Psychosomatic, Psychic Sonata

On breathing

Margaret Christakos once said the heart is a public organ of private damage. I’ve learned that the lungs are the pipe ways for grief. Intervals of silence from organs, as instruments or bodily sacs, envelop two places, either the church or the morgue. When doctors couldn’t explain my lingering cough that summer, I sought a Chinese acupuncturist. He told me that the lungs are the meridians of sorrow. When we cannot release our painful attachments, it blocks life energy, our qi, keeping us choked in the past.

I was on the Amtrak back to New York after a friend’s wedding, recounting all the ways I avoided my grief. The mounds of shit I’d not yet let go of, which sat rotting inside me for the better part of the year. I noticed an old lady next to me. She asked if I ever prayed to God. At that moment her question made me furious, as it made it apparent there was strife on my face. 

“I used to,” I answered, hoping to end the conversation. The old lady asked if I was Korean, which annoyed me further. Yes, I said. She explained she taught Korean exchange students upstate and was fond of the culture. I told her I was from the States. By the end of that train ride, she encouraged me to start praying again. I don’t know what she meant by it, but I chose not to respond.

Ironically, I’d rented a room in a funeral home. I won’t go into reasons why I was sleeping there. When I returned to my sublet I noticed a white church across the street from my steps. It was then I realized, maybe the old lady was on to something. Maybe on the other side of this God was waiting for me, hoping I would learn to forgive.

Recently I saw my friend Cristine made an artwork titled Certificate of Forgiveness. Signed on it are the words: I forgive everything. At a party one night, I lamented to Cristine about how I’d seen a show by the artist Jon Rafman. I wanted to write about the work, but something about it left me utterly despondent. His over-portrayal of the death drive and everything devoid of hope or beauty. Cristine assured me that this was because it was a white man’s work, and that there are types of grief that also leave us replenished. I keep thinking about that.

Since that day on the train, I have started praying again and my cough has gone away, though it came back a few weeks ago. Still, I let out my sighs, wanting to assuage whatever weight might have remained. Chest out, eyes forward. Memories on my back. I take a breath in, praying for relief ahead.