The Summer of Noticing

Josef and Anni Albers

I've returned to where I started a month ago, but nothing looks or feels the same. I'm somewhere new although objectively everything looks the same. What a fun way to start the week. Maybe I should say I'm home, but I can't be sure that's what I feel. I'm not sure it matters so much. I have home inside of me. I know that for sure. I'm back in San Francisco after a month of traveling in the South. After taking a course that taught me how to weave and think about how pieces could go together. After being taken care of day in and day out, freed to focus on present time and the experiences that can come from that. After a month of summer and all the sensations of that season. After passing through the hands of the people I've known forever and grown to love in just a few hours or days. After being down in a Tennessee Valley and brushing up against a possibility that I thought only existed in my head. What a ride I've been on, filling me up to the brim.

I'm starting to come down from that ride, and I can feel myself being friendly and gentle and patient because I'm curious. I want to notice how this experience has affected me with all its subtle shifts. I don't want to miss out on anything by thinking that something's over or by holding onto the memories or hopes too tightly. And I want this to be a friendly reminder to myself that there's nothing to figure out. Everything is in front of me. I just hope to be open enough to notice it.

We're so often filled with doubt, unsure and mistrusting of our selves. Doubt rears up with very little effort, but when the attention is placed on noticing, sensing and perceiving, the world and oneself in it, that doubt just seems to dissolve. The noticing takes on a life of its own. I can feel the substance of noticing after a month of easy yet substantial experiences, having the chance and the time to take in what's around me. The year seems to have started with noticing the sensations in my body, a noticing of myself. There's been an expansion as I submerged myself into a creative state and back into a summer season. Both of those created a loosening and opening. I don't want to stop. I'm completely clear about that. I've been saying yes a lot lately, and I look forward to that continuing. It may all come down to noticing.

Just Remember to Ask for What You Want

I can still feel the edges of anxiety going through my annual bi-lateral MRI process two weeks ago. Enough to remember the moments stacked on top of each leading to one essential insight I will now never forget; NEVER go to an MRI appointment by yourself. Going it alone, handling it alone, is a rut you want to avoid. It creates a low stress that builds in your body and lingers as a slow burn in between your shoulder blades.

But I went alone. At the time it didn't feel like a choice, but now I get to remember that it's always a choice.

Generally it would be Bill who would go with me. He went to every appointment. Every chemo session. Every radiation treatment. He waited and waited. He was my soldier, and he was always there. But not this time. Things are different now, and we're not together any more. There's a heaviness that comes with untangling lives. Each day we're separate, new missing things are noticed. Today, it was realizing that I didn't have my pillar in front of me. Bill's job, you see, was to stand in front of the MRI while I was in the tube. That way I could see his four eyes and his park ranger smile through my personal periscope as I lie face down, arms out-stretched, like Superman, for 40 minutes. Seeing him out there always brought my temperature down and kept my claustrophobia from kicking into high gear. He soothed me even though our communication was only by way of proximity. I could look out and see the wonder in his face. He, the mechanic, who loves mechanical things, grooving to and making sense of the John Cage-like clacks as the magnets pushed and pulled at my hydrogen molecules

But not today.

I had called the hospital ahead of time to see if someone could be in the room with me at this new place.  "No. Absolutely not. We had a problem once with someone wearing metal. Since then no one is allowed in without clearance." A friend said she'd come and was happy to wait outside for me. I felt self-conscious. I told her not to come. It's not a big deal. It's totally fine. Old patterns of knowing that I can take care of anything, so why create complications by bringing others into the mix. Oh the lifetime of training we attempt to uncarve once we wake up.

So I went alone. A glorious mistake I will never make again. The second I got in the room, shards of panic. From nowhere, vertigo set in; breathing became difficult. Tears were beginning.

"Did your doctor give you something to deal with the anxiety?"
"I was hoping a friend in here would take the place of using drugs. You guys said no one was allowed in here, so  I told no one to come."
"Well if we had realized you were going to panic like this, of course we would've let someone in here with you. Do you have anyone you can call?"

Wow, good to know. Real emotions can get me what I want. I desperately wanted to call Bill, but I knew he wouldn't come. He shut me out and turned me off. I still feel him intensely, and I could feel him close by. He was only 2 miles away, but I knew he wouldn't come. And if he did, would he provide anything other than brutal coldness? Would that make the experience worse? It was too much to process on top of two techs staring at me like I was some crazy lady who couldn't calm the fuck down.

"I'll be fine. Just give me a minute." Aah, such an optimist.

Big breath and into the tube I go. The first 28 minutes were a breeze. My little blanket swaddling my legs. Cool air on my back. Dynamite dissonance and atonal music being created from twists and turns of the MRI. I almost fell asleep I was so relaxed. Somewhere around minute 32, full blow claustrophobia. I wanted out. Out. OUT. I knew if I squeezed on the panic button everything would stop, but then I'd have to go right back in and do it again. The noise was suffocating, pressing down on my back, my shoulders, my head. It was squeezing all of the power out of me.

I looked through my periscope. No one was there. I leaned hard on Pema Chodron to help me drop the story. Feel the sensations only. Notice the source of the fear. No way. It felt bigger than any fear I could remember. There was an exquisite enormity to the fear. Somehow I made it. I counted up. I counted down. I breathed through it. I looked out and saw no movement, but I knew there was an out, out there. Maybe that was enough. And then it was over.

In the dressing room I was exhausted. The claustrophobia had surged so much adrenaline into my system I could barely stand up now. And then I cried. And I cried. And I cried for all the times I refused to ask. For all the times I resisted the support I really wanted. I cried for all that I can't take back. And then I wiped away my tears and told myself that I did the best I could.

It's these big and difficult experiences, in the depth of suffering that, by giving in or finding a way to listen, we have a chance of breaking free. And as stressful as it was,  I now have a new undeniable little spark, a new hairline pathway growing inside, whispering and reminding me, Remember to ask for what you want.