To have to bear the unbearable
how do I do this?
let alone teach my patients?
the tragedy that is of this world alone
this suffering life
this particular patient in extremis;
facing the pain of others
the failure of self
the pain of mere existence
of harms done to others
to even those I have loved
especially to my children
to the Self
a gnawing aching pain like the second one reels in one's toe from a too hot bath
there follows a deeper slower agonizing pain- that one-
knowing this without worry of sentimentality
like when listening to Bach and suddenly the tears flow uncontrollably without explanation as if he had unlocked the mystery of the suffering world in one chord sequence.
and I know how true it is despite the distance over time the secret remains alive...
but no one taught me how to bear it.

Why me?
Why my shoulders?
Nana had always said "he carries the world on his shoulders" when I was three
A cry baby to my Dad who often was triggered by this little sissy boy
who cried too easily for everything and anything
triggering his rage as to what this so-called son was turning in to.

Yet I still cry when making love, unable to hold back the pain
as if in the climax there is a secret being released into the world from a mysterious place through the lovers
and we are powerless to resist this like the very act of love itself
and are forced to transmit this crie-du-chat
despite ourselves
we are as mere porters.
and this sense pervades all my experience
nothing is free of its taint...
especially the sunsets over the lake
and landscapes in changing seasons
as if nothing is eternal
all must die and rebirth
all must leave and dissolve
and I cannot bear it nor hold back the tears.

But for me the joy was always intimately bound to not only love but also death and the tragic poisoned all happiness with the perilous concoction of ecstasy and torment.
And discovering the sacred was no refuge, for here too I found the hierosgamos-that sacred union of good and bad, light and dark sides, angels and demons, overseen by the Almight Oneness the Presence where all is made clear-made plain in one glance (skira) the whole of history, of human suffering, of nature and survival, of violence and animal behavior, human striving throught the lens of this tragic focus.
This consciessness we called God once, forced me into an even more unbearable awareness of the cosmic suffering and divine pain which only raised the stakes even higher seeing things from his perspective lightened nothing comforted no one. And of sacred texts the longing and yearning heightened the feeling that there were a few prophets with the same sense.

The relief comes only in fleeting moments, a Scotch, the climax, the music, the needle in the spine which demands my total focus and concentration, aware of nothing but the technique and watching that X-ray screen for my non-biological steel needle penetrating the vulnerable flesh as it passes skin, fascia, muscle and dura to deliver the sacred remedy.

And in most unexpected places it surfaces; triggered by haunting memories a sequence of music, a word spoken soflty in a movie, a patient's knowing look of anguish, my sibling abused, ageing relatives after a time gap,

Above all-no one taught me how to carry all this.