Atoms. Squeezed from stars. Bouncing.
Pinballs.
Collecting. Forming.
Until....
Decay.
And then.
Atoms, squeezed from stars. Bouncing.
Pinballs.
Collecting. Forming.
Until, again.....
Decay.
And then....
Observe this,
Or,
Resist.
The choice is yours.
Suffer.
Or
WONDER.
It's done so many times.
In a minute, an hour, a year, and a lifetime.
Without thought.
Mundane.
But.
That breath,
made with air on the skin,
in the throat,
chest,
lungs,
in this incredible vehicle,
On this magnificent orb,
In the depths of the endless abyss.
Is it really, actually, mundane?
Now that you're conscious of it?
The sun emerges above the horizon, and then descends.
It is as it should be.
The tide comes in, flushing the sand on the shore.
And then recedes….as it does.
Winter gives way to Spring.
Summer, to Autumn.
It is as it should be.
It is the way of physicality, constant transformation.
Flow, change, recycling and movement.
And suffering?
Is resistance to that.
When your time is up you will forget.
You'll forget the TV, the car and the brands.
The bills, the job and the junk will fade away to nothingness.
And yet.
You will remember.
You will remember the times that you loved.
The times that you felt the rain, or lay beneath the tree exhausted and alive.
The time the sun dried cold, wet skin.
You will remember the times that you really, really lived.
And the times you're awake enough to enjoy a single, simple, calming, exhalation.
Maybe that memory is made,
now.
Have you ever noticed the way that whitewash fizzes and bounces, as it falls over itself, to get to your feet?
Or the way that bark feels, as a tree leans through gusts of wind, swaying under hand?
Maybe you've also noticed, the wonderful warmth, and potential for life of soil under your feet.
But.
Have you ever noticed, that when you truly notice those things, that your mind is gloriously, and wonderfully,
Quiet.
It's all you have.
Can I have your attention for just a moment?
Nothing much, and just for a moment.
It's nothing.
But.
It's everything.
It's all you have.
Your attention.
And.
Just this moment.
Have you been close enough?
Have you felt the soil in your hands, and the movements of tiny creatures that keep us alive?
Have you truly noticed the trees dancing with fungus and dirt and air?
Have you been close enough to really see those things?
And then.
Closer.
Close enough to see the merging.
The merging of dirt and flowers, of slime, spiders, ants and life.
And then.
Even closer.
While I never thought too much about it, if I was honest, in the past I would have thought that having a brain injury would “look” a particular way.
As someone whose brain is damaged, I now know that most of those ideas were either vast generalisations, completely wrong, or very shallow.
Perhaps the hardest part for me of having had the tumour, brain surgery and cancer treatments, wasn’t actually the recovery from the surgery, the radiation and the treatments (but maybe I’m forgetting the crappy bits).
It seems to me that the hardest bit to navigate has been relatively recently. Being given the “no evidence of disease” call was liberating in many ways, but then….
Life comes back, although I should be more specific and say “my life comes back” and then life itself seems to diminish a touch because of that.
At the time of being sick, I was off the hook. I didn’t have to worry about the mundane, in fact, the mundane was exquisite. It was the first time I’d experienced the incredible miraculousness of everyday experiences. I didn’t have to worry about the chores, obligations and expectations I’d built into my life. Trees were shinier and birds more beautiful,… (even people were 😀).
And then my life came back,….. but, with a surprise.
The life I’d built over years, came back, but to a different person. This Mark was not the same one.
I’m not saying the new “me” was bad. In many ways it’s a better version of the old me.
It’s just that my brain won’t do stuff it used to.
I have a brain injury.
We all have (if we dig deeply enough) issues of being “less than” in some way. We collaborate with family, society and peers, and make that little stone in our shoe as children.
It’s there, annoying, distracting, and deflecting us until it hurts enough to actually really notice it, and how much it has impacted our dance with life.
My “stone” was about being stupid.
Being easily bored, a dreamer and fundamentally cheeky, gave people the opportunity to reinforce that narrative. For those reasons (and others) it meant I always felt not quite smart enough, and so, never quite felt completely comfortable.
I can see now how that drove my interactions with others, and the strategies I developed all my life to try hide it, and to try to fit in.
The results weren’t always great, but I muddled through, and then….the brain thing happened.
After the dust settled, I tried to fit back into “my” life, but now, with a brain that won’t do some of the things it used to.
It’s a very strange experience, to not be able to manage something I once did without thinking about.
I came face to face with something that’s “simple”, and that I shouldn’t struggle with, and yet…
The look of confusion on others faces when this “simple” thing stops or slows me, is mostly managed (my friends and people close to me understand).
Mostly I just say, “soz, got a brain injury”, laugh and move on. No problems.
Sometimes though, tact is forgotten, and peoples’ inability to understand is very, very, clear.
That the task is simple, isn’t lost on me. I’m in a micro-machination in my head, trying to get my brain up this seemingly tiny hill. Peoples’ responses can look like many things superficially, and at the same time, that “stone” in the depths of that shoe finds the tender spot at the base of the big toe, and there it is…. “you’re stupid”.
My brain injury isn’t obvious.
Most would never know, and even when it rears its head, I move past it with a joke (or claim it with a joke like “take no notice, I’m a high functioning idiot”, or “I’ve only got half a brain).
Laugh, done. Move on.
But sometimes.…it really hurts.
There’s sometimes grieving for the loss of the old functionality, (before the good changes are seen) and other times there’s a profound sense of vulnerability.
Helplessness.
We place so much stake in “knowledge” and “knowing” stuff, but often that knowledge is only used to reinforce our identity, our opinions, and therefore impact on our life experiences, and not always in optimal ways.
I’m learning ways to unlearn, and learning ways to remember .
I’m learning to unlearn the noise, that idea that “I’m stupid”, and learning to keep remembering the lessons the tumours taught me.
When I forget them I suffer.
Cancer teaches that “security” is a delusion.
There can be a wonderful glorious freedom in that realisation.
We blobs of sweat, slime and goo, in a thin skin of air, around a lump of dirt, hurtling through space, right next to a massive nuclear reactor that keeps us alive, forget that everything is in a state of flux.
There’s no such thing as security in the universe.
In that forgetting there is the source of our suffering collectively and personally.
I don’t have to survive cancer.
I just have to keep remembering, over and over again, about the ebb and flow of the universe, and the insignificance of “Mark”.
I may struggle with a few things, but luckily I can still remember to keep doing that.
Mark’s book about his experience in 2016 is available now.
In Play, you can find Joy.
In Joy, you can find Generosity.
In Generosity you can find Compassion.
And in Compassion, you can find Kindness.
In Kindness, there is Peace.
And in Peace, you will find Love.
In Love, you will find the Source.
Play with paint, until you weep with Joy.
Grateful.
The colour comes off the brush, and two dimensions become three.
Light, dark, shape and texture fall onto the canvas.
It's a prayer this painting thing.
Each brushtroke a moment laden with gratitude.
Each mark a homage to life.
Bursting from the earth.
A homage to vision and colour, to the magic of taste.
To the smell of salt, air, vegetation and more.
Maybe that's where life truly happens.
In the majesty of gratitude.
And perhaps, in the movement of paint.
A leaf.
Just a leaf.
A wave.
Just a Wave.
Light bounces from object to object.
Just waves.
Just leaves.
And then you look deeper.
Beyond the apparent solidity.
There are photons dancing with your eyes.
Atoms swirling in a dance with the endless abyss.
Fragments of stars, assembled into
just a wave.
Seen by
just an eye.
13.8 billion years in the making.
Gone.
It paints itself.
It's not me.
I'm not here.
"Mark" is nowhere, but "something" is left, just the same.
I am in the sound of brushes over canvas, or a breeze through Casuarina leaves.
I'm in the gold on the edge of a leaf, in the green of a fresh blade of grass.
Now, I am in the sound of paint being mixed. Of matter and atoms being moved.
Here, but,
Everywhere,
and,
every nowhere.
I am here, but Mark has gone.
Lost in the making of marks,
of making magic.
The ultimate disappearing act.
To paint, to vanish in front of my own eyes.
Gone.
But.
I AM, still, here.