The Gingerbread Girl

I had my second session with Olympia. Ouch. Ow. Four times I wanted to let out a bloodcurdling scream. Instead I held steady and breathed. She stretched me out like my flesh was gingerbread dough and her arm was a rolling pin. She rolling pinned my neck. She warned me it might hurt. She was right.

And it was good.

And while she worked the body I resolved to work the soul.

I resolved to gently lay down some of the dead.

I had been thinking on things as I had been reading T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday.

I resolved to banish bad thoughts and bad dreams.

And to be mindful that I am on a path of 40 days of reflection, that I first saw Olympia on Ash Wednesday and I shall stay mindful until Palm Sunday, and then there is Easter a week later. And I have some plans for Easter.

I told her that after session one the pain free part did not last, but the hope did.

Olympia has a wonderful soul. She reminds me of a welder or an iron worker.
I said to her, “I enjoyed my brief vacation from pain”, and she said, “You’ll transition to a new state of normal.”

Ah, I do look forward to a new state of normal.

Olympia reminds me of certain elements, her steadfast confidence, earth and horses, wood and metal.

After I left her office I could turn my head further to the left and right.
I felt somewhat less dizzy.

I could feel the physical ability to smile returning, my face is not so heavy to lift, something is not so paralyzed.

And here is some T.S. Eliot for you:

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.