Hung Up

I have a post-chelation hangover today, feeling oddly drifty, a bit chilled, a bit pissed-off. I went to the pool but found that my energy was better spent examining the state of my fingernails in the hot tub than in lap-swimming. To vent some of my random existential rage, I wrote a poem for my class this week entitled "The Things You Did Not See." It tackles the subject of my illness and the sense of frustration and abandonment that I felt and some of my friends felt as I 'disappeared.'  My problem is that I don't have a character to play the role of "You."

So I'm muddling about with my computer, trying to re-write the piece and figure out who to be mad at, when I took a little time out to read  Eknath Easwaran's book on Passage Meditation. After about three minutes I received this little lightning bolt from the universe:

"For most of us, conditioning - habits of thinking, feeling, and acting - flows through our days like a powerful river. Understandably, we usually lie back and float downstream. When a river of anger rises, for example, it is so easy, so apparently satisfying, to let it carry us along. Just try swimming against it! Your teeth will chatter, your breathing will become labored, your legs will grow weak. But the spiritual life requires that we do just that: reverse our conditioning and swim upstream, like salmon returning home."

Now I'm not sure whether my chattering teeth and weak legs are derivatives of my anger issue or of my chelation therapy, but it looks like I better jump back in the pool and start swimming upstream. I'll see you all at the salmon ladder . . .