Dragonwell Tea… with the striding camel on the label!
What the fuck is going on here, guys?!
Well. It’s hard to say for sure.
Apparently, on November 16, 2017, at 3:11pm, I recorded… wrote, then pushed>>the Save… button… thereby entering the first Confession, Waving Hello, into Pages. At the time, I was considering what I should put into a “Proper Bostonian” Curriculum Vitae. Most of the Adobe Portfolio websites which I had viewed in the samples, or, examples of different website formats… the “styles section”… of the—How to Construct—your own personalized portfolio website, included a section which recorded a form of life history.
Curriculum Vitae (CV) Format - The Balance
https://www.thebalance.com/curriculum-vitae-format-2060351
https://www.thebalance.com/curriculum-vitae-format-2060351
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Dec 8, 2017 - A curriculum vitae, commonly known as a CV, is an alternative to writing a resume to apply for a job. While a resume is typically a page or two in length, a CV is more detailed and longer. A CV often contains more information on one's academic background than a resume.
2 Similar
Dec 8, 2017 - A curriculum vitae, commonly known as a CV, is an alternative to writing a resume to apply for a job. While a resume is typically a page or two in length, a CV is more detailed and longer. A CV often contains more information on one's academic background than a resume.
A “Life History” as a series of art exhibitions, design jobs, formal education, professional work training, and so forth… all the important
public and private collections, institutions, into which one has been admitted
That sort of impressive thing.
Well. There are no enviable, important collections housing my work. And, my dusty road has not included the smoothly tire-worn, white-line-tailored black asphalt pavement of a highly competitive, desirable professional career in the hallowed halls of academia. So be it.
I thought. I can’t just say no-thing. I can’t just leave the personal account blank. To accompany an overdrawn bank account.
What would the ancestors think?!
So, I looked up “curriculum vitae” on line. And concluded that it implied— “A CV often contains more information…”
That got me to thinking. Thinking. What is— “my experience”?
For whether it is a “resume” for a job, or, a perhaps more extensive “curriculum vitae” for a portfolio website… what we’re talking about here is… what is called in business… “the real world”… experience.
How many years of experience… where and when and with whom… names and dates… names, dates, addresses, and, upon request… your bosses’ phone numbers, etc…
How extensive and of what quality is your experience, your record—the paper trail of your life’s professional journey; and, thereby, your relative expertise and potential excellence—in the pertinent field that qualifies you for this job?
Well. I was pondering all of that “real world” stuff. And then, too. I was wondering. How on earth I got from there to here.
“If you can just get your little mind together
And come on across to me
And come on across to me
We’ll hold hands and then watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea
From the bottom of the sea
Ahhh but first, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
We-e-ell, I haaave”
Have you ever been experienced?
We-e-ell, I haaave”
Like that.
Just like that. What can I ever say that Jimi didn’t say better? So.
“Two-thousand-and-seven was a profoundly depressing year…”
But I didn’t sit on my wet, sandy ass in a dank sea cave meditating for nirvana, or waiting for a hit song from the mermaids
Oh no. Not my style, bro.
I went straight to— The Source. The Sorceress Supreme! I went straight to the modern equivalent of the Oracle at Delphi. I went straight to the Pythian High Priestess Herself in downtown Arcata in the Real House of Snakes. The Allen Building on G Street.
I went straight to Amini.
Amini and Kellyn. The good witches.
I met Amini, and Kellyn, (a client, student, and then a partner of Amini) at a craniosacral therapy workshop in the Barn at Heartwood Institute in ’04. Where she initiated me into the esoteric arts of shifting tectonic brain plates, mind tides, hallucinogenic whale tail riding, and really, really deep psychic ocean… treasure diving.
I went straight to Amini the moment I heard that she had set up shop in town in ‘07. And….?
Climbed onto her massage table for six months. And went for a ride.
While Kellyn grabbed ahold of both of my legs at the bottom of the table. And locked her invincible dragon tale into the super magnet at the center of planet Earth. As Amini diligently, fearlessly scoured the many layers of my extended psychic… french onion soup… body for signs of emotional trauma.
Where exactly did I “ride captain ride”… on this mystery trip? What secret treasures did we per chance find… lost at the bottom of the psychic well?
Oh wow, dude.
So many battlefields. So many battle injuries. So many violent “transpersonal” encounters with medieval, “primitive” weaponry and sudden horrible death as a result.
Does anyone really wonder why teenage boys are playing those violent, “warlike” video games?
I could see, hear and feel in vivid detail, in lucid color… heavy-metal clanging, wide-edges blazing, razor-sharp… two-sided broadswords coming down with full force and fury… slicing through my left shoulder at the base of my neck… ripping through muscle, tendon and bone to the center of my chest… hacking off my right leg from behind just below the knee… smell the acrid flavor of smoking iron, burning flesh and hair, piss, shit, vomit… and taste the bitter-salty-sweet-and-sour blood overflowing my tongue
Wooden spear thrusts to the thick neck in the boiling mad black bristling body of a boar… rusty, vicious metal harpoons on wooden hafts locked into the right shoulder girdle just below the clavicle as a very angry, bloody white polar bear… bright, sudden flashes of lightning bolts out of seemingly nowhere searing off my right wing as I flew in the immaculate form of an angel high above a blue planet
Ouch.
So many battlefields. So many life forms. So many grievous wounds. So many unsung, rage-filled, horrendous deaths.
I witnessed death after death after… violent, angry, filthy death… a world of war and violent struggle without end.
One hundred “well worth it” dollars a session! Ofttimes twice a week. For as long as I could endure it.
Kind of like chemotherapy, right?
Now, I know you’re wondering what in Hellas all this… Trojan warring, Odyssean wandering, and Ovidian Metamorphoses… has to do with…
And now I’ll come roundabout to starboard—
Comin about, captain!!
Thank you, helmsman… steady as she goes, mate… pump a little more air into the left nostril there yogi
Come round to yonder… “whale in the room”
Elephant seal, seventh wonder chakra…? that is.
The unspoken question:
“Why the fuck did you do chemotherapy in the first place if you think it’s such a dutch royal scam!?”
Thank you. Thank you for asking, brigadier. It has been bothering me. Just a little above the heart and to the right. Just behind that Diuturne Fidelis there
When I got the bad news from the colonoscopy in 2009. And I read some of the bleak history of the Peloponnesian War on Cancer on line. As I knew that I was being impressed into the age old conflict with the legendary skirmisher, Señor Cancer. The first person I called was, Admiral Amini! Unrivaled Queen of the Long Tide! I had already been to war many times over with Amini, see. So I knew, beyond the shadow of an albatross, that I could trust her, in the fretful
winds, the choppy seas of crisis, and, cling ferociously to the sounding whale talisman of her many-fathomed, oak-solid massage table advice. By that time, Amini had moved her medicine show to some other whorling omphalos in the southwestern portion of America, but, I followed the trail of bread crumbs through the maze and managed somehow to contact her via carrier pigeon.
What Amini The Magi told me, and I paraphrase from fallible memory, was this. “It is your decision to make. But, I have been a practicing therapist for over three thousand years; and, I have seen a lot of cancer deaths coincident with “natural healing remedies” in that time. If I were you, I would bite the bullet and do the chemo. Here’s a phone number of a Japanese TCM-trained doctor in Novato, Ca. His name is Miki Shima. Call him and see what he advises. Good luck.”
And so. With great trepidation and hope. I went to Novato. And met with Dr. Shima.
Wow. What a different experience.
Dr. Shima met me promptly and courteously in his serene office in Novato. He was neat, tidy, present in his body, present in the room. He did not appear to be in any particular hurry. He was… “holding space”… in other words, as we were trained to do as healers at Heartwood. A highly technical phrase, oft-repeated in the classrooms and session rooms… almost a mantra at The Institute, meaning… meaning that, Dr. Shima was… “there for me”.
That is. He was there. In the same room that I was in! Not somewhere in his head full of numbers, or his heart full of woe. Not thinking about how much money he was losing or making by the minute. Not off on holiday in Bermuda, or not yet back from Belize. Already off to lunch. Starving mad. Any of a million other places he might have been in his mental or emotional body.
He was there. Present and accounted for. And not just “there in the room” with a frightful monocle and a frigid polished, professional blankness. I mean to say, he was there… warmly, intelligently, humanly… meeting me where I stood. He was there literally, totally, completely… for me.
For me. Just me. The only other person in the room. For me as a human being. As a patient needing kindness, reassurance, compassionate presence.
Like I said. Wow. What a difference between TCM-trained Dr. Shima and my “western” doctors. I immediately felt my breathing relax. My tense muscles from four hours of anxious 101 highway driving began to unwind.
And then. After an unhurried, informative introduction of himself. After an unhurried thirty-minute-plus actual “physical examination”. With pulses read and explained… with conscious palpation of points upon my physical form… eyes, tongue, posture, vital energy presence examined and noted to me aloud… pertinent medical questions considered, comments that made me know he had really read my intake forms… after a very thorough, gentle, non-invasive examination of my physical bodily presence… a careful, leisurely study… and fully voiced aloud… shared consideration… of my bodily health and well being as I presented it to him in person
And then. After an unhurried, informative introduction of himself. After an unhurried thirty-minute-plus actual “physical examination”. With pulses read and explained… with conscious palpation of points upon my physical form… eyes, tongue, posture, vital energy presence examined and noted to me aloud… pertinent medical questions considered, comments that made me know he had really read my intake forms… after a very thorough, gentle, non-invasive examination of my physical bodily presence… a careful, leisurely study… and fully voiced aloud… shared consideration… of my bodily health and well being as I presented it to him in person
He did something almost unthinkable. Certainly unheard of to that point, and since, in my oncological, surgical ordeal.
He pulled out thirteen pages of typed, single-spaced numbers and letters—from a huge stack of papers--which he had highlighted prior to our meeting in bright yellow marking pen—and he began to go over line by line… all of the materials he felt were felt important to share with me which had been acquired by his office from my other doctors.
The top secret papers! My entire medical history with all of the importunate, encoded medical terms!
He went slowly, carefully—with questions and comments allowed from me—through my entire, obtuse, cryptic medical record…
With me! Yes! With me, the patient!! Can you imagine!?
Outrageous!! Unheard of!!
He would spend more “quality time” with lowly me on that single day in his serene office in Novato than all of the highfalutin surgeons, miscellaneous fly-by-night hospitalists, maudlin oncologists, over-priced specialists… western doctors combined for the next eight years!!
Wow. I was definitely impressed with Dr. Shima.
He earned a little sense of trust from me in that moment. And so. I asked him.
Straight up.
Everyone in my family. Everyone who cares about me. Insists that I “do chemotherapy”.
Now I’ve read the fine print on line and I’m having a hard time trying to sift through the scientific facts and the humbuggery.
Do you recommend that I “do chemotherapy”, or, would you prescribe Chinese herbs? Or something else more natural perhaps?
And also, what do you think of the oxaliplatin chemo cocktail a la the pump versus the straight weekly bolus of 5fu + leucovorin?
What he said, I paraphrase from remote memory…
Ah. He offered with feeling. This is a very difficult question.
(It was actually the real reason why I had gone down to see him in the first place.)
To be perfectly honest. I have seen many folks—patients like yourself, friends, and family—over the decades of my practice. And, most of those patients, unfortunately… have come back to me after a few years of trying “alternative medicine” to cure themselves of cancer. And well. Then it has been too late.
If you are asking what I would do, personally. I would do chemo.
Yes, we could use Chinese herbs. There are very powerful Chinese herbs that might be effective. But. You see, here in the West, we are very good with tearing down. Not so good with building up.
5fu + leucovorin has been the standard treatment for colon cancer here for over forty-five years. It is very inexpensive and readily available. It has a proven record of being useful for shrinking cancer tumors.
As far as the oxaliplatin goes. Its cost versus its benefits… I don’t think so.
I would do the standard chemo protocol and maybe some Chinese herbs. Or
And he paused.
Or what? I asked.
Actually, I know these really smart guys who are going to win the Nobel Prize for chemistry this year for their work on telomeres and the aging process. My old professor from UCSF is part of the project.
My wife sells Telomerase….
Yeah. Right.
Throw that in with canned asparagus blender shakes, hydrogen peroxide draughts, iron-skillet-dried ground-up dandelion root cookies from the backyard, concentrated extract of squid spleen and olive leaf tea from Cypress, black oil of ganja concentrate, handfuls of Mebendazole with Tagamet and NSAID on Chinese takee-outee with a Pepsi
Down the rabbit hole…
“One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the one that mother gives you
Doesn’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice….”
And one pill makes you small
And the one that mother gives you
Doesn’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice….”
