Category: body

  • the Outrigger Kama Sutra

    the Outrigger Kama Sutra

    I’ve noticed that my friends don’t like to talk much about my “paddling” habit.  I think it’s because you can’t really talk about outrigger canoeing without saying something that sounds more than a little bit dirty (note:  I don’t row or kayak.  I paddle.  There is a difference…).

    Adopting this new sport has meant learning a whole new language for me.  There’re the Hawaiian-isms that we use as part of the heritage of outrigger canoeing, vocabulary that’s specific to the type of stroke that we learn, and phrases that are particular to our team.

    So last night as we were doing double-hull drills in the dark around Lido Island and I was trying to keep warm…I started composing this Outrigger Kama Sutra list in my head.  Being somewhat new to the sport, I’m sure my list is woefully incomplete.  Please help me out by adding your favorite Outrigger Kama Sutra positions in the comments below…

    Out of the hole
    The double-bend paddle
    The short-course
    The long-course
    The iron-man
    Flying the ama
    Taking out your one-man
    Going out on a two-man
    The double-hull
    The triple-hull
    Paddling with the Open Women
    The Steersman
    The Steersman’s Blade
    Getting a rolling start
    The Engine Room
    The Stroker
    The Novice
    Dry seat changes
    Wet seat changes
    Drag drills
    The Coed team
    Surf entry
    Rigging the boat
    The huli
    Riding the swell
    The Triangle
    Keepin’ it Hot

    My previous posts about outrigger canoeing

    bringing it home

  • doctor

    One of the by-products of my recent-ish divorce is that I just barely got my own health insurance policy.  It’s the first time that I’ve had insurance on my own (not as the result of being a dependent of someone else), and seems a pretty big step for me in being financially and legally independent.

    So recently I saw my new doctor for the first time.  I went specifically to get a prescription for some changes to my prosthesis.  When we met I explained to him exactly what I needed, gave him the contact info for my prosthetist, etc.  I didn’t expect for him to examine me, nor did I even sit on the exam table in the room.  Also, when he queried me about whether I was up to date on my vaccinations, I could tell that my reply left him a little bit speechless.

    “How do you know so much about this stuff? He asked as he gestured to a screen on his computer showing checkboxes for my immunization record–just after I’d given him a 10-minute spiel about the Tdap vaccine.

    “I’m a medical historian, with a strong research interest in resurgent disease.” I replied.

    I must say, there’s something about going into a doc’s office with some confidence, knowing exactly what I need and how to get it, that tends to offset any anxiety that I feel from having had so much medical trauma in the past.  Perhaps it’s a bit intimidating for the physicians that I interact with–but I think they tend to find it rather refreshing among the garden-variety sore throats and coughs that they see all day long…

  • when I was in college…

    My kids love to hear the story of when I had scurvy in college–perhaps because it’s a story that doesn’t seem to jive so well with the health-conscious mother than they know now (or maybe, because they see it as a story of my experimentation and learning)…(or maybe it’s just funny for them to think of their Mom suffering from a pirate-disease)…

    When I was in college I was frugal. I had enough money from what my parents gave me for school and what I earned from working as a cashier in the university bookstore to meet all of my daily needs, but I also loved watching the money accrue in my bank account so I was always challenging myself to cut corners and save more money.

    At the time, I was renting a room from a family that I ate dinner with nightly, so I provided my own breakfast and lunch. As such, I learned that I could spend only $10/week on groceries if I ate toast for breakfast and baked potatoes for lunch. So that’s what I did everyday. Toast-potatoes-dinner. This family loved to cook Italian, so dinner was often pasta with a cheese sauce or a seafood sauce.

    And soon enough I started having nosebleeds. The nosebleeds eventually got so persistent that it was difficult for me to attend my college lectures, because my nose would start bleeding and I’d have to walk out of class to take care of it. And often the bleeding would take so long to cease that class would be over by the time I could return.

    So I asked a friend that was doing a medical internship for some advice about the nosebleeds, and he consulted a doctor that he worked with and that doctor suggested that I was probably suffering from scurvy, or at least a vitamin deficiency of some sort due to my cheap diet.

    And of course once I began eating some fruits and veggies again, the nosebleeds cleared up.

    Since then I’ve tried some pretty strange dietary experiments. I’ve fasted for healing, I’ve gone vegan, and I’ve beefed up my protein intake for body-sculpting. I’ve also gone through periods with so little money that I’ve eaten mostly cheap starches for a few days until there was another paycheck in the bank. But even with all of that, I’ve managed to steer clear of another bout with scurvy. Once was enough for me.

  • escape

    escape

    There have been a number of hard things happen this week.  One of which is that Vasia-kitty* has a large open sore on his back–so large and deep that you can see his spine fairly clearly.  On top of that he appears to have a type of cancer that’s causing bony growths on his spine (this still needs confirmation with a biopsy, but it’s fairly clear that’s what’s occurring).  So I’m dealing with this wound and remembering so many of my own.  I find bone cancer fascinating–the eruptions of tissue gone mad that build channels of bone into places where they shouldn’t be.  But even while it’s scientifically intriguing to care for Vasia’s wound, I also can’t help but feel sick to the pit of my stomach as I see and feel what’s happening to his body and compare it to my own experience with bone cancer, and remember the time I spent tracing the unusual tumor-contours of my right knee before my leg was amputated.

    As I contemplated the emotional drain that it’s been to deal with his ailment (added to these other personal stresses that include fighting the flu all week long), I realized just how badly I wanted to get away for awhile (again).  I found myself reviewing my calendar for the next few weeks and strategizing a way to squeeze in a roadtrip.  I then started thinking of friends that I could visit on the way and began to make a mental list of people to email to see if they were around…Within a few minutes of thinking along those lines, I had a fairly well-developed plan.

    But then I remembered my commitment to slow down a bit this year.  To not be so eager to throw a bag in the car and hit the road.  I want to do that, but there’s just something about traveling that clears my head and renews my spirit…when things are hard, I just want to go.

    I’m going to try to stay put for awhile instead, but something tells me that I’ll probably be behind the wheel and squinting into the sun over the dashboard soon enough.

    *Vasia isn’t my cat–I’ve been caring for him while his owner gets settled into a new home overseas.  He’ll be winging his way to the UK within a few days, so I won’t be involved in his ongoing treatment.
    IMG_5734

  • ballet class

    Just a few days ago I was sitting in my office and a ray of sunlight hit the facets of a stone in a necklace that I wore around my neck and threw gorgeous sparkly patterns on the wall opposite my desk. Every time that happens I’m taken back to a time when I was a little girl sitting cross-legged on the wooden floors of a dance studio, wearing a turquoise leotard with my name embroidered in pink thread on my left shoulder and soft pink slippers with an elastic band across the top of the foot that was hand-sewn in by my mother. Miss Larkin would often start our lessons by pulling a delicate pair of slippers from her bag that were embellished on the edges with rhinestones. She would hold those shoes up high so they would catch the light from the windows and throw “fairy-sparkles” all around the room. She would then tell us that a dance studio was a magical place and show us how ballerinas walked (gently, with toes pointed out, arms held out at sides). She taught us how to move with grace and purpose, as well as how to stretch and arch our backs into bridges and baskets for the fairies. Miss Larkin didn’t believe in tutus and recitals–she believed in practice. Which we did.

    Though I went to dances when I was in high school and college, I’ve rarely danced in recent years (except a brief stint to teach myself some bellydancing moves in an unsuccessful attempt to strengthen my hips and abs). For me, dancing is just too much a fight with gravity (and technology) to produce much pleasure.

    Speaking of which. Gravity. Ugh. Yesterday as I was sitting at my desk and doing my work (not being distracted by sparkles), I felt a mechanical vibration run up my leg. I thought that maybe I’d left my cellphone in my pocket, but then quickly surmised that it was a vibration coming from my robotic knee, which was a warning that I had 15 minutes until the battery would run out of juice. I had an inkling that something was awry with my knee a few days ago, and suspected that it wasn’t charging well when I plugged it in at night. But…I didn’t suppose that I was running quite so low. So I rushed home to see if I could fix the problem. And on the way to get upstairs to the charger my juice ran out completely, my knee buckled under me, and I fell to the floor. There’s nothing like a fall to humble me, to make me remember just how fragile every step is for me. Luckily, I was just a bit bruised from the fall and not hurt too much. After fiddling with a few things on my leg I think I’ve got the knee working well enough to make it until I can see my prosthetist.

    Some days it seems such a hassle to have a knee that fails so easily, that needs such constant repair, and that I can never fully trust to hold my weight. Every awkward step belies my dependence on a functional microprocessor and on expensive components that are not flaw-free. When I see ballet dancers like in the video below I wish (sometimes, desperately) that I could move with their ease.

    But…though I don’t move like they do, I think I’m a dancer anyways–someone who lives in her body, who knows the pleasure of being flexible and strong, who can pick herself up off the floor after she falls, and who believes in persistent practice. Perhaps that’s the real lesson learned from Miss Larkin all those years ago.

    Danse(s) from Sosh on Vimeo.

    (hat tip to Allison for the video link–and for bringing back such tender memories)

  • delight, fulfillment and celebration

    delight, fulfillment and celebration

    Lately, many of my friends have been discussing sexuality, specifically how the LDS church approaches the topic (with many rules/strictures/punishments) or how feminists approach it (with openness, but concern about the subjectification of women). It’s a complicated topic, one that deserves a lot of thought and scrutiny. I’ve found that the guidelines offered by Friends (Quakers) are helpful to me in navigating this now that I’m no longer married, but would be curious what guiding principles you live by in your life, so your sexuality brings “delight, fulfillment and celebration” within the context of a respectful and responsible relationship.

    Here’s the Advice & Query from the Pacific Yearly Meeting on this theme:

    Friends celebrate any union that is dedicated to mutual love and respect, regardless of the unique make-up of the family. We strive to create homes where the Spirit of the Divine resides at the center and where the individual genius of each member is respected and nurtured.

    Human sexuality is a divine gift, forming part of the complex union of body, mind and spirit that is our humanity. In a loving adult relationship in a context of mutual responsibility, sexuality brings delight, fulfillment and celebration.

    Query:

    Are my sexual practices consistent with my spiritual beliefs and free of manipulation and exploitation?

  • enough of the zombie already…

    enough of the zombie already…

    There’s this fetish out there where some people are turned on sexually by amputees.  It’s called apotemnophilia.  Some of the folks who have this condition desire amputees sexually and some want to be amputees themselves.  To be honest, I don’t understand either proclivity.  However, I will say that over the years I’ve met some perfectly nice folks with these leanings and found them to be harmless–even if they are unusually curious about my body.

    But occasionally I come across some not-so-perfectly-nice things in connection with this condition.  It tends to happen often on flickr, when someone asks to be my ‘contact.’  When someone sends such a request, I typically click through to their profile or their photos to see if I know this person or to find what we might have in common (because, I do love photography and flickr is one of my favorite social media spaces).  Oh, but today, as has happened more than a few times before, I didn’t see any lovely landscapes or kitties.  Instead, when I clicked through to the profile I landed on a site with terrifically graphic and disturbing images of women’s disembodied limbs [scrub, scrub, scrubbing my eyeballs now].  What I saw…I can’t understand or be tolerant of–it’s simply sick.  And it’s one of the main reasons that I don’t watch slasher horror movies or attend zombie walks.  My life has enough of the zombie already.

    Posting this with a picture of a pretty kitten–a small attempt to overwrite the ugliness dancing around in my brain right now.

  • evocative

    I love the work this dancing does with the morning routines of gendered dressing. There’s an undercurrent of violence and intimacy to the patterns that develop through the piece–so powerful.

    Now that I ‘dress’ each day for work (rather than defaulting to my ‘Mom’ uniform of jeans and a tshirt), I give clothing much more attention than I used to. And lately I’ve been thinking of clothing as an ‘evocative object‘ of past times and feelings. There’s the dress I’m wearing today that calls memories of a special evening in Brussels this summer, the jacket that hangs on a peg in my entryway that I sometimes bury my face in to remind me of someone that I miss most when I walk in the door in the evening, the texture of a starched white shirt that pulled me back more than three decades ago when I encountered it recently (a father-memory buried so deep), and the clicking of the heels of my black pumps on the sidewalk last night as I walked home in the dark…such a sophisticated sound.

    Last month I realized that I no longer wanted the clothing that I wore when I was married. So I’ve cast away almost all of it now (despite the fact that I typically keep many of my clothes for decades)–loving the exercise of an afternoon as I culled it all from my closet and into a large black trash bag. I don’t want those memories to linger any longer next to my skin.

  • short shameful confession #16

    short shameful confession #16

    In the past year I’ve acquired some pretty rings that I tend to wear on the 4th finger of my right hand or on the third finger of my left hand.  If I wear them to bed, I nearly always wake up with them on the ‘ring’ finger of my left hand.

    Previous short shameful confessions

  • hole-y

    hole-y

    Last weekend a friend invited me to try an acupuncture session with her practitioner.  I’d never been before so I figured I would go, just for the experience of seeing how I liked it (in the spirit of my summer of YES).

    It wasn’t until after I got there that I realized…hmmm…I’ve had some rather negative experiences with metal and puncture wounds in the past (if you’ve ever heard the story of the long needles that I used to get in my shoulder for my chemo, you know how much trauma I have associated with such things).  But I knew acupuncture would be nothing like what happened with a rusty metal pole a few years ago or like an IV needle pumping toxins into my body.  So I laid down on the mat and let myself be punctured.  I’d suggested that she put the needles in the spots that would help to relieve the pressure that I’ve been experiencing in my lower back as a result of my prosthetic-fitting issues.  She said the points for that would be in my hands, feet, and ears.

    She started by inserting needles into the outsides of my hands.  Then she did my ankle (she skipped the bionic one, which was probably wise–neither of us would’ve wanted to short-circuit any of my robotics).  By that point I was a wee bit tense.  The needles, though narrow, did hurt going in.  It was sort of like that feeling when you’re getting novacaine at the dentist and they say “this’ll just pinch for a second” and then it really pinches.  For more than a second.  Since she could see I was a bit uptight, she then added needles to my forehead “to help me relax.”  It was nice to have her rub my forehead gently (I tend to carry all my stress right between my eyes).  Then she started pinning my ears.

    It was when she approached my left ear and asked what had happened there, that I remembered what a mess my body is, with scars everywhere.  I’d forgotten about the reconstructive surgery I’d had on that ear so many years ago–but it does look kind of strange close-up because of a series of skin grafts to the lobe.  Since I’ve had surgery on both of my ears I’m not even sure that they would ‘work’ for acupuncture–they’re both covered in scar tissue and I don’t have much feeling left in them.  But she pinned them anyways, and then left me in a supine position with all of those needles in for about an hour, while some new-agey music played.

    As the time wore on, I did feel more and more blissed-out.  But I’m not really sure that it was due to the needles–I think it was more because I was like Gulliver–pinned in so many places that I really couldn’t move without disrupting something.  Lately I haven’t been taking enough opportunities for silence, so I enjoyed having to just lay there for awhile, with nothing on my mind.  That part was just what I needed.  But the needles…I think I could have done without.  A massage would’ve felt much better to me, and I think when I need a bit of an ‘adjustment’ I’d opt for that before I’d do acupuncture again.

    I was just a block from my favorite beach for the session, and when I walked outside afterwards the sun was just setting over Catalina island.  I skedaddled over to the sand as fast as I could and was able to walk the length of Big Corona before it was completely dark, the salt water stinging the holes in my ankle.  When I passed my very favorite thinking spot (where I did my catharsis ritual), a long-stemmed yellow rose washed up at my feet (no really, it did–things like that just always seem to happen to me…).  It brought back some sad and happy memories of the flowers my ex left for me near there when he proposed marriage, of bonfires on this beach with my children, of paddling and swimming in the water so many times in recent years.

    It was such a mixed-up confluence of past and present–the contours of my body and my landscape harboring the weight of so many stories, and also holding so much promise for the future.

  • if this is you…

    if this is you…

    This morning when you went to the prosthetist’s office you were feeling a bit fussy and discouraged. Because for the past six months things just haven’t been right. Either your leg has been too long, or too short, or the knee hasn’t been taking a charge or the socket has been leaving pressure sores. And you feel like every little adjustment just spawns more problems ‘to be taken care of.’  And you are oh-so tired of walking with a “loaner knee” while yours is in the shop.  Ugh.

    If this is you, then you unloaded it all when you got to the prosthetist’s.  Venting your various frustrations and concerns about possible changes.  And then you surrendered your leg to be worked on again, to get the loaner knee out & the pylon changed out for a shorter one.  You also suggested some alignment changes–to point your toe out and to bring down the heel a bit.

    And then, as you were putting the leg back on, your prosthetist mentioned that your ankle rotator was back.  You’d forgotten that it was even missing.  But when you put your leg back on and stepped down on it, you remembered.  That little bit of give in the ankle feeling so natural and smooth.  And then you walked back and forth and back and forth in the office, to see what felt right and what didn’t.  And then you realized that sometimes when something is missing (a little twist in the ankle, perhaps), you don’t even realize that it’s gone, but you know that something just doesn’t feel right.  And when it’s back, you can’t imagine how you lived for weeks without it.

    Fortunately, I’m nearly all put back together now.  Just one more change in store next week and then (fingers crossed), I’ll be back to my normal bionic self again…

  • short shameful confession #14

    short shameful confession #14

    Back when I was in high school and had limited mobility due to having recently lost my leg (to cancer), my boyfriends often carried me wherever we were going. It got me there faster than if I were to ambulate myself, and also fed my uber-romantic teen desires to be swept off of my feet by a beau (I will confess that such moments fueled many a Twilight-like fantasy).

    But now it’s been years–if not decades–since I’ve gotten a ‘lift’ from anyone (the one exception might be that time a few months ago that a wave was pulling me away from my canoe and a teammate picked me up and carried me to safer waters). I’m rather proud of my ability to get places on my own two feet, so I tend to look back on my years of being ‘carried’ by men as a bit shameful now…

    However, a few days ago I got a piggyback ride up the stairs to the second story of my house…and I enjoyed it far more than I imagined that I would. What a sweet feeling it was to trust myself to someone else’s strength for a few moments…

    Previous short shameful confessions