Past

As a child my parents lovingly referred to me as the “singing surgeon”, reflecting my passion for creative expression coupled with my intense fascination with the inner workings of the human body. I was never able to satisfactorily answer the common question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” without listing a long litany of possibilities: obstetrician, actor, pediatrician, writer, architect, geneticist, or director? To remedy this apparent lack of clarity, I pushed myself to into all directions at once. Fortunately, growing up in Chicago afforded me a multitude of opportunities to explore my many interests.
By the time I packed my bags for college, I had already spent ten years dancing ballet, two years working in Northwestern’s Neurology and Genetics Labs, four years of competing in city and state science fairs, four years of acting my heart out in productions ranging from Shakespeare to Noel Coward, I had written two unfinished novels, and had happily participated in the dissection of three human-cadavers. As I entered my freshman year at Smith College I was no nearer to answering the question of what I wanted to be. I did know, however, that I did not want to be something that would afford me no time or energy for other endeavors, and so hesitantly “doctor” was crossed off the list. I devoted myself to the theater, working as an actor, director, playwright, stage carpenter, electrician, sound engineer, and stage manager. By the time I left Smith I had four years of experience educationally and professionally under my belt and was off to start my career in New York. I worked as a professional stage manager with a slew of off-Broadway companies until discovering the crushing truth – to make a living in this field meant trading-in my precious creative time and energy for someone else’s vision, until my own creative well had run dry.
And then it happened – The Burn. While cooking a simple meal one day the unthinkable happened; through a serendipitous and catastrophic series of events, a half-cup of bubbling hot oil levitated out of the cooking pan, through the air with slow-motion directness and ease, landing like a soft ball directly into my eye and over a third of my face. Shocked and confused, I walked into the bathroom to look in the mirror and saw the skin falling off my forehead and into my eye. It was then that I registered the pain and severity of the situation. Unclear of what to do, I instinctively reached for the lavender oil, doused a washcloth in the stuff and held it over my eye. I started energy movement out of pure need, sending cooling energy into my eye and trying to draw the hot energy out. I was in so much pain that when I reached the emergency room I could not speak for fear of screaming uncontrollably. I was placed on morphine and fluids, my eyes were irrigated thoroughly with saline, and I was told I would be transferred from Brooklyn to the Manhattan burn ward. After three hours of laying in shock, focusing on my instinctual understanding of energy movement, my face began to itch. The doctor was amazed, since itching signified a level of healing that was unlikely given the newness and severity of the injury. None the less, he took out his flashlight and checked my eye. He gave me a funny look; head cocked, furrowed brow, and sideways grin. It was three in the morning and the hospital was nearly empty, but he asked if I’d be willing to be taken on a tour to the eye examination room. Once there, the ER doctor took special care to examine my eye with curiosity and amazement. “I didn’t want to tell you this before because you were in such a state of shock,” he said, “but when you came in you had a pretty severe blister over part of your sclera [the white of the eye]. The blister seems to have disappeared”. With amusement and slight confusion, the doctor offered to release me into my own care if I would promise to visit him for a check-in as well as make regular visits to an ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon throughout the recovery period. I was told that the skin on my face would never be the same, most likely I would always be sun sensitive with possible discoloration and keloid scarring. I spent over a month in my darkened apartment, sitting, sleeping, and meditating. Amazingly, I experienced a complete physical recovery within several months and an energetic / neurological recovery over the next few years. Most importantly, I experienced an extreme shift in awareness, a shift that primed me for a grand realization. . . (see "Present" for the continuation of this tale)