The present of history- part 1

is that it often is a precursor to the past. As a wise man once said, “There is nothing new under the sun” and perhaps music is the best instrument of that. I find often new interpretations but even more often familiar riffs embedded into “new” songs. And yet my poet du jour and I talked for hours about how the past informs the present and collides with the future. We think we’re so different… but really as I get older (I know 31 years is not so old) I see how connected we all are. Look at our bodies and how they function for instance.

The human body has to be the most fascinating created piece of art in history. We are art in motion as it were, where the symbiosis of our parts hurls us into a society full of other us’s. I spent the first part of tonight with a naturopath. He is a healer and uses alternative medicine, acupuncture and chiropractic in tandem to treat the body as a whole instead of its parts. As he was conducting muscle tests to gauge the level of health of my organs, he made a few passing remarks of “hmm” or “interesting”. Then at one point when he pulled back, like the conductor pulling up a chair to converse with the music he had been conducting, he asked me a simple, short question: “How was your childhood?”

He then proceeded to explain that my body’s primary concern right now is my childhood and its rectification. In fact, my main allergy it turns out is linked to a particularly traumatic time in my childhood. And in order for that allergy to disappear, that time must be forgiven and passed over once and for all, the ghost of Christmas past laid to rest. I learned tonight that the liver is the organ that bears our griefs and sadnesses. So it wasn’t altogether shocking that the supplements he recommended will balance out my liver. Tomorrow I begin a cleanse for three weeks and that was my initial intent of the visit. Oh yes, no sugar or bread or vinegar or wine on my birthday or Christmas. But I’m seeing this as my gift to myself- a chance to cleanse and purify in preparation for 2008.

Over a quick bite at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant tonight, I opened up my fortune cookie and read as a cocked half-smile slid across my face: “Good health will be yours for a long time.”