moon shadow

slowing faster - is it too fast?

for about 9 years now, these legs have been slowing down. and while i've generally been feelin' groovy, at least when looking at the big picture, there are days. yes, there certainly are. days when the slowing down goes particularly fast; that is, faster than my feelin' groovy can keep up with. if this seems oblique to you, try living it.

i have mentioned my ongoing physical therapy, daily metrics, meditation, yoga, medications, etc. what is it that makes for a badly ms-ed up day, and what for a lighter one? and does second-guessing it make it worse? i think it's common for many of us with ms, to have a sort of superstitious thinking: i might notice a lighter step one day - or moment - and think to myself, 'is this my new high point?' (i.e., soon to be remembered wistfully as my leg drags along behind me even heavier the next moment or day.) or, i might remember back, maybe a year ago, what i felt was challenging then, now seems completely out of reach. i will wonder whether such thinking is incidental or causal to further symptom worsening - i.e. is there a psycho-somic (the ancient words meaning 'mind-body') process at work? and it sometimes seems like the thought itself sets a downward spiral in motion. which any neurologist would say is gobbledygook. but superstition often trumps science with me.

just back from some errands. at rite aid connected briefly with the clerk, 'chandra' (his name means 'moon' in nepali and hindi). i ask if he is from india, no he is from sri lanka (where, in sinhalese, he tells me, his name also means moon.) we have a nice chat while he rings up my purchases, then i am off to my next stop, whole foods; getting some produce and rice to make a daalbhaat dinner, sister and niece are coming over.

chandra, moon. i guess i'm being followed by a moon shadow. if i ever lose my legs, i won't cry, no i won't beg...i won't have to walk no more. the cat's words are prescient, and often much lighter than blue, sweeter than yoghurt.

but here is the thing: like i said, it's all slowing down, and the balance is getting more challenging; after i park the car in a handicap space, i stop, and in a moment arrive just at the speed my body inhabits. i slowly take the key out of the ignition, pick up the cloth shopping bags off the passenger seat, set them in my lap; open the door, pick up my cane, slowly reach it across - feeling its length and heft - to set it down leaning in the crook of the door. slowly inhale, set first my left foot, then the heavier one - my right - out on the pavement, exhale. it's okay, it's all okay, i'm all here, and it is happening, just as it is happening. the sky is bright, the warm air caresses. i have a shopping list in my pocket. how mundane can this moment get? but it is so big, so right, so just so: a psycho-somic moment to cherish. but then just as quickly i get lost in thought: there is a shopping cart just near the bumper of my car, a woman is approaching, will she take it? no she passes it by, it is mine... i push the cart, and before i set foot in the store, my mind is already in the produce aisle.

and this is how most of my moments pass, as if leaning just slightly into the future. most phenomena which happen along my way, are irrelevant at best, that is, don't even come into my conscious awareness. and instead often become an annoyance, or delay to my utterly self-important agenda. the cane can be either of these; but in the time-sequenced tableau at my arrival, it became a portal to the mysterious, an invitation into the miracle of right now.

i saw the dalai lama last fall when he was in d.c. his was a truly inspiring presence, even from a distance. at one point in his discourse he sneezed and immediately fell into his disarmingly infectious belly laughter. no comment necessary - the invitation offered by a sneeze into the beauty and wonder of this moment was so brilliantly shown - and accepted.

on sunday, my girlfriend and i walked around 'brookside gardens' a sort of arboretum not too far a drive from here. i was having a slow/slower/slowest day. was nice sitting on the benches, then lying in the cool spring grass, children playing about. walking slowly up some big flat rocks that were laid out like giant paver stones, it hit me of a sudden just how right it was to be going slowly at this park on this very lovely first full day of spring. even if i could have bounded up the path, would i have even wanted to?

may our sneezes - and canes, and eye nystagmi, and losses of balance, and inopportune cell phone rings, and children's interruptions, and obnoxious drivers cutting us off, and and and - may they all reveal themselves ever more as the invitations they are to the wonder and miracle of this precious moment.

amen.