Gratitude, Peter Max, and swirling sand.
No. I didn't drop acid. I haven't done that in 35 years. Not that it wasn't fun back then. The only bad thing that ever came of it is that I went to a Bob Dylan concert and missed the whole shebang. I was too busy standing in the hallway outside of the auditorium being fascinated by a drinking fountain. I wasn't just fascinated. I was mesmerized. My GOD! How elegant was that water just...burbling out of that silver fountain like liquid silk. Clear, liquid silk. Who cared that a legend was playing just 100 feet away from me?
That is what acid will do for you. It gives and it takes, dude.
No, the trip I took yesterday was much more self guided, much more calm.
I tried something called Zero Balancing. I had heard a lot about it, some good and some not so good. One friend swore by it. Another said that she had to admit that she felt absolutely nothing and that was hardly worth the 100 dollars she spent on it.
My massage therapist, Cindy, also practices zero balancing. She and I have talked about me trying this for months. I was unsure. She was unsure. She stressed that it was not for everyone. That some people seemed to get a lot out of it, others didn't.
I wanted to try. I was in a pretty rocky place, emotionally. My lab tests show that there is a good chance that my cancer has metastasized. I need more tests. I can't have these tests until my thyroid ablation is completed in early November.
So, I am waiting. I am not a good waiter. Patience has never been one of my attributes. I have been vacillating wildly between being scared to death to devil may care (fuck you, cancer....you don't scare me, you moronic motherfucker...) to stoic. My footing is shifting hourly and it is not comfortable.
I took all this with me into the massage room with Cindy. I stayed in my usual stance that I take with others, pretending that yes, I was weary of this waiting game and yes, I was worried about my bad lab results, but...NO...I wasn't scared.
We began. Not being naked was nice. Not that I was particularly uncomfortable being without clothes around Cindy. She always is careful to artfully protect her client's level of comfort with soft sheets. But, for zero balancing, you just have to lay on your back, hands folded across your chest and relax.
I'll probably never be able to relax very well, I thought as she began to work on my shoulders.
And then, I was off to the races. I have no idea how I managed this, but I slipped into another plane. That is the only way I can describe it. I was there but I wasn't. I could feel Cindy's fingers manipulating my arms, my legs, my feet, my neck and head, but I was someplace else.
I wish I could find the words. None fit.
I imagined that I was standing next to the stump of the flowering plum tree in Cindy's front yard. This tree is her gratitude tree and she and all of her clients have decorated it with ribbons, chimes, rope festoons and bows. It is a shimmering beautiful tree and each time I come for a massage, I walk across the yard to say hello. But, this time, it felt different. I felt the tree's roots under my feet and I saw words etched into the bark.
Find grace it said.
And then I heard a bark. And running towards me was a dog that I had not seen since my childhood. I struggled to remember the dog's name. Was it Rags? Lady? The dog leaned into my leg, delighted to see me, tail waging furiously. I scratched the dog's ears, under the chin....crazily remembering how much this dog loved that. I saw a cat amble by and recognized it immediately. She was a cat that T and I had when we first started living together. The first year. Her name was Azalea. She had been a very nice cat, very quiet, but very aloof. I watched her slowly walk by. She turned her head and nodded at me, ever polite.
I was back on the massage table. I could feel Cindy gently maneuvering my knee back and forth as she pressed into my leg. My leg felt like she was panning for gold. As if it were full of sand and being poured through a sieve, looking for chunks of.....what? Gold? Tumors? The sensation shifted as she moved to my left leg and did the same sequence of movements. This was much different. I could feel that the sieve was faulty, had a large crack in it and too much sand was being lost too quickly. I wanted to find the words to tell Cindy this, but it seemed too ridiculous to say out loud. Not that she would have judged me, but what was I supposed to say?
I feel sort of like my legs are sieves and that there is something amiss with the left one. It is allowing too much sand to get through and not catching all the chunks of whatever that stuff is.
I felt Cindy move to my back and then, a strong sense of floating. Floating in a color. Yellow. A lovely, cheerful shade of yellow. At first. And then, it began to feel hot. Like on a hot day when you have been in air conditioning all day and walk outside into the scorching heat and it feels SO GOOD at first, so homey, so sweet and then, after a few minutes into it, it doesn't feel that way. It just feels hot and a little sticky. The air felt thick and humid. As if I had ordered them personally. two pale blue streaks of colors came sailing into myself like a cool breeze. There. That was so much better, I thought to myself. But how odd this is. I am surrounded by nothing else but color. Yellow and blue.
I hear a woman's voice say, It's like riding a bike. You just have to get back on. I know you don't want to get on that bike, but you must. You have to get back on. You have to get back on. You..
I wonder if this is Cindy's voice, but stifle a laugh. How can I ask her if she was talking about riding a bike? I say nothing.
I am back on the massage table and I hear Cindy ask me if I am doing okay. I hear a voice telling her that all is fine. Was that MY voice? I didn't feel as if I were talking but it felt like I said that. Did that make sense? No. I know. Nothing makes sense.
Cindy is now telling me that she is ready to begin her end sequence. Is that okay? I say yes. Again. I have a moment of asking my own self if that was me talking.
I hear Cindy's voice but I can't make out what she is saying. Something about resting. It feels like we are in a big house and she is calling to me from the front of the house when I am in the back of it.
"Um...can you repeat? Pardon?" I say.
Now I can hear her clearly. She tells me to turn on to my side and sit up. I do this and feel as if I am a puzzle that just had the last piece click in place. I feel.....hard to explain.....back. Present.
And that was it. Whatever journey I had been on was over. If I had fallen asleep, it was an interesting dream. But, I didn't believe it was dream. It was like being here and being somewhere else. Not a place, exactly, but a different quality of air. Kind of like being high, but not having deep emotions. More like being.....hyper aware.
Cindy and I talked. I tried to tell her exactly what it had felt like but I couldn't find the words. Besides, I looked down at my watch and realized that I taken almost double the time that I had scheduled. I hurriedly set up another appointment and got into my car.
I thought about what I had experienced all of the way home. I felt that only five or ten minutes had gone by from the time I had rested on that table to when I got off of it but, in reality, over an hour had gone by. It was so odd.
I felt strangely good. Not great. But, I didn't feel that tight knot in my stomach. The one that had set up camp in there since I had heard the words lab results. I still felt scared, but I felt more capable. More like I would find the strength to be patient.
The feeling stays with me still. I'm not committing heart and soul to staying this way, but I am hoping it remains a while, this feeling.
Fingers crossed.
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