Last week was very much a "low." I have a list of physical therapy "homework" (exercise homework, not "memorize" school-style homework), which I've been kinda vaguely sorta doing, but this week I've spent a lot of time just lying down. Sleeping sometimes, eyes closed and listening sometimes. But as the coffee cups have said in the past, my get-up-and-go has got up and went.
A good acupuncturing today. Points specific to getting the energy moving, points specific to just plain enjoying life better: Triple-Heater 12, "Relax and Joy." The BlueHeron Wellness newsletter describes this point this way: "When the solid frozen water of a river thaws and
gives way to fluidity, we experience a release that can energetically be
expressed as 'relax and joy'."
Heard some interesting stories about successes with medically-employed cannabis, from some other "neurological" types. One of them tells that a very specific strain of cannabis indica—and this relief only comes from this particular strain—one puff, only one puff, and facial spasticity evaporates. Immedately. Another MSer reports that a low dose of a particular brand of oral cannabis makes the vague pains that periodically beset him disappear. Sometimes, for longer than the perceived "cannabis effect" lasts. And a medical researcher with whom I'm acquainted tells me that cannabis reduces inflammation (which we MSers suffer from) and actually helps rebuild nervous tissue.
As well as, of course, the well-known hunger-encouraging and mood-uplifting effects. As a chemotherapy patient said after weeks of nausea, grief, and starvation, immediately after taking a few tokes and laughing for the first time in months: "Anyone who doesn't think a doctor should be able to prescribe this deserves to have cancer."
Now, I hasten to emphasize that different states and different doctors have different opinions about the World Of Cannabis, and I hasten to emphasize that I am not encouraging any of my dear readers to up and try it. But from what I am hearing from people whose reports I trust, this stuff definitely fits into the category of "What's good for YOU is good for YOU." There is no single magic whaddayacallit that indiscriminately fixes everything... But clearly, like all herbal medicines which are administered in their herbal form without the intervention of the Pharmaceutical Industrialist Complex, there's more to it than most of us think. There is no unitary one-size-fits-all anything, as promising as individual stories suggest or, certainly, Big Pharma's promises. I've been working with Chinese herbalists for years, decades even, and with them, I have always seen the same pattern: This herb does [X] in general terms, but for YOU, I'm using it to [something specific for me, today].
So, what's next for me? Physical therapy tomorrow afternoon; writing music in the morning, if I'm fortunate, energy-wise. What am I working on, musically? The depiction of... a storm. Not a metaphorical one, albeit my familiarity with such things... a real storm, waves crashing on the ocean.
How's it going? (The creativity, not the storm.) The creative process is an interesting one... We spend a lot of time in a state of "How about this? Nope. How about that? Nope. What about this? Hmm... I might be able to make that work, but not like this... Right idea, wrong implementation, let's try something else..." Actually, I find none of this discouraging. Inability to stand at the cutting board and stove long enough to prep cook, and plate things? That, I find discouraging. But if I have the energy to create, the Heart Fire... "not getting it quite right, yet" is not at all discouraging.
But, when you're writing a storm, that takes a lot of notes, and all that note-writing, that isn't "discouraging" as such, but it does take a lot of energy. Just the "sitting at the machine" takes a lot of energy, much less the squeezing of notes onto the page. Sometimes, more energy than I have.
But finding alternative routes within the creative process, when the creative Fire is burning...
That's OK.
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2 comments:
Writing, which is My creative fire, I have learned to feed by taking breaks, sometimes months-long; in contrast to my old "write-til-you-drop" ways. I am not sure which has produced better quality work. As for C, I demonstrate the fitness of "one-size-does-NOT-fit-all," as C makes me nauseous.
As a friend of mine once told me, one cannot command The Muse; one can only make a welcoming place for The Muse to alight, and to stay.
C-induced nausea, I've never encountered in myself or colleagues; and that's quite unusual, given its use in the chemotherapy community to reduce nausea. One might try a better grade, one might try a better administration system to "gentle" the smoke (a "bubbler" is a very gentle method, use good water, chilled, I've had the "vaporizer" recommended very enthusiastically as a gentle administration system); one might try oral vs. combustible, start with a low dose because the "curve" of the effect is different. Or, as you sagely say, that might not be a solution you seek. First, do no harm, as the Hippocratic oath begins.
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