On resilience

 I read something like this on the internet the other day: "If you're congratulated on being resilient, maybe you needed to be held and cared for." I pondered that. I recognize that being resilient sometimes has been an act of defiance, of surviving by partly shutting down to not feel so much and by doing that be able to continue, to be upright, to tolerate the intolerable. And at times I recognize also that had I had more support and care, I could have softened. But sometimes the tough resilience is necessary. 

I'm lying on my back in my flat in the small seaside town where I live, looking out the skylight at clouds rolling by. Thick, layered cumulus clouds, sometimes parting, giving way to slivers of deep blue sky. Streaks of sun lighting up the clouds. Everything reminds me of impermanence. I think a lot about death. Or, it's wrong to say, that I think about death, but it's ever present, like a deep undercurrent and I like that. I don't want to forget death. 

I'm lying very still, letting my bones and my flesh settle. Allowing my body to sink with every breath, soft and slow. I'm slowly landing. Slowly coming home. It's Sunday and tomorrow I'm going back for the last days of treatment.

I only have three days left of treatment and the days of not counting down are over. I started counting down exactly 12 days ago. Counting down meticulously. Three days, six courses of radiation and chemo. One bloodtest and one consultation with the oncologist. 

The black pen marks from the Particle are long gone. The marks I took such care to touch up during the weekends were a fading reminder the first few days of an environment and a treatment that held me with warmth and care and invited a soft and open hearted resilience. A conversation between body and environment. Treatment a delicate balance between breaking down tissue and healing. 

But ... the particle accelerator broke down. The short story is that a technician screwed up during maintenance and caused damage to a crucial part of the accelerator. They needed a spare part and it would take at least two weeks to get the accelerator up and running again. They called me on the evening of Sunday the 1st of May to tell me that there would be no treatment on the Monday. At that time they just said, they had trouble with the accelerator and that my oncologist would call me Monday to tell me what was going to happen and what the treatment plan would be. I thought: a welcome break, a pause, before treatment would resume, a delay, annoying because it would affect my plans afterwards, but I didn't suspect the scale of the break down. 

So when my oncologist called the next day and said, that there would be no more treatment for me at the Particle, and I would be transferred to another hospital to receive traditional radiation treament, I felt completely numb. In shock. This was the treatment they'd said would be too dangerous to receive again, They had satd that radiation to my healthy tissues with traditional radiation (because I had received radiation before) would exceed safe levels and there would be a much higher risk of serious long term side effects.

Now I had no choice. Proton therapy had been my beautiful treatment. Safe. Kind. Easy on my body. Now I had to surrender my body to an experiment and no one knew how it would affect my healthy tissues in the long run. I hated the thought of it.It scared me.

We didn't go through other options then (we did have conversations later going through why this was my best ... or even only option), I couldn't think straight and just agreed to what she said and even offered her my sympathy for her situation. 

Afterwards I broke down crying. I was in a state of total disbelief. Waves of fear as I remembered the nightmare of the first round of radiation in 2019, this was my only frame of reference. I had gone to the beach and lay there for a long time crying. And not a quiet neat cry, I was bawling. This couldn't be happening. It felt like a parallel and surreal reality. Again this weird parallel life unfolding. But shortly after they called from the hospital in Vejle and already the next day I travelled down to talk to the oncologist there and to go through a new mr-scan they would use to plan the remainder of my treatment.

Vejle is not a horrible hospital. But compared to The Particle it was ugly and attacked my senses... and I compared. I grieved over my loss as I sat in the small cramped waiting room, chairs lined up against walls, tv on, inescapable. Tears welled up and I had to go wash my face before meeting the oncologist, not wanting to reveal my vulnerability to a doctor I didn't know. I braced myself for the meeting. I felt vulnerable and fierce. No nonsense fierce. (One of the nurses looked like she was afraid of me, and I think she sensed my vulnerability and that it scared her. What if I broke down and cried? Normally I'm the good patient in that I don't show much unwanted emotion and in hospitals most emotions are unwanted. There's no time for them.) At the Particle I felt touched on a daily basis. I could cry. My tears were allowed. 

The oncologist turned out to be a gem. Warm, kind, open, generous with his attention. That day he saved me and made the prospect of the move to Vejle seem okay. I was still worried, but I felt there was some hope this wasn't as terrible as I had feared. I could feel a part of me softening.

 (By the way I’ve had the same doctor following me at the Particle and at Vejle. This also makes a world of difference for my feeling of being held. Going through surgery I had no contact doctor and that felt so disconnected. No one knew me and my story. I have friends who’ve been through cancer treatment and who have met different doctors every single time, which feels unsafe and not held. That would be the easiest thing to change, I think?) 

I returned to Aarhus to pack up my stuff, was picked up by a patient transport and driven home to sleep one night at home and then was picked up and started treatment in Vejle the next morning. 

10 days, 20 courses of radiation and chemo. Countdown. Only three days left now. I'm still tolerating the treatment well, although I feel more tired and more nauseated than before.

 I've gotten used to Vejle, but am reminded daily of what made the Particle a special and nourishing, even healing,environment. How the softness and care and respect held me and invited a softer kind of resilience I don't have access to in Vejle. There is no space, no sense of being held in Vejle. I am treated in the same accelerator every day, but the staff is always changing and I don't know a single name of any of the nurses or radiologists. They are kind, but there's little time and it has a conveyor belt feeling. I'm staying at the patient hotel, more patient than hotel. The resilience I have access to is tougher and less in contact with my senses. I feel myself contract and shut down slightly. Time feels stretched out. Hospitals are for sick people and I don’t feel sick. Everything at a hospital addresses what is sick in me, not what is healthy. Yet I’ve adapted. I’ve had to. 

I’m okay, there are pockets of joy, moments of humour and gratitude, but mostly now I wait for this to be over and long for life outside the hospital. Three days and then this will also fade and become a memory. Impermanence. Also this will pass. 

On why how we look matters

 I just got back from the evening radiation session and I'm tired, but want to finally publish a post marking that I'm half way through treatment now. I've had 28 doses of chemo and I've undressed and been under the proton beam 28 times. 24 to go. (I'm not counting down :-), just marking time and acknowledging the passing of it. I'm actually feeling quite content being here.)

I still feel great (still no nausea, yay!), but the bloodtest today (they do a weekly bloodtest) revealed that my immunesystem is nosediving from the chemo. 

My body is a patient body in both meanings of the word. I feel no restlessness, no desire to be anywhere else right now. My movements are like walking meditations, back and forth between here and the Particle, here and the ocean, with a deep acceptance of this now as it unfolds. All my movements towards other places have stopped. In that way my body is patient. It's also a patient body in that it tolerates, bears with, waits, surrenders to everything that the treatment asks of it. The constant monitoring, the weighing (losing weight here is a bad thing and they keep a keen eye on us, which means being weighed twice a week), the scans, the bloodtests, All that because there's a reality I can't see or feel, but is real nonetheless. Without the scans and the biopsy I wouldn't have known there was a cancerous growth deep inside my pelvis. 

I'm grateful for the penetrating eyes of science and that there's a treatment, that is precise and targets the tumour. It makes sense. It's a gift. But the patient's body is not my only body and not the only reality. The observations and the measurements and the tests are a way to know the body, but not the only way. 

(I had a conversation with one of the other patients today and he said he didn't want to know any of the details of his cancer or the treatment, he preferred just to receive the treatment. I'm not like that. I love to understand all the details and I tend to read and ask a lot about cancer and treatment, but it's not to be in control, but just out of curiosity. But it's true, that sometimes information can kindle fear. If there's medicine I have to take, like the chemo, I try to not read about the possible side effects. But that's a whole new blog post right there about nocebo.)

I need to trust the science and it's keen eyes of observation to be able to trust the treatment, and I do, but I can't know my body in that way. My only way to know this body is by softening my gaze and by paying attention to the body as movement and breath and pulse and rhythm. I can't feel the cancer cells, I can't feel my struggling immune system, I can't feel the effect of the proton beams on those deep tissues of my pelvic ligament. This body, that I know through paying attention, is an ever changing inner landscape. Subtle wavelike movements. The sounds of digestion, the sound of my breath, the rhythm of my heart beat. All sensations. 

The way we look matters. If I look with the penetrating eyes of observation and description at the body as an object, my body hardens to a thing with clear cut outlines. When I soften my gaze and pay attention to my body as movement and process, there's a softening of tissues, outlines soften into breathable membranes. Awareness and body are woven together. 

The same body that undeniably has cancer is also a body connected and whole, healthy, vibrant and joyful. The cancer doesn't negate that. There's disease, I know, but I'm not defined by the cancer. There's freedom in that. No matter which reality can be observed or described I'm more than that. This body is so alive and will continue to be vibrant till my death. Disease and death doesn’t deny life, it's part of it. 

The first time I read the description of the cancer in my body, more than three years ago now, I was overwhelmed by fear. The words were razorsharp and precise and cut through my tissues and alienated me from the body that I thought I knew so well. They took my body away from me and instead there was a body contracted around what was wrong with it. My wise sister reminded me I was more than that reality. (At that time I was overwhelmed a lot by possible losses of my body as I knew it and a lot of fear.) 

And I know this to be true, and these days with so much practice meeting fear I find it easier to remember. 

Whenever fear slips in through the gap between this now and an imagined future I come back to this body I know through paying attention. 

And with mindfulness of body I can wrap a cloak of care around the fear.

On not knowing and this open heart

The beautiful interior of the treatment centre, DCPT, that I have named The Particle.

 Today I lay completely still with a full bladder (the bladder is full because when full it takes up more space and protects other more vulnerable organs from radiation) for an hour while a technician tried to solve a technical problem with the proton beam. Normally the session only takes about 20 minutes. We discussed whether I should start over, go pee and start drinking again, but I preferred laying still rather than having to start the whole process over again. 

Twice a day every weekday I undress, put on the white gauzelike hospital bra and a hospital bath robe, that is one size fits all and way too big for me. And as I step up to lay down on the hard platform with knees supported and my feet in foot rests I take off the robe and am handed a small towel to cover my pelvis. I surrender my body in their care. The team consists of nurses and radiologists, but only women, which given my nakedness and complete surrender feels comforting and secure. I feel held. They are warm and caring and always take their time, which helps my body soften when I'm in there, so much that I've fallen asleep once during treatment. 

The two women touch up the black penmarks on my body, that need to lign up with the laser beams to ensure that I'm in the exact same position every time I receive treatment, so that the proton beam hits and damages the tumour and as little healthy tissue as possible. The whole setup is wild and looks like something out of a scifi movie and is in a way. Somewhere deep under ground there is a particle accelerator like the one at CERN, only much much smaller of course. 

You can Google proton therapy if you're curious. It's cool.

I'm back in treatment again and if you know me (and if you're reading this I guess you do) you'll know that it's my third round of cancer and treatment. First time in January 2019, second time less than a year ago, where I went through surgery, that was supposed to be radical, meaning that they removed the tumour completely, but apparently wasn't.

On the 22nd of February I went in for a routine scan after surgery, but instead of the "all clear" I thought I would get, the scan showed something they suspected was tumour growth. After the first wave of shock, of disbelief, of fear and grief, I managed to return to a frame of my mind, where I could place it in the pile of things I don't know and can't control. It didn't mean the fear wasn't there, I just didn't feed it. 

In an odd way having been in this situation before helped. I knew the landscape and could navigate it with greater ease. I had been in the waiting game before. Waiting for scans, scan results, biopsies and biopsy results. Not knowing.  After all, I thought, nothing had changed from before the scan, and I didn't know for sure, it was cancer, so worrying didn't make sense. So I went to work and stayed more or less grounded as I went through a new scan and then a biopsy and then the waiting for the result for the biopsy. That week of waiting for the biopsy result was the hardest to hold space for. I would get overwhelmed by fear at times, and then at other times caught up in the narrative that it wasn't cancer, but just scar tissue as it had been before. All in a not very logical, but very human attempt to get a sense of control over the uncontrollable. I kind of held my breath and all around me the people I love and that love me held their breath with me.

When the biopsy result finally came after a week, it confirmed that it was cancer, a tumour growing in the site of surgery, in the pelvic ligament. 

First I felt a sense of calm. Finally I knew. Then there was a landscape of emotions, that came and went, sometimes only a murmur underneath daily activites, at other times, mostly in the evenings and nights, they flooded me and I would lie there coming back to my body and breath to give them space and to be able to discern and navigate them as skilfully as possible.

There was this sense of a surreal parallel reality unfolding. Like I couldn't really understand this was happening to me. (I've had that feeling often since surgery and the nerve damage, I've suffered. I've had a hard time coming to terms with having a handicap). Not a "why me?" feeling, more a feeling of disconnect. 

And then fear. Fear would flood me at times. Fear of treatment, fear of pain, fear of nausea from the chemo, fear of more nerve damage and loss of mobility, fear of having to live with cancer, fear of dying from it. 

Grief. Grief over lost life. Of having to leave the work that I love so much. Grief over my pained body. 

A  feeling of letting others down and then something akin to shame. Not a strong feeling but it was there, fed by the cultural narrative that being sick is a failure. My failure. I had failed to get well. And I'll get back to this, because it's not a narrative I believe, but I want to give it some attention. 

But something else also happened. I already knew what the treatment plan was: Proton therapy twice daily for 26 days and oral chemo twice daily on all proton treatment days. It meant staying for six weeks in a flat close to the hospital so I could receive outpatient treatment. Proton therapy only exists that one place in Denmark (it's a very expensive facility to build and run). The setup reminded me of my first round of treatment 3 years ago and I remembered how hellish that had been (so some remembered bodily fear there - which I actually didn't fully recognize then. That came later), but also that despite all my fears then, it was also a time with ease and joy and pockets of deep appreciation and love for life and the people around me. A deep gratitude for being here rather than not. I also remembered that once I started treatment, all my fears ( and there were many then) of entering unknown territory, released their grip and it became a life like any life. Different than the life of not being in treatment, but a life. This reminder opened a space to trust that I would also be able to meet this round of treatment with an open heart. 

And even if it's still early days (It's been 9 days here. I came here Tuesday the 5th, started treatment on the 6th ... I have promised myself not to count days ...) I can see it happening. 

The first days were tough and I'm grateful my sister was there with me. I received two different types of chemo the first day, the oral chemo, that I'm still taking and will continue to take throughout and a dose of intravenous chemo, that hit hard on the second day. I woke up intensely nauseous and the nausea just flattened me. On the Saturday it was so bad I stayed in bed all day in spite of taking the medication to avoid nausea and drinking ginger tea and ingesting ginger in various forms. I felt weak had a tremendous headache (which I think may have been a caffeine withdrawal headache) and had no appetite. I lost courage and fear crept in again. Fear that this was how it was going to be. I guess if it had stayed like that, I would have found my way to practice with it, but I'm just really greateful I don't have to. At least not for now. 

Sunday I woke up and the nausea was gone. It took me a couple of days to begin to trust it wouldn't return and to fully begin to enjoy life without it. To enjoy food!

There doesn't seem to be much fear anymore. I'm settling in and creating routines around the daily treatments, so I stay nourished and in touch with the world outside the hospital (I've vowed to get myself to the ocean at least three times a week). And more than anything right now I feel deep gratitude. For the people who treat me and care for me at the hospital, and for my family and my friends, who are always there for me and give me so much support. So much generosity. And I have gained some experience now in being on the receiving end, I'm still not expert, but practicing. 

I'm not worried or even thinking about the outcome of treatment. I'm aware, that apart from surrendering my body in the care of experts, trusting the treatment and staying awake and openhearted, using my ressources and nourishing this body that has cancer, but is also healthy and whole, I can't do much. This is not a battle against cancer, and I'm not a soldier. This is not a heros journey. It's more an allowing and a deep recognition of our interdependence. Right now, because I feel wondrously great, it's not so hard, and I know it may change. And then I'll meet that. 

I am curious about this human experience, well aware that I'm far from the only one on this path. 

Coming back to our cultural narrative of disease and death as a failure I recognize the narrative and the impact it has on me, but I know it's flawed and have a practice that's counter cultural in that sense. (Death or impermanence is central in Buddhist practice). I often reflect on impermanence and know that death is inevitable (even mine) and an inherent part of life. Bringing it out of the darkness and into the light highlights that life is a gift, that we can't take for granted and gives us a sense of what is really meaningful. Death connects us. 

As I was reflecting on death in the first days after I was told I had cancer again, I had this deep and not verbal realization that most things would eventually fall away and what is left is just love. I know this sounds cliché, but it's not when it's felt and known on a gut level. There is a huge difference between knowing something and knowing something. 

But I've talked for a while now, and if you're still with me, thank you.

So just to end ... Of course I would so much rather not have cancer, but that's not a choice I have. And of course I have a deep hope, that this will be it, but I don’t know.

For me leaning into not knowing is a key practice in keeping an open heart. I can not know what the outcome of this treatment will be, so I practice trusting the process without being invested in a certain outcome. We never have the full picture. We never have control. Getting cancer and being in treatment brings it into the foreground, but it's always true. Normally we live in a kind of a addiction to the illusion of control and permanence, which may well be (one of the reasons) why Death is still a taboo in a our culture.

To be able to trust this process without being invested in an outcome helps me become more available to life right now and not wait for a better moment and an imagined life on the other side of treatment.

And that makes this life, here and now, with all that I'm given, so much more easeful and vibrant and rich. 

the inside of things

I go out in the early morning chill in search for coffee. But the cafés haven't yet shaken off the night and let loose with the sweet scent of coffee and croissants. The quiet canals with their smooth luminescent water mirroring this world beckon me and I walk. Along one, then another, crossing bridges. I find myself in front of the Paper Island Streetfood Market, where the "Spotted Pig" café promises coffee and beer, but it's closed. Even a spotted pig needs it's beauty sleep. I turn to head back towards Christianshavn and more than a promise of coffee ... all, but the sleepiest of cafés must have opened now. At the corner of the bridge from the Paper Island there is a man.
He is hung on the frame of his tall body like a puppet between acts and as I approach he comes to life. Not a lot of life. He slowly comes out of the shadow of the tree he has been standing under and stands in my way in an innocent manner I find totally disarming. He is visibly drunk. His eyes staring a little stiffly behind the round metalrimmed yellow sunglasses. I suspect he wants money when he says "Can you help me ..." and I am already fingering the coins in my pocket. He struggles ... looking for the words. "Can you help me find ..." He pauses again. He speaks with an accent. Icelandic ... And icelandic drunk in Copenhagen. A drunk Icelandic guy in Copenhagen looking for ... a café? A bar? A hotel? The trainstation?
He deliberately pushes out the words, a difficult birth of meaning obliterated by alcohol or maybe accentuated by it ...
"Can you please show me the inside of things."
That's what he says. Can you please show me the inside of things? And maybe I would love to...
I can't help laughing, which makes me a bit ashamed because he looks so serious. Well, yes, let me show you the inside of things. This is what I try to do. I try to help people see the inside of things. To not stay on the surface of things, but to go deeper. To stay with their experience. To explore. This is what I practice and I try to pass this practice on. To my students. My clients. But I am not sure, that's what he means. My index finger gives him a sweeping virtual tour of the surroundings: "This is the Paper Island," I say and point to the factory buildings on the other side of the bridge, "that way is Christiania, out there is the Opera but it's probably closed now, and that way is Christianshavn and all cafés and the morning citylife if that's what you're looking for." He hangs on my finger and every word with what looks like intent, but probably he is just very very drunk. As I leave he retreats to the shadow of the tree. To the unlived life of a puppet between acts.
The marble sky is a promise of another beautiful spring day in Copenhagen. Can I show you the inside of things? Do I see the inside of things or am I stuck on the outside? I sit on a bench for a while and listen to a blackbird. Singing inside of me.

Since Death alone is certain

I was in the middle of the story of our hike through Sarek, but life got in the way or rather death did.

It's the first day of a new year as I sit down to write this, and the old one made it's exit in a dramatic way, when I lost my old friend, Ole, who I knew from my youth. We lived together when I moved away from home 17 years old, and he was a good and close friend. A support. Someone that I counted on and loved.

Then we drifted apart. I got married, moved to the States, had a daughter. Then moved back, had a son, moved to the countryside.
But the last 10-15 years we had rekindled our friendship. I got to know his wife and his children, they got to know my partner and our children. They visited us, we visited them. Some friendships last through all the changes, this one did. And we had just started talking about maybe investing in a summerhouse together. Talking about building community, extending our families to include old friends. To tie together loose ends ... and then he suddenly died.


One late evening before christmas I got a text from his wife. A text that I didn't read, because I was on my way to bed, but I imagined it had to do with the house, we were looking for. Maybe they had found something. That night I dreamt, that we were out looking at a huge old place, that was falling apart, but Ole said, that he could fix it.
When I woke up and read the text, I had to reread it three times to grasp what it said. Ole is dead.

What happened over the next few days and weeks was almost a textbook journey through grief. A journey that has far from ended. It started in disbelief, went through anger and downright rage and then deep deep sadness to moments of intense joy in life. Those first intense emotions have faded, but the ripples are still felt in my system and reverberate in all aspects of my life. The echo whispers:

How do you want to live your life? Now? Now? Now? Nowowowowow

Meditating and reflecting on what was happening with me I could separate my feelings into several layers, that I want to share with you here:

Disbelief:

We don't believe. really, that we are going to die. We can not really relate to it. We know that all things, that are born, die. We see it all the time. Yet when it comes to our own existence and the existence of those closest to us, it seems impossible to grasp. So we continue to live as though ... as though that reality is never going to affect us. Untill one day suddenly it does.What was there yesterday, suddenly isn't there anymore. I can't call up Ole and say, that I'll come by for a coffee and to shoot the breeze. He isn't there anymore. Life in the form of Ole seizes to exist. That is deeply puzzling. I mean, I talk about this all the time, when I teach, but when it hits close to home the realization is stark and intense.

Anger and rage:

Has to do with unlived life, I suspect. The realization that albeit all my best intentions to stay awake and aware, I am still caught up in patterns of sleepwalking. Of not being completely here. A little parenthesis here is, that I remember discussing this with Ole long time ago, where he thought it quite harsh to say, that we were sleepwalking in life.  We almost got into an argument about it. Him being so stubborn ... :-)
And suddenly we just die. The rage is just like: "Fuck, shit, fuck, shit!!!!" I want to roar at the world: "Stop sleepwalking!!! Wake up!" But only I can wake up and the rage is this intense waking up to the intense energy of life. I rage because I realize that I am not fully here. And death wakes me up and I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK TO SLEEP AGAIN! Maybe underneath the rage, there is fear. It doesn't feel like fear though. It feels very pure and very engaged and full of life energy.


Deep deep sadness: It's bittersweet. It's loss. It's longing. It's memories. The memories took me by surprise. I suddenly remembered things from my youth that I had no idea that I had forgotten. The memories flooded my senses. I woke up and they were fighting for space in my awareness, vivid, colourful, sensuous...the weirdest feeling - almost like the memories for a while were more real than the rest of my life. I was fighting to be here and annoyed with my surroundings (my partner) for drawing me back into everyday life. I wanted to nosedive down into those memories and sniff them in, cuddle up and lie real close with them. For a few days when I woke up, it would take me some time to fight my way back to this reality. I actually ended up cancelling classes to be able to withdraw and just be with those recurrent, detailed and enormously vivid memories.
A memory of sitting in our shared apartment in his room writing peoetry on an old typewriter( Yes, I am that old), his room, because it was bigger and cozier, and looking forward to Ole coming home from work and giving life to the apartment. Me, a little weird and teenagey and isolated. Ole a breath of fresh air.
Or the time when he visited me when my mother was dying, and I showed him my favourite spot in the forest, and we lay there side by side. Just being. Which was exactly what I needed at the time, and he knew.
But also the irritation. I used to get so irritated with him. He was so unplanned and uncontrolled and chaotic in his movements. Sometimes it felt like he was falling through life.
But the irritation fades to give way for the love. Loves is what lingers and stays. Love is what is remembered. That is so thought provoking, because what of the irritation I feel with the people who are close to me now? The urge to control. That completely falls away in the face of death. I want to remember that.

And I felt such heartache for the family and wanted to be with them and share their pain and ease it somehow ...
And I felt heartache for all my other losses.
Losses, that suddenly felt as real as this one. My mother, when I was 19. My father 10 years later.
My grandparents. My uncle. My cousin. A childhood friend. My aunt ... People, who were there, who aren't here anymore. Just the memories. Memories that were pushing on the gates of my awareness. Pushing them in. Pushing through them. What is really real?
And then taking in the losses of all the other beings in this world, on this earth. Through time eternal...What is this life? What is this death? Heart cracked open...

Joy in Life:

When death moves in and sits real close to us, we may wake up to the beauty of life. It has happened to me a few times. I was sitting in the church, the first one there, waiting for people to arrive and the ceremony to start. There was the coffin, white and covered in flowers, and this woman was hammering up and down the aisle arranging the flowers around the coffin, and when there was no more space, then down the aisle. Sun was shining in on the wall of the church, dancing light and shade a bit like light under water. And suddenly I grew very quiet, time stopped and I just watched the light and it was so beautiful that tears started welling up in my eyes. The simplicity of that moment. Just sitting in the church in the quiet, while this woman was doing her thing and the light doing it's thing. Life unfolding around me. And me just there. I can't describe the beauty of that moment.

This is the gift of birth and death. These to poles of existence can make us fall in love with life. Birth and death wake us up to the beauty of life. But they are only moments in the continuous unfolding. Only moments. Birth nothing to hold on to. Death nothing to hold on to.

Nothing to hold on to.
And like I said earlier the urge to control our lived and others falls away in the face of death. Or rather may fall away.

I am reminded of the zen contemplation:

Since death alone is certain, and the time of death uncertain
How shall  live?

There we have it. Again. I say this sentence to myself at the tail end of every meditation.
I say: "Since death alone is certain, and the time of death uncertain, how shall I live?"
And then ... I whisper to myself countless times during the day: "Relax ... nothing is under control..."

It is an invitation to contemplate what is important in our lives and be willing to do that every day, every time we remember. Is this thing that I worry about really so important? Do I need to get stressed and flustered? Are my hurt feelings so important? My grudges? My complaints?

Or can I surrender to enormous gratitude fed out of being content with what I have and knowing that in a moment I have to give EVERYTHING back? And then feel the joy of giving back now? When I am still here to be in touch the life that flows between my being and the being of everything/everyone else? The truth is that everything I have now is a loan, and I have to give it back. I don't own anything, not even my life.
If there is nothing to hold on to, then why on earth not begin to give back now? Are we too busy? Too preoccupied? Too bewildered? If I don't know how to give back, then I can start small. Give back to my immediate surroundings. Give back in the form of small acts of kindness. In the form of letting go of selfrighteousness. In the form of a smile. Just giving other people my face - no holding back. Let others see me. I don't belong to me anyway. I belong to the world.
And keep widening my circle of compassion.

I know that when death moves in close, this is what arises. The gratitude, the joy, the love and the sadness and the grief and the anger ... because one does not exist without the other. They are two sides of the same coin.

Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy part 6... Storm

Yes, I know. I left us there in the dark and in the rain and we have no idea what is going to happen, apart from the fact, that you know, that I survived to write this. Which will also be the fact later on in part 7, where we are in real danger. This is just uncomfortable.

I got caught up in life and didn't have time for my blog. A part of our family is moving to the States, and that moved us, and my son found a place to stay in Copenhagen after having searched for two months, and his moving out was quite a change too after four years here in our relatively small apartment. He is 20 and it felt right. Although my motherheart fears that he will get lonely and what about eating healthily and will he be happy? All the thoughts and worries, that are part of the reality when you love someone. And that you have to bear, because you can not save other people from the pain of growing up and you shouldn't. And he will grow.

And all manners of other things happened, that I don't want to bore you with now, but most of all what has been drawing me away from the Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy is the refugee situation in Europe. It is on everybody's mind, isn't it? We all think about it. And in a way I relate it to both that stormy night in the tent and a book by a guy called Viktor Frankl: "Man's Search for Meaning", which is his account of his experiences in a concentrationcamp.

The world has just gotten very much smaller. Events that normally happen "out there" in a part of the world, that seemingly doesn't really touch us or concern us, suddenly moved to front row. Literally to our doorstep. We are being affected by this and for good reason. In one way or the other, what was happening out there in the world that we didn't see close up and therefore couldn't really relate to, got very real. Real people. Real stories. Real suffering. Real deaths. It's easy to imagine, that the people that are suffering "out there" somehow don't suffer in the same way as we suffer. We can't imagine what it's like, when people "out there" are cold, hungry, scared, when they loose the ones they love. Suddenly seeing the images in the news or shared on Facebook, we understand that the people suffering are real people. And they are right here in Europe. They are people like us. It touches us. All of us. For some of us, what is evoked is compassion. For some it is fear. But no matter how we are touched, this situation changes us. We can't close our eyes anymore. I will write more about this in a later blogpost.

But let me first get us out of that tent and on with the hike, because by the minute things are just getting worse:

Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy part VI:

I can't sleep. I catch myself praying to the weather Gods or anyone who has any power over the weather. I am tense and apprehensive.

If you have never spent the night in a tent in a storm, you won't know what I mean, but Nature get's so close, creeps under your skin, in a tent and it's intense. Alive. And can be quite frightening. I realized several times during that night how small we are in the Universe. So insignificant. That is a very useful and beneficial insight. But in the situation, that night in the storm, it was actually just plain frightening. We really felt at the mercy of Mother Nature's immense power.
At one point it starts dripping down on my face, and I start getting obsessed with keeping an eye on the tent to make sure that it's not raining in anywhere. I make my way out of the sleeping bag and into the frontpart of the tent where all our gear is and sure enough, rain is dripping and sipping in. I cover our boots and the gasstove with the big plastic bags we use to keep our sleepingbags in in the backpacks when we hike and cover our backpacks with their raincovers. Then I crawl back in, determined to sleep. It's 11 pm. Johannes snores with comforting regularity, I twist and turn and with the regularity of Jo's snoring, I wipe down the inner tent to keep it dry. My sleeping bag is getting
damp, the mattress is wet, there is small puddle building in a corner of the tent. I am cursing the fact that we didn't treat it with water repellant before we left. It's an old tent so even though it's a good quality ten, it's not really performing optimally.
Normally the rain would just drench the outer tent and the inner tent would still be dry, but the gusts of wind are so hard that the outer tent beats down violently on the inner tent and delivers it's burden of water.
Hence the puddle, the wet mattress, the damp sleepingbag and hence I am unable to sleep.
At 1 am Johannes wakes up. We are both freezing and we turn on the lamp to warm try to warm ourselves up (much like the little matchgirl of H.C. Andersen's fairytale) and share a bar. We giggle a little talking about our situation and having no control over it, and as long as we are both awake it feels lighter and not so bad. Then Johannes goes back to sleep again and I continue my involuntary nightwatch. Drying off. Moving stuff out of harms way. My mattress keeps sliding into the puddle when I turn in the sleeping bag and then I try to move it away again. Out of the sleeping bag, back in. Sitting up, drying both sides of the innertent, back down again. 20 times during the night. Sleep won't come.
Finally morning comes and I'm not sure whether I have slept at all.
The storm tugs relentlessly at the tent and sometimes we feel like it's going to lift off. We eat porridge and drink coffee and debate our next step. We could stay here and wait or take a chance, pack up the tent and hope that we can get out of the worst of the wind by crossing the pass into the valley. It feels like we're in a windtunnel. But that means packing up in a storm, which in my mind
before we left home was the most challenging thing we could be exposed to. But now it seems uplifting to think of action. And in the end, after waiting for several hours, we decide to go for it.

We have practiced this. Packing everything inside the tent, which is an art, when there is that little space to do it in. We take turns in packing our stuff, while the other one waits in the inner tent. Finally we're ready to go outside and pack down the outer tent. And again we have a strategy and everything goes smoothly. We stuff the tent down in it's bag. Tighten the raincovers around the backpacks and we're ready to go. I roar at the storm. YES!!!!! As we climb to the top of the hillside, the wind intensifies to the point where it's hard to keep balance. We stumble with each gust of wind and stand still to push against it's powerful force. It's enormously physical and powerful and as we cross over the pass and start descending into the valley, we roar and yell, and our voices get swallowed up by the wind. Mother Nature is so incredibly, wonderfully badass, and we are feeling her full force now. The wind and rain beat on our backs and I get soaked in a matter of half an hour, my rainjacket not really up to this kind of weather.

But the energy is wonderful. We are on our way again.

Hikers Guide to the Galaxy part 5 in which the fog rolls in ...

This is what it looks like when we wake up in the morning. I woke up during the night and went out to pee in the cold drizzle. Then lay there listening to the sound of rain gently tapping on the tent like tiny insects wanting to come in and joins us in the warmth of the tent.

Of course we have to let go of the idea of climbing a peak and we spend the morning in the tent.
At one point we hear a noise outside. There is defintely an animal out there. When we investigate we see this:

It's a reindeer and her calf and she circles the tent several times. She just seems really curious about us. They talk to eachother all the time, mother and calf. A gentle reassuring chatter. It's kind of nice with a bit of company, but after half an hour or so she disappears up the mountain and in to the fog, calf close behind her and with them their chatter. We are in a fog enveloped pocket of the world, where all sounds seem muffled and intimate.

In the afternoon the weather clears up a bit, the fog lifts, and we go on an expedition up to the top of the slope to look down into the next valley, where we will be heading tomorrow. We discuss whether to stay here or make a move down into the valley, but decide against the move. It seems silly to pack up the wet tent just to move a couple of kilometres. And from the ridge we watch little tiny people along the lake in the next valley looking for places to pitch their tent. From a distance they look like ants aimlessly moving around in a pattern only they understand.

We hike back down again and head for shelter in the tent. The rain starts beating down harder and during the evening intensifies to a storm. We spend our time drinking tea and playing a quizgame, where we take turns in coming up with a person, that the other one has to guess. And the hours move by slowly. This is my worstcase scenario. To be idle in a tent. I think of the photographers from the BBC naturefilm and how they spend weeks waiting for some animal to turn up so that they can film it. We have only spent a day in the tent and I feel cramped. There is only one place where it's possible to sit up straight, so we take turns in sitting, while the other one lies in the sleepingbag. The real downside to being idle is that it's cold and we use quite a lot of gas letting the gaslamp heat up the tent just a little bit.

My patience is being tested. I am cold and hungry. The cold mkes us burn more calories, but we only have the day's ration. If we eat more now, we have less tomorrow, it's that simple. There are pockets of talk, where we fall into the social field of connection, then we fall back into silence, but the silence still connects us. It's a friendly silence. A warm comforting silence. And the hours pass. Finally, more because we are tired of being cold than tired, we get ready for bed to the incessant pounding of rain on the walls of the tent. Nature is taking her space and it's so clear how vulnerable we are, just guests in her realm. I lie in my sleepingbag, hoping, that the storm will die down, imagining how in the morning the sun will shine and dry all our stuff, but instead the storm picks up ...