A Place to Turn Around
Last week I told a handful of people that I'm dying. I let go, stopped trying to conquer what can't be conquered, stopped trying to make progress, decided to respect the disease and my limits. And I wanted to talk about it. I described it to some friends as a kind of Tourettes, spitting death into the patter of polite conversation that irks me.
Death. I'm dying. No, I'm not getting better but I'm alive and will try to keep it that way for as long as I can. Enjoy your day and I'll do the same. I feel a bit guilty when I rebuff the well-wishing but, hey, this is my protest and my medicine.
In many of the Zen koans, a teacher is praised with the phrase: He had a place to turn around. This has always fascinated me. I've long believed that my life had a directional wrongness that needed to be turned. What is the point around which we can turn? I think I'm on it now.
Giving up, letting go, not trying to improve. Walking now I meet my actual pace, on my feet instead of lurching and falling. Sometimes I do lose my balance and realize I have frozen my ribs or my ankles; usually that happens when I get lost in thought and hold my breath. On my leg is a dancey aspiration, and it requires the whole body to coordinate, to orient its axis through the one leg. We do this with every step, actually.
Last week I asked two body experts to help me with my spine. One spouted the ideal, which I strained to maintain--drop the tail bone, lift the sternum, retract the neck. The other said forget all that about trying to make the right shape and just sense, and that's when it turned around. Choosing the latter because the former created more strain meant I was choosing life as it is instead of as it should be. When I was in high school I had a crush on a boy whose yearbook quote was something like "the greatest mistake is to see life as it is instead of as it should be." * A few years later he killed himself.
We have to die. 
That is ever so hard to believe. If I had believed it earlier maybe I would have been easier on myself and on everybody else. Luckily, there is still time to have fun. Do you like my new shoes?
*I think this is the actual quote:
Maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be – Cervantes (author of Don Quixote, not so much my hero now)
April 9, 2021
Share Article →
Reader Comments (5)
AS always, poignantly perfect point! love the shoes!
Brava. Thank you. I think it means meeting life on its own terms. I once had a therapist who said, "You don't have to do anything.
Blues shoes dancing in and beyond the blues.
You— clear, honest, beautiful in word and deed.
We breathe with you.
Thank you for writing this.
Yes, I do, I do love your new shoes.
You changed my life. You inspired me with a vision of life worth living. With the possibilities of boundaries, creativities and freedoms. I am wordless in the face of this news. I just wanted to make a mark here to let you know that I know and my heart aches reading your honest, passionate being.
Love Katherine