I was sitting in the tattoo chair again.... Getting my Foo Dog... (For Ethan..) and talking to Mel D about why people tend to get tattoos...
My tattoos.... of course.... are for my kids. I'm having a symbol of my children (in traditional Japanese) carved into my body as a reminder of the mysterious ways that God works...
The tattoo itself is part of the process for me. It's spiritual at this point. A sacrament of sorts. Ink.... going into skin.... Marking my body as a memorial... A reminder.
As we were talking....... Mel..... grinding away at my skin... he told me about a niece of his.... whose new born baby's in the hospital (not gonna make it...)
He told me that the family was already preparing for the memorial tattoo that they wanted.... sending him pictures.... with questions about what pics might work best....
For Mel's niece... The tattoo has become part of the process. The pregnancy... The delivery... The bad news... The shock.... the struggle to come to grips with it... the anger. the hurt. the questions... All working towards the incredibly difficult moment of letting it go. Letting her go.
Not My Will... But yours...
Now the family is collecting pictures of this baby and sending them out to Mel for the memorial.... The tattoo has become part of the process.
Its a post-modern Sacrament (if you think about it). The reminder of a time "IT".... happened. The hope that there's something more.... something bigger.... The leap in the dark... the decision to do the only thing you can do..... honor the child by engraving her onto your skin.
I've found that most non religious people aren't opposed to Sacraments in life. Most don't mind ceremony or ritual. What non-religious people hate is deadness... Rigidity. Legalism. The choking of the living for the sake of maintianing that which is dead.
I was discussing that with a friend... (my friend with the Buddha tattoo...) and I was surprised to find myself talking to her about wanting to participate in a Catholic Mass. The Eucharist.
The thing that intrigued her was "The Body"...
The ceremony.... taking the marked up body of the divine..... it's representation...... the bread and wine... And joining into it... with Him.... with everyone.
All of them.... All of us who have been marked with the similar type of markings that he has been marked with.
All of us... All at the same time.....
Marking ourselves onto the body.
Showing posts with label post modern.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label post modern.. Show all posts
Friday, March 11, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
The Existential Blues
One of the freaky mysteries of life is that given all the physical and psychological limitations that people have....
(.....hormones.... DNA and genetics... conditioning.... etc.)
people also have the ability to resist the expected responses of life.... to break away from the norm... swim upstream... and make a choice.
Freedom.
I found out recently that Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous speech (maybe one of the most famous speeches in world history) was something of an ad-lib. If you were to find the notes that MLK was using for his speech that day, you would not find the words "I have a dream" written anywhere on the manuscript. While he had used segments of the speech at different times prior in his life, the speech as it was spoken was entirely made up on the spur of the moment... An impulse, and then an addendum to the close of the speech that he was already giving that day.
I've often wondered...... what if MLK had been preoccupied that day??? What if he went into the speech with a mind full of crap?? Thoughts??? Worries?? Fears about the future!!!
Would he have felt the impulse? Would he have listened to it? Acted on it?
I'm finding that most of the important things in my life happen when I respond to the impulse. But instead, usually I find myself trapped by my fears of things... or my constant dissatisfaction with life.... always craving what's next.
John Lennon said "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans", and as an example of that, when my father used to visit (before his passing) all he could do was talk about his upcoming visit. But 10 minutes after his arrival, instead of talking and enjoying himself he was already talking about his plans for his next visit....
As I sit here writing, and watching television (and commercials...) I'm also worried about work tomorrow..... and I'm angry about how I got screwed over the other day.... And I'm thinking about what it would be like to be an Iron Chef for a living.... And I'm hungry for cheese...... (What if during his speech, MLK was thinking about cheese?)
And despite all the things that fight for my attention, I wonder sometimes what my life would be if I could stay fully engaged; awake and aware of my immediate surroundings. What would it take for me to be fully present to my son as I play the Wii with him...??? Kicking the ball around in the backyard with my daughter??
MLK changed the world. What if in the course of my daily life I felt the impulse... "Heard the voice"... and then responded with an action that transcended everything that was expected of me.
The deal is that as much as I feel the pressure to be as I've been conditioned.... As much as I try to stretch myself.... worry about (or crave) the future..... dwell on the past.... all I've really got are the things that are here in front of me...... right here.... and right now...
Im starting to believe that in the end.... the only way to break free of all of life's limitations is to live every moment completely aware of the choice I have in front of me. Who we are, and who we will become can only happen in the choices that we make right now.
(.....hormones.... DNA and genetics... conditioning.... etc.)
people also have the ability to resist the expected responses of life.... to break away from the norm... swim upstream... and make a choice.
Freedom.
I found out recently that Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous speech (maybe one of the most famous speeches in world history) was something of an ad-lib. If you were to find the notes that MLK was using for his speech that day, you would not find the words "I have a dream" written anywhere on the manuscript. While he had used segments of the speech at different times prior in his life, the speech as it was spoken was entirely made up on the spur of the moment... An impulse, and then an addendum to the close of the speech that he was already giving that day.
I've often wondered...... what if MLK had been preoccupied that day??? What if he went into the speech with a mind full of crap?? Thoughts??? Worries?? Fears about the future!!!
Would he have felt the impulse? Would he have listened to it? Acted on it?
I'm finding that most of the important things in my life happen when I respond to the impulse. But instead, usually I find myself trapped by my fears of things... or my constant dissatisfaction with life.... always craving what's next.
John Lennon said "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans", and as an example of that, when my father used to visit (before his passing) all he could do was talk about his upcoming visit. But 10 minutes after his arrival, instead of talking and enjoying himself he was already talking about his plans for his next visit....
As I sit here writing, and watching television (and commercials...) I'm also worried about work tomorrow..... and I'm angry about how I got screwed over the other day.... And I'm thinking about what it would be like to be an Iron Chef for a living.... And I'm hungry for cheese...... (What if during his speech, MLK was thinking about cheese?)
And despite all the things that fight for my attention, I wonder sometimes what my life would be if I could stay fully engaged; awake and aware of my immediate surroundings. What would it take for me to be fully present to my son as I play the Wii with him...??? Kicking the ball around in the backyard with my daughter??
MLK changed the world. What if in the course of my daily life I felt the impulse... "Heard the voice"... and then responded with an action that transcended everything that was expected of me.
The deal is that as much as I feel the pressure to be as I've been conditioned.... As much as I try to stretch myself.... worry about (or crave) the future..... dwell on the past.... all I've really got are the things that are here in front of me...... right here.... and right now...
Im starting to believe that in the end.... the only way to break free of all of life's limitations is to live every moment completely aware of the choice I have in front of me. Who we are, and who we will become can only happen in the choices that we make right now.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The Rational Blues
There was a lady circling the desk (a patient) and she was saying random non sense words, asking questions about the number 9, with an occasional comment about Satan, and the end of the world..... (just in case you weren't already freaked out). And every time she passed me, I tried not to look at her.
As I was getting the medications ready for my next patient, my I-phone was playing a song. It was a Beatles song from my new cirque-LOVE cd (the Beatles remixed... But not jacked up) and while I was getting my meds together, I was thinking about John Lennon and how he had said once (as a response to the blues of life), "all you need is love".
*(of course he also said he was the walrus...... which I never got, but I totally think the crazies would understand).
John Lennon would have made a great blues man cause all blues men know about love. But given the crap that comes with loving people that don't love you, the question I would've asked John Lennon (were he still living) would be, how do you know, all you need is love? Cause (from a 7 Tower perspective at least) sometimes I think all you need is Haldol (antipsychotic medication).
In fact, if life is a debate between whether the world is insane or sound, it's the crazies these days that are winning hands down as far as I can tell.
I have an uncle who thinks he's the opposite of all that (crazy). He's a modern man. He only believes in science, thinks technology is the answer to most problems in life. He scoffs at traditional cultural concepts of the supernatural as superstition... (Not just the "big five" religions.....All of them.... Old Pagan.... New Pagan..... Asian.... African..... Native American......). But he loves science fiction (may speak Klingon). He's reasonable and rational and skeptical of anything outside of what he can see or hear. He believes the universe is a closed box of cosmic dust and that people are not much more than a few brain cells and sex organs and hormones (to keep it all going).
He believes that he came from nothing and that he's going to nothing and that in the end there's nothing more out there than a very lonely compact atom sized dot that the entire universe will eventually collapse back into. But still, every day he stands in the sandwich line at work and gets pissed off when the administrative staff casually cut themselves toward the front of the line, as if anything that happens in this world, good, bad, just or unjust, should finally matter in the end, at all.
(Now that's crazy).
Living life seeing things that aren't really there (Justice, Meaning, LOVE) is the definition of crazy. Right? And yet, deep inside us we all "gotta feeling" (another Beatles song) that all these things are true. (is that irrational?). The problem is that with all the (alleged) evidence to the contrary, we think this life matters. That it has meaning. That maybe after all.... All you need is Love. And either that's true, and we're all living our lives unwilling and detached from something bigger, like some dying leaf on a breeze. Or we're just terribly arrogant. (and crazy). And I'm willing to believe that a little of all three are true. And in the end, you just cant deny the truth.
(* Charlie Dixon once said the blues is the truth. And John Lee Hooker said to; "Let that boy boogie woogie..... cause it's in him..... and it got to come out".).
I picked up my medications to go to my next room but as I stepped into the hall the crazy lady made her way past me with her back bent, head down like a chicken, talking out of her head. I let her make her way past me without eye contact. But this time she looked more familiar to me. Maybe like every single crazy blues man that I'd ever seen.
As I was getting the medications ready for my next patient, my I-phone was playing a song. It was a Beatles song from my new cirque-LOVE cd (the Beatles remixed... But not jacked up) and while I was getting my meds together, I was thinking about John Lennon and how he had said once (as a response to the blues of life), "all you need is love".
*(of course he also said he was the walrus...... which I never got, but I totally think the crazies would understand).
John Lennon would have made a great blues man cause all blues men know about love. But given the crap that comes with loving people that don't love you, the question I would've asked John Lennon (were he still living) would be, how do you know, all you need is love? Cause (from a 7 Tower perspective at least) sometimes I think all you need is Haldol (antipsychotic medication).
In fact, if life is a debate between whether the world is insane or sound, it's the crazies these days that are winning hands down as far as I can tell.
I have an uncle who thinks he's the opposite of all that (crazy). He's a modern man. He only believes in science, thinks technology is the answer to most problems in life. He scoffs at traditional cultural concepts of the supernatural as superstition... (Not just the "big five" religions.....All of them.... Old Pagan.... New Pagan..... Asian.... African..... Native American......). But he loves science fiction (may speak Klingon). He's reasonable and rational and skeptical of anything outside of what he can see or hear. He believes the universe is a closed box of cosmic dust and that people are not much more than a few brain cells and sex organs and hormones (to keep it all going).
He believes that he came from nothing and that he's going to nothing and that in the end there's nothing more out there than a very lonely compact atom sized dot that the entire universe will eventually collapse back into. But still, every day he stands in the sandwich line at work and gets pissed off when the administrative staff casually cut themselves toward the front of the line, as if anything that happens in this world, good, bad, just or unjust, should finally matter in the end, at all.
(Now that's crazy).
Living life seeing things that aren't really there (Justice, Meaning, LOVE) is the definition of crazy. Right? And yet, deep inside us we all "gotta feeling" (another Beatles song) that all these things are true. (is that irrational?). The problem is that with all the (alleged) evidence to the contrary, we think this life matters. That it has meaning. That maybe after all.... All you need is Love. And either that's true, and we're all living our lives unwilling and detached from something bigger, like some dying leaf on a breeze. Or we're just terribly arrogant. (and crazy). And I'm willing to believe that a little of all three are true. And in the end, you just cant deny the truth.
(* Charlie Dixon once said the blues is the truth. And John Lee Hooker said to; "Let that boy boogie woogie..... cause it's in him..... and it got to come out".).
I picked up my medications to go to my next room but as I stepped into the hall the crazy lady made her way past me with her back bent, head down like a chicken, talking out of her head. I let her make her way past me without eye contact. But this time she looked more familiar to me. Maybe like every single crazy blues man that I'd ever seen.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
A Beautiful Confusion
I was at work waiting on an email response from a friend and I was wondering if everything in the world (reality), all that I see and hear, is actually just as I think it is.
I'd like to say my thoughts were inspired by some Taoist-like meditation about the sound of trees falling in the woods and stuff, however, in reality the question came as the result of just another one of my hospital work days, what I sometimes like to call my daily "7 Tower acid trip".
Nursing is a strange combination of skills. You have to look for objective facts and turn them into compassion. It's like starting as a scientist and ending as a pastor. I was getting my medications for my next patient, listening to my IPhone (on speaker) and I was thinking about the patient I had just seen, (one of the crazies) and how ironic it was to be listening to Floyd right now on my IPhone (dark side of the moon).
What I remember about the man was that he was blind.... And nearly deaf. I remember how I had to lean way over to within about an inch of his face and then with the best projected voice my diaphragm could manage I would holler hello to him or that he needed to take his meds. Or sometimes I would holler and asked if he needed to pee.
He was an old black man. (Stress OLD-maybe Could have been a hundred). He looked like he could have been a blues man. But it seemed that no matter what I hollered he always just kept saying the same thing. "Yes ma'am", he would say. And I would say I'm a sir, and I need to know if you've had a bowel movement today, and he'd say "Yes Ma'am". And I'd say how many times did you go? and he'd say, "yes ma'am". And then I'd say you didn't really poop at all did you, and he'd say yes ma'am......... Then as a test, I'd say, "after lunch we're gonna scoot over to the other side of the room and with the help of Physical Therapy we're gonna fly out the window, you and me". And then after my muffled, barely audible, non-words he would yell out "yes ma'am" one more time, emphatically as if that were the end of the conversation (and it was). And then I would leave the room and come back to my med cart and begin working on my next patients meds;......... Pink Floyd playing gently in the background.... all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.......
While I was standing at my med-cart I started wondering if it was true..... that all I touch and all I see are all my life will ever be? Cause I was thinking about the old blues guy and the modern world and I was wondering if maybe there were things going on around us.... things this modern world with all it's "science-only" business could never hear or understand. I mean what if all kinds of things were happening but because of my condition I couldn't hear any of it. (psychotic?).
My email ring tone went off and I checked my messages to find that it was an update of a friend whose daughter had just come out of surgery. Her daughter had been primarily deaf for most of her young life but for the first time she would be able to hear as the result of these cochlear implants. And my friend said that the doctor said that they would be slowly increasing her reception because at first sound her world would be mostly chaos, hearing words and sounds and noises that she had never heard before. He said that she might even be confused for a while but that she would work through it and start to distinguish things, voices and sounds and stuff, and that she would ultimately have to relearn how to live her life on this whole other level, and the email ended with this phrase from the dialogue between me and my friend:
She might be in a confusion?.... but it will be a beautiful confusion, he said.
As I walked away from my med cart I wondered if some day there might be of a beautiful confusion for us? And I walked on down the hall with my next patients medications and I tried to open up my ears as open as I could, like I was deaf, or crazy, or like I was expecting some kind of alternate world to break in. But the only thing I could hear was the sound of my nurses aid asking my old blues man how many children he had, and the inevitable expected response, "Yes Ma'am. Yes Ma'am. YES Ma'am".
I'd like to say my thoughts were inspired by some Taoist-like meditation about the sound of trees falling in the woods and stuff, however, in reality the question came as the result of just another one of my hospital work days, what I sometimes like to call my daily "7 Tower acid trip".
Nursing is a strange combination of skills. You have to look for objective facts and turn them into compassion. It's like starting as a scientist and ending as a pastor. I was getting my medications for my next patient, listening to my IPhone (on speaker) and I was thinking about the patient I had just seen, (one of the crazies) and how ironic it was to be listening to Floyd right now on my IPhone (dark side of the moon).
What I remember about the man was that he was blind.... And nearly deaf. I remember how I had to lean way over to within about an inch of his face and then with the best projected voice my diaphragm could manage I would holler hello to him or that he needed to take his meds. Or sometimes I would holler and asked if he needed to pee.
He was an old black man. (Stress OLD-maybe Could have been a hundred). He looked like he could have been a blues man. But it seemed that no matter what I hollered he always just kept saying the same thing. "Yes ma'am", he would say. And I would say I'm a sir, and I need to know if you've had a bowel movement today, and he'd say "Yes Ma'am". And I'd say how many times did you go? and he'd say, "yes ma'am". And then I'd say you didn't really poop at all did you, and he'd say yes ma'am......... Then as a test, I'd say, "after lunch we're gonna scoot over to the other side of the room and with the help of Physical Therapy we're gonna fly out the window, you and me". And then after my muffled, barely audible, non-words he would yell out "yes ma'am" one more time, emphatically as if that were the end of the conversation (and it was). And then I would leave the room and come back to my med cart and begin working on my next patients meds;......... Pink Floyd playing gently in the background.... all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.......
While I was standing at my med-cart I started wondering if it was true..... that all I touch and all I see are all my life will ever be? Cause I was thinking about the old blues guy and the modern world and I was wondering if maybe there were things going on around us.... things this modern world with all it's "science-only" business could never hear or understand. I mean what if all kinds of things were happening but because of my condition I couldn't hear any of it. (psychotic?).
My email ring tone went off and I checked my messages to find that it was an update of a friend whose daughter had just come out of surgery. Her daughter had been primarily deaf for most of her young life but for the first time she would be able to hear as the result of these cochlear implants. And my friend said that the doctor said that they would be slowly increasing her reception because at first sound her world would be mostly chaos, hearing words and sounds and noises that she had never heard before. He said that she might even be confused for a while but that she would work through it and start to distinguish things, voices and sounds and stuff, and that she would ultimately have to relearn how to live her life on this whole other level, and the email ended with this phrase from the dialogue between me and my friend:
She might be in a confusion?.... but it will be a beautiful confusion, he said.
As I walked away from my med cart I wondered if some day there might be of a beautiful confusion for us? And I walked on down the hall with my next patients medications and I tried to open up my ears as open as I could, like I was deaf, or crazy, or like I was expecting some kind of alternate world to break in. But the only thing I could hear was the sound of my nurses aid asking my old blues man how many children he had, and the inevitable expected response, "Yes Ma'am. Yes Ma'am. YES Ma'am".
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