Clouding the waters

A visit to the optometrist's today. Good news: Optic nerve looks great, as far as she's concerned we don't have to worry about optic neuritis (at least, coming in from the eye side). I'm going to need to move to a "two-glasses" system, one for computer work, one for dealing with the world; but that sort of thing is to be expected. Age, and all that. (And, her experience is that M.S. ages your eyes faster, so I've functionally got 61-year-old's eyes, not 51-year-old's eyes. The age thing, again, just a little more enthusiastic than customary. Well, at least something's enthusiastic.)

I'm experiencing a conundrum. I look at the calendar, and think, "Oh s&&t, it's going to be September any second now and the summer will be gone, and how am I going to do all the stuff I want to do?"

And I lie in bed until oh, ten o'clock maybe, just because it's really comfy, and I don't want to get up. I do get up, I do what absolutely needs doing (doctor's appointment, that sort of thing), today I had lunch with my wife (quite wonderful, both the experience and the food). Here it is, evening, and I don't want to do anything that requires any work. Any work. I'll like back and think, but even sketching ideas on paper, what little "work" that requires, is too much. "Well," I think, "Why don't I make that CD of the Pentecost service? All I have to do is drop in the track markers, that won't be too hard." And yet, somehow, I'd rather be doing something else. Lying down, for example. Part of it is that I really need new glasses. I have the new prescription, but I need to go to the oculist's to get it filled and then wait a week or whatever for the lenses to show up... but that's not all.

Walking is getting very close to no longer happening. I still can do it, but standing up takes quite a bit of effort. Oh let's be euphemistic, my elimination systems are extremely unenthusiastic. They work, I suppose, but they're hardly at their peak of efficiency or control (fortunately, the latter I still have enough of to keep "the worst" from happening, but that's about all it's good for).

And it's nearly the solstice. In the five element system, the season of Fire. Which I have none of. I think I have no fuel for it (that's Wood, from the spring), although the LA weather is still dipping its metaphoric toes in Wood, I can feel the Fire season rising. And it is not resonating with me, in the least. Summer has always been my "music composition" season, especially composing music for Christmas (it's been kinda funny, hearing the speakers pounding with Christmas carols in August), and I suppose if I put absolutely all my effort into it I'd be able to create something, but I don't feel the music trying to burst forth and manifest. I feel some quiet thoughts about a lecture I'm planning on giving in October, and those are nice, and I actually did a little piece of magic at a wedding reception (which was very well received)... but I'm used to summer being a time of Big Accomplishments. Big Creations.

And I feel small. And tired. And weak. Do I have something to offer? Intellectually, I think so; but emotionally, energetically...

I got nothing.

What is the gift I am supposed to receive, from this moment of the M.S. experience?

I don't know.

A martial-arts saying is "tsuki no kokoro," the spirit of the moon; a spirit totally quiet, like a pond that perfectly reflects the moon, that reflects so perfectly that aggression is simply returned to the aggressor.

There is no aggressor; M.S. is nothing, it does not exist; it is merely the label I have given to my current state. There is nothing but me, in this experience.

But I crave that quiet spirit, so that I can perfectly see whatever is shining down from the heavens upon me. Turbid. Cloudy. Not reflective.

So how do I stop stirring the waters? There's the question whose answer I cannot yet receive. On some level, I think that I must be stopping myself from receiving it; but right now, how to stop that... well, obviously, I don't know that either.