day-after-testing gratitude

i am grateful for…

1) several days with 50 young contemplatives (myself being a youngish contemplativish) talking and being about actvism that starts from minding our own shadow hearts before and while addressing others’

2) getting to lead some freewriting

3) food, inc. it’s rough but worth sticking out. i thought i knew it all, but it’s in much sharper relief now.

4) mary oliver

5) j. crew’s tank top with shelf bra. really, now like the best thing i own outside of my laptop.

6) being able to talk about hard stuff with an open heart

7) coming home to warm arms

8) trees, stars, water, moss, turtles, birds

9) yesterday’s scan going smoothly as it could

10) the nurse asking me “are you cold? you got goosebumps the second i raised your sleeve. want a warm blanket?” and me thinking a warm blanket just meant the warmth of a blanket and then discovering that it was a warmed blanket. heated. i was like, “how have i been coming here for five years and never known about the warm blankets?” she did not know how that could have been missed. and i said, “so fancy!” and she said, “well, you know, we’re memorial sloan kettering, we’re fancy here,” with perfect comic delivery.

11) running into the owner of a local yoga studio last night while i was waiting for b. to meet me to leave for my scan. and him saying, “that’s so weird, i was just sifting through a ton of krishna das video footage (he helps out kd) the other day and came across three minutes of you dancing at a kirtan on the upper west side.” already weird. but when he walked away i realized that footage was shot the same night i had my last oncologist appointment six months ago. i don’t know what exactly to do with those kinds of perfect parallels and coincidences. but i do believe they are significiant. but like this quote from a physicist in this article on a new anti-matter discovery: “I would not say that this announcement is the equivalent of seeing the face of God, but it might turn out to be the toe of God.”

12) pema coming!

13) that mskcc is now offering “breast shields” for ct scans to protect soft tissue from excess radiation. brand new. and they come in sizes, they said. it’s a thin layer of lead that the scanner can see through. cool, right? it’s really just a piece of what feels like a heavy piece of paper. blue.

14) drinking post-scan chlorophyll in the form of a candle cafe green goddess juice (see above–photo courtesy bc’s iphone)