no more to say

[new video and stills from the 4th infusion, including a view of my studio window from the chemo suite - to come] until then…

It's OVER!!!!!!!! OVER OVER OVER !! ! now the nitty-gritty next two weeks of down time. Funny # 1 & 2 didn't have this dread fatigue like # 3, and doc says # 4 will follow suit, sleeping way too much will double efforts with Qi-Gong breathing walking and rejuvenating! 

there is little left to say that won't be simply chronicling "suffering this, and suffering that"—how we do our best, keep quiet when that is the most helpful and move on with grace and now a long cycle of true self-healing begins- the procedures and treatments behind, but the deeper life long habit breaking and new patterns that will evolve, emerge and enliven will become my daily work. Reflection, exercise, diet investigation, meditation, cooking for others, cooking up my life's intention, of right-livlihood, so that one day community change and the vows I make to help others may realize- moving on, speaking less, listening more, practising patience which is the remedy for anger. 

The nurses sang to me today and blew bubbles, "Hit the road Jack and don't you come back no more no more no more no more- 4 x 'no more's that was the charm of the spell. 

I PROMISED them they wouldn't see me again!


I'm on the ROAD - Jack! The road to a cancer free future, with lots of work on fearlessness, body-love, a glorious new morning awaits us each day, may I be of benefit to each of you here on this page and circling that out then a benefit to everyone you know on your community circle and the friends of friends, and each of you a benefit to me, it reverberates like concentric circles rippling out from a stone of love tossed in the lake of stillness, tossed in the lake of chaos, a lake of action, a lake of withdrawal, the circling with nothing left out not even cancer, or the end of cancer. Not even chemo or the END OF CHEMO! Celebration. elation, emancipation!

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Dear All- I have reorganized the comments window so it is much easier to leave comments- than before! I discovered an error I'd made in the settings pane. I hope to see more dialogue and stories of your own that my postings bring up! Blessings to each of you and prayers!
Elizabeth

Maze Day • Night Walk

For a dear friend and father— Dr. Fred Stricker, beloved by all having had the privilege to meet him.

this post is in honor of Meredith's dad, who left us in 2010, and we celebrate his life today May 18, his birthday, AND the 32nd anniversary of the first performance collaboration between M and I -
Night Walk-
I leave you with the Navajo Shooting Star Chant as I prepare fr the next and final INFUSION this Friday:

[round each bundle of feathers or plants, depending on form of ceremony. When the bundles are ready (and the number of the bundles increases with each night of the rite, five on the first, seven on the second, nine on the third, etc., and there is usually an uneven number) the Medicine Man takes up a bundle and presses it to the patient’s right foot, singing as he does it, and pulling the slip-knotted cord loose at the same time. He then takes another bundle and does the same on the other foot, then on the knees, thighs, breast, back, hands, shoulders, head and mouth. When this is finished, he takes up all the cords together and draws them from one hand to the other over these different parts of the patient’s body and sometimes waves the feathers round and over the patient’s head. The patient drinks an infusion of herbs and inhales some incense and the rite is over. The details vary but the form is always similar.

The body painting at night I have seen only in the Star Chant. It was on the fourth night and ended the ceremony of Hotchonji as they sang all night**, which always happens at the end of any ceremony, even a short one. The fact of a night’s wakefulness is most important for the patient’s healing.]

Please sing** like this for me—and if you find yourself awake at night, you'll know your wakefulness has a purpose… thank you each and everyone for all your deep caring, watchfulness and kind loving wishes!

My Bosom Buddies

This morning has glory all over it!

japanese silk print

morning glory pattern

jaguar woman print

Jo Self, Morning Glories, painted from the Dalai Lama's Garden

Well, I'm finally seeing the crack of dawn through the velvet night of cancer, ready to plan for the future, begin the return to living in the world at large, all is being completely reinvented, and it is glorious! **
[chem-3 fallout was co-mingled with the highest teachings of meditation in the Mahamudra retreat last week-end, nothing will ever be the same]


I'm feeling much much stronger than ever in months and months today] and-so I stand up, back to the future— I have had a dream to have a breakfast cafe all my life, and a few weeks ago when I was lifting back into life from chemo # 2, I had a true vision one morning of the whole enterprise in vivid detail display itself in my "mind's eye" as the saying goes, and so in an almost mystical chemo-floatingness, I drifted down stairs, found Frederic outside in the crystal light of morning, sawing wood for his beautiful home improvement project and said simply: "I want to start a breakfast restaurant." He said with out a single heart-beat of hesitation "OK, honey". Since then, every indication, image, and most importantly every important person in my large circle of important people to my life's structure have given me complete unconditional enthusiastic support. I have 4 weeks to complete my business plan. I have a Letter of Intent from a landlord for the lease space 2 blocks from our house in a very thriving neighborhood (a neighborhood without breakfast or coffee spot)— and the blessing and generosity and backing of two very dear old friends who want to partner as investors!  So many blessings continue to reign and rain down on me. I am so humbled.  The morning glory flower is a tenacious plant, enduring- even thriving in nearly any condition. Wild or cultivated, blossoms open for a single day with brilliant displays of azure sky and white-hot specks of sunlight in their middle. Impermanence perfected!
This entry is dedicated to all you who have endured the cutting, the chemicals, and burns, and are still dreaming, still thrivingly alive, still planning for the future all the while KNOWING more deeply than any other truth, that 'TODAY' is all that is ever given or ever needed, to BE today is ALL, nothing left out! •• 
I dedicate my efforts to realize this dream of mine to create this eatery in which to enjoy the freshness of the dawning day, beholding the morning each new day in it's glory offers us—to all of YOUR dreams, YOU are each my very special blossoming bosom buddies!  Bless you each and all.


Following is a tea recipe shared with me from my friend Anne T. it will be on the menu at MoRNING GLoRY!
Thank you Anne!

The Power of Four

Renee was not greedy with her Essiac Tea recipe. The following four main herbs make up the natural remedy tea for curing cancer:

1. Burdock Root. Traditionally used to:

* Help reduce mucus

* Maintain a healthy gastrointestinal tract

* Stimulate a healthy immune response

* Improve weak digestion

* Sweat out toxins through the skin

* As a diuretic for waster retention

2. Slippery Elm. 

Contains large amounts of tannins and mucilages that are believed to help dissolve mucus deposits in tissue, glands and nerve channels.

3. Sheep Sorrel. Used to:

* Cool the body

* Create sweating and detoxification through the skin

* Nourishes the glandular system

* As a diuretic to maintain healthy kidney and urinary functions

4. Indian Rhubarb Root. 

* Acts as a gently laxative and helps purge the liver of toxic buildup and waste. 

* Helps to neutralize acids due to indigestion. 

* Its malic acid also carries oxygen to all parts of the body.

* Aids in healing and promoting a positive, balancing effect upon the whole digestive system.

Making the tea yourself is quite easy. 

Renee recommended 1 oz. of tea with 2 oz. of water on a daily basis. Furthermore, you don't have to have cancer to benefit from Essiac tea. It is a great preventative measure and a superb detoxifier. 

CHEMO-sabe

K just called and asked me "how are you CHEMO-SABE?"! This is interesting since  when looked up what kimosabe means and according to Lone Ranger mythology- Tonto refers to the Lone Ranger as Kimosabe, meaning "trusted -scout".

Trusted Scout—

On the trail and it is a craggy steep out under clear sky, pocked with white clouds and shimmering sun. Bird calls closing up for night, fainting shadows along the ever greening elm saplings and lilac scent enough to sicken the weak.

I realize talking with F this afternoon, I have "chemo", not "cancer". 

Patience Patience—trusted scout on the range where I'm on the look out for small prideful moments that shut down the body/mind communication, let me drink it ALL in… I won't after all, have "CHEMO" for much longer!

Monday's realization, in the midst of deepest moments of fatigue which I call weakness, a very very subtle aversion to the body and then immediate sense this thought/feeling is like a miniature self-betrayal.

I instantly regret the arising of not wanting to be in the body- escape mentality- when sitting with the body, holding forth, gently cradling my own body with my body the mind eases and breath flows and there is a landscape of forgiveness and endurance- a welling up- maybe something like a runners second-wind? Place the breath in front of the body resting with the rise and fall, nothing more nothing less. No where to go- no where to come from, rising and falling just the breath in this body and feeling the poison working its mystery. Not even days and nights have boundaries when all is breathing. sleep from 4-11 wake from 11-4 sleep from 4-7 wake from 7-7,

sleep from …wake from …from ?…

eating red cabbage and cucumber I feel true joy.

White Tulips opening & INFUSION # 3

My lilacs begin their perfuming, as the white tulips planted 15 years ago arise and open- they are double petaled and we've never seen them bloom before, yesterday on my dear god-sister Cordelia's 50th birthday, in the brilliant sunlight and heat of the day, they began to open…  !! Happy Birthday dear one!


Today my wonderful and true friend Joan accompanied me to the 3rd infusion and we had a fantastic time. Such is the depth and compassion of true friendships where one watches their friend drinking in poisons that will sustain many growing seasons to come. 


In the infusion/chemo suite, it was quiet. Some persons there for serious bone-marrow infusions, and these people look very weak, pale, slow, and papery, and yet there words are full and strong and they say they are "good", and they ask about the nurses, and then there is the same man i saw have his first treatment three weeks ago and already his hair completely gone,he nods to me as he wheels his metal caddy toward the bathroom, and he looks relieved and so much more peaceful than before, he's going it alone doesn't bring a partner, the nurse asks him about his pets. The nurses are so kind, and have many tricks to soothe the worry, and their touch is very refined—I can't hear the man responding, his voice so soft, Joan and I on the other hand, laughing an carrying-on! But i send each person including the nurses peace and warm loving waves of softness, and I remind myself to look directly in each person eyes, and when I do, they smile- people love to be seen, like I'm looking through the camera at these flowers and I see there eyes, and hearts and they smile back- here they are, may they make you also smile to see them. &


May we grow old into these gardens of our lives with the same magic and defiance as these perfect petals from ancient tulips bulbs planted so long ago. Old roses, lilacs, carnations, lupines, and peonies—so much greening, and today my teacher tells me: "You are the perfect person to have cancer." I take this as a high compliment, and thank him!

SUNLIGHT

Light • 

it's free——fill your tank with it, your tank, meaning your body. The thing that carries 'you' around, at least that is the way we have agreed to think of this bag of vessels, and sinew, skin, hair, bile, blood, piss, bone and a multitude of various kinds of tissues, all coming from the same source materials, same elements that are inextricably related to LIGHT- Using language conventionally because if we couldn't agree to invent a labeling system, like language to I'dentify ourselves with something in common, like bodies/language, how else could we get along? So calling you, your 'tank', I'm stretching the linguistic boundary only a little, because most of us are also moving around in something we have created just as conceptually as our 'tanks' / bodies, only this body is vaguely more removed in the conventional sense, a little faster, sharper, harder, but never-ever shinier, called an "automobile".  ones own movement.

Auto/from the greek: αὐτο- auto- "self, one's own"


I'm thinking of how we have this SUN on our side. I'm thinking of the word:  

"Corona"

I'm also thinking of my meditation this morning.  As we sit… contemplating…calming the body formation which is dependent upon the breath…absorbing into the breath deeper and deeper, more peace, more stillness, not for peace or stillness sake, even tho peace and stillness are really really nice - the calming is a precursor to LOOKING. Looking at what? Exactly! what ever you THINK you see, is not it. 
Continuing…to sit means becoming, Still like a mountain—Peaceful like a sleeping baby—Alert like a sentinel. 
Then very slowly arising, an understanding  more or less of freedom coming through this morning of my recent stressful relationship to this tank/body, in that I keep thinking this body actually belongs to me. It belongs, if  to anyone, then it's to the SUN. I've simply borrowed it, for a second. The ego is a curious little phenomena, it is for all intents and purposes nothing more than a thief. It knows it doesn't have anything of it's own, and so it goes around appropriating ALL things as it's own. In fact, that is one of the ancient teachings, maybe not so far as to identify the ego as a thief, but that one must be on the alert, able and willing to apply mindfulness, and use mental pliancy to catch the self appropriating ones spiritual practice even, with selfishness. Nothing is more concerned with it's sense of self than ego. 


Metta like a mountain and where the first drop of water condenses on the granite wall and lets lose into gravity's fall, joining with the next and next until a stream of likeness forms a cascade into a pool, and from there a spring travels under the wide frozen glacial field to emerge in the wood and continues down through gravity's marsh emptying into a lake, and spilling its bank to form a river, before melting into the delta and feeding all manner of industry, waterfowl, micro-organisms, plant-life, reflecting high above the white streaming clouds on their way back to the mountain top. Then effortlessly gathering momentum the delta widens and finally the shaping earth cuts a channel toward the bay and one can sense the rising and falling of the breath like the distant surf, and tidal surge, the tidal receding, the ocean calling the water , the sun and moon calling the ocean. Other-worldly… and all the while the water is METTA, for every living cell, no longer held in check with boundary of the body- cellular, stellar, and shelter all in one. Until you look deeper and you see, there is no "out-there", there is no- "in-here". What death then? Evaporation, condensation, the mountain, the river, the delta, the sea, THE BORROWER, who always gives back what has been borrowed, with interest, fill your tanks with the freedom of the light, give yourself back it's ALL free-(dumb), as in not really speakable.


Cancer treatments with LIGHT-photosynthesizing cancer

what Eye•dentity   •  

what dualism?

And now, I head out to physical therapy. to work on un-freezing my shoulders. Isn't it just hilarious to think of the body as a body after being a mountain, river, delta, ocean, sun? But non-the-less, today marks exactly 6 weeks, the smack dab epi-center of my CURE. Tomorrow high-noon, (SUN at it's apex) the 3rd of 4 infusions begins up in the SKYLINE/Franklin Kaiser Permanente building the very one I am looking at out my studio window this bright sun-filled morning.

May you shine today like the free solar-power of the sun that you have never not been, and may your dazzling light be reflected back out through your borrowed auto-mobile in perfect brilliance!