Beauty and ugliness

Hello everybody

Here some thoughts about health, both in the garden and in my body, and the congruence I see happening between these two. Although my houseplants are thriving, healthy and growing fabulously, so I‘d like to take them as my example.

‘Fear of the unknown is an essential part of the human program', Joseph Dispenza,The Way of the Traveller,(2002)

Beauty and ugliness in the garden

More than 50 strawberry plants, there are black-and redcurrant shrubs, abundant roses, lettuces, calendula, lemon balm for my tea, and many kind of herbs for the picking. I defend my food and plants against the pests who are looking for their next meal. In essence we are all doing the same thing, looking for food to live on. The snails and slugs are enjoying an abundant wet summer in my garden.  They’ve eaten all my zucchini plants (including the yellow flowers); half my beautiful lettuces; they’ve totally destroyed an immense green striped hosta plant, and all of the dahlias; they’re doing their best with my cabbages and broccoli and now the snails are heading for my strawberries.

“No!” I told them. ”You can have the cabbages, but not the strawberries. That’s my limit.” We’re not on speaking terms anymore. So I tried to stop them, using crumbled eggshells, prickly comfrey leaves, with copper anti-slug tape and I even bought them beer. (As a coeliac, I don’t drink beer). I think they’re ugly. I wouldn’t mind seeing them drown themselves drunk in the cans with beer I placed at several strategic places. 

I still have quite some processing to do before I can be at peace with them, before I can see their beauty.

Challenges of beauty and ugliness in the human body

Like my garden, my beautiful, slim, 51 kg, flexible, strong body has its own ugly side to face, invisible to others. For years I’ve been struggling with the untreated consequences of coeliac disease. I now have it quite well under control and am at peace with it, but two months ago the right side of my body went numb. Although it still functioned normally, it is as if it was only partly present. At the same time red spots started to appear on my chest. Neither I, the doctors and nor the hospitals have any idea what is going on. I’m a guinea pig, receiving one cream and test after the other, even antibiotics, all without result; a biopsy, a lumbar puncture, an MRI brain scan; bioresonance sessions, homeopathic and Bach remedies, a thorough clean of my new house after the discovery of the fungus Aspergillus. After two month my illness is still a mystery, as both the spots and the numbness are not only not improving, but getting worse, with severe dizziness, causing me to faint in the street last week.

During good moments I am in peace with it. During other moments, the worry and the fear set in. Then I start imagining, like Don Quixote, my own dragons where there might only just be windmills. Time to face the dragons and maintain the windmills. 

No beauty without learning about ugliness, no love without getting to tackle fear.

Blog 39, July 2015, © text and photos: Adriana Sjan Bijman

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