Twinkle Passage

In the late fall I started visibly noticing how much muscle mass I had lost. This was not surprising given the fact I'd basically stopped exercising. But besides my legs being smaller and me fitting into all my skinny pants (a girl's dream, right?), it was the arms that got me. I lay down in my bed at night and held up my arm, only to see the skin on my forearms and upper arms sag with wrinkly, grandmothery skin. For some reason this really bothered me. I would have to do something, maybe arm weights. 

One night before bed I was semi-reclined, and tried to swallow an Advil pill in this position. It went down the wrong pipe and I almost choked, setting off a vigorous coughing fit. This set off a chain reaction in my mind. I saw the many steps of physical decline that lay ahead of me, and wept. "I'm not going to like this," I said aloud to myself after a few minutes. "I'm not going to ike this one bit." 

Gogo appeared, sitting at the edge of my bed, and patted my feet. (Gogo is the me-30-years-hence alter ego I introduced in my very first blog post). She sat quietly, not needing to say anything. I stopped crying, and sniffled. I knew she was right. Don't worry about it. "And I suppose you'd say don't worry about the arm skin." Gogo smiled, and shook her head. "Don't worry about the skin." She tapped her finger to her temple, pointing to her eye. "Worry about the twinkle." I knew what she meant. Focus on that sense of aliveness, of being, perceivable in the twinkle of an eye.

Often I have experienced disease and healing through images and imagery -- whether in dreams at night, or semi-lucid states (yoga nidra sessions, for example), or just daydreaming.  One image in particular has helped me through some tough times, and I'll try to conjure it: 

The Passage

What it is, is a hole,
an opening,
a tear in the fabric of the planetarium,
a flap in the actual sky.

I have seen light from it.
I have held onto it
with my fingertips,
and dangled there.
What I don't know is,

where does it lead?

I imagine squeezing between table and chair
in a crowded restaurant.
Or threading a needle,
outside, in the cold.
Or holding onto a rope that pulls me
from the water to the deck of a boat.

A passage to…
Survival. Arrival.
Even now, even now!
I don't know for absolute certain.
But I keep an eye on it.

-Elizabeth B. Randolph