Episode One Hundred Sixty One, We Might Have to Medicate You

It will be my 70th birthday the day this post goes up. The day (unless I'm miraculously killed instantly) that I will no longer be able to make medical decisions for myself or declare my independence from these protocols as I am wont to do looms large. I don't know if I will writhe under a sudden conflict that I may have about being separate from the life force that I claim that is always with me when I'm in the clench that Hafiz talks about in this poem. I AM assured that it will fall on deaf ears of medical professionals should it come to that in spite of the reams of paperwork I've submitted to ward off such machinations and interventions.

Hafiz talks here about being in denial of the omnipresence of supportive energetics. These forces, however, are not always there to do the anxious bidding of a body riddled with fear of the unfamiliar. These energies are here to maintain the flow of life and death. Death is not the end that we attribute to it. I have been privy to that knowledge long ago. Awareness and being preached to doesn't do much, anyway, for a hysterical body bent and wired for surviving at any cost. It is just psychobabble to a heart geared only for one job - to beat. No. I don't now how I will go or how I will take the end. It is none of my business. It is the business of consciousness - the life force holding my whole ball of wax together.

I will have to be consoled in the meantime knowing that I am swimming through a life that is as much a part of me as I am of it.

Thank you for listening.

https://pixabay.com/music/ambient-a-flavour-of-india-5810/

Music: I picked this song, Just Breathe sung so beautifully by Pearl Jam's Eddy Vedder for this post because it I don't know how many times I found myself making this plea to myself in the mirror. I have a melancholy for all I've denied and employed of this body that has served me so well for so long. I have no doubt this has nothing to do with the actual song as written but when I hear it, this is what I think of.

I wonder everyday, as I look upon your face, uh-huh

Everythin' you gave and nothin' you would take, uh-huh

This body has been in service to my soul all these seventy years and I'm floored by how much respect it deserves and how little it receives. Like this song, it brings me to tears when I think of it.

The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here. Also, my thoughts on this series a year into these poems, HERE.

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.

My book can be purchased HERE. E-book HERE. The Season Two blogcasts with audio excerpts from my book begin HERE: in Behind The Lines. This reading of the book excerpts in a mixed media format is Season Two of this blog. These recorded excerpts are outside the chronological order in which the book was written. Podcasts with audio only beginning with episode 22 can be found HERE.