Acupuncture and Refrigerators

Just back from acupuncture- tenderness in my inner ankles, in the place between my thumb and index finger, a tingling rush from the center of my head. The sensation is something like having an egg cracked on top of my head, and instead of a sticky, runny yolk, cascading down and onto my shoulders, there is a cool blue light, with a consistency of mist, spreading out all around my skull, soft and rushing quietly like a very mini waterfall pouring from the top center of my head. It feels sublime.

During acupuncture I often experience a series of break through moments. One is enough, and none is okay too, but of course I prefer multiple revelations to one, and prefer one to none. How do I describe the state I'm in whilst I'm in the chair? Not awake, not asleep. Not here, nor there. My eyes are closed, but I am still seeing things- flashes of light when the reflective surface of a car drives by the front window of the room, and light shines and reflects everywhere. In fact, I have no idea if this is really the case- because my eyes are closed I cannot see if there actually was a car that just drove by. It is just my guess.

Sometimes I do fall asleep, and I dream. Othertimes I am in the neither here-nor-there place, and I still dream, a different kind of dream. So perhaps dream is the wrong word. But there is sometimes a loose narrative, visual imagery, sensory involvement.. Last week I was tunneling through the universe, in its infinite darkness, following the inner spiral of a conch shell, elongated, and a creamy pink. Like the kind we find on the beaches of Shelter Island, where we go every summer, they are never complete. Often broken and lying around like ocean's porcelain set after an earthquake, scattered like tiles and shards of bone, I like to pick up the shells. I used to only want the fullest, most complete ones. But now I realize, the more broken they are, the more you can feel of the inside curvature, the smooth pink insides. And that was where I was traveling during last week's acupuncture session, along the smooth pink spiralling inside of an infinite conch shell, tunneling deeper to the heart of space.

What are the kinds of revelations I have? Today I experienced a sensation of being leveled very flat. Myself as I know it or feel it, is usually three dimensional, rising upwards and outwards in space, holding volume, being mobile. For a brief moment, I felt myself suddenly only a very thin horizontal layer, like I had been gently compressed, I didn't feel any weight on me, but I occupied only a space like a piece of paper lying flat on a desk. I was like that- a piece of paper- that experienced emotions and sensations, lying softly on a flat surface.

What came to me when I existed like that, as a sort of piece of paper? When I am 28, I will spend a long time in India. Maybe a few months or a year.. but I am sensing longer rather than shorter. It will be a transformational time. Every time is in some way transformational- and some more profound than others. So what I should've said is, it will be a profoundly transformational time.

Something else very important came to me. I needn't put so much pressure on myself. I thought I had to be doing something big now. NOW. Opening an art gallery, publishing a book, getting a MA or MFA, some kind of concrete forward movement to justify and show to the world at large that I was making an evidential progress- that I was not a waste of a person or a family's resources, that I had reason to keep existing. It is strange- to not choose to exist, and yet to feel obligated to justify your existence. Perhaps it is just me who feels this obligation- to prove that you are worthy of this life experience- anyway, this is a longer conversation thought I can tell, and I am already late to meet my friend two blocks away.

Refrigerator men are in the kitchen, our frig is having trouble, again. A big machine, it's so strange, its like a body- sitting there, stationery, stalwart. We open its door, and inside its constantly cold body, we store the things to put into our bodies. When it's sick, it can't maintain its body temperature, it buzzes louder and louder, calling for attention. Some men come, the refrigerator doctors, and do some minor surgery. Everything is better. Cold again. Its cavernous chest can now hold our things. Except the acupuncturist just to me- no more cold foods. Steamed vegetables, soup, warm things. Avoid juice (no juice!? I often wake up and CRAVE juice, in my mind thinking "mmmmm I want juuuuuuice...", and if I want fruit, dried fruit. So, foreseeably, if I am dedicated enough to follow her advice, I might not be using the refrigerator at all.