Something Completely Different
© 2023 by Dr. David B. Meredith, D.Ac.
I wrote this eight years ago today, at a crossroads in life. Having recently divorced and with my sweet dog of fifteen years in her final stages, I decided to attend an acupuncture seminar in Vancouver. I spent a lot of time alone, walking the glum streets (it rained the whole time), and trying to find meaning and motivation for my next steps.
The world is completely different now, and so is my situation, and so am I. But I was thinking of this and wanted to share. Even your kindly old acupuncturist has a history!
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I feel I have been in an extended conversation with the universe in which we are both speaking different languages. I am using English, the dialect of Hollywood and Madison Avenue and the absurdities induced by their mesmerizing transmissions; she, the universe, communicates in a brogue of wind and nebulae and minor coincidences with earth-shattering ramifications.
The perspective I am getting on my life, alone on the opposite end of a foreign country, is profound and inexpressible. Although I feel it in my bones, I will probably dismiss it upon my return as the ravings of a jet-lagged demoniac. But I am trying. Yesterday morning I felt particularly close to the cosmic ebb and flow. On my way to class I encountered a homeless woman with wise eyes, who twitched and swayed like a mystic in a nest of all her worldly possessions. "Good morning," she said, nothing more. "Good morning," I replied and bought her a box of food from Starbucks, for which she expressed grave and simple thanks. If an atheist can be forgiven for using this expression, it seemed to me as if I had both given and received a blessing, and I spent the day reflecting on my overarching challenges and questions through this lens of connection, interchange, and the permeability of my own edges.
“The shamans of Indonesia believe that they can only cure one of their people by addressing the equilibrium between the entire village and its surrounding environment.”
The shamans of Indonesia believe that they can only cure one of their people by addressing the equilibrium between the entire village and its surrounding environment; if they do not accomplish this larger goal, the individual may still get better but sickness will inevitably arise in someone else nearby. Of course when it comes to the environment we are all fucked, but I wonder about this philosophy of healing as applied to the balance between our personal barriers and the dance of life just beyond. In one style of acupuncture this is the realm of the Inner and Outer Frontier Gates, two points on opposing sides of the forearm that can, in the intrepid, be pierced through simultaneously with a single long needle. Many of my appeals to the universe have to do with discovering some needle, some message, some sign that can accomplish the same effect in my own life, creating an effortless balance and flow and security and meaning between my innermost heart and the complexities of the outside world. I have looked for this in constellations of stars and the phases of the moon; in all the hemispheres of this planet; in caves and in cults; through exotic substances and bloodcurdling sexual escapades; in husbands, lovers, and dear friends with and without benefits. And my search has not just been outside of myself, but also within. How many countless hours have I spent in quiet meditation, tangling my body into improbable yoga poses, or untangling cognitive mysteries with the aid of psychotherapists, teachers, mentors, priests, psychics, and even my long-suffering dog?
I think the ultimate answer is that there are no answers, that we do the best we can and eventually lie forgotten in our graves, but who wants to endure a brief existence without the tantalizing possibilities of magic, higher purpose, and an exquisite order formed from the chaos of our combined bad choices? This is the stuff of art and religion and the core of humanity itself, although that is hardly a compliment to our befuddled species because the animals in nature, and probably even the plants, know all of the secrets already and are waiting for us to arrive on the other side of our nonsense. But my own nonsense is vast and formidable, and I need to travel thousands of miles to escape its overshadowing tentacles and find the perspectives and portents that will help me tame that beast, live by more useful themes, create a new balance with the world around me, and design the trajectories that may make my grave a little less cold.
As I said: I am trying.
This morning, outside of Starbucks, I encountered the same homeless woman and approached again, eager to make another tactical excursion between Inner and Outer Frontier Gates, but I stopped abruptly upon seeing that she had not yet eaten the food I gave her yesterday; she had not even opened it. My previous offering to the universe sat on the sidewalk, pristine in its unbroken wrapping amongst her squalid assets, while the woman herself slumped over to the side, her previously wise eyes swirling like pinwheels in a haze of fatigue or something else. She was completely unaware of my proximity, my needs, my desires, my dreams, my uncertainties, or anything about me, including my very existence or that I had ever existed. I had made no impression at all save that she had at some point used the food box I gave her as a surface on which either to roll or unroll a cigarette, leaving the abandoned remains of this project strewn across the plastic lid.
This is the language of the universe we occupy. Mystifying, capricious, ironic; both terrifyingly indifferent and intensely personal. We can ignore it or get lost in it, and everything goes on just the same until we do something different.