the limping shrink

                        The jade jaguar throne in the middle of a pyramid  in Chichen Itza Mexico                                                         https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmannix/ When I went to Mexico with a friend in my 20s I refused to go into the pyramid to see the jade jaguar throne because in my imagination all I could see was what it would feel like not to be able to get out again because of the queue. When I was first conveyed into a doughnut-shaped scanner in my 30s I was persuaded to do it without a tranquillizer and despite the operators best attempts to talk me through it I left before it was finished. I even had a problem wearing a hat while skiing because of the feeling of pressure, of being restricted.  So when I had to passively go head-first into an MRI machine for a cancer biopsy, I knew I would have to do something differently.  I had plenty of anticipatory anxiety. I was so hyper-alert that I should remember every second of the journey across London.

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.” ―  Aldous Huxley ,  Island