Sylvia's Journal

Letting go and easy breathing needed some help yesterday – it is as if my mind is still in Afghanistan and my body was not getting the right signals. So I eased into bodywork with a pedicure, accompanied by Tessa at the Vietnamese nail place in Beverly. It was nice but not enough.

We then stepped things up with an acupuncture tune-up, highly recommended by Tessa. What convinced us to go there was that Tessa’s Steve had subjected himself to the treatment and was happy with the results. For him to have any body work done that isn’t surgical or dictated by a (real) doctor, is rather extraordinary. It was probably the best recommendation we could get.

And so we presented ourselves at 3 PM to Bill who looks like he just graduated from college. He worked on us in two adjacent rooms, sticking what felt like a thousand needles everywhere.

That he knows his stuff was clear right away. Without knowing us he read our bodies like an open book. That too was comforting. He ended both our treatments with something that looked and felt like scraping our skins (my back, Axel’s arm that was damaged in the accident) with a Chinese soup spoon. I thought he was scraping my skin off. It was rather painful but felt wonderful afterwards.

Now, more than 12 hours later, Axel’s arm looks like he was in an accident again but his fingers feel better than ever, without the tingling and tightness in his arm. My back is all blotchy red; it looks like I have been severely beaten. I wouldn’t dare to show it in public. But I too feel that much of the tension I carry there has been scraped away. We felt so good afterwards that we made another appointment.

Back home we plucked asparagus out of our garden and cooked the traditional Dutch/Belgian asparagus meal with ham (yeah!) and eggs and new potatoes, drenched in much butter.

This morning I explored what is available on iTunes university related to learning Persian (a lot) and lectures from Ivy League universities (a lot). One can even listen to all the major commencement addresses. I downloaded the entire Betty Crocker cookbook, including coupons, on my i-Touch, all that for free. What a wonderful world we live in!