The First Interlude

I wake just after dawn. The birds in my new neighborhood are many and the singing brings an unconscious smile to my face. The cat is curled in a tight ball, tucked between my arm and my side and gently, softly purring. She always seems to be aware of the moment that I open my eyes for she stretches one paw out and gently touches me. The smell of the jasmine and mint outside my bedroom window fills my mind with exotic images of some peaceful, magical garden far away where all fears and worries are rinsed away and the body, mind and soul are purified and one with the world. I laugh out loud at this thought. My sudden outburst frightens the cat who, as she bolts from the bed manages to impale me with a couple of her claws as she runs out of my bedroom. Life is no peaceful, magical garden, I thought; and Harry Potter doesn’t live here anymore as I roll over and try to catch some more z’s before the alarm goes off.

The alarm erupts and I throw one arm in its general direction blindly searching for the switch that turns it off. The cat is back, this time a little more prepared to deal with me in my morning ritual of getting out of bed. The smell of jasmine and mint is still strong and I smile as I think of that earlier garden while lightly petting the cat. Maybe there is a magical, peaceful garden. It must take a lot of work to find. I had found my way this far, I thought, because I was tired of the old way of life. The old garden was full of weeds and thorny hedges that offered only a minute degree of safety from a colder world outside; an illusion of safety, really, because the fact was that these weeds were slowly choking the life from my very soul.

Diligence, patience and determination would be the tools with which I would work my garden. Compassion, awareness and joy would be the seeds sown in the newly tilled soil of my life.

* * *

I had been suffering from horrible headaches, nasty, non-stop headaches that pounded the inside of my skull. It felt is if my brain had suddenly outgrown the space it occupied and pressure was building up daily. No matter how much aspirin I swallowed the headaches never completely went away. They reminded me of the headaches I suffered when I first became HIV positive. And the headaches weren’t the only symptom; add to the mix an inability to sleep or focus on my work and a weird feeling of disassociation from reality that was almost euphoric. I kept trying to remind myself that there was light at the end of the tunnel. I was almost finished with my A.A. degree. But I just felt so bad; it was difficult to keep the bigger picture in mind, it just seemed as my own body was conspiring against my potential for success.

Being stoic in nature and foolish in action I tried my best to live with these symptoms; and I did, more or less successfully for four months. Outwardly I carried on as if nothing was inwardly wrong. The spring semester was coming to a close and I finally gave in to a voice in my head that urged me to have my symptoms addressed. A rational voice from within kept reminding me that due to my weakened immune system I might indeed have a serious medical issue developing. The very notion of that possibility caused a shiver to run up my spine. It was a notion that I did not want to recognize or deal with. There had been a recent upturn in my life and I viewed acknowledging an illness as an admission or recognition of physical and mental weakness. My prospects were looking up as the acceptance letters from transfer schools trickled into my email inbox. Anything that might cause a delay in my education, I felt, would doom me forever. I took the bus down to the hospital and told the attending docs in my clinic what was going on. They did the usual cursory exam and then conferred in the hallway. They came back in the exam room with a “specialist” in HIV and she examined me in much the same manner as the other two. The three of them went back into the hall and conferred again. Twenty minutes later I was on my way to have an M.R.I. and C.T. scan to be followed by a spinal tap, all the while imagining my future had suddenly been truncated.

* * *

To sit on the shore of the Pacific on the afternoon of the winter solstice is a thing of beauty. The pale yellow light streaming through the layers of clouds at such a relaxed angle warms my native soul. It’s beautiful right now. It’s so bright on this first day of winter. The sun in its southwest arc casts a golden road onto the Pacific, tempting me to climb that road towards heaven. The temperate climate of northern California in winter sent my mind into deep thought. I wondered about the possibility that humans, too, might have a seasonal cycle. Looking back over the decades of life and the various emotional and physical changes I’d experienced it certainly seemed possible. It is the first day of winter in San Francisco and I’ve been plagued with headaches. My life felt like it was locked in some dark, frigid arctic winter. The spring semester is about to start, my last and most important semester at junior college. A milestone that will probably only lead to a dead end. I gazed west, out to sea and tried to remember something pleasing.

I grew up with this view. The ancestral family home was just a few blocks from where I now sit at the foot of Golden Gate Park here at the western edge of western civilization. It’s an interesting mesh of landscapes here as the green park meets the dirty khaki sand dunes; a place where restored windmills are now just tourist attractions and have long since ceased performing their intended purpose of pumping water for the greenery of the park that was built on those sand dunes. San Francisco has become the land of the tourist, where even I am a tourist in my native city. I’m envious of the people who can afford to live here. Even crossing the bridge is expensive. Five bucks to cross the bridge and soon that’s how much it will cost to ride a cable car. A price only a tourist would pay while flippantly calling them “trolleys.”

I take a deep breath and put my writing down, exhale, and gaze westward to the Farallons. “Beautiful,” I think to myself on this hazy winter’s day, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s absolutely beautiful that the sun continues to embrace me after all this time. I watch the surfers beyond the break and envy their willpower to pull on a wet suit and dive into the chilly and restless surf. The breakers doggedly pound the shore with their cold, wet, thunderous precision. When I was a child, just a few blocks from here, I could hear them beating away as I lie in bed waiting for sleep and dreams of sunny days. I miss that salty, fishy smell that hangs out in the air here. A smell so thick that you can taste it. The cold bluish grey of the Pacific, warm pale gold of the sun, throw in a mild off shore breeze for good measure and you have three of the prime ingredients of my childhood memories. The good memories. I had found the “something pleasing” I was seeking but then winter crept into my soul and I remembered the cold rain and snow that seems to lurk in my psyche. This is the danger that remembering childhood held for me. Ever present and aware the black clouds of memory manage to cover the sun and steal away from me any warmth that I might find. Any new shoots of hope and promise quickly whither in the icy environment.

* * *

The doctors were great, they listened to my symptoms and then proceeded to scare the shit out of me with tales of bacterial meningitis and the treatment thereof. They explained the tests needed to confirm or deny their diagnosis. They explained the treatment was relatively benign, however it required at least a week stay in hospital. I paled. I don’t have time for this shit. Finals are approaching; I couldn’t spend a week in the hospital. Every class I’m taking this semester is a class necessary to finish my transfer program to U.C. There is no way a bunch of baby faced doctors and some microscopic bacterium were going to keep me out of school. No way, no how.

* * *

A favorite line from a favorite movie of mine is “Fear is the mind killer.” I’m not sure if my mind was effectively killed, but I do know that the experience in the hospital caused me a great deal of fear: fear of needles, fear of extended stays in hospital, fear of not being able to finish out the semester in time for graduation, fear of stupid doctors and fear of stupid hospital gowns that have an amazing ability to make one feel stupid and leave one exposed to attack from behind. I had been inundated with a great deal of fear, but from what seed had this fear germinated?

What was I afraid of exactly? I didn’t know. How is not knowing possible? How could I just be afraid and not know of what? Fear is powerful. I can’t let fear control my actions any longer.

I wondered who would feed my cat should I be in the hospital for a week. I wondered if my professors would understand my predicament and make allowances for me, after all, it’s not like I made a conscious decision to get some bizarre bacterial infection just to get out of a final project in statistics; or did I? Would they give me a second chance? Would they have protection for me from this cold winter?

* * *

I sit on the gurney waiting for test results and started to write. At least the lighting is good in the E.R. After all it’s moments like these, these moments of high emotion that lead to true personal insights right? All I could think about was my collegiate career being flushed down the drain like so much hazardous waste making its way to the bay from the Chevron plant. Even these thoughts were hazy and distant; yes, my mind had been effectively killed. The one continuous thread that weaves together my fear of not finishing the semester is the same thread that ties me to my childhood. Memories of a brutal childhood had synthesized in my psyche a feeling of lack of control over my own destiny, a lack of self-respect, a lack of self-control. This thread was taking the shape of a giant web stretching across the great hall of my psyche trapping any hapless thoughts of hope that might surface and flit towards the garden and the sunlight. The pitiless nature of my household taught me fear at a young age. I learned to fear humans and their power to inflict a deep enduring harm; a very real harm that wasn’t always obvious. As I grew into adult life these deeply planted seeds would grow into a thick and gnarled hedge around my psyche that, once tucked safely within, I could protect myself. Or so I thought.

Waiting for the test results is brutal. I wish they would just give me morphine for these goddamned headaches. At least that would help pass the time and who knows what imagery it will lend to my writing? Waiting…the waiting is the hard part. It’s like the waiting I endured to find out if I got into any U.C. Waiting…I never want to be in this position again. No more CT scans, no more spinal taps (just the movie), no more waiting, no more passivity. A call to action is necessary; it’s time to take ownership of my health both physical and psychological. It’s time to get back on the anti-retroviral medications that can quell that persistent and pernicious virus that makes my body its ancestral home. It’s time to make peace with this silly tourist of a virus of mine (the HIV thingie I mean and not the suspected meningitis thingie). I need to find a way to raise the property values so it can’t afford to stay. I have too much work to do to keep waiting. A change in seasons will help.

My mind wandered into the recent past and of a time long before I had decided to have my symptoms looked at; a time when I was in a deep funk that stemmed from the worry that I wasn’t good enough to go to school anywhere. This funk, this fear, this foul and ancient weed rooted deep in my psyche began to creep upward and ever more present in my mind as I lay on the gurney. I shivered suddenly as I thought about “not being good enough.” I’d heard that phrase so many times before but I couldn’t remember where. It’s not too late to apply to S.F. State, I thought with another shudder as I wished for an accidental overdose of morphine (which the pleasant nurses smilingly forbade me). Where is that damn doctor? At least U.C. Irvine had come to my rescue; while true that Irvine is my third choice at least I know I’m going to a U.C. The fear of being admitted to this hospital however, raised a very real question of whether or not I would finish my final semester at junior college, and subsequently graduate and transfer to U.C., any U.C. at this point would be fine with me. I have to finish this semester.

Fear had effectively killed my mind. I wasn’t worried about the real danger of having a serious, life threatening illness. I wasn’t afraid of death. It was something else. This fear wasn’t about illness so much as it was about repeating patterns established and programmed into my psyche a long time ago. Patterns that I was beginning to recognize as obsolete. Patterns of winter weather blowing in from the north at a moment’s notice, unannounced, unwelcome and always detrimental to living things without shelter. Somewhere, from some all too familiar back room of my psyche I could see the image of my father standing over me, inside my thorny hedge in my frozen garden holding his belt, shaking his head chiding and deriding me about not being able to graduate from a junior college. Where is that damn doctor?

The doctor appeared and flushed my fathers’ image from my consciousness. In a brisk, business-like tone and with the tiniest of smiles he said, “The results are negative, you can go home.” A wave of relief came towards me that I rode all the way to the beaches south of L.A. My life returned to me that day at that moment. I wouldn’t have to miss any classes, I would be able to finish my project and paper, and I will graduate and transfer. My life was now perceivable as an ever-advancing line towards the frontier that higher education would provide for me. This huge, warm, tropical wave on a south west swell would take me to Irvine. But as I rode my wave I realized I was approaching some rocks. “Umm, doctor?” I asked hesitantly, “I still have the symptoms that brought me in.” He looked at me rather blankly and said, in what seemed like an autonomic response, that I should take two Tylenol with codeine and if the symptoms persisted for a week I should come back. I swallowed the pills and left the emergency room feeling that my very real symptoms had been reduced to a mere trifle by a single sentence. It reminded me of the pop culture standard: “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” The handsome young doctor had accurately portrayed his role in the seriocomic hospital drama, while I and my waiting had become comic relief to ease any stress felt by the audience due to the more dreadful cases in this particular episode of E.R. Grudgingly I left the hospital campus and, only slightly worried about my real symptoms, walked down to Ocean Beach to ponder things like bacteria, viruses, diplomas, plans and goals and how we can sometimes be our own worse enemies.

* * *

Tuesday May 12, 2003, a week after my visit to the emergency room, was like any other Tuesday for me: Biology lab, lunch and then into San Rafael for a couple of beers and, finally, home. I had been home for an hour or two, watching the baseball game and just generally unwinding when I decided to check my email. And there it was. There was the email of all emails, the email whose subject line managed to simultaneously satisfy the completion of a goal I’ve had since high school and bring to the forefront of my consciousness the idea that all past notions of failure, whether real or imagined, that had long been present in the morass and mires of my psyche were false notions indeed. The subject line of the email simply read: “Congratulations, you have been accepted to U.C. Berkeley.” I blinked. The warm spring sun flooded my consciousness from all sides, within and without. I blinked again, man it was bright. Then I screamed such a joyous scream that the angels would descend from heaven to witness such a glorious and blissful voice. I couldn’t believe it. Hell, I still can’t believe it and I’m sitting in Moffitt library right now. Curiously, about forty-eight hours after I read that email my symptoms went away. Well, maybe not so curious. No more headaches, dizziness, inability to concentrate, inability to focus. No more sleepless nights, no more fear. No more waiting for spring.

* * *

I spent the rest of 2003 thinking about how my life and my way of thinking about myself needed to change. Would the change be immediate? Would there even be a change? I tried to map out a plan that would help me rise to glory while attaining, if not surpassing, the much talked of “Berkeley Standard.” What I didn’t know at that time was that the change had already started. The change started nearly a year before that day in the emergency room when I began the long and arduous task of shoveling the snow from between the rows of my garden. As I cut away my gnarled hedge I hit upon the idea that if I experienced winter, then surely spring and summer could be experienced also.

When January 2004 finally arrived (I was a spring admit), I was so excited I could hardly contain myself; I damn near pissed myself on the commute across the bay. I had quit my job, dispossessed myself of those things that I could no longer afford. I had made a concerted effort to quit the debilitating predilection for beer and the much more expensive habit that involved a certain weed that is much touted for its efficacy in treating certain symptoms common to those with HIV (I now regard this as pure bullshit, I just wanted to be numb). I was systematically removing impediments that would hinder my success at Cal; such was the nature of the importance of my success. For the first time in my life I took ownership for who I was and how I got here. Long, deeply rooted patterns of behavior were being exorcised and new, positive ideologies are being found and implemented. After all, someone, somewhere, an entity completely alien to me had decided that I had what it takes to succeed at Cal. This thought alone was instrumental in thawing the glacier my psyche had become. I was not going to let this entity down, and I will be damned if I let myself down.

This thought, this “nugget of pure truth,” would become the seed from which a great tree will sprout, ever reaching skyward and sunward and casting out the last remnants of those pronouncements and paradigms that still linger in the dark and muddy mires of my psyche. Forever a metaphor of re-birth and renewal, spring now looms bright and warm over the world. Over my world. Over my Psyche.

Winters will come again; of this there is no doubt. But in the last two years with careful attentiveness I have managed to bring the garden of my soul into the spring. There is no one event or action that is responsible for my awareness. A series of events and actions that were carefully played out, whether by chance, fortune or destiny I cannot say. What I can say is that this careful attention to the recurring weeds, the old and ugly paradigms and pronouncements laid upon me at a young age are now much easier to recognize for what they are: shadows on a cave wall that do not accurately reflect who I am. I am no longer de Leon in winter.

* * *

As I step out the door I give the cat one last pet. I shut the door behind me and inhale deeply the smell of the sweet air in the garden. Jasmine and mint caress my nose and work their therapeutic magic on my brain. I walk down the drive and squirrels play on the fence, hummingbirds are busy about their task. Do they understand their role in pollination, I wondered, probably not. I turn on to the street and start the short walk to my first class of the day. It’s another beautiful day in Paradise I thought as I subconsciously pulled another weed from my garden.