There are some updates to the Nicaragua diaries that I will offer in a post to come. Only one of which is "Frankie, my Nicaraguan scar". Chica said it would be a great story to tell with that preface. Interestingly enough, Frankie is now doing well. After returning, it became infected internally and I had to go on yet another round of antibiotics as the outer stitches started opening from the bottom up like a zipper. Due to concerns that the inside ones would also not heal, I was put on a restricted activity program for a month. No work, not jumping, lifting, running etc. Now all that remains is a large blotchy scar which strangely enough is now growing a thick patch of hair only within the affected area. I have never had thick hair on my limbs - but now I do. Hubby is quite unsettled and confused by this. I will have to shave my Frankie patch now.
So this Spring/Summer has been amazing. I have had the opportunity to do two writing retreats and one writing conference. One of the retreats was a meditation and writing retreat with Ruth Ozeki, award-winning author of "My Year of Meats" and "All Over Creation". The piece below is something I wrote during my time at that workshop.
Each day, we sat in the round room, on the floor with our back-jacks and meditation pillows. In the centre of the room sits a lovely flower arrangement on the floor surrounded with candles. I sit at the 9 o'clock position. Ruth sits at the 12 o'clock position (in the beginning there actually were twelve participants including Ruth). I hope you enjoy and don't forget to see enlightenment in the unlikely corners of your day!
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In the deepest part of my throat remained a pit of phlegm that could not be removed. Knowing we would be in a meditation soon, I discretely removed a lozenge from its crunchy, waxy wrapper and slipped it in to my mouth. “Cherry Mint”, I rolled it over my tongue. “ Not bad.”
Ruth introduced the meditation exercise we were about to submerge ourselves within, when it occurred to me, that I should not be sucking on a cough drop when the meditation was taking place. “What would I do?”
I summoned as much spit as a mouth humanly could and began rolling it around in my mouth, attempting to dissolve it speedily, carefully keeping it from clattering against my teeth. My spit became syrupy and sticky sweet - surely now, I would not cough through the meditation.
Ruth’s closed her summation and people began to adjust and settle in to their noble posture of choice. A large portion of my cough-drop remained, so I began taking harder pulls on the oval mass. It simply couldn’t be crunched, “Those around me would know.” I should not have been eating anything in this sacred space as it was. I couldn’t spit it out. It was too big to swallow whole. “What would I do?”
I would not allow the Ricola to take me from my inner-space, my opportunity for enlightenment by continuing to process it within my mouth. I’d done this many times before as a child in school - there was no way my novice meditation level could navigate around the stimulating lump in my mouth. I was wild-eyed as I did my best to disintegrate it. My cheeks puckered inwards as I continued working away at the lozenge at which point Ruth looked over and caught my looks of unknowingness… and then it happened… the drop lurched to the back of my mouth and in a split second, it slipped over the hill of my tongue in to the posterior of my throat and, beyond a wave of peristalsis, right in to the door of my trachea. My lungs locked.
“R e m a i n c a l m… ” my inner being stated. One cough and I could get it out - I was sure. I figured it would take every ounce of force within my half inflated lungs to shoot that sucker out. From my abdomen, I expelled every ounce of power upward through my chest cavity, launching the oval burgundy mass up and out of my body, half way across the circular room, where it struck the belly of the vase containing the salal and lilly arrangement with a heavy clank, and then, redirected outward.
It sailed in an arc angling upward, over the grey, checker striped carpet, far above the hopeless, forever wandering armadillo bug (who, if he had a neck, would be straining his head like a satellite dish tracking this foreign object across his skyscape - but he didn’t, so he just used his beady eyes). It drifted atop the tea light candles, … and then landed… right upon the middle forehead, in third eye position, of Ruth. In utter stillness she sat. Her eyes pushed her brow upward towards the unlikely mark of enlightenment that had perched itself in it’s called upon place.
There was complete silence. All eyes were upon Ruth; some wincing, some frozen in disbelief. And in her own noble position with a small smile that relaxed her gracious and wise face, she stated, “Not knowing is most intimate…”
*An end note, the final quote given here was a quote that I asked Ruth for out of the blue. In writing this piece, I thought it would be nice to finish it on a quote that she enjoyed, so I asked her (unknowing in what it would be used for) what her top three favourite quotes were. The last quote, which is quoted from an unknown source, is one of her favourites.
