“The answer to the question of time, the soul’s answer to the question of time, is not anything in words or ideas. Time is incomprehensible to the mind that asks about it, our mind. The soul’s answer to the problem of time is the experience of timeless being. There is no other answer.
— Jacob Needleman, “Time and the Soul”
Flashback:
Day 51
We are sitting on the sofa in his hospital room together. I have a cup of coffee and am sipping slowly. “How is the coffee here?” he asks me. “Nowhere near as good as yours, but by hospital standards, it passes muster.” He smiles. “Are you up for some conversation?” “Would love it,” he says.
Pavi: Are you looking forward to us going home eventually, or is that not something that comes up for you?
Viral: I haven’t really had much time to think about it, but walking around with the limitations here you realize— it’s not the most expressed of lives, to be living within the box…. [he pauses] Is it going to be awkward for you to play a producer role in this?
[In the early stages of treatment for his brain infections, Viral sometimes operates under intriguing premises that are not fully rooted in this reality, but that are not fully disconnected from it either. One frequent assumption he makes, is that we are on a film set. He recognizes we are in a hospital, but assumes we are here as part of an elaborate, scripted production that is serving a greater purpose.
Looked at from his perspective, this is an entirely plausible explanation for the implausible circumstances he finds himself in. A reality where day and night have no boundaries, where norms of privacy are a thing of the past, where his body is routinely poked and prodded, confined to a strange bed, its movements restricted by a jungle of tubes and wires. High-pitched alarms and beeps punctuate the soundscape, but no one appears deeply perturbed. Assorted characters in varied uniforms bustle in and out of his room without waiting for permission, asking questions that range from the banal to the bizarre. This is all just at baseline. Life in the hospital, post-BMT treatment, even without any complications, follows a profoundly fragmented rhythm. Toss four severe infections, including two of the brain, and short term memory loss into the mix, and the disconnected nature of that reality is exacerbated many fold.
In this state, the brain can no longer seamlessly supply a continuous storyline in the ways that it is used to doing. It must draw its own conclusions from a smattering of disparate scenes. Two things stand out to me in this time. They put a lump in my throat, and they fill me with an awe so sharp, it lacerates my heart. First, the awareness that at this point, at a level pre-cognition, it’s not Viral’s conscious mind that is analyzing and choosing interpretations. The patterns he’s built up over a lifetime are choosing for him. And Viral being Viral, the conclusions he is drawing from the felt-sensations of his current reality– a reality that is physically intense, and rendered in a jumble of disparate snapshots — are not fearful or self-oriented. They are benevolent, interesting, and rooted in a fundamental sense of love and interconnection. In his mind, he is a willing actor in a meaningful project, not a victim of frightening circumstances. And he is not trying to direct the process, or even negotiate a cut to a more comfortable scene. And second: I have a pervasive sense that in Viral’s disorientation, he is, in a strange and powerful way, revealing the truth of memory being at least in part, a medium of agreed upon fiction, much more than it is the domain of objective fact. He is pointing with a kind of purity, to the storylines we live in, the scripts we unconsciously create and unconsciously follow, while assuming we are living free lives. He is surfacing the irony of how we make an intricate movie set of this marvelous world, and dub it Reality.]
Viral: Is it going to be awkward for you to play a producer role in this?
Pavi: What do you mean?
Viral: If we are doing this project, and I’m at the center of it, is it awkward for you to be the intermediary?
Pavi: [By “this project,” he is referring to the film he thinks we are in,] Any role that keeps me at your side – sign me up!
Viral: You’re so sweet. [I am many things and only sometimes sweet, but if I had to take a guess, I’d say this is his response to 95% of what I say to him :)]
Pavi: How are you feeling this morning?
Viral: Clearer and actually rooted in my body in a fundamental way. Grateful to have the rooting of our connection – yours and mine in particular. And grateful to hear about familiar deep relationships, still being a part of the overarching landscapes, the recognizability of those foundational forces within wherever the new narrative is.
Pavi: What is the new narrative?
Viral: I don’t know yet.
Pavi: Are you looking for one?
Viral: No I just get the sense that I’ve missed a bunch of time and perspectives, and so am just assuming that I’m going to see partial angles– which is of course true no matter what.
Pavi: Do you have a sense of why you missed a bunch of time?
Viral: It’s a strictly biological or psychosomatic experience– it seems like I needed the space or needed to create the space to — I don’t know exactly what — to heal or ground in multiple perspectives or just adapt to a new reality that I don’t have all the full details of –it’s almost like I’ve missed some time and need to adapt to that.
Pavi: You had a BMT at Stanford almost two months ago. Engraftment happened, but before that a few infections set in, and two of them were in the brain and caused inflammation. This caused some memory loss, particularly short term memory. You are being treated with very potent and very targeted medications that in the short term create a sense of offness because of the side effects, but there have been remarkable improvements in your state of well-being and particularly in your physical capacities and also your clarity. You’re doing really well, even though it may not feel like it to you since you are maybe comparing with your old normal. But they are expecting a very robust recovery of your whole system given enough time and so am I. Of course we can’t know for sure because nothing is quite for sure in this–
Viral: Domain
Pavi: Yes. But there are strong signals and indications of recovery from all dimensions and levels–
Viral: The adventure continues.
Pavi: Yes! Does it feel daunting in any way to you?
Viral: Daunting is probably not the word I would use, but I think there’s an initial sense of an interesting and major challenge — a sense of like — this is what life IS. Another emerging set of explorations. Whether you know it, or invited them or not… though I guess some deep part of you knows, and did invite them.
***
Day 52
The last couple of days have been hard. After a night of very little sleep and a low grade fever, Viral has several other concerning symptoms show up. I am watching him like a hawk. In his current state, even minor symptoms can have serious implications and must be taken seriously. The day quickly fills with medical investigations. Another MRI of the brain, another x-ray and CT scan of the chest, and a bundle of other blood, stool and urine tests in addition to the usual regimen of almost hourly infusions and pills. How tired and uncomplaining he is. Through all of it. How heart-wrenched and full of doubt I am. Through all of it.
His body has been subject to so much. The infections he is battling are severe. The treatments are life-saving, but far from benign. The results are ravaging. It wounds me to look at him sometimes. I see the small red dots and dark bruises on his body (the result of low platelets). I study the frailness of his arms and legs, the fragility of his wrists. The thinness of his face (how I love that face!), its once mobile features now so much less fluid, his smile (that sunlit smile!) constricted by facial muscles that cannot move with the same ease they used to. I see the light drained out of his once vibrant, now darkened skin. He has lost almost thirty pounds. His ankles and feet are uncomfortably swollen, tight with retained fluid. His shoes no longer fit, nor his sandals. His chest caves in a little. When he moves, he moves hesitantly with the help of the walker, his eyes dropping to the floor. “Shoulders back,” I tell him, as we walk together, “Remember to breathe. Eyes straight ahead, remember to look scan the horizon.” I need these reminders too. It is difficult to take deep breaths. Difficult to keep my gaze focused on the path ahead. I am given to the backward glance. Riddled with memories of our life together. Too haunted by the ghosts of a cherished past. I did not want my life to change in the ways that it has. On the surface I try to keep moving.
There is so much pain inside, and I do not feel it is the time to attend to it. Inside me a feeling that feels like a knowing. A knowing that Viral must be my focus in this time. I need to be at his side. The pain ignored, erupts on its own schedule. In private moments late at night, in the early hours of dawn, and once, at a rare acupuncturist appointment. A howling, ragged, primal release of tears. A grief that feels like it does not have a beginning or an end. And yet, even in the midst of that brokenness, I receive occasional glimpses. Of a strength stirring in the deeps. A power and fearlessness that I am, funnily enough, more than a little afraid of.
Where are we headed Viral? And who are we becoming?
Day 58
Every time the doctors come in I have a list ready. I pepper them with questions regarding the persistent fevers and about possible additions to the regimen to protect/address the potential of the inflammation being ill-controlled or aggravated. I ask if they have a pool of other experts/specialists they can tap to find out specific details about cases where there was successful resolution of inflammation/recovery of cognitive function/short term memory. There is a meeting on Monday where they will have access to more specialists and they will surface his case there. I ask about access to therapies while he is still in the hospital, I ask how we can ensure that he gets timely intervention. Sometimes I am direct to the point of sharpness with my inquiries. I have learned to prioritize clarity over politeness, and I ask the nurses afterwards to let me know if my questions are ever irrelevant or unhelpful. Each time they say the same thing, “If it was my husband, I’d be doing exactly the same thing.”
Invariably, if he is awake during these ‘energized’ interactions with the doctors, Viral intervenes with a quiet sweetness that makes me tear up and wonder all over again what his spirit is made of. While I’m trying to get answers and ensure closer monitoring and follow-up, he (even in his condition!) wants to make sure no one is offended or feels misunderstood. He jumps in to soften my pointedness with his appreciation. “We know you are on our team and you work at the edges where there are often no clear solutions. It takes bravery to work in that place and we appreciate all that you are doing, and the dedication that you have to helping us and others.” On one occasion he interrupts my interrogation by trying to convince me that the doctor I’m talking to is a volunteer. At that point even I have to laugh. “He’s trying to soften my approach,” I say to the doctor. She smiles, “It’s beautiful, ” she says, “You both just care so deeply for each other.” “And we care for the ecosystem,” adds my extraordinary husband
Oh Viral!
***
Viral first did the pen and ink outline for this painting, then asked me to help. I gave him the paintbox and asked him to choose colors for different sections of the painting. I said I would paint it for him. He started out choosing yellow for the heart and then green and brown for the club shaped protrusion on the upper right, then orange and black for the eye-shaped figure above the heart. I finished all of these areas sequentially and then he asked for the brush and filled in the little “foot” with orange and also painted the bottom layer — greenish blue/gray before asking me to fill in the rest with variations of the same color. He then chose red for the little cluster in the upper left corner. The next morning over coffee I showed him the painting again and asked him to title it. The spontaneity and succinctness of his response arrests me. I immediately sense a deep current of wisdom beneath the words, but it will take me much longer to truly register their meaning.
Title: Beyond Time & Force
“Time is a type of force. There’s a presence that goes beyond the conditioning of time and of force. It’s what’s rooted in yourself vs what is rooted in projections of yourself.” ‘
***
Flashforward
Back in our own home, as autumn makes its way back on stage, we navigate the dizzying labyrinth where memory (and its loss), time, and self, suffering and salvation meet and mingle, I pick up Jacob Needleman’s Time and the Soul (gifted to Viral by a dear friend). I read it very slowly, over many weeks. And as I do so certain lines pounce off the page, like so many jungle cats. Felling me with their fierce grace. Gleaming gold with insight. Here are a few of them:
“The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical.”
“…All this remembering is only the work of a small part of the mind, mixing its accidental thoughts and feelings with scattered, random fragments of the past. We have never deeply remembered! We have never really gone back in time. We have never seen the roots of our being with the whole of our mind.”
“The personality is formed to protect us from metaphysical pain. And it does this very well. Too well.”
“In the false world, Time is our enemy, but we do not really know how powerful it is; we don’t really feel the deep, rolling, cruel power of the river of time, so busy are we managing the crisscrossing waves on the surface. But in the real world, there is a wind that comes from, “the center of the universe,” from the “beginning”– in the language of myth, “long ago,” “once upon a time,” a message and a messenger were sent to humankind. This messenger is always being sent.”
“How insane to believe we can grasp anything essential about time without opening the heart? …What could be more painful than to try to manipulate the greatest force in the universe– Time — with our nervous minds, our anxious hearts, our tortured bodies? Until we can let in what the masters of wisdom called, “the attention that comes from the source,” “the wind that rises from the center of the world,” or simply, “divine love,” we can no more deal with time than we can deal with volcanoes or earthquakes or the movement of the earth around the sun.”
“There are no tricks or techniques that can make us feel that we exist. And it is only at such levels of feeling– and far beyond such levels– that time begins to “breathe” in our life. Only with such feeling do we begin to breathe differently, literally and figuratively. According to the ancient wisdom, when a human being breathes differently, the passage of time takes on new properties. There is a new feeling of self that appears when a man, or woman, truly and genuinely steps back from himself, looks at himself and then…? And then: enters himself.“
***
One day I close the book, and recall Viral’s painting. I pull it out, and revisit his words, they read as crystal clear, and as refreshing as spring water. I feel a softening and an opening within.
Time is a type of force. There’s a presence that goes beyond the conditioning of time and of force. It’s what’s rooted in yourself vs what is rooted in projections of yourself.” ‘
It is time to breathe differently.
The Poetry Of 