Word After Word

I am walking in to my doctor’s office and I’m smiling. I so love to see her. This is largely due to the fact that she thinks my jokes are really funny. So of course I think she has a great sense of humor.

When I am there, I very much want to make her laugh. She laughs so hard—she really knows how to stay with it—and then she usually makes a joke, and often we just be laughing. The moment stretches out, and swallows everything bad that ever happened. It’s pure joy and could likely be the main reason I’m in much better health than I was a year ago. I go see my doctor, and laugh, hard. Not that I don’t think her other treatments are not working; they are. But the laughing, maybe it’s the activator, the catalyst, the substrate. The spark that opens up the space where the healing will come in and do its work.

I always intend for this laughing joy moment to happen between me and my doctor. But I can’t try, plan, or work for it. I can’t make it happen.  Only if I use the invisible material in the room, at hand in an unknowing, unclingy, unexpected way. I have to look at the big diagram of the ear. I have to look at the calligraphy. I have to let go of thinking and let something else enter.

It is (wait for it….) exactly like writing. (And falling in love.)

To be funny for/with my doctor, I have to get into this place of total focus and concentration. I have to be completely in her office, in my seat. I can’t be thinking about books, calligraphy, groceries, school, injustice, tire pressure, or gluten. I have to be there fully and watch her very carefully but not with any objective. It’s like riding with a good tailwind. The world whooshes by, no effort from you.

The state I’m trying to locate, to become, when I am going to co-create the hilarity with my doctor (or write the next poem) is made up of these qualities: curious, attentive, open, assertive, patient, energized, calm, engaged without expectation. I am active but not after anything. I’m leaning forward into how we are together, but I’m not searching for anything specific. I never know if it will happen again or not but I have to want it to happen and then also forget that I want it to happen. Both.  

It is just like writing. I know all the qualities of the state of mind required to create something, but I can’t be aware of any of them consciously and also be in the state of mind. It’s very weird and addictive and delicious. (Also like falling in love—you are completely out of yourself, yet completely self-centered at the same time and you don’t know what will happen next.)