Act II complete, bring on Act III

And just like that, I think I solved my cough – like a story resolving itself in the second act, only to reveal later that the initial conflict was just a barrier from really seeing another one.

I had a cycle of colds for years, so my body got used to coughing and throat-clearing. I learned yesterday that the more you cough and clear your throat, the more your body makes mucus to protect your throat. So what had been happening because I was sick started to happen because I had been sick, and never stopped. Up until yesterday I was clearing my throat every few seconds, and it was always a major pain and source of anxiety that mucus would interrupt my voice. But knowing that now, I’m making the effort not to cough or clear my throat, and a little over a day into it, I already feel a lot better.

In Denmark some months after my nasal turbinate coblation (stab, zap, shrink) surgery, I wrote

Everything feels pure now. Loving is no longer an apology. 
The Gods kept my medicine
from me for a while, but now, I am cured – 90%. I am still missing 
one last balm. One day, that
may give me too much abundance of health
and lead me to lose myself again.

If that tingling sensation in my throat goes away by letting what is likely to have been damaged heal, then I will be ecstatic, freer to use my voice than I’ve been in at least 3 years. The pressure in my right ear and the physical tightness in my throat might both be related to this, so if it solves them too, then as far as I know, I will have overcome all the physical conditions that I’ve been struggling against, and this, largely because of the time that I had to myself during the Watson, in which I started to notice and address my own problems. I was so motivated by my physical challenges that I made lifestyle changes that are so drastic, spartan, unconventional, that I should have a great chance of living healthily and happily for a long time due to intentional, internal modification of biochemistry through lifestyle choices and practices.

And yet I worry.

I’m hit, at the same time, with the unstable position of my future travel, with the instability of my finances, and my – what is, essentially – wildly unstable current situation, in an environment where the values for taking time, remaining humble and pursuing experience rather than achievement, and above all, listening to and following my gut, do not feel like values that are supported.

When I think of my irons in the fire now, I’m increasingly getting struck with doubt, and much of it because I don’t feel much support in these all wildly challenging – writing a novel, starting a youtube channel, developing classes – endeavors. And because they take a huge amount of time, two months in, I look at the progress I’ve made, and see that it is appropriate progress, and yet, have doubts about whether the two months I have left here will be enough.

I envisioned a different life for myself, and I intend not to forget it.  

Jedi

maybe I can call what came before for me
my Anakin Skywalker phase: obsessed with the ego,
placing undue value on power, prestige, wealth,
accomplishment
and not yet seeing that my passions
and the lies therein
were leading me on a path toward the creation of pain:
psychological pain for myself and others.
Imagine this Dark Side: Phi Beta Kappa and going to
Harvard to become a lawyer, 
but still not knowing why I do what I do
and still relying on the gifts of the market
to satisfy me.
                          I would not have been satisfied
were I even to become a great academic or lawyer in that 
image.
I would still be shooting in the dark,
unaware of living.

Knowing this, I don’t need what my ego wanted before.
The way of the light side is subtle, small, and unassuming.
This path paves itself.

Home

One day a little before the Watson, I held a flower and a blade of grass in my hands. I turned the flower in my left hand, observing it. I was surprised. I was overjoyed. I was finally holding a flower without my fingers automatically folding and cutting at it.

Then I looked at the blade of grass in my other hand, and noticed I’d crumpled it up and sucked it dry with my thumb.

I thought, how much, and what kind of work do I need to do, so that when I hold something I don’t destroy it?

I forgot about that for a year, but when I look back now, I see that the whole year I was searching for answers to this, and encountering these sorts of challenges. Several times, I lived very closely with people who were very difficult to live with. I had to learn how to coexist with them, and encourage the best in both them and in myself — to be an ally, even to the people who can only see enemies.

This became a point that seriously challenged me. Whether I knew it or not, I was learning how to deal with qualities that I saw in my parents and that I experienced in my own upbringing — numbing feelings, feelings of paranoia and crippling regret, neurotic masks to hide gaping hurts, and the lives of lost puppies.

I came home because, armed with a spiritual practice that gave me psychological stability and with the love and support of a theatre group that had given me another upbringing during COVID, I felt ready to love my family. I knew that I was exiting a place that felt like Paradise and re-entering a place that, throughout my life, has felt like the Inferno. I felt like I was finally ready to confront that place, sit with it, and no matter what, to be okay.

I’m still okay. I think, though it’s really emotionally strenuous to be here, that my memories are slowly opening up, and that even if it turns out I can only help myself, then I’ll have helped myself a great deal by being here. I harbor a little hope that addressing trauma here is the key to solving my cough. I don’t know. I’m trying not to be attached to that hope.

Work To Do
I pick a withered, brown flower between my thumbs.
Another day, my automatic fingers would have creased its stem, tucked; creased and tucked
Until crumpled, thumb-sucked, it’d have fallen.

It turns, softly upon my forefinger, already dead.

In my other hand, a small green leaf, picked from the ground, nails stabbing and feeling juice, fingers
stacking it into slivers.