And all my other jobs

I’m starting to see significant change in one patient I’ve been working with for just under a year, this last remedy finally hitting something really deep and substantial. I was beginning to wonder if she was finding anything of value out of the treatment, and she tells me she’s been getting well and not even realizing it until she considers the absence of pain. She tells me, after I question her about the specifics, that she’s experienced none of the pains she complained of, after taking the last dose.

So that’s a reassuring thing.

Ironically, the remedy’s Aurum.

When I was learning all about the basics, Dr. John warned me that the patients I would receive would all push my buttons in some way. The patients who will seek me out will do so because they feel some kind of affinity for me, some kind of alignment. There is no way to know what that could be, and you have to be on guard never to confuse a dynamic which builds out of this potential friction or camaraderie with what you actually need to consider in order to understand the patient and the case properly. The patients you see will all teach you something you must know for your own survival, whether that interaction is good or bad. Dr. John told me all his early patients were suffering from severe psychosis (they were all schizophrenic); all my patients are potential cancer victims, and many have even sought me out because of the disease or because they want the means to ensure they will survive the disease. These are the patients who fall into the “fired” category, as well. The ones who desperately needed arsenicum, whose physical pathology masked disease that was so much deeper and so much more destructive on a mental level. Often when the physical pain cleared their mental symptoms worsened, a bad sign but one that can be misinterpreted in these cases. Most patients are thrilled when their presenting complaint has been removed: these ones will want you dead for making them face themselves (whether that means their own fears, their own misgivings, their own self-hatred).

I can definitely see myself in them, their own raw fear and self-loathing. Their lack of faith about the world, their lack of trust of all things. When I am very vulnerable, very ill, I can feel this way easily, and it can do me in. Now I tell myself that even if I can understand that the reaction is not personal, I may want to cut my interactions off completely, because I’m not likely to do this patient much good. Other times the interaction must end because the patient is unwilling to bring their own “best selves” to the process. They are afraid of facing that. Afraid of opening. Afraid of trusting themselves to who they really are.

So I can’t help them, and I can never show them how to get well.

These patients are the ones I have to let go.

This patient, the Aurum, has been a surprise to me, in that the good response we’re seeing is something I’d overlooked as an option. I didn’t think of the Aurum because she wasn’t depressed, wasn’t suicidal. Just resentful, and stressed out because of it (but the work, the nobility, the responsibility of it all did not stop). There is a mirror image of me in her, somewhere…and I neglected to see it. But I’m glad it was finally seen.

Nikita, home from his travels; “J” at the market

About a month ago, I spent the afternoon with my “adopted” father Nicky, who had just came back from Paris and Venice about two weeks before only to feel depressed to be in the very mediocre Toronto.

I met Nicky in class, of course. I was one of his students. I walked into his course by accident (actually, I was auditing, and I decided I’d follow a particularly good looking man into a classroom just to see what I could see). I wish I could say I fell head over heels for Nicky, and never thought twice about that good looking man, but that’s not how it happened. In any case, Nicky’s one of my best friends, and we try to get together for lunch or movies or just to go run around the art gallery like children whenever we can.

He is right, Toronto has become mediocre. To stress the point, we went out to lunch at a pretty good restaurant called The House of Parliament (Parliament Street being the street on which it’s located), where we had some excellent food…until the dessert was selected, and Nick felt compelled to compare the creme brulée of Toronto to the crème brulée of Paris. This kind of exercise is, in a word, futile. He was convinced, needlessly, that the custard in the dessert was formed with the use of a custard powder….and neither God nor I could convince him he was comparing a dessert the Parisiens make with triple rich unpasteurized cream and eggs from chickens they keep in the backlot of the restaurant, to which they feed nothing but fresh herbs, earthworms, and fois gras, as tradition dictates, to cream that’s not only been pasteurized and homogenized but thickened with seaweed. Not to mention eggs that come from beakless battery hens loaded one on top of the other by the hundreds, in the back of transport trucks. We are just not going to get the same result, I think. There was not enough wine around for that discussion, but the owner of the restaurant saved the day by offering him a gorgeous slice of bread pudding as a consolation. They became fast friends…and I think that saved the afternoon.

Everyone left happy. I mentioned to Nicky that one must be careful to complain gingerly and with tact…because serving staff have a science of distributing body fluids in a way that makes the word “revenge” far more frightening than it was ever intended to be. I thank goodness, too, that Mr. Restaurant owner decided to take a generous approach to the complaint, rather than an offended one. Then again, who knows? We ate the bread pudding: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

In any case, Nicky was complaining about a crème brulée in a restaurant called The House of Parliament, which was, on that day, an impressive impersonation of an English pub. Filled with lawyers having pork loin for lunch.

Anyway, while we ate (before the drama) we talked about his film class again, and he spoke about his favourite students over the years, people he was very lucky to attract to his classroom. As the school became more and more damnably corporate, he began to lose a lot of the Fine Arts students who opted to take his course in droves, in the past. One solution he came up with was to create a film course focused just on gay film and literary theory. He was surprised this class attracted so many women (I’m not: a place where women can explore the portrayal of sexuality that isn’t your typical Hollywood formula, in front of men who won’t be threatened by it? It’s a wonder he missed that). Anyway, now that he’s officially retired and resting from the ordeal of his political activity at York, I hope he thinks about teaching it again, an option he’s always got if he wants to keep attracting new students in a class so many of them would love–need–to be able to take.

After the lunch we walked out to the Riverdale market, where Nicky had ordered a number of organic goods from the various farmers who come in every week to sell their foods. It was rainy and drizzly, and almost an entire year since our last outing to the market, so I bought him a cup of very rich Mexican cocoa. That’s when we both met “J”. Nicky instantly disliked her, but I talk to anyone at these things, and being with Nicky always puts me in a good mood, so we chatted about the chocolate with the vendor and she asked how I came to know about it’s benefits. I told her what I did for a living and her eyes lit up. She told me she had a radio show at the university’s station and said she’d like to keep in touch, maybe do a feature show on alternative medicine. I gave her one of my business cards and told her to email me if she wanted keep me in mind, but secretly I’d already started to reconsider the possibility all together, every broadcast I’ve ever heard of other practitioners in interviews has always left me furious. I decided I didn’t think I would hear from her again, and ran off to catch up with Nicky, who made comments about the woman’s sanity until I told him she’s a broadcaster who’s interested in interviewing me on her show. Finally impressed, he changed the topic so we could talk about Saskatoon berries and morels, and flirt with the vendors we like.

Lately, after a round of emails about treating J’s cat without a formal diagnosis from a vet (more accurately, my refusal to do so, as well as my insistence on actually examining the kitty myself, once that ddx comes in) I’ve been thinking Nicky was on to something.To keep J from sending me what was beginning to look like a barrage of angry emails, I referred J to another practitioner, a very good one, and wondered if J would ever leave me alone. Naturally my colleague made the same demands, which prompted another round of emails from J, full of apology and attempts at flattery. She thinks I’m a maverick, now, and is more interested in befriending me than ever. She’s got complimentary tickets to a great play as she’s interviewing the actresses in it, and she wants to take me.

I dunno. Maybe.

This is Sicily’s. But this symbol is absolutely everywhere lately. Fittingly.

(image by Roberto Breschi, centro italiano studi vessillologici)

A Few Requests from the Universe

Just last week someone suggested to me that I make my needs far more clear than they’ve been. That I ask for them to be looked after, outright.

And yet everytime I think about them, I’m struck by the resistance my own thoughts form to this approach: I can feel myself reacting to them all as if I were convinced that I’m simply not deserving of these needs.

It’s such a powerful thought that it acts on its own behalf, whenever I’m out to have those needs be met.

So, what can I lose? Except for some comments telling me to “get off my ass and work for these things, just like everyone else does”, and even that is really no loss given that no one reads this blog besides me and maybe one other person, once, that’s nothing.

Here goes, then.

THINGS I NEED, RIGHT NOW (OR very, very soon)

1. Thirty Five to Forty Thousand Dollars.

Enough to pay off debts, with a bit left over.

2. A New Job In A New Town.

Just like David Bowie.
And I want it to be a big, sparkly new town, with a lot of things around me that flash and glimmer, something that makes me want to leave the sanctuary of what I know will be four walls in a tiny womb of a place.
The Job has to be a real one: something I can feel good about doing, where I can use my teaching ability and my ability to write and come up with solutions, and then implement them. I have to feel like people are actually becoming better from what I do, and that I’m actually learning new things all the time.

And the job has to pay me enough so that I can live in my new home, keep myself alive and have access to all the things I need. I’ll need a lot: I want to see the world.

3. Passion.

More than anything, I need that part of me to come back.

4. Health.

Finally, it’s time for this to return as well.

Just for good measure, here’s my Japanese name:

My japanese name is Nakashima (center of the island) Ayumi (walk; deeper meaning: “walk your own way”)

Dr. John and Me

No one knows why events take place in the way they do, they seem random and unrelated and quite often irrelevant or forgettable, when in fact they hinge on some central force in our lives in a way which may never fully reveal itself in its complexity. I’m not sure I know why Dr. John and I are even communicating with each other, but he’s here and he’s been a presence now for a decade…and not always a pleasant one. But I decided to take him on as my personal doctor once I’d studied under him while I was learning, myself.

I have good reasons for this choice, despite the fact that he’s pricey, he’s way the hell out in Peterborough which just adds more expense to the effort, and politically we’re on opposite sides of the spectrum, a place from where we look at each other with a kind of red-eyed fury. Here they are:

1. He’s persistent. I need someone persistent, who could think a bit more creatively than others. He punched out various possibilities for remedies as suggested by Scholten, he pushed Dr. Sankaran around with other ideas for treatment, he weighed the writings of people like Jeremy Sherr and Lou Klein when the typical polycrests didn’t have the expected effects. He’s convinced I need some kind of mineral remedy: I’m not so sure, and so far I’ve had a sizable amount of insight into my own condition. But we’ve been able to throw around some possibilities in terms of what may actually be taking place with me. I’ve done my share of the appropriate animal remedies, and now I think the mineral might just be the right track, based on a mutual understanding of a physical and emotional reality I just can’t seem to shake: that I am deficient in something vital, and I have been, from the start. So now we shall see.

He was my supervisor while I did my clinic work in school, and he was a sonofabitch in that department, always doubting or second-guessing my choice of medicines for my patients, asking me to replace my own decisions with the choices he’d submit. It was not personal: there was another student he supervised who formally complained about this when he did it to her. For me it this became overbearing, and ultimately, I felt like I should have paid attention to my own decisions about my own patients. But that was the lesson: consider his suggestions as just suggestions, questionable and only potentially helpful. After all, I took the case: it was I who observed and interviewed the patient for two hours; I collected the factual information by observation and interview–his input and decision for remedy selection could only be based on speculation and not inductive reason, and therefore his remedies were bound to be ineffective or less than appropriate. Still, I let him convince me that I should give one patient who needed Aurum Argenticum Nitricum instead; and then another who needed Lac Caninum Lac Humanum (even there, I can see he was pushing me to stand my ground, as these substitution medicines are so close to the original prescriptions I’d made). After that, it hit me that my original choice may have been the best choice, so I fought more heartily for my own decisions in each case, and got them. I think I was so slow to pick up on what he was doing that he made me demand the right to manage my cases myself, after that. Just to be sure the lesson was learned.

2. He thinks in spirals and tangents and parallels and alternative perspectives.
So do I.
The minute he started to talk about Phosphorus as a spontaneously combustive, corrosive chemical, and tied it in with its effects on the liver, then brought it all home by examining so much of the substance’s cultural meaning with discussions of the myth of Prometheus, fire, and the human (physical and spiritual) condition in front of a classroom full of “just tell me what I need to memorize for the exam” doctors and nurses, I knew I found an equally frustrating, detail-inflexible, quasi-highbrow twin thinker. Who might “get” me, after all.

Plus, he presented a paper case he published in the Dutch journal, LINKS, and I was the only person in the class to “figure out” (rather, recall the various remedies discussed in the paper) the remedy which cured the case. It was Hydrogen–how could I forget it? It was a case of extreme nervousness, a sense of never feeling grounded and almost prone to being “abducted” from whatever gravity exists here. And the physical symptoms were so bizarre, I could never forget them. I think I’d know a hydrogen case on sight, even today. So, when I offered the answer, he shot me a stunned, silent “You read the article?” along with his confirmation of the remedy. It became our unspoken little secret: and in return he let me contribute to his lectures without getting too frustrated with me. Now that I teach, I know the generosity of that agreement.

3. Because of the first two reasons, I knew I would never have to worry about transference.

4. Despite differences of opinion in politics (especially about the politics in our work, where we are opposed most profoundly), despite obstinacy on my part, despite having real difficulty finding something that works brilliantly, he cares fiercely about me as his patient. Remedy wise, I’m a god damned shape shifter, and no one hates that more than me (maybe he does, I think I’d hate to have a patient like me, after all). But I know that one day he will knock it out of the park, and I’ll get better.

Right now I don’t know where I stand with Dr. John, in that I’ve finally received my remedy in the mail and it does seem to work to calm down some of the more horrific symptoms I’m suffering with right now. But it’s a very low potency, and I have no idea what the medicine actually is (except I do know it’s quite likely a fluorine compound of some kind, or some combination of aurum and salt). That means that I can give this some time to take effect, and maybe make an appointment some time in the fall, after it has had time to act.

We will just have to wait and see.

The Annual Scream in High Park, revisited

The Scream wasn’t quite the event I’d remembered. I walked down to the subway and the bank in the 100 degree heat, and I made the mistake of getting on the transit lines right at the beginning of rush hour. By the time I’d reached the air conditioned sanctum of the mall, my comfortable walking shoes had already begun to nibble away at the tender folds above my heels. I ducked into the first pharmacy I could find, right around the corner from the subway exit on Quebec street to find nice fabric bandages which fit perfectly over the threatened spots. I felt much better equipped for the park after that.

I love High Park. I was actually born just across the street from the park, in what was then the St. Joseph’s hospital, just next to the park’s bottomless Grenadier pond. It’s full of ravines and deep forests, oak trees that flame in the fall and paths that snake through the grounds to house bagpipers, the occasional actor working on a soliloquy, and treasures like rare wildflowers in the early spring. I loved the spooky legend of the Grenadiers when I was a child, I loved the shivers the story of those lost battalions, men whose bodies were never found in the glacial pond, would send up and down my spine. Especially when I found myself in the park in the middle of the night, surrounded by the still darkness and the dark whistling breezes as they sailed through the oaks around me.

On this trip, though, walking through the park at that sun baked time felt like walking through an overlit furnace room while being encased in plastic. I just kept feeling warmer and warmer, and the saturated air intensified the effect for me. I arrived a bit too early for the festival, and the stage area was closed off–but it was only when I got there that I remembered attendance always requires a chair or blanket and some form of pillow, plus some icy drinks and an umbrella. I wished I’d remembered! I would have been overjoyed if it started to rain (and there was a bit of a threat of this happening, and I remember it always seems to, each year) but it just never did.

The last time I went was actually 10 years ago, when I had just returned home from living on the East Coast for a while. That show felt comforting in a way nothing else could–it felt reassuring to attend something that would never take place where I’d been living, involving something that would never be valued much there. It was part of “coming home”, or at least I gathered some hope for that possibility just by attending. I even caught a glimpse of a writing instructor I knew there, perched against her bicycle in the darkening ampitheatre. A few years after seeing her there, I heard she died of something she’d been terribly afraid of: cancer.

The show was only half-filled with audience on this night, and most of the people who were there were somehow involved in publishing the readers being featured. That’s not necessarily a criticism, because there is an industry set up around literary talent (and I’m reassured, believe me, that evidence of its existence can still be found). But there were so many publishers and authors and editors present and giggling about poking each other on Facebook that I felt like a tidy minority of one. I hate “social network” sites. A lot. All they seem to accomplish is to limit conversation in social groups to Facebook alone. “Poke, poke, poke…!” they continued. I kicked myself again for not having remembered to bring wine, and some glasses. Surely that would have put a stop to all the social network blather, and just get people to talk to each other. Talk to me, more importantly.

I was alone, and, in their midst, a little bit “in the way”. I moved around to find a seat because the space was completely open to me, but the outdoorsy set up of the ampitheatre was a real physical test. I was trying my best to perch on about 3 inches of concrete terracing, and failing miserably. Finally I moved to a spot under a tree branch, which wasn’t so much curb as stone. Slightly more comfy. It was right in the middle of the social hubbub around the publishers. Oh well. “Facebook facebook facebook”, they blathered; and then, “Ouzunian interviewed me and it was humiliating” plus other gossipy conclusions only the literate (or, rather, “the Toronto Literati”) would give a damn about. I just wanted the readings to start–I was looking forward to the writers just reading their work in their summer clothes, surrounded by people who just want to sit in the heat and be stirred.

Messages for Edi

My brother and I have an odd relationship.

Aside from the shared genetics, we’re strangers. I know anyone else I meet better than I know my brother, at any given time. And yet there is something about the way we relate to each other that betrays a powerful link. It’s by no means comfortable–it never feels like it’s safe around him. But in trying to understand some realities between us, I’m getting a clearer idea about the forces involved in the dynamic in which we both move.

My brother is a closed book. My brother is a collection of events, signs that he puts out without any control or knowledge. The ones he knows about, he hides energetically. The ones he doesn’t know about, he can’t acknowledge. Maybe this is all true about me too, I’ll concede that. I wonder if he steps back and has the same thoughts about me, but I don’t think he gets past the thoughts he most obviously entertains as conclusions. I doubt he cares enough to even give it enough of his energy. I’d never ask. I’d never get an answer. This is just the way it seems to be.

When my brother and I were children we were pitted against each other in competition, for what exactly, I’ll never know (though right now it looks a lot like we needed parental affection or attention quite a bit, each more than the other when the other had it). Each of our parents used to love to tell us they loved us both equally–but when pressed, my father displayed his preference for my brother consistently. My mother readily admitted to her preference for my brother whenever she was asked. So I used to think I knew, conclusively, that they both prefered him. But now I wonder what they told him when he asked them, and I was not around.

M. was the first to tell me that my brother’s experience of my parents was different from what I thought it was. He would watch my brother and my father together while working with them, and conclude that my father’s insults and degradations were not really limited to his every interaction with me: he leveled them just as energetically at Edi, whose reactions included everything from open-mouthed silence to spontaneous vomiting (a condition he’s suffered from since he was 12 years old, and continues to suffer from to this day. For which he’s told me he blames me–even though it only seems to happen when he’s working with my father in any capacity).

I guess I am thinking about this because his birthday was just last week, and I spent only a few minutes with him before his day, I didn’t see him on that day. I always seem to think about him when I come across an interesting idea, or a piece of music I think he might really like, or a book I think he’d love if he read it.

When I’ve given him those things in the past, he’s read them, or listened to them–and has actually enjoyed them. But he’s never told me so until years passed. It’s as if I get these things to him in a way that seems disconnected from anything they ought to be connected with: they are quietly given, handed over in the middle of an exchange of pleasantries, never opened up as gifts with the giver present. Never discussed. Strange. But it feels like, under all the other currents of heated competition, active disapproval, fiery and corrosive envy, and forced civility…we’re making a connection on some level.

When my parents are both gone, and the inevitable war that will follow is over, I have this vision that my brother and I will find ourselves formed in an unconditional alliance.

Another Saturday Night

M’s in the city again, ironically taking part in an outing I’d been looking forward to–but I missed the last Go train and I’d have been late if I waited to catch the next one. He flipped at the thought of my taking the car in, and simply wouldn’t hear of it–because it would make my father mad. I’ve put that little notation away in my brain–and then I turned the car around and drove for about 2 hours straight with no problem, just listening to my iPod while I wandered around Niagara.

It seems I’m now, apparently, officially barred from seeing his social group as well.

I remember when I started spending time with RS, how often it would be that we’d have time to talk and linger together while M spent time in the city, with a variety of friends and acquaintances–dinners, parties, coffee and dessert, film events, you name it. I’d never be asked to come along (unless it was a dinner with business associates) and after a while I got angry at being left alone. I was very often left alone. It really hasn’t changed (let’s be honest) but I’ve stopped being angry about it.

It feels the same way just now, spending another Saturday evening alone because M wouldn’t risk having to stand his ground if it might have come to that (and it wouldn’t. It was MY decision, and I have no trouble standing up with it). But here I am, typing out a blog entry.

This morning I happened to catch an old friend on-line, who’s finally moved from the middle east to London, England (or actually somewhere rural in England, closer to London than she was when she was in the middle east). We talked for a couple of hours, as she has a phone plan that allows her 59 minutes of free long distance to this country, as long as she keeps to that limit. I replied, “We’ll never, ever, have a conversation that lasts 59 minutes–recalling an instance when she called me from Zimbabwe and we talked for about 4 hours on my cell phone, while I was in the parking lot of a shopping mall. That bill, she remembers, was marriage threatening. On my side, however, you’d never know. Anyway, we caught up for 2 hours or so and then decided we’d stay in touch more often. Felt good to connect with someone, even if she’s thousands of miles away. Certainly felt better than I feel right now.

Right now, I’m kind of glad to put another day spent in almost complete isolation to bed.

scary low

I got a story in the mail, something new and sparkly and profound, beautifully written and illustrated by M. Yahgulanaas. Something resplendent with the sentiment that we all create ourselves, make ourselves into a part of the greater whole whether we’re aware of that or not. And that we’re all connected, and that some great spirit is aware of all of this interaction and connection, and active within it. For some reason, receiving that piece of work in the mail was enough to send me into a deep darkness.

(If we do create ourselves then I’ve taken no pains to keep myself from becoming the monster I am).

I just want to get through these translations and move on.

The True Meaning of the Holidays

My uncle in Italy has just died.

He was 80.

Not a tragedy, I imagine, but still. After a life filled with the kind of frustration and fear he seemed to live with daily, I suppose his final release was a long time in coming. He constantly bickered with his siblings about wanting to create his own life, and they constantly told him he could not. He was unattached to anyone except the place where he lived, the family around him, the land they wouldn’t let him part with to begin his life. He was exactly like my mother, in that he always accepted the word “No” far too easily. My cousin and her mom (his sister) are traveling there this evening, which is probably wholly unnecessary, under the circumstances. But it is something they can do, so they will.

I realize I’ve been writing for almost two whole years here, and the only people who’ve seen anything I’ve put here were a couple of spammers. No one else! So: why do I need to wonder what to write here? I can write absolutely anything I like, as no one will see it. And I can also hide what I write here too–so there’s no reason not to say whatever the hell I please. Beats the worry, that’s for sure.

My cousin made his annual rounds to visit me today–bringing me a recycled gift as a token, a way of saying he thought about me and he knows we all just shift these things back and forth anyway. So I presented him with a gift I didn’t want to keep, either: a Baci panettone and a bar of chocolate covered torrone, something I really don’t want to find myself tearing into early in the morning hours when hunger overtakes me. I’m not saying anything negative about “re-gifting”, as people like to call the phenomenon these days. If it weren’t for the stash of gifts I receive that I don’t want to keep, we’d have had no Christmas at all this year. Everyone got something from “the box”–an old platter and dish set, a boxed container of demi-tasses and saucers for espresso coffee, bottles of Spumanti, a series of candle holders I’ll never ever use, and a glass serving tray filled with chocolate candies. I managed to pull Christmas together with less than $100, and a series of inexpensive finds from a few outlet stores, never-to-open-again retailers, and No Name Brownie mix. Years ago I bought cookie tins and finally pulled them out to fill with cookies–another inexpensive way to say thanks, as long as it’s beautifully wrapped. Now if only I’d been able to successfully convince my husband to approach the task in the same way, we would have saved a great deal more money for the long list of bills we’re facing. But I didn’t. But I want to dwell on gratefulness instead: Thank the goddess for recycling.

The Christmas “appearances” were not so successful, unfortunately. We spent Christmas eve with my father, who delights in inviting us, and then creams himself over making sure I know that “I” am not ever welcome. I get the hint really well: so I don’t say anything, and I bide my time. I’ve perfected the art of being present, but not being there. As time goes on, I’ve become almost flawless at actually taking part and not harming myself. The first year this was most pronounced, I gagged at the food he made and actually spent the night vomiting in chills with a fever. I spent the next day, Christmas day, in bed trying to recover; which meant I got out of another Christmas meal featuring my brother’s family and my father.

Say what you will about psychosomatic illness, but that experience was my own proof of disease as a form of self-protection.