It had been a rough two weeks. About halfway through refinishing a deck, I started having a difficult time breathing and needed to go home. Over that weekend, I went to the emergency room. They sent me home. I did not improve and returned to the ER the following week. I was treated, put on prednisone, and sent home again. At my PCP on Wednesday, my blood pressure was 77/52. She had me admitted to 5 West at the VA Pittsburgh hospital. Diagnosis: possibly tuberculosis.
Stream of consciousness on the 4th day
By Friday, I had not slept in 4 days. But that did not prevent waking dreams. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw a smooth sepia colored wall that turned heavily textured. Then, in one of the ridges of the texture, muddy water began to seep in and ran across that wall. The leak became a torrent raging from right to left like a stream after a downpour. Then I saw a fish in the water. Then, more fish and debris. As the deluge continued there were whole trees being swept along. As if it were being played in reverse, the trees began to stand up in place beside the water. People rose out of the flow. They grew, stood, and played out scenes with other people in changing locations and time periods. Rapidly those became other scenes with more people. Then while the indistinguishable scenes played out across my screen, I noticed water again flowing, soon it was ankle deep. The people and locations began to crumble and fall in upon themselves. That motion became a rush as if the images headed toward a swirling drain. All those players before me were getting consumed. Soon the people were gone, replaced by a muddy river with trees and debris with fish among them. All this began to disappear into a square drain hole until they vanished, and their watery grave shrank into a crack in the surface that became many. like it on a textured plaster wall. Soon it was as smooth as where all of this began…
Then it started again. Each new reel was exactly like the one before but completely different. Repeat… Repeat… Repeat…
Emerging memories
In the background there was an itch in my mind that, scratched, became a thought, a memory, shrouded in the fog of time from more than 40 years ago during a decade of self-imposed exile from the toxic atmosphere of America’s South. I found myself in a bookstore in Los Angeles, seated in one of those tiny wooden chairs at a table that met my legs just below the knee, thumbing through a children’s picture book. The picture book before me in my reverie was the Bhagavad-Gita. The excellent illustrations were saturated with blues, reds, greens, and orange. Some pages depicted the Hindu creation story. Vishnu lay in repose in an ocean atop a vibrant yellow snake. As he dreams, a lotus flower sprouts and grows from his navel rising to float in another sea. Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, tends this Lotus blossom, the entirety of our existence. Everything we know, love, and experience, grows and thrives in this flower while Vishnu sleeps. When he wakes at the end of an age, the Lotus dies and all we know vanishes.
The Shadow
In the midst of? Behind? Overlaid on the whirring inside of my eyelids? I could see a growing shadow. It soon loomed over and on the entire vision. I knew this shadow. Always present, rarely visible. I have felt that chill. At least three times in my life that I am aware of when I should have died and did not. Would this visit be its last? Was I, in fact, still here?
Then the door of my hospital room opened. Technicians came to take me to a scheduled bronchoscopy. I nearly cried at the prospect of sleep, a drug induced deep, dreamless sleep. I am weary. I am weak. I am still here… and Vishnu sleeps.
I jolted awake at 5:30 am in the semi-as-a-hospital-room-gets darkness. A Christmas tree lit IV stand counts time to some unheard 20 second musical riff while, nearby, an overhead computer screen is beeping in time with the rhythms of my life. Light leaks in through the blind covered door, around a storeroom and around the bathroom door. I stare.
I gathered myself, opened the blinds to my west facing window, the only one on 5 West at the VA Hospital, Pittsburgh. I perched myself on the side of my bed and watched as luminescence crept toward the western skyline. I am sure time passed as it inevitably does while the sky did the slide trombone from night into day. I am empty. I am tired. I am…
As I peer at the brightening horizon, beyond sight and sound, the shadow looms. I can feel it in my third eye. The shadow did not stop for me today. It will not stop tomorrow. I am painfully aware of my remaining brevity.
Once again, the picture book rests on my knees, open at the first pages. This reminds me that the Vishnu creation story is only a small part of the Bhagavad-Gita strung out in fragments across Hindu religious literature and murmured in oral traditions. The main story begins as a conversation between Arjuna, a great warrior, and Krishna. They stand in a chariot on the eve of a great battle that Arjuna no longer wishes to fight.
I am Arjuna
I am Arjuna facing the battle, weary and worn. The battle before me, before us all, is for the survival of our entire species-homo sapiens.
One group of Christians believes it is their purpose in life to bring about the apocalypse that takes place in the Middle East. Mike Huckabee, American Ambassador to Israel, believes this.
The fossil fuel industry has lied to us about Climate Change since the 1970s. They are willing to burn this planet to the ground in pursuit of short-term profits.
The top 10% of the wealthy, in addition to generating the fossil fuels you and I use, personally generate 48% of all greenhouse gases. They are certain their money will save them.
Now these same rich men have created AI that is as dangerous as Climate Change, threatening to make us extinct.
Will we, in our greed, wake the sleeping Vishnu hastening the death of this, the only known outpost of life?
Until Vishu wakes, I am Arjuna, you are Arjuna, we are Arjuna revived in that chariot, Krishna whispering in our ears. May our aim be steady and true. May we aim with the heart!
Time grows short. There is much to do while Vishnu sleeps.
Until I feel the shadow’s hand on my shoulder, I fight. For life. For light. I am all-in to the end.
Are you?