Pin the Devil

Today (March 9th, Ash Wednesday) I saw Olympia at the Lasting Pain Relief Center and it was rather like experiencing a miracle. I left there feeling almost pain free, feeling the least pain I have in weeks, in months. I could see out of my right eye and there were no strange floating bits distracting me. Amazingly, I could lift my face to smile. I felt like my self.

Thank you Olympia. While I was there in her room and on her table I did not want to be anywhere else, the rest of the world did not exist. Usually I have to keep moving because my pain keeps me distracted and uncomfortable, restless, so I move to keep from stiffening up further or feeling my pain grow louder. I move as if I can outrun it, out-walk it, out-wiggle it, out-stretch it. Of course it is futile and exhausting but it’s the best I can do.

Today there was about an hour while I was on her table when I did not move at all. I was as calm and centered as I can remember being. I just breathed.

I realize that this being in pain for so many years has of course unhinged me, and also that western medicine is so anxiety provoking, because when it has no answers it leaves one feeling so hopeless. And even when it has answers it often has no comfort.

Olympia showed up carrying paintings in her arms that she had painted. I was immediately comfortable with her. She did a thorough intake which was more like a conversation and left me feeling like she really did care and was interested. Her questions were so good it helped me to answer them.

And she confided that she had suffered two horse accidents and three car accidents and at one point in her life had been so ill she could not work for three years. Of course that gave me some hope also.

Her father named her.

It is not lost on me that Olympia was sacred to the ancient Greeks, and that the temples of Hera and Zeus were there. The site of the original Olympian Games. And of course the importance of Mt Olympus.

So she did some various assessments and began work on my right hip, with the idea being that my whole body is out of balance and alignment and that if we can work with the flexibility and restoration of the fascia, then we can get me in a better place.
She remained optimistic and hopeful for me.

When she moved onto my neck was when the miracles began. She got hold of a place in the right side of my neck and I felt a tremendously good sort of pain, a pain that was bigger than the usual pain that haunted me, a pain that made sense almost. It was like she had grabbed the other end of the rope that had the painful knot in it. The cobra that was eating my skull.

You know the game Pin The Devil? That was what I felt like. A variation on this. Like she had grabbed it. Almost like we could name it. It had a location. An address. And she has a firm grip and she held it a long long time.

It was like we had accomplished something.

In Pin the Devil you hope to retrieve something that has been lost, by making a counterclockwise circular motion three times with a pin and saying an incantation, ending with “I pin the devil” and requesting your item back, as you push the pin into a chair or couch or wherever.

I might like to stick the pin into my actual head! But really, what has been lost to me is the absence of pain. And so what I hope to regain is this absence.

I want pain to do a big disappearing act. I want my pain free days to return. I have things to do. So, it was like the first step in pinning the devil. In circling. In calling it out. In saying I am separate from this pain. And that I want what is lost, my feelings of peace, to return.

And when she moved onto that point and other parts of my skull, I felt a feeling like I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, and like circulation was returning to my right cheek, and that maybe I would smile again, and things were possible, and my pain could move on. I had a funny idea that my pain had been so huge that I had actually grown extra nerves to accommodate all the pain and that had backfired of course because now it was just more nerves feeling more pain.

I thanked her for giving that spot attention, that place that connects to my skull that is like a balled up gym sock of tendon or ligament. When she grabbed it I had a flash of insight for a moment that maybe this could be fixed, maybe this was just a problem there with the skull and tendons. I flashed on two ideas at once:
1. Here she was and she had so quickly gotten a grip on the thing which offends me after so many doctors just looked at me as I pointed to the excruciating area and cried out “help help” and at best they looked at me blankly, as if they could not see the spear or arrow protruding from my skull, or at worst, as the doctor last week did, began actually yelling at me repeatedly, “Why ask why? Why are you asking me why?”

2. I thought of the Rilke quote about fearful things just wanting to be loved, or rather “Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

Maybe my pain no more wants me than I want it.

It was like Olympia just grabbed this monster of pain from my neck and held it, held it up in the air, all its limbs wriggling, and she held it steady while we just looked at it a long time, and the whole time she held it I did not feel pain.

And now an hour later I still feel very great. My right eye is lifted up. I am careful though not to turn my head too much side to side as I see it does not like that. But I am hopeful and will see her again in a few days. We talked about my fascia as a shock absorber and about how we can get it back in shape doing its job.

Praise Olympia.

She grabbed the cobra of my pain.

We had some similarities. She is from CA and came here 5 years ago for a man. She misses CA. She will be going there in April for her nephew’s wedding, whom she helped raise after her sister got ill and then passed on.

Being with her was a reminder that I miss my Auricle office and working with clients. It was such a pleasure and honor to work with and help those I could. I wonder what it will take for me to be able to get back to that sort of work in the world. I am hopeful and enjoying what was like a vacation from myself and my pain.

I think people think things like myofascial release is somewhat wuwu or esoteric or spiritual or mystical but Olympia was really rather no nonsense, and almost more like an experienced exterminator who walks into a room where people are cowering because of a ferocious African honey badger (and they are actually quite fearsome and dangerous) but she just rolled up her sleeves and made her way over and trapped it. Like an honest day’s work.

Maybe she is a pain whisperer.

Olympia, the pain whisperer.

At one point I had said I don’t know how my neck and skull got messed up and knotted up like that and she said it doesn’t matter why, we can just go about helping it heal.
Isn’t that nice, just going forward. That is the direction I want to go.

I have reconsidered going to the Bronx tomorrow. It is because I love my car and am afraid that sort of journey might cause it injury. Strangely I am not worried for my own body as I think I can avoid that sort of accident, but the way people drive in NJ and NY makes me concerned my car might not come out unharmed. I have only had the Highlander a month. I don’t really want to take her into battle.

I am ready for my true new moon time. Too long eclipsed by pain. I am ready to move forward.

Bless my ashes. A cross on my forehead. I am ready for forty days of fasting, reflection, and prayer.

Resurrection time, just in time for Spring.

Thank you Olympia.