Fire

At first there was the word. Speaking my words instead of writing them. It’s too hard for me to write with very little dexterity in my once dominant right hand. Now I write with my left hand cut with my left hand cut with scissors with my left hand eat with my left hand…

Not working much in my sound studio because I have a house guest, my housemate recently let-go at work, and my elder son is home before going to Israel to study the next five months.

I am in a place where my legs can scarcely hold up my body and when I descend onto the floor which can be often with seven-year-old kids and animals and the busyness of life, sometimes it is so hard to get up I can’t get up off the floor. Woe is me.

But the wood stove fire, I have such an incredible connection with! I have my hearth all set up with a small bench for me to sit on off of the floor, , matches, lighter, paper bags which I find the best firestarter, kindling dropped from the trees around the yard, And wood that’s been split and sized for my sweet little stove.

I have been heating with wood these past 27 years or so. It was the fire that first indicated I would be getting MS by burning the initials of the word in the wood. (My only life-changing information from fire-reading.)

The last 20 years, living with MS, have been a journey. Remissions to recurrences remissions to recurrences: Optic neuritis, double vision, vertigo, numbness, aching, itching, hot. The list goes on, to include losing my hearing in my right ear but on further study, we learned that I could hear tones it was human language that was unheard to me indecipherable to me. And then there’s the palsy, half my face has held a grimace- then I knew the MS was not only a personal struggle, but was evident to the wider world.

The past seven years, or so, The symptoms seem to have gotten progressively worse. Though my neurologist will not change my MS designation from RRMS, it seems apparent that that has changed into secondary progressive to me.

My struggle right now is movement, walking, using my right hand, weakness in my right arm drop foot and toes curling under making it very painful to walk. Really struggling. And pain. Electric shock, exclaimable shocking pain in my right shoulder, and then it passes. I use medical cannabis, but it merely make the pain more tolerable.

I had taken the past two months off at my gym which I’ve been a member of for four years now. It just got too hard to work out the machines are very tiring, elliptical was very tiring. I finally said fuck it and I left the gym but now I’m back although last week was my first week I went three times hope to go again this week, must build up my strength!

Feeling the need to push through right now, and feeling blessed. Waiting for a snowstorm to come tonight. The clouds are beginning to gather in what was the clear blue sky. Hard to even imagine the changes that are going to happen, now the wind is still. I’ve moved my wood pile, w/ the help of friends, up to the porch (partially covered). So flames can continue to warm us!

So this is new for me, speaking my journal entries, instead of writing them by hand, or more recently typing them out. But I find it a different process. For the thoughts to go from my mind to my mouth and to hear my words instead of just silently sharing them on the page is different it’s louder it’s Breath it’s in the world maybe more spirit if it’s breath I venture to say! One with really connect with one’s own thoughts in a different way.

Sitting in front of the fire. In relationship with the fire, through my breath, through a straw, as a bellows, in relationship with the flames. Year after year I work with fire. Connects me with the natural world.

Life is creaotic- creative/chaotic

Hot water streaming down my naked body, listening to trap reggae on my android phone loud. Reflecting on the time that time stood still breath had ceased not even through the nose I knew when I took that bite of taco that it was awfully large, but dripping with hot sauce, and not wanting to make a mess I ate it instead. And now I was choking there with no time, just silence silence my friend was chatting with her mother just feet away SOS I thought loud and flagged her down she got my message gave me the Heimlich maneuver– thank you Melanie! Nine days later, Henry Heimlich passed on. A great story is that though he invented the Heimlich maneuver to help un-clog the passageway of food, he had never used it before. But in his elder years living at a nursing home, A woman ate something and was choking on her food and he got to perform the Heimlich maneuver one time– his great contribution to life! Thank you Henry Judah Heimlich. For saving my life, and memorably, Pop pop Marvin’s life too! (Daddy was a hero after that!)

Breath!

Sitting on the earth in a circle of musicians
Mountains of colored clay crumble into sand

I am holding, and playing my clay ocarina
And the melody is haunting and familiar

Woman of clay and wind, creased and crumbling
A willing companion until the end of days

Another is remarking that my clay ocarina must feel honored
It’s been sitting on the altar all these years

By, Yiskah Koock