| 6:32p |
"Never Close Your Eyes"
Keep your eyes open. Try to look at beauty, even when things in front of you are gruesome. Focus on something beautiful. If you close your eyes to the gruesome, you also shut out beauty. Don't close your eyes, because then you focus on the pain.
Now I am in the mac lab. Typy typy. I just mainly wanted to use internet since Verizon is giving us this big hold-up...it will be awhile until we have service in the apartment even though we've been trying like mad. Typy typy. So yeah, I'm in the Mac lab under the pretense of updating my website and job-hunting. In two weeks my health insurance expires. And I am in the throes of the Mystery Illness of Doom.
I am STILL getting sick, and incapacitating sick. Bed-ridden sick, when it comes on. Considered going to the hospital on Saturday, even. My roommates looked very worried. Today I got x-rays of my lungs. Don't know the results yet. My blood test results were good, though.
I thought, maybe I should make a will. Then I realized that I don't really have many material possessions of monetary value. So then I thought that maybe I should write out everything in my heart, addressed to a bunch of people, and put it in my lock box. I'm not trying to be morbid, and I don't suspect that I will die soon of the plague. But you never know when you're going to be down to your last 24-hour day. It was interesting the things that came into my mind about what I would write in the letter to be found posthumously. I thought over these things--these things that burn in my heart, but that don't get spoken--and I felt alive. And wondered...why don't I say them now? So what if they are crazy and don't make sense. In light of ultimate questioning, they stand up to my face, bold and straight-shouldered.
If there are things I can't express quite right, maybe that is why sometimes I just look off into nowhere and smile. David says I smile all the time, and that it makes other people happy. Am I happy? Well, there is enough to take pleasure in to smile, anyway. And it doesn't have to be conjured up. If I am in a fix, oftentimes I lift my gaze toward the sky or the sea or a tree, and the wonders open up to my soul. It is hard to notice nature in the present moment and not to be awed and moved.
Lately, I am aware of my solitariness. Tonight, I feel lonely and slightly left. But there are lots of great people around. I think it's the suffering that gives you a sense of isolation.
I hear birds outside right now. Recently I read that birds are often used as symbols of change.
When I was getting my blood drawn at the doctor's office, the Russian woman had pictures on the wall, calendar pictures of Moscow. My eyes drank them in, until needle time commenced. I stuck out my arm with the good veins in front of me. Then I squeezed my eyelids shut in horror, my face turned away from the blood-sucking needle. A shot of adrenaline filled my body and it reacted in panic. I felt sick; I told the nurse. She was done. I swooned. She smacked my face a few times and called my name with her thick accent. I opened my eyes and resolved to keep them opened, trying to focus on her face hovering in front of mine. If I could just remain conscious, I could jet out of there, run away. She said to never close your eyes. Look at the pictures: they are beautiful; they are not like America. Never close your eyes, because then you focus on the pain.
(That was an interesting way to receive a message about life.)
What did I eat that morning? I replied that I ate a pastry. Hmph. Well, you have good veins. Very good veins. Sit down in the waiting room for awhile.
Current Mood: lilting |