A line cast, a hope followed

It’s funny how I’ve gotten this far, and now I’m tired of it all…
Living with a perfect moment, it haunts you
It sits there in your dresser drawer,
A brochure from an art exhibit
Just beneath a card that says goodbye
The year between those two moments
Should fill pages more,
But I just can’t summon the energy anymore.

iv
It ended in an airport in Phoenix.
To say my heart broke at an airport gate
That’s really sort of trite
He was a “beautiful fucked up man”
Perfectly in love again two weeks later
Leaving me mistrustful in my own skin
After this fall from grace
I began to cover myself up,
Like Eve, embarrassed and exposed
Unsure how I could have been so naive.

I know you think this is a gift, a moment like this
To treasure your life through
But it has defined me too often
The branches and roots of that tree of knowledge,
Wrapped themselves around my heart, choking it,
Describing themselves as love
Demanding nothing less,
Forcing me to face backwards into memory
I am ready to relegate this all to myth
Blame a serpent, blame the sin,
Relinquish the ecstasy
It is past, it is a scar, it is time for it to heal over.

The dog has long since left
Seeking the cool draft of a door frame
The abandoned shoe lies tilted sideways of the desk
Is it done now? Yes, I think the sap is dry.

v
Putting it here,
I ask for exorcism,
Absolution.
Help me shake it loose,
Drop the fruit to seed
In some other garden.
Tell me a different story of Eve
There is a whole orchard full of trees,
A new season of sap that must run,
Other fruit that must ripen in time

iii
The icy stone benches in the sculpture garden just outside
Where we flee into the cold March day
Should cool the flames, but
The intensity is still too much,
Lips touch,
Eyes open wide,
Our breath in tiny warm puffs between us
As we pull back, frighteningly aware that nothing will stop this.
Not him, not I.

He has brought lunch.
There are kumquats and raspberries,
Chocolate and rum,
A single apple, chosen for a poem they had liked
Eating in reverence, each bite both sacred and sexual
It is as perfectly romantic a moment
As I will ever share with anyone
And we both know this.
I am prescient of the nights I will spend
Cursing God,
Cursing that serpent of temptation and I believe,
Truly I believe, that this moment is worth it.

This how I become Eve
How the moment defines
Forever forward the sweet taste of this fruit
In my mouth,
There will be no forsaking this knowledge
Even when I long for my innocence back.

"In his devotional lyric Gita Govinda (Love song of the dark lord), the twelfth-century poet Jayadeva tells the tumultuous love story of the cowherd god Krishna and his beloved Radha, a mortal whom later theologians elevated to divine status."(from the exhibit brochure)
Thus it begins:

"The sky is overcast by thick clouds. The woodlands are black with tamala trees. This boy Krishna is afraid of the gloom of the night. So, Oh Radha, take him home. Such was the command of Nanda, the herdsman. Thus arose the love of Radha and Krishna who, as they passed through the forest, sported in the bowers on the bank of the Yamuna."

There are 24 “Prabandha” or divisions, which tell of the love play, and the ache of separation between Krishna and Radha, used as an allegory for the yearning for and joy in unity with God in a devotional sense. The poem has lent itself to adaptation to dance, painting, music and temple worship. There is integration of the erotic in the concept of the consummation of this union between the two lovers, and union of devotee with the Divine.

"Wind from a lakeside garden
Coaxing buds on new asoka branches
Into clusters of scarlet flowers
Is only fanning the flames to burn me
This mountain
Of new mango blossoms
Humming with roving bumblebees
Is no comfort to me now, friend"

The vehicle of a friend or messenger gives both the poet and the painter access to portray the intimate feelings of the two lovers via their expression to an outside observer or sakhi who can cross the boundaries of their two worlds. The sakhi urges the lovers to unite.

“If you show a hungry person food, will it fill his stomach?
How can thirst be quenched by listening to the story of water?
You waste your days, O foolish one,
Looking at your beloved’s picture
Only by meeting him will you get pleasure.”

Leaving behind a cold desert of feelings in our other lives, it is this sensual poetry, these lush paintings which complete the act of seduction

I guess I need to tell you now, before I let it go any further
We are both married.
We live on opposite ends of the country
One is six years older and leaving her husband
The other is preoccupied elsewhere,
And after six months of conversing long distance
Both are sure there is no chance
Of falling in love.

ii
We are already falling in this moment in the entrance hall
Long before we descend the stairs to the gallery
My senses take over
Dizzyingly recording each detail, the memories
Of a single instant,
The rustle of his jacket, the
Texture of the worn flannel,
His skin's scent at his neckline
Tiny brown metal eyelets capturing the laces of his shoes, the color of coffee beans
It is freezing outside, and his cheeks are bright with the cold
But there is no thaw in his blush as he sheds his coat
Ushers me down into the museum.

It is a set up.
Bhakti paintings and lyric poetry,
Seeping romance and forbidden longings
We do not speak,
Our bodies draw closer,
Closer
Mirror the dance between the aesthetic and erotic
The sakhi revealing what we cannot voice ourselves
The boundary
Vanishing
Replaced with raw desire

There I stood cooking pork chops
When my heart finally demanded the exorcism
Years this story has waited,
"Forget your frying pan,
Tell it and be done."

Patiently the dog follows me out of the kitchen,
Stretches and lays down on a single shoe next to the desk
He licks a paw while I cogitate
How far back into the cambium do I need to reach
To untap this flow of sap?

i
It is March, and I am standing waiting
At the entrance to the art gallery
I am wearing a blue sheath, a soft navy chenille sweater
Which hugs me close,
Dark stockings and pumps,
My heavy winter coat stashed in a locker
I feel
Light footed, luminous,
My hair smells of jasmine and I am waiting, early
With anticipation I cannot
Sit down.

He walks in, he is
So tall, he is rushing over
He is lifting me off my feet
I am spinning inside
Spinning outside as he sets me down
Turns me so he can see
Spins for me too, we are shyly whirling
For each other because
We have never met

Dinner Conversation
V. is my 10 year old son.
C. is my 12 year old daughter.

V: "Mom, why do we say that short little prayer before dinner at Papa's house?"
Me: "That's saying grace. It's a way of saying thanks to God for the food. To show gratitude."
V: "Why does Papa do it and we don't?"
Me: "Papa is more religious."
V: "Why do we say it again? Why is Papa more religious?"
Me: "Papa thinks about God different than I do. He thanks God that there is enough food for us so we don't starve to death, the way some people in the world do."
V: "What is God? Is God a person?"
Me: "That depends on who you talk to. Christians like Papa often think of God as a person they talk to. Christians say that Jesus is God's son, and that God made the world, including the first people."
V: "God made the world?"
Me: "Christians say that he created everything. I am not a Christian so I don't see it quite that way."
V: "Then where did the first people come from?"
Me: "Apes. It's called evolution. First there were cells that multiplied, then eventually those made little plants, and eventually those became little animals, then bigger animals, and then primates, and at some point primates evolved into people"
C: (chiming in now) "Monkeys? we come from Monkeys?"
V: "So how did the world get made? Did it happen with a fire or an asteroid and wasn't there always water? And then they all died, and there were meteors or something?"
C: "Are you talking about dinosaurs now?"
V: "And then they all died and yes, dinosaurs"
Me: "There is a place in Arizona where they think the asteroid hit the earth and made a huge cloud. They used to think the dinosaurs might have gotten stuck in tar pits. But the thing about evolution is that it doesn't explain much about how people get souls, (here I am thinking, how do I explain soul to a 10 year old?) and..."
C: "Can't they be a combination of both? Don't you think people evolve but there is something with God that makes the soul happen too?"
Me: "Yes, or some people even think someone from another planet, aliens might have come and done something to make people the way they are."
V: "ALIENS?"
C: "Right Aliens."
V: "And so what does it mean if you are gay?"
Me: "Wait, are we done talking about God and dinosaurs?"
V: "No, what is God anyway?"
Me: "Well, no one knows for sure. What do you think?"
V: "I don't know."
Me: "Well, what if someone asked you and you had to make a guess on a quiz at school. What would you say?"
V: "I'd skip that one."
C: "What if you were going to fail the test and not get out of 4th grade if you didn't answer it?"
V: "That would never happen."
Me: "Yeah, but what would you put down?"
V: "An old old man who is a ghost. Yeah, he's old and he's a ghost."
Me: "Ok, and C, what would you say?"
C: "I would say its a part of everything. In us and in the dog and in everything."
Me: "What part would you say it is? Is there something you'd call that part?"
C: "No, I wouldn't say it that way. It's not a part, it's just in everything."
Me: "So would you say that it's something that goes away when something dies?"
C: "No." (thinks a minute) "It is there all the time, like people who talk about how they know someone is looking over them like an angel or something. It's there when we are alive, but we don't notice it because we are looking at them. Then when someone dies, we start to look inside ourselves and realize that its still there without the body, looking over us, and that's the God part."
Me: "So V, you wanted to know what it meant if someone was gay? Why?"
V: "Kids are saying gay at school. Chris called someone gay, it sounded bad."
C: "Can I explain this one to him?"
Me: "Sure."
C: "Sometimes when a boy acts more girly, the other boys will call him gay. The boy is just kinda different, not the same, and so that's why the other boys will tease him. Maybe he's not as tough or something. Then they call him gay."
Me: "V, do you understand what being gay is?"
V: "No"
Me: "Being gay is when a boy likes a boy, romantically. Or a girl likes a girl. But sometimes people use gay when they mean that a person is acting different than they expect a boy or a girl to act. Maybe the boy isn't interested in sports and likes to sing, or shows his feelings, then he might be labeled gay, but he might not fall in love with another man when he grows up."
C: "Like how I like Mitchell? See, that means I'm probably not going to be gay. Because I'm a girl and he's a boy. If I liked girls like that, then I'd be gay."
V: "So Alyssa likes to play wallball, and Chris said she was so gay, but she just likes to play wallball."
Me: "Yes, girls can like sports and not be gay."
C: "Its lesbian mom. Girls are lesbians if they are gay."
Me: "Yes, but Alyssa liking sports is not a reason to call her gay. V., what did you say when Chris said it?"
V: "I didn't say anything. But Alyssa can play wallball if she wants to, she just likes to play wallball."
Me: "Well, you can say a couple of things if you hear that again. You can say so what? There's nothing wrong with people who are gay. You can say what you just told me, that Alyssa can play any game she wants. You can also say that you don't like it when someone calls her gay. You can also say that you like Alyssa and that it's cool that she plays wallball."
V: "Then they'll tease me and say nah nah nah V-- likes Alyssa."
Me: "Ok ok you might not want to say you LIKE Alyssa. But you can say you like to play wallball with her. You should go tell a teacher if someone calls someone gay and it hurts their feelings."
V: "So can I play my gameboy after dinner?"
Me: "Does this mean you don't have more questions about God or being gay?"
V: (rolls his eyes, like they both usually do when I've blabbered on and on for hours on a simple question.) "DUH"

Bumper sticker smile today:
"Republicans for Voldemort"

I was thinking about what I wrote last night as I drove in today.
I don't like to say this but I am fighting the same feelings of hate and the desire to stereotype that I find so scary in "the other". I sit at a traffic light behind a car with a Bush Cheney Sticker, or one of the local anti-gay marriage stickers, and I want to slash their tires, scream profanities, ask them why it is ok to sacrifice my children's future to their greed. I recognize this makes me guilty of the very polarization I am so fearful of. I guess part of what I am working on internally, this week, is how to stay open while I acknowledge the real feelings of betrayal and mistrust, how to avoid lumping people into "stupid" and "selfish" and "bigoted" and "mean" and the sorts of labels which create walls. I wonder if the "figuring out what went wrong" is eroding into an exercise in judging other people's values, and if that is not exactly the thing we are accusing "them" of.

See, I am sitting next to a person I have tremendous respect for as I write. He is one of the fifty nine million. He is someone it would be tempting for me to suddenly dismiss now on the basis of a vote in an election. I know this is wrong, I know he is thoughtful, caring, open, intelligent, in fact, not anything like the "Bush supporter" monster I create when I see the sticker on a stranger's car. This is why I am struggling with myself. I need to talk to him. I need to see what his thinking was. I need to ask questions instead of assuming he is irrational or bad.

I'm not looking to find reasons why I should agree with their vote - don't get me wrong. I'm not unsure of my moral stand. I do want to reconnect with the humanity of those who don't believe as I do. It doesn't matter if they are compassionate or caring to me, if I want to get across the gulf I may have to do all the bridge building. I don't like it, but I don't always have a choice. And so far when I reach out and ask with some real desire to understand I am treated with compassion and respect by Bush supporters. So I need to stop demonizing them as a group and start to view each as a full faceted individual again.

(with the exception of a certain California governor who has proven to be a lost cause)

The urge to classify

Is so strong.

Box it up neatly, and maybe I can
Call "Brown", pick up at 10,
Deliver it to USA Self Storage
Lock it in and wait for the next election.

There are fiftyninemillionseventeenthousandthreehundredeightytwo
People I'd like to condense down into one box,
Down into some three ingredient recipe some
Simple formula for this vote that separates me
From you
Good
From bad
Make it small enough to describe, control, dismiss
Language of a sixth grader, language of an election
Language of a soundbite.
As if a page of words can explain the feelings, motives
Histories, beliefs of fiftyninemillionseventeenthousandthreehundredeightytwo
Individuals who are not me.

But what are the chances that one of the fiftyninemillionseventeenthousandthreehundredeightytwo
Is more like me than I dare to believe?

Division. There is page after page of problems in the homework packet
He spends hours putting one number into another, finding remainders
Subtracting until there is nothing left, neatly solved.
We say division is the wake of this election
But this is nothing like the methodical effort of
Dividing one hundred into fiftyone percent and fortynine percent,
Dividing the map into twohundredseventynine red and twohundredfiftytwo blue
Dividing my neighborhood into Bush signs or Kerry signs
The signs no one has taken down because
This is who "I AM" this is who "YOU ARE" this is how we disagree
This is the gulf we have to cross
This is both artificial and real
This is the conversation we don't want to have
These are the assumptions we refuse to give up
Why you said Bush Why I said Kerry
This is an equation of irrational numbers
We will write it in its simplest form
We will round down and round up and still
We will find an inequality in the problem
And we will round it down again until
There is no common denominator left to identify
Why I can talk to you
Why you can talk to me
This is the gulf we have to cross

"(Bush's religious language)...is code language meant to reassure a base, to tell them he's one of them and that they understand each other."
Interview with Jim Wallis from 11/03 describing the meaning of evangelism, Bush, and the way Bush has used religion to communicate.

I respectfully submit, that the next step is to understand the opposition because surely 51% of this country cannot be so different from me as this election would seem to indicate.

It might be this simple.

Are we willing, with a vote, to admit that the decisions this country has made might have been wrong?

Several days have passed since I shared this question: "Which of the five senses do you think is most important?"

I have very much enjoyed reading the comments and blog posts that have surfaced looking at this, and wanted to share those I've come across and thank those who've commented here and elsewhere for making blogging so facinating. Each answer has taken its own unique spin, and as any good topic should it seems to have it's own life now in the blogsphere, as readers of these blogs continue the thread beyond the neighborhoods I haunt.

Sound: "Strings scurrying in counterpoint, a sudden whack of what must be a massive drum, then (as if from the top of a canopy of trees) the wondrous spreading tone of a flugelhorn, followed by a quartet of flutes nipping around the edges of that sound."

Sight:"I remember walking through a book-lined living-room to the front door, when I was leaving. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, thousands of books, and not one that he could read."

Touch: "the skin is the bodies largest organ. There is a reason for this."

An Anatomy of Senses:
Yesterday morning, from the trees
up on the ridge, a cacophony of rusty hinges.
Startled by something, it stills, turns
into an immense rustle of wings.
A thousand blackbirds lift, pivot,
drift high across the field like
a cloud of smoke.

This morning, walking through the fog
on top of the same ridge, I am stopped
by a yellow sugar maple leaf
dangling from an invisible strand of silk
six feet off the ground.
The slight breeze is enough to make it
flip, flop, fly. The forest drips.

These are not metaphors for anything.
Science says, a body at rest,
a body in motion. But only
such abstract bodies really make sense.
Ah, unreal body, home to an unreal sense!
Move one finger and the universe shifts: try it.
Let the small hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

This week I learn that my W-loving dad would have voted for Lieberman given the chance. I can only shake my head. I need something to get me through the next few days, and probably weeks as the post election results are inevitably argued.

A bit of pre/post election advice from:
How to Break the Political Fever
By GARRISON KEILLOR

"...what will come of all this on Nov. 3? Some will pick up the morning paper and save it for a souvenir, and the others will wrap up the garbage in it.
What will reconcile us is what has always restored our sanity, and that is the plain pleasures of the physical world, our common love of coffee, the world of apples, the movements of birds, the lives of dogs, the touch of skin. Music. Dancing to music. Shooting baskets. Shooting conservatively, scoring liberally. Lacing up our skates, gliding through the dusk. Having worked ourselves into a fever over the future of Western civilization, we will now begin enjoying our oatmeal again, with raisins, chopped apricots and honey from bees that grazed in meadows of clover. The beauty of engagement is disengagement. You simply put on your jacket and walk out the door and find good health. There is no fever that a 10-mile hike can't cure.

Twenty years ago, I gave up TV, and now I am going to take a sabbatical from the news and live in the immediate world. The neighbors are expecting a baby girl. My daughter is taking up the cello. My mother is game for more Scrabble. There is wood to be cut in the family woodlot. I've been a prisoner of the New York Times and have read enough for a while and want to get loose."

Thanks to Leslee for this recommend!

Go wish Siona a happy happy birthday and an outstanding year to come.
She deserves it!

For you dear Siona, a recipe and pic of a gluten free pumpkin pie.

Quickly improvised dessert for my women's group dinner/discussion on Sufism...
Combine 3-4 TB honey in a small microwavable dish with 2-3TB orange blossom water. Heat for 30 seconds and stir.
Scoop vanilla bean ice cream into 4 dishes, and top with a sprinkle of finely grated fresh orange zest. (I LOVE my zester. Its right up there with my parmesan grater.) Pour a small quantity of the honey-orange blossom syrup over the ice cream and top with 2 or 3 marcona almonds. Serve quickly.

---------------------------------------------------------
Note to self: An hour of CSI Miami, and a half hour of evening news makes the daily arrival of many cars to the newly rented house across the street seem very menacing.
Really he's probably just having friends over for beers.
There were so many cars Friday night that they were parking 2 blocks away. Roaring in and out a bit faster than we are used to in my quiet cul de sac.
Maybe this isn't the type of guy to bring the welcoming plate of cookies to.
On the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea to look him in the eye and see what we are dealing with. Maybe bring them on a dinner plate so we can dust for fingerprints when he returns it *grin*
--------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of dinner plates...I found several bowls and a set of cups and saucers on EBAY to replace some of my now extinct dinnerware pattern. They happened to be here in Portland, so I saved myself a bunch of shipping charges and drove over to pick them up. She threw in 4 more dinner plates and finally agreed to take a couple more dollars for them, the same plates I had been watching on EBAY were going for $6-8 each. I also got a nice Sting local crew tshirt from the concert I saw a couple of weeks ago for less than half what the regular t's went for at the show. It is a nicer shirt too! Yay EBAY!
----------------------------------------------------------

And just a quick note of thanks to Dale over at mole, for providing the truly reassuring kind of hugs that are needed when one starts a lunch in tears over a work problem. I'm not sure it will get better, but I do know that it's not such a big thing, my kids are marvelous, my house is warm and I like it more each day, my friends are steadfast and caring, my health is good, and my dog, well, he's there to bark at
every
single
car
that
pulls
up
across the street.
Who needs David Caruso?
-----------------------------------------------------------

Now I have to go look up what TV show he was on before CSI. Some medical show?

No really, I'm firmly headed to bed now.
But before I go, did you know that there are pictures of naked women doing skanky things when you do an image search on "gatorade"?
No really.

And I didn't even try....
But I LOVE IT

You're a punk rock mommy! DIY is probably your
motto, because you're a punk mama at heart.
Your kids are getting your independent spirit
and guts, and learning to solve problems
themselves. You love it when they show their
independence, even when it's breaking your
heart.


What kind of a freaky mother are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

In keeping with my quirky content...
Check this out if you ever wondered what life was like "backstage" on tour with your favorite music artist.

Some of these contracts actually specify that the cheese plate must include gorgonzola and brie.

Whee ha.

An engaging question in my email this week: "Which of the five senses do you think is most important? What's been one recent memorable experience you had with each of your senses?"

I was thinking that this particular community of bloggers is particularly in touch with their senses, and might enjoy the challenge to respond to this as well. I'd be glad to post any offerings you can make on this subject, (you can comment or email me) and in the meantime, here is the way I answered a question which I keep thinking of different answers for.

I'm inclined to buy into the somewhat "pop psychology" theory Gary Zukav speaks of in The Seat of the Soul. We humans tend to get caught up in the physical inputs from our environment and depend on our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell to the extent that we discount or dismiss the other ways we "know" of things in our world. Zukav's term for the expanded ability to sense things that aren't measured physically by our five senses is to be multisensory, but I think a more familiar term for this might be intuition.

I've had occasion to consider the loss of some of my five senses: my children's father is losing his sight to a genetic disease, one of my best friends lost her sense of smell almost entirely for several years following a virus, and another one of my best friends has lost much of the feeling in one of his hands after an accident that damaged the nerves. I'm so sensory oriented, that the possibility that any of these could happen to me is something I can't really imagine dealing with. When my friend's sense of smell disappeared, so did her ability to taste a wide array of foods, and this would surely send me into a huge fit of depression. So far R's sight has degraded slowly, but the reality is that someday in the not distant future, mountain vistas will be lost to him. To lose the subtlety of the angle of light through the trees in fall, or the smile on a babies face, those things too seem devastating. My friend struggles with making his hand work with tools in the way he has in the past, but more worrisome, he is not immediately aware of the warning signals that his hand is again in danger, because sensations such as heat and cold don't transmit the way they should. The intonations in a person's voice express so much; and I am a bird watcher, relying on sound to locate and identify my quarry; and I love music very deeply... So I don't see how I could choose to give up one or another in a devil's trade, any loss seems intolerable. For now, (and maybe this is a form of avoidance) I think I'd rather share a memorable example of how vital the inner senses can be, the huge difference it made in my life.

Those of you who read my archaelogy of childhood entry on elck's site might remember that my mother had a rather odd pregnancy, after 10 years of trying to conceive a second child, it appeared hopeless, and when in fact she did become pregnant, many of the normal "clues" did not manifest and so the doctors thought the fast growing object in her uterus was a tumor and operated. My sister had a difficult time conceiving also. When my (then) husband and I decided to have kids, we settled for a long wait, assuming it could be difficult. Well it wasn't the least bit difficult getting pregnant, and for the first seven months I had a completely uneventful and pleasant pregnancy. Something odd happened during our pregnancy classes though... more odd because I have a notoriously strong stomach for medical stuff, and have been known to eat dinner while watching brain surgery on TV. The films about the delivery were pretty graphic, but that was fine. Then they discussed complications, and the way the doctors dealt with them, and when they talked about turning a baby in the uterus when a baby is breech (for you technical types, an ECV), I became physically ill and had to leave the class. But you know, at the time it just seemed like one of those mood things, maybe I hadn't eaten enough that day, I was fine once we got home, so we dismissed it.

Then as time progressed, it became apparent that my daughter was in a breech position past the point of when she should have dropped down, and then came the discussions about doing an ultrasound to take a look at things, and then about a month before her due date, the conversation about our options. The doctor said that turning the child in a first time pregnancy had somewhat smaller chances of success because the uterus is not as stretched out, but that there was very little reason he could see why we shouldn't give it a try in order to avoid the c-section, which has its own set of risks and a longer recovery. During this entire conversation, and in the reading I had done on my own, I noticed that my entire body seemed to stress and my mind reject the possibility. It honestly terrified me, which is awfully strange for a procedure that was not supposed to hurt and supposed to have very minor risks. My OB-Gyn asked me what I thought and I felt safe telling him this. His answer was "Then we won't do it. I trust a woman to know what's right for her body, and you seem to feel strongly this is not right." He went right into planning the c-section and moved on without any attempt at all to talk me into the ECV. I was so relieved.

Shortcut to the delivery room about a month later. This same woman who couldn't handle the idea of someone pressing on my stomach kept asking for the doctors to let me watch the whole operation. They weren't able to, but I was fully awake and intently listening to the clinks of the tools and the doctors walking me through each step, as they agreed to explain exactly what they were doing out loud for me. My doctor reaches in and I feel the tug as my daugher is delivered from my body, then she is brought over where I can see her face, but meanwhile, the doctors are talking excitedly and I know something is up. She is fine! They say, but I am apparently a pretty deformed gal and they want to videotape my insides now for a medical video. They appropriate the video camera from a somewhat skeptical new Dad, and start to lift out the uterus and fallopian tubes explaining to the future audience that they are looking at a "unicornuate uterus, with a rudimentary horn, and non functioning ovary on one side" which I guess means half my reproductive system is withered in laymen's terms, apparently only 1-2% of women present this way. If you look up this term on google, you see the words "rupture" show up rather often. So good naturedly in the middle of all this, the doc teases me that I can only get pregnant every other month, but at my first followup visit he tells me quite seriously that we are lucky that she fit in the room she had, and that turning her when we had considered it would certainly have ruptured the uterus and we might have lost her, not to mention messing me up pretty good. We talked about how strongly I had felt about not doing it, and he said that over the years, he has learned to always take the mother's intuition seriously, because even if its inexplicable from a scientific perspective, the mother tends to be right. He noted that what particularly clued him in to follow my lead, was that all along I had been totally rational about the pregnancy, treating the whole thing analytically and intellectually, until it came to this one thing, where I reacted totally irrationally based on my feelings rather than on the data we were looking at.

I've had some other really unexplicable experiences of the world that seemed to go beyond the traditional five senses, but to know that trusting my intuition in that moment possibly saved my daughter's life, that is the miracle of the thing Zukav is talking about, aligning our whole selves to listen, to let our soul's voice be heard.

Do you think you've perceived things that go beyond the physical sense of the world? Do you have a way of talking about how you perceived it? Is there any one of the traditional five senses that you find more important to you? Is there one moment that describes the significance?

Hooray! Laughing~Knees is back up!