Koyaanisqatsi -- a cult film classic-- is now preserved in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, aesthetically, or historically significant." The film named for the Hopi Indian term meaning "life out of balance," depicts the chaotic and often destructive relationship between humans, nature and technology. I would venture to say we all feel some of this underlying turmoil and many, like myself have used it as an excuse to stay numb for far too long. Before reading any further, I highly recommend that any reader of this particular blog episode watch the movie, which features the music of Philip Glass. The visuals will amaze you.
So this is a blog. One that has been dormant for years (excuses, excuses) because writing becomes difficult when life feels out of balance -- it's like ADHD on steroids, a carousel that never stops, where we never reflect, sit, to take the time to think, let alone to write significantly. When one does take up a pen, ideas are often fleeting, swirling, crashing waves that hit the shore and drive back out to sea. Has a precious shell ever slipped through your hands at the water's edge, never to be found again? That line were the sand meets the waves may never find its' writer. That's what I'm talking about.
In a world with so much stimulation, keeping track of a thought is nearly impossible. It's like roping cattle or doing a headstand for the first time. Tenacity, desire and stick-to-it-ive-ness are keys to publishing, but knowing what to write when there's no clear purpose? One has to be laser focused to make sense of the torrent going on the the mind and to block out the noise and the mundane, and the daily chores and habits. Again, this is partly why "Blue Bloggin" has been silent for so long.
So why now? Because I have a story to tell and an essay to share. I have a reminder that I think everyone needs to hear about the beauty of being alive.
If you were confused by the name, no, this is not a political blog. Although "Blue Bloggin," the name, may lend itself to politics, it's about humanity, creativity, love and the pursuit of art and excellence. It is for all people with a brain, and blood that courses through their veins. It's not for caterpillars that bleed yellow, or dandelions that bleed white, it's for humans whose blood runs blue -- until exposed becoming rust colored earth.
This is a non-partisan message for anyone who feels life is out of balance. Now is when it gets personal, so feel free to stop or read on.
I love this term Life Out of Balance, and if you have never seen the film Koyaanisqatsi, see it now. My personal copy was borrowed (to never be returned) by a science teacher at my alma mater high school where I was also a teacher. I remembered that "negative" experience after hypnosis and neurofeedback. In order to find balance, I have been training my brain to, "Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative - latch on to the affirmative and don't mess with Mr. In-between" (Harold Arlen) in order to find balance.
Part of my own personal experience was literally losing my balance and all motor coordination from a flu gone bad back in the year 2000. I called it my "millennium bug." It was caused by a 'life out of balance' trying too to do too much with and for my children, my husband and my writing career. It was scary in, and scary out. Here's my story in the form of a letter to a friend whose son lost his "balance" and motor coordination after a scuba diving incident.
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Hi Friend-
I don’t have your number but have been thinking about you.
I wanted to share my thoughts on (son's) situation.
I have never had the bends, but back in 2000 I lost ALL motor coordination and landed in the hospital for three months (my kids were three and five). Drs. struggled to determine what it was, and Guillain-Barre, and Lymes Disease were possibilities.
I couldn’t walk or stand on my own and because I had no center of balance, I threw up hourly if not more (like a really bad case of seasickness). It was awful. My nerves were shot, and it felt like I had an electrical current running down my spine. My handwriting looked like scritch scratch and if I heard a loud noise I’d reflexively throw what ever I was holding (including once a full cup of hot tea). Eventually Drs. (Particularly one Infectious disease Dr. who I called Indiana Jones) determined it was viral encephalomyelitis caused by a bad flu.
I am telling you this because, though people cried when they saw me, I never gave up hope. I was lucid x3 according to the reports and eventually one Dr. (Neurologist) asked for me to come to his office so he could share his prognosis. It was a huge outing. We went by van to accommodate my wheelchair and I wore a lead vest and motorcycle helmet to minimize my violent shaking (caused by cerebellar ataxia).
I’ll never forget that Dr.
He was a southern, elderly gentleman named Noble David. He was pleased to meet me. He shook my hand and told me that I had gained “quite some notoriety” for my opsoclonus (freely spinning eyeballs). He also said that he would like to read me something. He reached behind his desk and grabbed a textbook off the shelf and proceeded to read a passage about my exact situation —- all I remember was that in that textbook it said that I would have a 100% recovery.
Seeing me, no one else would have believed him, but I did. I thanked him and held on to that hope. I left and had one last puke on the ride home and that was it. I never threw up again. I started to recover. MIND OVER MATTER.
It took me over a year to feel like myself again and some things may not be quite the same, but for the most part Dr. Noble David was right. I had a 100% recovery. He was also right for going out of his way to read me that textbook so I could believe that what seemed impossible was in fact possible. Without knowing there was a “text book case,” I may have lost hope. Gradually I went from zero to 100. It was a slow and steady pace, but I got there by believing I could.
I hope you will share this with your son and that he finds patience in his recovery process knowing that everything happens for a reason and everything you believe is possible. Sorry for the book. This is actually the first time I have written this story because I never knew anyone who I thought really could use to hear it. Godspeed and lots of love.
-Stacey
Dr. Noble David set me on the road to physical recovery, but it was a long row to hoe. Surviving the illness was one thing, but it was the physical recovery and what it did to my personal outlook that wrecked me. I was also a text book case of anger, depression, and neurons working against each other all causing me to be impatient, angry, bitter and intolerant. I was a monster to my children who I loved more than anything in the world. I hated my husband for his handling of my hospital care. I became disillusioned with life, having seen the darkness of humanity in nurses who wiped vomit in my hair while sporting fake smiles. Something had to be done, so I went on antidepressants and became a zombie. I was more out of balance than ever.
That didn't last long. I chose to throw away the pills, and it was then that I wrote the essay, "Rock Bottom" and was on the real road to recovery.
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Rock Bottom
By Stacey Reisman Steig
No one noticed the lines on my face, my own personal "Dorian Gray." Eight ragged scratches -- self-inflicted, raw bleeding, greasy with ointment -- glistened there, in the sunlight of the open-air amphitheater. The opening act played on, distantly below as I, alone, sat holding down my blanket as if it were a job. The world danced around me, a colorful blur as I sat there cross-eyed, inside myself, beside myself with pain and suffering, sorrow and woe, seeking the source of the throbbing in my cheeks, in my head, in the ground beneath me. It was other-worldly; a surreal feeling I'd know before at concerts in drunkenness while innocently whirling as a Dervish, but I wasn't drunk today and innocence was washed away like "water under the bridge." I had reached rock bottom, and today it was the Red Hot Chili Peppers I had come to see. Music, like other art forms, can be as powerful as any antidepressant in its ability to heal.
Slits now, my eyes gathered up the feudal energy of the dancing crowd; hyperactive eyes, darting aimlessly in their sockets trying to make sense of it all. Over-stimulated, I lay down sniffing the fabric on my blanket, of my soul. I could have been drunk, passed out and stoned, all acceptable that day, among that crowd, all clamoring to see Anthony Keidis on stage. That expectation was my veil -- anything goes -- and so I went, anonymous, unnoticed still, on that beautiful fall afternoon in Florida; music playing, people dancing and laughing and me lying there face down fighting unseen monsters and drowning in a pool of tears because I couldn't muster up the strength to face the music.
Like a blind man who once could see, I too had the rug ripped out from under me in a strange and bizarre illness that made me shake, rattle and roll in a way that was far from dancing. People cried when they saw me in my encephalitic state; head shaking, nerves rattling and eyes rolling freely in my head. Dance? Hell no. I couldn't even walk. I couldn't eat, I couldn't read, I couldn't be a parent to my children, a wife to my husband, or me to myself. There were needles in my arms, in my neck and in my spine. And then one day, as if by design I was well again and left to make sense of my new myopic vision. I was a sight to behold. I heard no laughter during those long, dark months looking for the lesson in it all, not knowing quite how to be the hero that was expected of me. Helpless, hopeless, desperate and depressed, I was vulnerable to the knowledge of life's fragility. But today I had a choice. I could swallow the latest in pharmaceutical miracle cures lying at home numb, in pill-popping bliss, or go to an outdoor concert on a bright, sunny day.
"Under the Bridge," a favorite Chili Peppers tune, started up. I heard it loud and clear. It hit me as a commiseration, a song sung with passion from the pit, from the rock bottom of somebody else's core. With it came that proverbially "cosmic" sense of connection. I lifted my head to see the band in all their glory and understood that behind their light and energy, as they played soulfully before this vast crowdth, they too had known the darkest days and the depths of despair and had risen above it. With a twinkling of hope, my eyes steadied, and I stood up to dance. It was much more than the doctor ordered.
I see now, as I re-read the poetry of Allen Ginsberg's Beat Generation, that all of life is suffering. I feel the dark times of certain young poets passed on like Elizabeth Bishop; embroiled in passion, and wicked hours spent struggling in search of words as if they were pieces in a jigsaw puzzle; as if life might have template; require a solution. And I understand those like Theodore Roethke, who saw words as bridges to connect the dark with the light; who in his poem, "In a Dark Time," asked, "Which I is I?" -- referring to human duality -- the highs and lows, the crazy and the sane; and resolved that we are free when we realize "One is One." My mind might have been too fuzzy to get that if I had taken what the doctor ordered.
And in films, Like Roberto Benigni's 1998 Holocaust masterpiece, "Life is Beautiful," I see the power of humor and wit when we are faced with the darkest of human fears and emotions. As Benigni's character, Guido, shelters his 4-year-old son from the concentration camp horrors of 1940's Nazi Germany by playing a hiding game with him, I understand the importance of playing -- not only with my children, but by myself to experience and share the joys of life and to instill, not fear, but a sense of wonder and curiosity. Funny how easy it is to see these things in the dark of a movie theater. Maybe that's what the doctor should have ordered.
Since that concert, on that beautiful fall day in Florida, I have ditched those awful, suppressive little pills and have chosen to feel my full range of emotion by spending more time looking at life through the raw, evocative eyes of the artist, poet and musician. In the process, my own eyes have opened, and I have begun living fully again.
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