Ode To Death Valleys
And to Solace of Open Spaces
Dear Ones,
I melt into now. I have a bad case of JOMO (joy of missing out) not FOMO (fear of missing out). Have you grown more awake? Are you still on nodding terms with your seductive sleepy ways? Have you outgrown yourselves yet? Gotten out of the trance of unworthiness? We are worth more than we know. We are clusters of brilliant atoms. We are stardust. Did you know that we are composed of the same elements as the stars? How cool is that?
I felt haggard this week, did you? Despair even. I marshall energy for good friends and the natural world. Did you also suffer from poor emotional hygiene? I did. Yet here I still am writing. Fumbling for my oxygen mask. I don’t know how we do it but we do. We are resilient beings despite the tomfoolery. No more half-heartedness. Wholeheartedness is the only path now. We do not necessarily have to be pollyannas during polycrises. We can shape our presence during perilous times though.
*Nessa Tip: For the love of all things sacred, put on your oxygen masks. This invitation is non-negotiable. Time to care for human pain and non-human pain. For our pain and the pain of the coral reefs. It is one and the same.
“Don't trust the way you see yourself when your mind is full of turbulence” -Yung Pueblo
We deceive ourselves so much. There is much disillusionment these days. If there was a book of truth I would have read it and memorized it by now. The wisdom we seek is not written in human words.
FILTERS OF WRITTEN WORDS
I don’t trust the journey of my thoughts to mouth anymore. Processing routes from brain to lips seem deceptively too short. Cause for reactivity in years past. I prefer silence and the interstitial spaces in between my thoughts and words. So I direct my thoughts to percolate through highways of my body. They then come out from my fingertips. Who knew the circulation of my body would be a reliable thought filterer? My sweet capillaries.
There is pain and there is suffering. Suffering occurs when we avoid the processing of pain. It is okay to sit in pain and even bushwhack through it sometimes. There is an intelligence to it. Think of it as a soul mission through a kind of life labyrinth. No human buoys are required to crack codes. Only you know your code. No corners can be skipped.
A life examined is a life evolved. Writing is an effective new examination tool for me. We are adaptable by nature. When stuck in tarpits of our pain or past, we can become excruciatingly unadaptable. Congealed and curdled almost like a dead human body.
ANATOMY LAB
During my anatomy lab in medical school, I excavated human cadavers. Tinkered with human remains. Reduced bodies to parts and pieces. Biological masses were marinated in formaldehyde. Those were cold, competitive, clinical years. Formative years which gave rise to stoic and self-sacrificing doctors. The years of fostering detachment to maintain objectivity.
The human body assigned to my lab group had elderly primordial marks of time. Rigor mortis. Ossifications and coagulations. Tensed with lifeless rigidity. She appeared mummified. It was cold in the bowels of the school where she and her cohort rested.
I wonder what kind of life she had. Where her body had traveled. What she did with her hands and with her heart. What her family was like. I conducted clandestine honoring rituals for her each day. I remembered the ceremony just before julienning her tissues and sawing her bones.
I suspect that my body-mind incoherence or mismatch materialized in the first seconds of anatomy lab. I vaguely remember the moment my spirit peaced out of my body. Departure time in sync with fleshy contact of the scalpel.
My nostrils singed during great disarticulation events in anatomy lab. I saw blood and a bit of it was mine. My senses blunted with time. Willed into a helen kellar body. It was an initiation of sorts. I did not realize how much death my dull body would later witness. Foreshadowing decades of hospital time among sick and dead human beings.
My occupation with my occupation grew intense. Knowledge was a great life distraction. An unfortunate wisdom barrier. My brain geeked out on science. On neurobiology, physiology, and other ologies too. On how our bodies expand and contract. On how our cells organize based on interactions with each other. On relationships with our environment and our microbial parts.
I fell hard into the modern-day intelligence trap. Reduced our bodies with the confines of science and objectification. The same science that ironically made me forget the nature of my body. I forgot how to translate unspoken messages of interstitial spaces. I re-member more with each passing day.
Winter solstice is here. I love Persian rituals. We celebrate the birth of winter on the longest night of the year, December 21, 2023. It follows the shortest day of the year, Shaba Yalda means rebirth of the sun. In the days trailing the solstice, there will be more light. It symbolizes the triumph of light over darkness. Of death and rebirth. We can celebrate renewal together.
*Nessa Tip: On the evening of December 21, 2023, participate in a solstice ritual or meditation to honor the changing of the seasons and the cycle of life. I hope to be cooking, seeding pomegranates, and cozying up by the fireplace with spiked turmeric dark chocolate hot cocoa.
SILENCE IS MY PARTNER
I forged a genuine bond with silence in May of 2023. I spent 10 days at a silent Vipassana meditation course in the high desert. The prescription was for 10 hours of meditation a day for 10 days. I call it the confrontation. Stark landscapes. Mirages with no oases. Vipassana also called insight or “as it is” meditation was a gift. A gift that fell smack on my lap. It was a when the student is ready, the teacher appears type of opportunity.
Imagine sitting on a bank of a river watching your melodramatic thoughts float by. There is zero reacting or judging. Just watching your monkey brain while eating popcorn. So many soap operas! The inner workings of my brain feel like the container store. Not to mention my histrionic yet paradoxically paralyzed body.
“No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” - Carl Jung
Silence can be deafening. I ruptured my eardrums on day 5. Desert storms and deep dives can do that. It made breaking of silence that much more dramatic. I wanted to quit 5 out of the 10 days. Tears of gratitude streamed my face on days 2, 6, and 10. Tears in exchange of invaluable takeaways. Tears in exchange of the discovery of new mindfulness tools. Mercy tears.
*Nessa Tip: Find ways to appreciate silence during the holidays. The world would be so different if we all practiced Vipassana meditation. I love peace and quiet. I am hypersensitive to modern-day sounds these days. It is okay to remove yourself from noisy distractions. My mindfulness practice keeps me grounded in silence and therefore anchored to my listening mode. It takes daily practice.
Speaking of silence. I am a glutton for otherworldly lands. This week’s trek to Death Valley National Park (aka ego death valley) was soul-rejuvenating. I love how my ego turns over many times a day. It dared to act even in the company of true friends. Silence reigns supreme in the desert. I love the solace of open spaces. Maybe vastness seems so sheltering. Maybe it is the non-humancentricity of such spaces. Maybe the spaces have enough power to declaw despair.
END OF THE YEAR REFLECTIONS:
COVID has not peaked yet but will be expected to in the dead of winter. For the most part, treatment for winter viruses involves rest, hydration and sleep. High risk patients can get Paxlovid for COVID.
*Nessa Tip: If you are sick this winter, it is likely due to an illness from a circulating virus. Let it pass. Antibiotics treat bacteria not viruses so you most likely do not need antibiotics. Viral illnesses could become bacterial over time requiring antibiotics. Usual markers of bacteria are prolonged illness, cough with yellow sputum +/- fever after 10 days. Please learn when you need antibiotics. Refrain from bullying doctors into prescribing them for you. If you do not need antibiotics, dear humans, do not take them. The consequences of antibiotic overuse are too much for us to bear right now.
COP28 -in its 28th useless year, the "Conference of the Parties" is an annual climate change conference held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is obscenely owned by the fossil fuel industry.
For your eco-anxiety, I advise getting informed by listening to this great resource. It is a podcast by The Climate Pod. It summarizes the truth behind the COP28 circus and what is behind deceiving headlines.
May all beings find peace,
Nessa
"No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell." -- Love it!!!
I miss you.