We are counting our blessings, and in this time I am counting so many things that a few short weeks ago I wouldn’t have known to include. Viral is walking without a walker. He is able to stand at the sink to brush his teeth. He can take a shower, sit on the sofa. He can bring a cup to his lips without shaking.
The doctors and nurses are well-pleased with Viral’s swift progress. We’re relieved he is no longer in acute pain. There is a sweetness to this time. Though there are still many unknowns, much complexity to navigate, and still much ground to be covered before we can consider a discharge date, there is too, a quiet sense that he is held. That we are held.
Above is a diagram created as a quick way of orienting Viral (and myself) to what has happened, and what is happening in this time. He was having to re-adjust multiple times a day to suddenly finding out he is at Stanford, post-BMT, navigating a host of debilitating infections. At some point we were getting lost in the thicket of complex treatment details that his memory has temporarily lost access to. And it was draining his energy. Every time the teams of well-meaning specialists burst into the room with their routine questions and jarring updates (peppered with the intimidating names of multiple drugs, advanced tests, and disease details,) we’d watch Viral valiantly marshal his limited physical resources, and his remarkable internal ones, to try and integrate and respond to everything they were sharing. It would unsettle him in subtle ways, not to be able to do this, and each time he would be left trying to sort out all the missing pieces.
It struck me over and over again, how his focus in all of this was on trying to support whoever came into the room. He wanted to be in meaningful connection. He wasn’t overly interested in, or concerned with his experience as a patient. Something in him deeply trusted that part was taken care of. The frame that he was most alive to was that of being a collaborator in a shared process. I wanted a way of reflecting that back to him. So I tried to create a high-level, simple, pictorial summary of his/our journey that he could resonate with and build off of. I’m not an artist, but I figured he’d give me points for effort 🙂 When I showed him the diagram, I narrated the flow of it for him in words:
“In May of 2024 you were admitted to Stanford hospital, a few days later we were thrilled to have you go through a bone marrow transplant. Every BMT comes with unexpected twists and turns. In your case you came down with intense fevers and a few infections. The medical team here was able to diagnose and start you on the right treatment. You’re responding to it beautifully, and the infections are getting better. Now we’re in June, and you’re in the “Building strength” phase. You’re getting stronger every day, step by step, and we’re all healing together. The heart in that circle, with you, Nipun, Guri and me, represents everyone whom we are connected to both in visible and invisible ways. There’s a multidirectional dance of offering and receiving and healing that’s happening. And through it we flow to the edge of discovery together. We each have our own mountain to climb, and we do it each in our own ways, but we are all connected at the base. And we flow into the wider world with our learnings, our light and love. And the cycle continues as we continue to build strength, step by step, and dance and flow and lean into the edge of discovery again and again. Because of the intensity of the infections and the inflammation that happened in the brain, some of your memory is temporarily offline and you don’t always remember being admitted here, or that you had the transplant. But those details aren’t deeply important at this time, they’ll get clearer eventually. We’re in this new phase now and we need you do to exactly what you’re doing– you’re building strength and being a core part of this deep, collective process we’re in.”
“I love it,” Viral said, “This is amazing.” He says that every time he sees the drawing. And I bring it out multiple times a day. Some of the doctors and nurses have been subjected to it too 🙂 As rudimentary and unrefined as it is, it approximates some of what really matters to Viral, and where he innately sees value. As we wait for his short-term memory to re-emerge as the doctors have assured us it will, this little scribble allows us to ignore the threads that tie us in knots, and instead pick up the ones that he/we are drawn to explore in this uniquely potent time.
***
There is something beguiling and out of the ordinary, about our current conversations with Viral. It feels at times as if he has arrived back in our midst from somewhere at once faraway and unutterably near. A place that cannot be named or visited like a country. A place that cannot be described except in koans and codes. Below are nuggets from sundry conversations Guri, I and other dear ones have had with him over these past few days. Like all excerpts, they are by definition incomplete, and missing the contextualizing frame of the surrounding dialog. And while I try to transcribe as faithfully as possible, these efforts aren’t perfect. My apologies in advance to you dear reader, for any ways in which this muddles or distorts Viral’s meaning. [I know in advance that he himself, gracious as he is, will forgive this without a second thought.]
How are you feeling right now? There’s a freshness in terms of aliveness. You’re not fully arrived and you’re not fully departed. And then there’s the practical aspects– it’s been unclear what is coming up next in terms of different injuries that have happened… And on the flip side there’s all the glory of livingness, that’s alive and possible and experiential. And then there’s the collective living of that, whatever the collective in that moment means. That has been beautiful as well. So it’s like okay– you want to live your life with authenticity, joy, and a sense of aliveness, and if you do that then everything else is details in terms of how it shows up.
What is the value of being in the present moment? I think fundamentally for me it’s ultimately about where your attention is genuinely called, and what does it mean for it to be called. If you really are alive to that, then there isn’t —any, “I should be attentive to this,” or “I should be doing this” Those things can be great creative constraints. Like, “My values and aspirations tell me I’d like to be doing such and such, but when I don’t go in that direction there’s something deeply valuable to learn from that.” Because in general, we tend to learn from where the attention moves, and what that reveals. [attention always moves in the present moment.]
Have you felt alone or connected or both during this period? Both alone and connected in some fundamental ways. Everything feels connected and interrelated for the most part. and I think there’s also definitely an element of fundamentally different or unique, specific channels that you are walking through or experiencing that others won’t automatically see.
Are you comfortable with that kind of aloneness? I think it’s the nature of the universe. I don’t know that I find much reason to argue with or resist that.
What is this period evoking in you? A kind of gentleness and fruition. A unique, gentle and kind energy.
How do you experience your self in this time? The thing that keeps coming up is, there is this core attention–or consciousness, or however we want to name it– from which we act and think and talk and “consciate,” and all of the other things. Generally it feels very solid– but it’s actually not. And in these types of moments you really see that. I know for instance, that I will only catch pieces of what someone is talking about, but I will need to make my own story out of that– including with my own story.
That’s true – we always only hear a part of the story, even our own, and we construct from there. Yes and what I mean is something even more fundamental than that. We use up a certain kind of fundamental energy in just being the way we are.
The mind typically imposes continuity on experience, but in your case at this time that’s not happening in quite the same way. What does that feel like? You get to examine the actual experience when you don’t have the experience of that other type of continuity — and that can be both exhilarating and completely overwhelming, and depending on where you are on the spectrum you will try to adapt accordingly.
What does adapting to not having the solidity of continuity look like? The crux of it is developing some amount of — a set of qualities — including some amount of curiosity, some amount of fearlessness, some amount of assuming goodness and benign-ness. At the same time protecting yourself from where those conditions may not be met.
What is it that needs protection?Maybe somewhat ultimately, but maybe somewhat confusingly — that need for protection is what needs protection. If we buy into a certain amount of. “I need protection for this,”– then that becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
***
For the last few days I have been giving Viral a black pen and a blank sheet of paper in the morning. I ask him to let the pen move in whatever way feels most natural in the moment. Then I give him some brushes, an open paintbox and ask him to add color in whatever ways feel in flow. He tries, unsuccessfully each time, to get me to paint on his behalf. He does not think of himself as any kind of artist. But I’ve always been struck, even in his casual doodles, by the unselfconscious freedom and potency in his lines. And now in this twilight zone we find ourselves in, I’m interested in what might emerge through him in the wordless medium of form and color. And what words he might find afterwards to describe the emergence.
Title: The World of Possibility, June 24th, 2024
What does this painting evoke for you Viral?
Logical creative possibilities that are seeded from a place of structure and generative force. And then the way it propagates…there are things that support the propagation at both upper and lower ends. They make the expression an expression of possibility. And then there’s this watchmanship that’s underneath it all. Watchmanship is not the right word– it’s guardianship. The green one, and the brown one too, they are noble platforms. And these are eggs (streaming out) into the world of possibility. Then there’s the sky, ever potent, ever present, ever watching…
The Poetry Of 