Music Medicine

I remember when I first heard Glenn Gould's Bach variations. It has been years, but it was a transcendent moment. Oh man, that was a revelation. I couldn't stop listening. Honestly it was almost obsessive.

Just the other day I read that at last music as medicine has been scientifically documented. Where did I see that? Somewhere in the Post or maybe the New York Times? I don't remember the source but it was valid. Certain sounds, rhythms, melodies and harmonies, when administered in the proper dose, bring measurable healing to the listener.

I knew it already, though certainly have never had the chops to prove it scientifically. Currently my medicine involves a lot of Eric Clapton music which is very odd for me. I've had his unplugged CD for years but barely ever gave it a listen. Now it's on a continual repeat loop on the ipod. Wow. That Townes Van Zandt song I quoted yesterday really opened up something in me that has been hungering for sweet guitars and gruff voices. I would never have guessed.

Though I can't explain exactly what it's doing, I can say for certain that Eric, Townes and others like Steve Winwood for instance, are exactly what the doctor would order for me at this moment in time, if I had a Doctor of Music, that is.

Thanks Eric, et al. Bravo!! And ... encore, please?

Take it Upstairs

One happy reunion that was the result of leaving behind the Wiccan path is that I got God back. No, not the sociopathic guy with the white beard who judges us and smites whomever He wants. Not the guy who makes promises or tells people they are "chosen." I never believed in that god. I'm talking about the great divine realm, beyond the beyond. God, according to the cosmology of Reya (and many many great thinkers throughout history) is formless, unnameable, unknowable by the mind, impossible to describe or explain, except for brief moments in the heart.

In Reclaiming we had the Goddess. What that means depends on who you talk to. Reclaiming was an anarchistic tradition so there tended to be many different opinions, but I think it's safe to say that many of us believed the Goddess is literally the earth, a living being from whom we are born and to whom we shall return once this earthly dance of life is over and done with. True, dat. I began then and continue now to worship the incomparably beautiful, luscious Mama Gaia. Wow. I also resonate with the way my shamanic godfather, Ghenghis Khan saw the divine cosmos: he worshipped the Eternal Blue Sky as father, and Earth as mother. Nice, eh?

In Reclaiming we worshipped not only the Earth and the Moon (all wiccans worship the Moon), but also many different pantheons of deities. We were a wide-open, inclusive tradition so those of us following that path were free to pick and choose our favorite deities from all the mythological traditions we knew about. I loved (still do) Bridgid, goddess of poetry, smithcraft and healing. In fact I dedicated myself to this goddess and still abide by that heart-felt commitment.

And yes, there are gods who are a part of the pantheons, a number of whom are my dear brothers. But God, the name I place lightly on the idea of the great overarching formlessness and wisdom, was not generally included in the Reclaiming model of the cosmos. I'm sure there were some who included God, but divine formlessness was SO not our focus.

When I'm confused, stuck, sad, grasping at straws or caught in one of my many emotional vortices, like I was yesterday and the day before, if I can remember to open to that thing that makes everything else more than a sum of its parts, (another way I sometimes think of God) there is always richness and wisdom available. Indeed I wandered the streets doing my shamanic thing, and I dreamed hard, but eventually I remembered to take it upstairs, to open to the divine formlessness. As always, all I can say is: wow.

I know you are formless and have nothing like a personality, God. And either you have no name or every name ever spoken, but please allow me to address you intimately, as if you had form and personna, OK? I want to say thank you for your and wisdom and multiversal love. Seriously, thanks.


To live is to fly
Low and high,
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the sleep out of your eyes
So shake the dust off of your wings
And the tears out of your eyes

Townes Van Zandt


Capitol Hill landscape reflected in high contrast from the side of one of those ubiquitous white vans.

Subterranean Ethics

Union Station. I love this place, the setting of a recent, vivid dream.

According to the cosmology of Reya, one of the reasons the citizens of my society buy so much junk is because many people feel, at a soul level, completely impoverished. We are rational, sensible, we live in the "real" world, i.e. a mundane reality in which anything that has not been rationally explained is instantly dismissed. It is a life of spiritual impoverishment to reject mystery so absolutely.

When I mentioned Mercury retrograde to someone yesterday, she rolled her eyes. She wasn't being mean or consciously insulting me, no way, but she was inferring that I'm a nut for following the movement of the planets even though people from the North Pole to the South Pole, throughout the entire history of humankind, have taken meaning from the sky just the way I do.

I get that kind of reaction all the time here in Washington DC, though I'm told that in Taos, for instance, I would be among like-minded folks, which begs the question, Why am I here??

The world I live in is so interesting, multi-dimensional, colorful and textural - especially compared to the stripped down world of mundane reality. My theory is that rational folks have intense cravings for spiritual/mystical/psychic richness just like I do. The problem is that their world view does not allow for inner richness which is why they can be convinced that a new car or success in academia (see Rebecca Clayton's comment) or political triumph or yet another pair of shoes will somehow satisfy their spiritual hunger. For others, this paradigm does not fit (see NanU's comments).

Whatever.

Living in a complicated multiverse such as I do, within the cosmos of A Very Rational Society, presents me with certain problems. There are so many more boundary issues I have to deal with than most folks. For instance, a few years ago I learned how to not be so codependent with the Dead - a healthy boundary that most of the people I interact with would never take time to consider. Why would they? They don't believe in ghosts, ancestral spirits or disembodied beings of any kind.

It's an interesting dilemma I would never trade for a new car, believe me. Some days it gives me pause for thought, however. Wouldn't life be simpler if I believed, in my heart of hearts, that what I really yearn for is a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes? A life like that would depend mostly on making money, something I've never much been interested in (or good at). But if I thought Manolo Blahnik was the answer to my deepest desires, I bet I could figure out how to get my hands on a pair or two.

I'm a mystic, but a skeptical mystic, and some days I wonder.

News flash: After posting this, I went to see the Sufi acupuncturist who, after careful observation and deep listening, placed 6 needles at various places on my body. He also offered some sage words about the life of spirit - he always does. After my treatment, the Poor Little Me mood of self pity was completely dissolved. All hail Chinese medicine! Oh yeah.

Many Splendors

As a shaman, when I'm bewildered or overwhelmed, as I was this morning after being drenched in vivid dreams last night, I have to get out of the hermetically sealed cube I call home, out into the world. I have to look at the sky, listen to the birds, watch for augers. I believe that what people call the "natural world"** contains everything I need to help process and (maybe) eventually understand whatever it is that I'm confused about. There are clues everywhere, believe me. All I have to do is pay attention.

Sure enough, the frilly angel wing clouds, the robins singing their tiny asses off (they are so LOUD), the green/gold light of early summer in the early morning, and the slightest, sweetest breeze, neither hot nor cold, helped me gather my wits about me. Thank god for this beautiful city. Wow.



Love is a monumental power, a force of nature, I think. The image of Cupid and his arrow is so apt, for me at least. It describes the unpredictable nature in which love flows through the heart.

Right now I am feeling love for someone I don't even know, a friend of a good friend, who has just endured surgery for cancer. I've been sending this friend of a friend a steady stream of Reiki, and holding her in my mind and heart, "seeing" her well and whole and happy. I'm doing this more for my good friend because she is in such distress over her friend's condition, she doesn't have the wherewithall to keep the faith. Keeping the faith for this person I've never met has opened my heart in a profound way. I am blown away by the experience.

The above is not the only kind of love flowing through my heart at the moment. It's kind of a lot to deal with! Hence the walk this morning, with angels passing by overhead and rivers of clouds under foot.

A friend is absolutely correct when he says love is scary. I've been teasing him about this but I'm going to stop straightaway. It is scary because it is so powerful, and so beyond our control. As usual, all I can say is: wow.


**What part of the world is unnatural, eh? We build houses, but so do bees, beavers, groundhogs, wasps and many other animals. We don't call their houses unnatural, but we think of what we build as ... what? ... otherworldly??

There is no spoon

Took a bunch of pics while walking through Eastern Market yesterday.

We mean well, mostly. But what is it about our species that always makes us go too far?

A client came to her session in tears yesterday. Her daughter has just been diagnosed as "on the spectrum," some weird jargon for slightly autistic. This client loves her little girl so much. Of course she was freaked out. I worked with this client when she was pregnant so you could say I've known her daughter since before her birth. She's a little character, that's for sure.

In a way it's great that people are looking more deeply into what makes each of us who we are. But I really detest the pathologizing of humanity. The criteria for what is "normal" becomes narrower and narrower as every little quirk gets categorized as a symptom of some disorder or another.

My learning disorder (I self-diagnosed a few years ago) probably has an official name, though I don't know what it is. When confronted with lots of information, I become overwhelmed and can not distinguish one thing from another. For instance if my housemate puts the OJ in the fridge on the left side, when I'm used to finding it on the right side, I literally can not see it. I'll say, "Where's the OJ?" Immediately afterwards, I am humiliated when he points to the OJ, sometimes right in front of my face. The Sufi acupuncturist says that my "sorting" capacity is weak. That's a nice way to put it. I take in so much, but then I am overwhelmed by it all.

It would have been beneficial if, as a kid, these kinds of little problems had been noticed and addressed. The Reya Disorder accounts for a lot of my behaviors, like my aversion to places like Costco or Macy's. There's just too much going on in those places. I freeze when confronted with All That Stuff, then I turn tail and run away as fast as possible. It may even account for my alleged introversion, who knows? That said, I am SO GLAD I was not pathologized as a kid. I had enough going on without having to carry the burden of some label.

It's ironic, isn't it, that no one is normal anymore? We all have our little oddities, eh? Here at the beginning of the new millenium, we are all diagnosable. Is that sad? Or funny? Both? You tell me.

Partners

Woman and her dog on the grounds of the Capitol.

I know it's early; the anniversary of Jake's death isn't until June 30th. Still, I am already reminiscing. The truth is, I miss my dog terribly, but I'm simultaneously grateful for the time I've had alone this past almost-year. Honestly, I am.

That dog was my everything, he really was. He was my roommate, partner, best friend, spiritual community. By the time he died, I depended on him for all emotional needs, I looked to him to fill in all the blank spots in my heart. My god I was in a loop with that dog.

It didn't start that way. I had a partner when Jake came into my life, someone I lived with. I had a big spiritual community in San Francisco, and I also had a couple of great best friends.

One by one, during the thirteen years Jake and I spent together, all of the above fell away. I moved to Washington DC, split up with my partner, left my spiritual community. I'm not sure whether it was Jake stepping up to the plate or whether it was me turning to him every time I suffered another loss. No matter what happened, there he was, ready for a walk or a scratch behind the ears. He was my rock of Gibraltar. He was always there, always.

Which explains why his death was So Tremendously Huge. Still is, in fact.



For the past year, I've lived the life of a solitary in every way possible: unpartnered in love and work, no specific spiritual community, alone in my space. There is no one with whom I've shared an every-day intimacy, no one I check in with on a daily basis. I've had no personal or professional touchstone.

Is this sounding pathetic? I don't feel pathetic, not at all. Another truth is that during the past year, without Jake, I have reached out, connected with others of my own species in ways I haven't for years. Yes I have missed Jake and yes I have felt the loss so acutely. Ouch! But in fact I haven't been any lonelier without him than I was during Jake's final year. And I have had absolutely no interest in getting another dog. None. Zero.

An astrologer told me, once upon a time, that only through partnership would I express my soul's purpose. Hmmmm ... is that right? Did I express my soul's purpose with Jake? And is that all over now so it's OK to be so singularly single? I wonder. I really do.

Portraits

It was a gorgeous day in DC yesterday. Because my last client cancelled, I was able to take a nice walk in the afternoon. For about an hour I sat outside Peregrine Espresso, drinking iced coffee, watching the sky, listening to birds and snips of conversation, and looking at the other people there.

The guys in the above pic are both lost in their own thoughts. At first glance it seemed clear to me that the man on the left was thinking happy thoughts while the guy on the right did not share the same good mood. Their expressions never changed the whole time I was there, which made me eventually wonder whether their facial expressions were connected in any way to what was happening in their hearts. Maybe the guy on the left is so used to smiling that he looks that way even in the foulest of moods. The guy on the right might be happy as a clam, but in the habit of frowning. Who knows?

Even just a year ago, I was almost completely uninterested in digitally capturing human faces. All my photos were of trees, sky, animals, clouds, architecture. I didn't notice people so much, and certainly did not get interested in whether or not their facial expressions conveyed their moods. I wonder what it means that, since Jake died, I've become so much more interested in humanity? I've tried repeatedly to second guess myself about this, but so far I'm completely bewildered by the shift. What do you think?

I decided not to photograph the face of the woman studying the Principles of Evidence (portrait below). She looked so unhappy. If I was in law school, I bet I would be similarly vexed. Or maybe she's just used to looking unhappy, or perhaps needs a new pair of glasses. Who knows? Do you?