Nicolas Poussin; The Dance to the Music of Time

You and your aunt came to dinner last night; I had a glorious time with you.  I’m not prone to hyperbole: I mean that, dear friend.  These days, friends have to come to me.  These days, friends have to accept me as I am, not as what or who I used to be.  So many old friends dropped away as I was unable to be the robust warrior I once was.  Ach; their loss, I like to say, although it’s a stretch to really believe it.  No matter; here I am; I’ve adapted to this new life and often still find ways to kick the hell out of it. 

 I’ve been learning to write, and study a bit, and my brain’s gotten stronger, though I’ve been a bit depressed lately since I seem to have reached a plateau: this may be all I get back; yeah, some days lately I feel self-indulgently sorry for myself.   I’ll get over it.

 It was wonderful how much you both loved the dinner; I confess, it took me several days to make.  The traditional Mexican sauces take a lot of time, but it was a feast, wasn’t it?  And even the cake was good.  I’m Crap at cakes, but it was N’s birthday; we had to have a cake!  Who’d have thought zucchini would make such good cake?  I think the fresh nutmeg overdose made it great; smelled like clouds of bliss…

 At the table you asked me some questions I didn’t answer well, partly because I couldn’t understand them, and today I’m still haunted by them.  I write now so that I may be able to wend my way to answers that might satisfy both of us; I may share this because I think there may be some universality to the themes.  Who knows; hell, we never know…we just write because we must, and see where it goes…

 We’d talked in the past about my work; the attempts to heal bodies and souls, and how intertwined they seem to be.  I don’t have any grand theories I espouse (well; maybe a few minor ones…); but I try to listen well, and with intention, to each client. 

 You know I can’t do the work as often or quite as well as I used to now that I have some physical limitations.  But as we speak, my heart swells with memories of the place I carved out in my community over the decades: people trusted me to help them; that ain’t too shabby, you know.  Multiple hundreds of people just in this valley; boatloads of people, anyway, and more from nearby towns.  I even had some physicians as clients.

 Yeah; you knew from the beginning that I don’t really like many people.  You say my standards are too high; God, are you right!  I used to quip that the work was perfect for me: it caused me to have to give love to many people I didn’t really like.  Yes; it sounds strange; but it isn’t, really.  Professionalism dictated that I’d have to set aside my pissiness; so it was good for me, too.  The Accidental Better Human... :o)

 When someone comes to you in pain and may be afraid that their pain will remain forever, they’re often open to healings they never considered.  They’re often vulnerable then, and open to change.  No, I don’t mean everyone is like that; some people come in and want their bodies fixed so they can get back to work; that’s okay, I can do that.

 But most want a connection.  So many of us lack the warmth of human touch, a grounding, hands-on connection of the sort that asks for nothing in return.  Good touch you can relax under, feel loved and cared-for under…the way you can lie on your stomach on a hot day, and imagine yourself plugged into the earth. 

 And many of us don’t realize how much our unresolved mental garbage can contribute to our physical pain, if indeed bodies and minds even are distinctly separate.  Far too many of us have monsters in our heads: the things we know or suspect about ourselves, or our childhoods, that have to be kept hidden from the world.  If I ever told this, I’d be judged and found wanting; so we learn to live with artifice and superficiality far too often. 

 See, that’s always been the big lie; the agreed-upon societal lie: I’ll buy your version of yourself, it you’ll not challenge mine. But see, bodies don’t lie.  The long-term patterns of muscular tension tell stories about which parts of ourselves are being withheld; sort of an adaptation which has some downsides to it.  Protecting your heart from sensation, for instance, can be helpful in the short run; but if it goes on so long that you can’t open it at will, that’s a problem.  Or if your legs were always poised to run away from your drunken father, the pattern might stay too long, and work against your desires for closeness later.  Living with fear might have made you ready to battle the world, and tense your arms and shoulders in preparation to shoot it out; things like that.  There are loads of cues if you pay close attention. 

 One approach is pretty direct: “What happens in your mind when I touch this spot?” (Hell; sometimes even I see the image it’s so strong.) Mum yelling at me; dad coming after me, my favorite grandma dying…might be the answer.  Sometimes nothing comes, so I might tell a directed bit of my life to get the ball rolling.  Shoot; I think if we told each other the hard stuff, and built up trust with each other, people wouldn’t need shrinks and meds and drugs so much.  Especially if it were more okay to be working through the stuff causing our neuroses and some of our physical pain.

  And we need to tell our stories to someone; we need to banish the monsters who come to us in the middle of the night, and whisper to us of our doubts and despair, our shame or our guilt or our fears for the future.  My favorite part of all is after a client tells a chunk of hidden history, and feels better for it.  It’s insane how small-bore the stuff is once it’s exposed to the light of day!  When I point that out, it’s always cause for laughter: a ‘Jesus; it’s not so bad once I say it out loud’ sort of laughter.  Pure relief, along with the realization that guarding the secrets, even from ourselves, could do so much damage, and for so long.  There are, of course, the occasional Biggies: the church deacon raped me, I’m considering suicide, and so forth.  I ask if I can refer them to a therapist for more work.

 But back to your other question, something like, “How is it when you see people out in the world after they’ve shared things?”  I fumbled my way through it, even when you tried to explain better what you meant.  We spoke of absolute privacy for clients; that wasn’t you meant, that I might accidentally give away their secrets…

 So now I’m left with this as an answer: Out in the world, they were more friends, meaning we’d connected and shared our Stuff.  We’d developed some measure of trust and respect for one another; I love that.  There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t have some hidden stuff causing some amount of havoc and issues, and good God, we’d be better off talking with each other about them.  Were you afraid I’d think less of them?  I don’t; just the opposite.  Every time a person inches toward more a more authentic self, banishing, or at least battling, the voices and wrong lessons we heard and learned throughout our lives, it’s a true blessing, if not a measure of grace.  And in these hard and dark days, especially, we need more blessings and grace. 

 Were you afraid they’d be leery of me?  Maybe a few.  Sometimes when people open up, they can hate you just a little for knowing them; sometimes I’d get morning-after calls: Forget I said that; you won’t tell anyone, will you?  Assurances almost always worked.  But it speaks to how closely we can guard our personal demons, and the dearth of trust among us.  We can allow it to make us sick, and behave badly toward others, even those we love.

 Updated 10/11/2010

I got an email from a friend who read this, and saw a major hole.  I agree that it is.  He asked, in effect, what made me feel my friend needed to tell his inner stories?  And if it would indeed help something about him or his mind-life.

I'd answer that it was why I thought he'd asked the question in the first place; would someone who heard the stories he was reticent to share change my, or any listener's perceptions of him?  When I'd edited out just that part of the piece, I suppose it seemed perhaps too personal, and I thought readers would assume the meaning without that bit. 

And by my lights, when we have honest and intimate discussions about our inner lives, we do in fact, become more whole, and less ruled by the unconscious beliefs we hold about ourselves.  And it can prompt others to remember forgotten events that still shape them.  Not rocket science, but we often forget it, or never learned it.