9/19/08

I'm lying on the table today at  the Community Acupuncture Center in Boulder. I hear the Indian tabla and sitar doing a melodic dance with the sound of water lapping a shore. I wonder where the water is. I can hear crickets. Its not a still pond. The water laps, rhythmically. I am on a pebbled shore and I can see the underside of the small waves that crash onto the crushed pebbles, one after the other. I sense someone beside me, to my right, on the shore. Besides the crickets and the waves, it is still.

The needles are in and I am left to my own devices. I thought about bringing a book, but then I thought better of it. This is precious time. I have a finite number of breaths. I bring my awareness to the inside of my body, to sensations arising and passing away. I try and stay there. My mind wanders.

I have been irritable with Dan this week. Is it a cold that has been ravaging my body for the last seven days? Is it my period? He is the man I am crazy about, the one I married, the one I cherish. And I've been a little mean to him. Generally he doesn't react to me when I do this, so he is the perfect mirror for me. My words, my defenses, hang out there in the air with nowhere to go. I am forced to own them.

Back to my body, to sensations rising and passing. I can feel electrical current in my left lower leg- the acupuncture working. The day begins to fade out- the traffic, the noise, work- and I am tuning into something much deeper. There is space. And the more I'm there the more I feel. And in that space I am able to let go. I forget irritation. 

Its that space that I need.