Still burning

It just occurred to me that this is the only place I write anymore. I used to write avidly, feverishly, needfully-- in other places (paper, mostly; poems and essays and lengthy letters in all caps to old lovers about this and that; letters to my grandmother). I don't know what happened to that very specific kind of passion. Maybe I wore it out. Maybe I made it into other things: cooking, photos, working. Maybe I just got tired of myself.
So: acupuncture.
Anyone who knows me knows I am heavily identified with this part of myself, especially people who know me for any length of time. It is something I have made at times with great difficulty.
I love it. I love it that it is ancient. I love it that it is magical and mysterious and somehow still true. I love its tools: needles (silver, gold, copper, and even this modern stainless steel) hands, fire, intention. I love it that is is a big puzzle with no static answer; it is changeable and flexible and, at least where I live inside of it, open to interpretation. And not. Depending.
This new acupuncture I am learning has me in all kinds of awe and wonder. After only two months I am finding myself looking at (indeed the world) and living inside of acupuncture differently than I had been. Less is more. Pay close attention, and much will be revealed. All pieces of my perception are being changed, shifted, trained to minute details. Everything inside this work is quiet and listening: especially my hands. The pulse is this vast and subtle cathedral where you can live forever listening to the hum and roll of the meridians in the body, ever shifting, sinking, rising, and singing--just under your fingers. I never had that offered to me at TCM school. Here it is part and parcel: a touch, a shift, a word, and a thousand ways to describe it. I always knew acupuncture was my home, but this place is the bath, the featherbed, the good flame on the stove, one that will fire up hot but still simmer softly.
The learning here is humble but not reverent. There is laughter and wry and wonder. Our teachers are gentle and clear. And also there is us: beginners, worrying, fumbling, trying to get it. We work in small study groups--asking one another questions, feeling our pulses, getting feedback, and inevitably getting to know each other intimately, quickly, carefully. Still, it is quite something to be lying supine on a table having some stranger touching your belly and asking you about your period (abdominal palpation is a big deal here). It is a strange thing to offer up your body for this sort of examination, and we all have our ways of coping.
I'm up front: I hate it when people touch my belly, especially strangers. I said so, and my partners were quick about it and plain and made sure to ask for every permission.
We end up saying things we might not say to new acquaintances in any other situation.
One of my partners would not stop talking--and what he said was this:
"I'm destroyed."
I had my hand on his pulse and my eyes in his and told him he looked okay to me. A shift, a breath, and onto the next thing. We're all there in it, and maybe he felt like I would know it one way or another anyways. I thought he was courageous for saying so, I suppose, and a little scared that he did say so. It is all part of this pretty cool new thing I am up to--all this knowing and feeling and learning. I've never done it quite this way: paid up front, feet on the floor, mind wide open, sticking my boot in it hard, like maybe I've got someplace to be.