The MR scan result came back with bad news on two fronts. First, it failed to explain the pain shooting down my left arm as something simple and treatable. Second, it showed that a previously normal disk is now protruding to the point of slightly flattening my spinal cord. As you can imagine, this is a discouraging and frightening finding.

Spinal canal stenosis in the neck can become a big problem. It can cause numbness, paralysis, and incontinence. Surgery, though available, is highly risky and entails a long recovery time. It’s not always successful. But as I keep reminding myself, the problem hasn’t gotten to that stage yet. Right now, the only ominous indicator is a gray and white image on a computer screen. No tingling, no weakness, no leakage.

Ah, to live within a frail biological organism. And not within, truly, but as one. We all know our human forms don’t last forever, and with aging we see signs of the inevitable. Granted, not everyone faces such looming problems at age fifty-three. It’s tempting to feel sorry for myself, but that would be short-sighted. Sooner or later we all confront serious difficulties with our bodies. Some expire in infancy due to prematurity or genetic disease. Some succumb to accident, murder, or suicide as young adults. Some confront a diagnosis of lethal cancer in midlife and wither away within months. Some endure to die of old age and its accumulating vulnerabilities. And everything in between happens too.

Just moments ago I watched our eleven pound poodle mix, Ralphy, reclining in front of the wood-burning stove. He looked blissful with his half-closed eyes, ears flopping on the fireside cushion we lay out for the dogs. I feel happy knowing he rests peacefully without worry nibbling away at his serenity. It pleases me to provide safety and comfort for such a darling creature.

Then I extend my perspective. Somewhere, perhaps not far from this little mountain cabin where we take our vacations, a young man and woman are cuddling in front of a similar fire while a frigid storm rages outside. They are freshly in love and holding each other with a mixture of desire and affection. They are not troubled by ragged vertebral columns and endangered nervous systems. They are enjoying youth and all the pleasures it brings, even as they remain ignorant of how transient this vitality will someday seem.

I feel exactly as satisfied envisioning their happiness as I do watching my little dog. If my wife and I had children we’d no doubt be living vicariously through them as they ventured forth in the world and sampled its allurements. In absence of such immediate family, I do something similar by imagining how life keeps marching forward with each young generation. This lessens my concerns about my own future. I see how much bigger the human story is than my own little mix of fortune good and bad.

So much gratitude: for my loving wife, two sweet tiny dogs, a comfortable home and even a vacation cabin. So much pain: shocks down my arm, cramps in my gut, endless aching in my spine. Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. Contentment and regret. On and on and on.

Biology is a dual process of growth and decay. Today my ego can’t help but contemplate an undesired medical result and the deterioration it announces. But my larger mind remains focused on the timeless majesty of life, which keeps cycling through its appointed seasons. There is ruin. There is springtime. And there is springtime among the ruins.

I am almost sorry about yesterday. What a discouraging post! I say ‘almost’ sorry, because my goal here is to be honest about what goes on in my world, inside and out. I don’t want to hide my moods; certainly not the positive ones, but not the depressed ones, either. If I don’t watch it, my text drifts into the arid desert of analysis and logic, and away from the messy emotional compost that nourishes my more heartfelt writing. Personally, I find too much issue-dissection boring. Life is as much about what the heart feels as what the brain thinks. States such as passion, affection, sorrow, euphoria, fury, and desperation often look disorganized and senseless. If I am to be authentic, and open about my inner experience, sometimes I will sound wretched. (Another reason I’m not too regretful is that I received such nice, supportive comments!)

My feeling life gets tossed about by frequent typhoons of sadness and despair. Although the cloudiness alternates with brighter moods, including pressured winds of optimism and plans that soar high above firm ground, I never venture far from the shade. Until recently I called my storminess ‘bipolar disorder’, and my bleakness ‘depression’. At this stage in my life I find it more helpful to consider myself a bit temperamental, mournful, and sensitive, but to pitch the illness concept overboard. Whatever you name what I’ve ‘got’, however, I am never long on an even keel, and I spend a lot of time in the stagnant duldrum of hopelessness.

So if I am going to write with feeling, which makes more interesting reading than pure logic, there will be times when things sound a bit unhealthy. Self centered. Whining. Self pitying and immature. I hope the less uplifting posts will alternate with essays that climb toward ecstatic observations on the spiritual underpinnings of biology, or pieces that animate the possibility of utter contentment in the face of chaos and loss.

I could make the decision to censor ‘ugly’ material out; I could make myself always sound spiritually fit and possessed of wisdom. But I have given this thought, and my goal in this blog is to tell a story of life. Not just my own history, though that forms the basis of most of my ideas, but the larger story of life as a damaged human being. An injured person may have days when everything ‘falls into place’. On such days every insult, each wound, and the countless pangs of grief, are recognized as openings rather than cuts. The awareness blossoms that such fenestration widens the eyes so they can see more beauty, and expands the heart so it can offer more love. But most of us with hellish memories also suffer times when the vision clouds over, and the heart cramps into a lonely knot of muscle, unable to accommodate more than the thinnest stream of blood.

Even Jesus, we are told, had moments of doubt in the garden of Gethsemane. My spiritual development is as close to that of Jesus (or the Buddha’s, or Gandhi’s, or Mohammed’s) as a flea’s heart is to an elephant’s. So for me, at least, perfect and perpetual equanimity remain out of reach. I suspect this to be true of all but the most determined and fortunate of those who are raised deprived, assaulted and hated instead of nurtured, protected and loved. When children suffer overwhelming losses, they grow up with infinite feelings of want. When they are attacked, they learn to expect the worst. And when despised, they learn to hate themselves. Such lessons take a lifetime to unlearn. On the best days, one gets blessed with a radiant comprehension of life and its full panoply of emotions. One understands that joy, love, anger, and grief are just different directions that the same wind blows. One feels the uneven but never-ending currents of time, space and fate flow like God’s blood through the mind, body, and soul.

But there will also be days when it all looks like a lump. At those times the injuries seem too great, the loneliness too imminent, the joy too sparse, for life to be worth living.

I have my saintly moments. But they are not as common as my darker days. I am not offering a cure in this blog. I am not presenting my path to recovery as a method others can follow and find salvation. That would be a lie. My path has not proven to be direct and unerring in leading me to peace. My commitment to well-being wavers, and sometimes I just break down and cry.

That is the story I want to tell. The entire canvas, including the splattered and shredded edges that often get hidden when one uses an elegant frame. This is my life nailed to a tree. It is not hanging in the Met, or bound in the rare books section of a major library. It is a mess. But it is sometimes beautiful, often interesting, and it is all I have to offer.

My aim is not to lead people to think I always view life as a precious jewel, which I certainly don’t. Or that I am living the perfect story of recovery, which will never be the case. I choose instead to present the days as they strike me, the ideas as they arise, and the emotions as they crash over my bow.

Yesterday I was a shipwreck. Today I feel more like the transom of an ancient wooden fishing boat I once found on the beach in San Francisco. The varnish had at one time been shiny, and the wood had formed part of a stout and working vessel. What I found had turned into a labyrinth of splinters and warps and cracks. The paint that once proudly announced the boat’s name could barely be deciphered. But that piece of wood had an elegance it had never known when it was still functioning as a beam across the stern of a trawling watercraft. Time and catastrophe had etched it with a fineness that it seemed to want to share with me. So I took it home and put it in my garden.

This is my transom. It is wrecked, and not all of it will be beautiful. But I want to share it with you. Feel free to place it in some corner of your garden. Let the moss grow over it, and let the ants move in. Or burn it and toast marshmallows. It is my gift to you and to the world, if you want it. It will not always be attractive, or even inspirational, but I will try to keep it authentic.

So I don’t apologize for whining, even though I’m embarrassed. Yesterday, I was a lonely and discouraged child. Today I am an inept but enthusiastic poet. I am sometimes enlightened. I am often discouraged. But most of all, I am alive. And good or bad, upbeat or down, this blog is helping me stay that way. I pray that it helps you, too.