Thanksgiving Musings

I just finished writing a ranting blog post about the 2016 election and then decided against posting it. Rather I decided to post an old entry I never posted from 2011. It is still relevant in my life and since we are coming up to Thanksgiving, I thought it was even more relevant. If anyone cares to read my musings on life, I hope you enjoy:

Today I decided to create a blog (2011). Just to write down my thoughts and ideas and dreams.  My existential experience, I suppose,  during thanksgiving, inspired me to write. Let me share. I cooked a duck for Thanksgiving and while I was preparing this duck carcass,  I realized this is only the second time I have ever prepared and cooked an entire carcass of a dead animal. What a strange feeling it was for me to feel the body of a once living animal.  Legs that move and wings and body parts, flesh, skin... Blach!  Never have I understood so clearly until now that what we need to be thankful for is the animals and plants, the lives that are given up to become part of our life and energy.

Generally I avoid cooking meat.  It doesn't mean I never eat it, but I just rarely cook it or eat it.  I remember why. However this experience made me realize why it is so important to be connected with your food in all aspects. Where it comes from, how it lives, what it eats, what's been sprayed on it or manipulated (GMOs).  Everything that happens to that animal or plant in its life eventually becomes a part of your body and your life force once eaten.

People in Portland are very big on the whole food movement and so forth and I have just recently begun to eat a more plant based diet. Even thinking about what I choose to put in my body makes me realize that eating is just ingesting life force or energy or whatever. We essentially take life from other living things to feed our life. Perhaps this is obvious to most people, but it seems so weird to me. Plants, seeds, eggs, animals etc. I mean the seeds are a plants life force. A seed contains everything it needs to become a full plant. And we eat these things in grains, seeds, the leaves of plants, animals and their products. Eggs become chickens. We eat what a chicken needs to become a chicken.We basically just eat other living things (not just living animals.) Which made me realize, even more so, that eating live food is so important. That is why when you eat processed food or t.v. dinner things you feel like shit. It is basically dead and decaying food you are eating. They have to put preservatives in the food to keep it "alive." There is very little life energy left for your body to get from it. Fresh alive food is what our bodies need. Life begets life. It is the oddest thing to me. Why is life designed to eat other life to live, anyway? Makes me appreciate all the living things that have supported my life. And I am truly thankful for that!

Dreams

My dreams tend to  be like movies.  Sometimes I can't wait to sleep just to find out where I go in my dreams.  I thought I would share one of them.  I wrote this down years ago but still remember it.  The dream was very vivid.  Hope you enjoy, and if you have any of your own dreams you would like to share, I would love to hear them...By the way, I changed any names of people who are actually in my life to just an initial.

I call this one "In the Flow":

I had a prophetic dream this morning (2007) full of symbolism and mystery.  It started with someone giving me a piece of paper with a phone number on it.  The paper turned into a large picture hanging on the wall.  I copied the number onto another piece of paper.  A-- was sitting to the right of me looking at the phone number on the wall.  He said he was having trouble making it out.  I thought I wrote it down clearly, but when I looked again, it became cryptic. The more I gazed  the less visible it was and I suggested we step back from the picture and cross our eyes as though to view those 3D pictures that were so popular in the early 1990’s.  It became a puzzle.  As I stepped back, the picture, which was white with black lines scrawled all over it, morphed and transformed into completely incoherent designs on a white background until it became just a light.  The light engulfed me and I passed through it into my brain where I saw the circuitry of the mind working--synapses firing and gray matter. 

Then I walked alone down a sidewalk with a tree to the left of me and green grass all around. A flock of crows or blackbirds flew across my path from left to right.  I continued forward through the flock.  I noted none of the birds were dodging me as birds do.  They weren’t running into me; they just allowed me to walk through the flock without flying away from me as birds do. I pulled my jacket over my head to prevent the birds from hitting me although they gracefully avoided me.  

Suddenly I stood on top of a hill covered with green grass and stone rocks. The hill was naturally terraced. I noticed several people, an adult and child or children, sitting on one of the terraces to my right.  There were people all around.  As I began to descend the hill, I noticed a small, glassy stream, so glassy I almost stepped in it.  In the stream were lots of fish.  The stream appeared to start at the point I was standing and the water was flowing in a diagonal direction beginning with me and moving to the right and down the hill.  The fish swam in hoards down stream.  I noticed that one appeared to be dead, but I decided not to pay attention to it and moved on down the stream a bit.  I bent down to take note of several dragonflies that were busily moving towards me from the right.  They took no notice of me just as the other animals hadn’t.  The dragonflies moved with such determination almost militant like.  They were clearly on a mission to get somewhere.  And then I woke up.

"You want a piece of me?"

So, last week I had an operation to remove my gall bladder.  My husband and I decided it would be the best thing based on several potential “hazardous” future possibilities.  However, a few days before the surgery I began to second-guess my decision.  Was it really necessary to start removing organs at my age?  Yes, I knew my gall bladder had produced an ample amount of stones, enough to become a hazard, or perhaps to fashion several nice bracelets, but would it become a hazard?  What were the chances of a stone getting lodged in the bile duct and cutting off the blood supply and then becoming a gangrenous, cesspool inside my body, which would then spread and cause such a problem that removal would be the only logical option?  But as it stood a week ago, it was functioning, although not very well; it hadn’t turn gang green and may never.  So I was confused.  Should I do this or not?  Should I “preventively” remove my gall bladder?  That is what preventive medicine is, right?  All the doctors tell you it is no big deal.  They act as though removing an organ is so routine.  “What would be the potential long term risks?”  “There really aren’t any,” I was told by some; other doctors skirted the question.  Probably because they don’t know or there hasn’t been a long term study done…Everybody’s doing it.

The night before, I imagined all the ways I would get out of the surgery.  I would fake an illness…I would jump out of the car on the way there.  I would fain a fever or sore throat…a cough…Anything…In the waiting area I contemplated telling Marcel to just take me home I wasn’t ready…but I went through with it. 

They wheeled me into the operating room asked me to move over to the operating table, strapped me down and without warning I was out in seconds.  Where was the countdown?  Hey, I thought I was supposed to count down from 10?  I woke up, eyes closed, to someone screaming at me, “don’t touch your eyes; don’t touch your eyes.”  “What happened?” I asked.  I couldn’t see anything; I couldn’t tell who was in the room.  It was all just voice scapes….sounds, people.  Irritating wet eyes.  I wanted to wipe them off, but every time I tried I was yelled at, again.  Then YOU do it, I thought.; wipe my eyes off, please.

I must have fallen into unconsciousness, because I woke up again in the recovery room with Marcel next to me.  I tried to turn over and immediately dry heaved, fell back to sleep, woke up again and threw up twice.  They injected some anti-nausea medication into my hand, which burned, and I was out again; then I woke up feeling much better and wanting to get the hell out of there.  They wouldn’t let me go until I could walk and go to the bathroom.  Finally the time came and I was sent home.  Poor Marcel spent the entire day there bored waiting for me to become conscious.

So that was it.  I did it.  I went home with an abdomen sore from bloat; I looked like a starving African child.  For the next three days I mourned my gall bladder.  We parted ways, I believe, too soon.  I cried for it.  What happened to my gall bladder, I wondered. 

Around Christmas time I read a book about the HeLa cells.  The cancerous cells taken from a black woman named Henrietta Lacks, hence the name HeLA, which were the first viable cells to be used, and are still used today, in medical research.  Her cells have been used in so many applications they are well known in the scientific community.  They never die.  They’re immortal.  The controversy is, at the time, patients were never informed and consent was never sought by the medical community to use a patient’s cells in research.  Her family, who were undereducated and poor, were continuously contacted by other medical researchers, journalists and other professionals regarding HeLa’s cells for years after Henrietta’s death.  The family knew that the HeLa cells were somehow important to the researchers.  They didn’t understand exactly what they did to them.  They knew the cells were exposed to many types of diseases.  The cells were infected with Aids, shot to the moon, exposed to many other diseases to research the effects of diseases and treatments and even space travel had on human cells.  I won’t go too much into this, it was a interesting book and I recommend it. 

To Henrietta’s family, they envisioned Henrietta, herself, becoming infected with these diseases, over and over again. They envisioned her going to the moon.  They didn’t have much understanding of what cells were.  I believe they knew that it wasn’t exactly Henrietta the person, but to them there was no distinction between Henrietta the person and Henrietta’s cells.  The medical community sees our cells as separate from our organism once removed.  Her family didn’t see it that way. 

Interestingly, after my gall bladder was removed, I contemplated this distinction.  Intellectually I understand how the body works, the biochemical reactions and I have an understanding about research.  However, I could not help feeling as though I lost something and that something was still out there. I was concerned for that piece of me that was removed.  A bigger piece then had ever been removed from me before.  It made me wonder if we are indeed separate from our cells.  And it made me wonder what happened to my gall bladder?

Marcel joked that I would make a bracelet or necklace out of the stones I produced if they would let me keep them.  This started a whole new conversation about harvesting gallstones and perhaps kidney stones to make jewelry.  As sick as it sounds, it is no less sick then shooting elephants for ivory, farming pearls from oysters, even using bone for beautiful jewelry. Perhaps that is what really happens to the gallstones the surgeons collect.  Why so many people have their gall bladders removed these days is not to prevent some impeding doom, but to harvest the stones our bodies produce as a precious commodity to fashion into jewelry, buttons, belt buckles and other consumer items...