Do Not Disturb

Following streams of consciousness on the bayou, I celebrate the best feature of the iPhone.

Trichonephila clavipes, the golden silk orb-weaver, or banana spider. Photo by author.

Some in the healing arts profession would say the development of breast cancer is representational of having given too much. They might say it comes to those who have not been putting their own oxygen masks on first. You cannot go on pouring for too long from an empty cup without serious consequences. And whether this holds any truth, metaphor is powerful. Stress does have the power to alter DNA.

Whatever this is I’m dancing with — we shall learn more when we see the pathology reports after my surgery next month — my breast tissue has been doing a lot of complaining. And the body does not lie. I reach with my poet-brain into all the dark corners, groping for truth, searching for connections, trying to listen at a cellular level for what needs to change.

A therapist uses a thin finger to slide her spectacles back up onto the bridge of her nose. They slipped while she was sounding out the word

CO DEEP END DANCE SEE.

Here are the rules:
1. See that you do not lose yourself in your husband/sons/everyone you’ve ever met or ever will.*

2. Do not push your needs aside for others or bottle up your feelings.

3. You should exist as a sovereign nation, never allowing your heart to become
entangled in an intractable way with another.

4. I am to fulfill my own requirements and no one else’s.

The rub? While not being a doormat, also do not be a raging bitch. And beware!
Very little territory exists between these points on the map of a self.

* No need to worry that you might lose yourself in your mother. She can’t come to the phone right now. Or ever. That toggle has been permanently set to “DO NOT DISTURB.”

There are plenty more recommendations, guidelines, warnings, and other conundrums up for consideration:

1. Time is slipping away!

2. Find your purpose. LIVE that purpose.

3. Live your best life and do it now! But don’t let it infringe on anyone else’s. And
forgodssake, don’t sacrifice any of your heart’s truest desires.

Also, an unassuageable truth: Relationships take compromise. They are
comprised of give and take.

Don’t give too much, though. “You’ve been a little adult since you were a child.”

There is also sacred wisdom, passed down through the ages in holy texts, in languages like rivers from all over the world that run together, and flow to to sea. I’ve dipped my toes into some of these, as well. Duality is a sickness, a false illusion. We are all One.

There are so many contradictory messages thrumming in the mix.

Spend it all. Give with your whole heart. Do not go through life guarded. But also: Protect your energy; keep it for yourself. Watch out for vampires.

Which is it? Be present, don’t worry about the future. Carpe diem. Or: Life is short. Work backwards from regret.

A tag on a tea bag once told me that, “When God made time, He made enough of it.”

“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver asks us. And while I’m wondering, I run across this:

“The revolution will be led by well rested people.” — Tricia Hersey

How confusing.

It’s too complicated, so I am forced to follow my own intuition. I decide to stay home a while, swearing allegiance only to the hourly motions of being Human in the simplest possible terms. Taking care of oneself is a full time job. I will spend my wild and precious life chopping vegetables and soaking in epsom salt baths. I will keep my phone on Do Not Disturb, and speak only to dogs.

While I wait for the delivery of potentially life-changing news, I find myself operating in very binary modes. Here in liminality, it’s often either foggy headed numbness, or all out panic. I move through the interstitial space of knowing things can’t stay like they were, but not quite sure what I am transitioning into. I wander across territories of the in-between, no longer unaware of the problem brewing beneath my skin, but not yet doing anything about it.

And I walk in the forest. Here, I can breathe.

The dogs and I make our way through the winding paths, moving amongst huge stands of Saw Palmetto. Their green fronds fan out, open like waiting hands, receiving the light. The stalks are thick with blue-black berries this time of year — heavy enough to bow their heads.

A feral hog is scared into the brush by our approaching footsteps. Between us are two feet, eight paws and four hooves, if you count the hog. We do. S/he is one of us.

There is much grunting and breaking of low-hanging branches as s/he rumbles off, slipping through a tangle of vines we could never penetrate without a sharp and metal object, disappearing between trees that still stand upright, though long dead.

Even in death, these stately giants graciously host at least twenty other life forms — several species of vines, squirrels, ferns, mosses, many different kinds of birds, ants, termites, ticks, and who knows how many microscopic organisms, all living for today. Occupied. Do Not Disturb. Some of them have whole other trees growing out of them. Some are hollowed out, and provide temporary housing. Perhaps they are worth more to these woods dead than alive. They certainly haven’t stopped contributing.

The little dog strains at her leash, ready to take on the hog many times her weight. The big one runs free, always twenty paces ahead. We hear echoes of the beast long after it has been folded back into the secrets of the forest. For the next hour, I startle at every snapping twig, and the movement of every bird.

Yellow butterflies alight on the trail just ahead of us, wearing thin skin, no more than a slight membrane. They move through the world like liquid sunshine, fluttering, dreamlike, in a slant of new morning light. Below our feet/paws/hooves is the decomposing firmament of the Earth, more heavenly to me than any celestial body. It is a true foundation. Something I trust emphatically. Our passage across the drying, fallen leaves stirs dust motes that mingle in the air and are inhaled, blurring the boundaries between us and this place.

I reach across a complex web with someone serious sitting at its center, holding the whole world together with fragile strands of silk. I’m careful not to disturb the fine, silvery threads, spun by one who moves soundlessly towards the smell of me, tentatively lifting one leg, then another, edging in my direction. Her legs look like porcupine quills and span five inches. I work to gather the berries, dropping small handfuls into a sack with one eye on the spider.

The little dog reaches to taste a few berries for herself. It’s hard to trust that her instincts are correct after the way she just tried to run after the hog. Does she know what’s good for her? Do I?

“No, Mabel,” I say, erring to the side of caution. She shows me the whites of her eyes.

The sounds of industry grinds on forever in the background, never far enough from the peace of the forest. Is nothing sacred? I curse at the trash floating in the bayou, insulted that my eyes must be drawn to this, away from all the beauty surrounding it. I curse the forever-plastic that will move downstream, to the ever-widening dead zone in the gulf, where it will choke fish that still make a living beyond the agricultural run-off that has caused the ocean to fall ill. We made this mess. I am ashamed to be part of a race that would do this.

A thorny tentacle of greenbriar is reaching up through the lance-like fronds of the Saw Palmetto. A drop of blood is drawn to the surface of my probing finger, and the sharpness reminds me: Don’t just be a taker. Leave a little thanksgiving for this powerful medicine in return. All I have with me is some water, and a song. Mabel squats down to make an offering of her own.

Carried on the song is lived and breathed gratitude. Humbly, I send it out on my carbon-breath to the plants, who give and give and give without stopping, never pausing for one moment to check the score, or sort out Self from Other. They do not add or subtract tally marks, or attempt to determine which side is winning. They are just over here trying to cope in a polluted world, as codependent as the rest of us.

Farther along the trail I step over scat, filled with whole, undigested blue-black berries, just as Nature intended. The dogs wag their tails, taking stock with their noses, matching the scent to our hog friend.

One of my earliest herbal teachers, Susun Weed, once spoke of the surgical removal of breast cancer in interesting terms that have always stayed with me. To paraphrase, she said that, should the need for surgical intervention arise, a wise woman will also hone the edge of herself. If one must go under the knife, she must also learn to be the cutting edge, to grasp it herself, and cut from her life that which has grown out of bounds, shearing off anything that no longer serves.

Yellow sycamore leaves the size of my head drift slowly down from on high. Some get caught up in spiderwebs, others tangle in deadwood. I contemplate Autumn— the season, as it relates to a year — this one, that I am earnestly ready to throw on the compost heap, and, on a grander scale, the Autumn of a lifetime. We all want to live forever in the verdant, new growth of spring, or to relish the full ripeness of summer, but in truth, all life is born from rot. Before tender shoots of green can burst forth, decay and darkness must hold the seeds.

Back home, I put the berries up in a solvent, and shake the brew. The alcohol turns the color of a bruise. In several weeks, I will decant it, return the berries to the Earth, and take the medicine into my body.

Ask not what a plant can do for you,
but what you can do for the Green Nations.

Just try not to fuck things up too badly.

Last night I dreamt I’d been hired to hold babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Nothing more. Just hold them.

Now that’s a perfect job for me! I thought on waking, slowly opening my eyes to the knowledge that I’ve been searching for a greater purpose. Is there a way to become a Certified Baby Holder? Do I need credentials?

Spending time, skin to skin, with tiny, fresh people. Untainted, unguarded. Raw and open. This could be my best life.

The desire to help others was born in my blood. Once upon a time, in an effort to keep the rent paid as a single mother, I even turned this tendency into a way to make a living. I earned official accreditations. Certified Worthiness hung on my wall in a frame, signed by higher powers of authority. I found a sense of purpose in this, and gave deeply of myself at work (and at home) for years and years. Whether I was exhausted and sleep deprived, heartbroken or traumatized, I kept going. No matter what was happening in my personal life, I kept showing up.

Before long, this cost me my own well being. This is the great paradox of being a health care provider (and a mother). Some pursuits may levy too high a tax. Though acts of service are conceived with the best intentions, some of the altruistic urges of our dearest hearts can ask too much of us. The needs of others can become invasive, and run roughshod over our lives like a cancer.

Over the last several years, I have taken down all the shingles I once worked so hard to hang. First, I retired my midwifery license, then sold my herbal business. The neon OPEN signs are darkened now. “No one is available to take your call.”

Do not disturb the one
who is straining herself out,
separating matter from the menstruum

Life chews us all up, and spits out the medicine.

Cortisol rises at ungodly hours and disturbs my sleep. I wake with my heart pounding, and adrenalin coursing through my veins. All the things I can’t process in my waking life lie waiting for me during these witching hours. I have watched the clock changing from 3 to 4 to 5 for too many mornings in a row now.

Pollution disguises the sky with an anemic light, which peers around edges of the bedroom curtains. It’s hard to determine if it’s still the dark of night, or the first hints of morning. The glare of the city splits the difference. I lie still, pinned to the bed by dogs. Drifting in and out, my sleep stays close to the surface, bringing the strangest of dreams in its wake. Pulling them back apart when I wake is like trying to unscramble eggs.

Begrudgingly, throughout the night, I reach over to find out if it’s a reasonable time to rise. Why do I need to affirm this with something outside of myself? I push the button that illuminates the face of an analog clock, carefully chosen so as not to introduce any more electricity or glowing light into the room, and to keep my phone out of the equation of sleep. I ponder what it would be like to break free of the whole construct, and not measure out one’s days and nights in this way. Would I continue sleeping, or choose to get up if I didn’t know the hour? How have we all gotten so far away from following the rhythm of own bodies?

Dismantle time. Dwell in caves. Track the movement of seasons only by the ripening of berries, the rise and fall of temperature, and which fish are swimming upriver.

When I lean in and listen, this is what my cells seem to be asking of me.

This has been a year of multiple health crises and too much traveling. The combination has been brutal; it has stretched me too far, and scattered my energies. I am wired and tired. My social batteries are in the red zone. I need grounding. I need Home. I need a place to hold me. Nothing more, just hold me.

It’s been ten days now since I’ve arranged my face for anyone else to see. It’s just too much work, shoring up levees against a rising tide. I am not fit for public consumption at the moment.

Dear Google, Please explain how grounding rods work.

Curious minds never rest. I poke around, and discover poets running around in electrician costumes, publishing great works on the internet.

I read elegies about stray electricity. There are whole sonnets dedicated to discussions on the best tools of the trade, and what is needed to get the job done, and ballads about how deeply to drive the rod for adequate protection from lightening strikes. “Be sure to allow the conductor the proper amount of slack,” they say.

I remember seeing my mother asleep once
Her jaw hanging open
Thirsty for something
unquenched
Her mouth, filled with silver, lay open
Slack-jawed in a silent scream

The dictionary offers more poetry: The difference between Levee, Levied, Levity and Leavened?

Levee: Embankment to stop an overflow

Levied: To call up, enlist, mobilize….[young] persons into service. (This one is complicated. Please don’t try to decipher the word “service.” There is killing involved, and an alleged duty thereof.)

It can also mean the imposing of tax, as in: “a new tax could be levied on industry to pay for cleaning up contaminated land.”

Levity: Feeling an inappropriate lack of seriousness, lack of steadiness. Lightness; not heaviness: the quality by which any body has less weight than another.

Leavened: Made light by aerating, as with yeast

Yes, single-celled organisms and other life forms do march on
invisibly
working to make the world a lighter place.

But please,
Do Not Disturb
me.

I am over here, sticking my hands into the mess,
finger-painting a masterpiece.
I’m trying to remember a simpler time
And can’t

Juneau and Mabel, in the woods north of Lafayette, Louisiana.

Sources:

Trichonephila clavipes - Wikipedia

Trichonephila clavipes (formerly known as Nephila clavipes), commonly known as the golden silk orb-weaver, golden silk…

en.wikipedia.org

Oxford Languages

https://languages.oup.com

› dictionaries

https://www.definitions.net