Again I find myself with a spare moment. I'm in an Albertson's in Malibu, taking advantage of the free wifi, and some poor 19 year old sot is sitting here eating his lunch. What are you making of your life, young sir.
I'm happy with Xero. He is a good man. And so I have to wonder my organs are just not participating in the process lately. What did I do to mess them up? My brain is very attracted to him but my body is not with the program. If I didn't want to have sex with him, I would think that all parts of my brain would be on the same page about that. That's why I'm so confused that the spirit is on fire but the flesh is dry and flaccid.
I made him give me a massage. There is nothing quite so intimate as a partner who knows, to some extent, what they're doing, rearranging your muscles and healing you in a way that Western medicine just doesn't seem to appreciate. I had a long conversation with a woman studying Oriental medicine, as she calls it, but what others call Eastern medicine, and I have to say, in my mind there is some merit to it. She presented me with a theory that I think makes a lot of sense. Western medicine evolved from battlefield medicine. Repairing bodies and covering up ailments as quickly as possible to get a soldier back on the field. Dealing with an infected limb by hacking it off. And even though our knowledge of the body and pharmaceuticals has progressed drastically, there is still this philosophy of make it functional and get it done fast. Which isn't really healing. I may have a skewed perspective of Eastern medicine, but it seems that the emphasis is much more aimed at helping the body heal itself, about taking the time required, that time spent off one's feet is not such a terrible loss. Its just the way we live our lives, have lived our lives for many generations, this frantic rush to accomplish, not that anything particularly bad will happen if we don't, and yet that ifs the prevailing disposition. At this point, I suspect its genetic. White people. Something about growing up where its really fucking cold and having to get all the food in before the rains come to be able to survive 6 months of toe numbing cold. Only the desperately frantic, even without any clear conception of the consequences, survived. And so that is how we perform medicine, not just as doctors but as patients. Both are party to the intense need to get the patient back in operational order as quickly as possible. Minimize lost man hours. But when you're capable of slowing down, of working with your body as opposed to on it, or at it, then I think that is much closer to what we can clearly conceptualize as therapeutic.
And if we take this in context of the knowledge that the immune system is suppressed in response to stress, its no fucking wonder that we stay so sick and the healing process hurts. We always describe it as battle. Why not as growth? Its a very extreme paradigm shift but one that I believe is possible. We as a culture have embraced exercise as such, even though it is in a very real way damaging our bodies and can be a painful process. But we focus on the results, and thus can enjoy the process. Why not sickness? Why not go through that pain with calm and joy, secure in the knowledge that if biology is allowed to take its course, you will come out the other side stronger? Will to live seems to have more to do with survival rates than the medicine that we throw at a sickness. If this will to live were allowed to combine synergistically with a therapeutic calm, then I think it could be much more effective.
But these are just the thoughts of someone with no truly relevant training. Yet every day I become more and more convinced that getting training as a massage therapist would be a good thing in my life, because it is a good thing in others' lives that they just don't get often enough.
I want to see Tai Chi taught in inner city schools. The western conceptualization of physical education isn't doing anyone any good. Run around in circles, do sit-ups on hard surfaces. Training that is so painful and denegrating that these kids never perform the exercises except when they are forced to. That is not conducive to health. Not even a little bit.
I'm really the royalist hypocrite of all hypocrites. Look at me, having all these deep thoughts, while doing diddly about them and enjoying my wealth. What have actually ever done for anyone who really needed it? When have a sheltered the homeless, fed the starving? No, I give so little of myself, in any real sense. History will not remember me, not as I am now. Perhaps I'm waiting for the opportunity to show my colors. The new world order requires so much training to be of any legitimate use to anyone, that the beginning of any advanced endeavor has been pushed back by nearly a decade, for my profession. But perhaps I have internalized this artificial system, this lie, allowed it to be my excuse for not putting more of myself out into the world. Yes, its ridiculously expensive to fly out to third world countries for two weeks at a time, and so I try to do what I can, here, but even that isn't much. But the people I'm being given the opportunity to help, they don't need nearly as much help as I am willing and able to give. I am capable of so much and I am stagnant, and I am angry about this.
I wonder if massage therapy would be a viable therapy for kids with Asberger's, situational depression, etc. Human touch is very real and very important, and so often very, very neglected. Its probably something that would never, ever be allowed through public schools, but you never know what can be accomplished by the private sector. Its probably something that would be more appreciated at the middle and high school levels, although there is viability at the younger ages. I really don't know enough about it. I will have to ask a social worker for an opininon.
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