I spent ten days in July and August in nearly unremitting agony. The disproportionate amount of pain sparked by a one centimeter kidney stone astonished me. In the 48 hours after visiting the ER, my consciousness was narrowed to a dismal pinpoint as nausea from Vicodin swirled with hot icepick stabs in the kidney. There was no comfortable way to lie, sit or stand. I slept when I passed out for a few hours, only to wake up drenched in sweat. I was given more medicine to combat the nausea so I could take the Vicodin, which was quickly diminishing in efficacy. I barely ate, just enough to buffer each fistful of assorted pills. I lost eight pounds in ten days and have yet to recover my appetite. I had no hunger, no desire, and only fever dreams. I was unable to enjoy sunlight lest I endure even more side effects of my medication.
It had already been a challenging shake-or-get-shaken-year. Everything was in flux. It felt like a period of mutation. I was not only reacting to a series of unusual ordeals, I had already decided to aggressively change several parts of my life and was succeeding beyond expectation. I had a new sense of equilibrium and freshness of life's possibilities. I was having more fun and felt creatively engaged. To celebrate and mark my passage, I planned a series of events, beginning with a Walpurgisnacht festival and culminating in an esoteric Moorish Feast & Jubilee. Strange and wonderful things were happening and events tend to facilitate the possibilities. I woke up one May morning, after an unexpectedly wonderful evening, with a head full of verse.
About the time that I was to begin preparation for the last event in the series, I was brought to my knees by pain. Family members, friends and my doctor urged me to cancel the Jubilee. It was an impossibly ambitious scheme and I was effectively out of commission for theforeseeable future. I could barely think straight and the only relief in sight was Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy; blasting the stone with infra-sound five days prior to the party. I had no idea how woozy and weak this would leave me.
I was sustained by two thoughts. The first, bolstered by the weight of experience, was that one's capacity to endure pain increases one's ability to experience pleasure and bliss. When in pain, endure and plan. When in bliss, gush. The second was that I could alleviate some of my stress and discomfort by bombarding myself with hours of gleefully buoyant music. I would stagger to the stereo for 70 minutes at a stretch, making party mixes heavy with Cab Calloway, string band music, cartoon jazz and frenzied trance rhythms from the Middle East. Then I would collapse in a hot bath with a stack of research material and check my audio work. It was exhausting and ill-advised but it felt right. It was my ritual of overcoming.
Had it not been for friends stepping up, the Moorish Qiyamat would have been greatly diminished. As for my own ordeal, the event occurred at almost the exact moment that I ceased being in pain. I had no idea that relief from suffering could be so ecstatic. I had the wonderful, cleansed feeling of having been chased out of myself for a while. All my senses were, and are, fresh and ticklish. Returning to life and work, I felt like some secret stranger with a heightened sense of absurdity. As Mustafa explained to guests at the Jubilee, Qiyamat, to the mystic, means "uncovering." For me, the price for this was having superfluous layers of thought and habit sand-blasted away by crazy amounts of pain. The patina was driven from my senses and I was able to celebrate this transition with beloved friends at just the right time. And many of them seemed to be celebrating rigorous or joyous transitions of their own, which lent the occasion a heady, intoxicating atmosphere.
Whatever else may mark the balance of this year, I feel better prepared than ever before. I'm hungry for fresh experience and mad to create. I feel renewed and re-invigorated, pleased to be part of a community of creative, inspired individuals. My stone has passed and my egg has hatched. Blinking in the sunlight of this new morning, I'm at peace with the world, walking in new shoes with new purpose and a fresh sense of Mystery. I have no regrets and a keen eye for interesting possibilities. If you pressed me, I'd have to say that things are about to get very interesting. It's wonderful to have friends with whom to strike sparks. Sooner or later something will catch.
"I've given up on my brain. I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you're not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep."
-Jilaladin Rumi
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