Poisoned By Pollution
An Unexpected Spiritual JourneyBy Anne LipscombAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Anne Lipscomb
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-6503-1Contents
Acknowledgments......................................xiForeword.............................................xiiiIntroduction.........................................xviiPART I: ILLNESSWorlds that Shatter..................................3A New Building.......................................12Set Adrift on Wild Seas..............................21Lifting the Fabric of Life...........................31Trying to Tend a Garden..............................41Gifts from the Seas..................................53Some Small Fireworks.................................62PART II: DIAGNOSISListening to the Experts.............................81Finding the Energy Within............................96East Meets West......................................107A Small Body of Hope.................................120The Biggest Challenge of All.........................128A Simple Twist of Fate...............................144One Final Trial......................................149PART III: HEALINGThe Unexpected Spiritual Journey.....................163Afterword............................................177Selected Readings....................................193
Chapter One
Worlds that Shatter
I smell a croissant and suddenly I am 20 again. When I take the first bite, its crisp exterior shatters into tiny, layered, individual worlds, which transport my body and mind into some distant dream. Its subtly rich aroma speaks immediately to me of some older world, one of elegant ornamentation. But it also offers an intense private moment of indulgence that has been so long in the making. The flaking croissant at this moment becomes an emblem for a sensuous life reborn.
Croissants were often weekend breakfasts for me when I lived with the Dondey family as a college student in Paris. I loved how their buttery perfume would curl up my nostrils and flow through my mind and body like a fragrant river. In Paris, I learned that a croissant could quickly become a lesson in sense experience and pleasure. As this young woman, intoxicated by the sensations of that city, I was constantly reminded that our lives are made up of such sensual moments, that we are complicated and restored by our sensual interactions with the world. It was that heightened sensuality of France that beckoned to me when I could first contemplate a holiday abroad after having lived housebound for 14 years - that and the chance to see the Dondey family once again.
I am standing in line at a bakery in Paris, astounded I've been able to make such a trip. My world has been barren for so long. I have been so bereft of sensory pleasures that every remembered detail now hurls itself at me until my head throbs like a drum beat: The aroma of fresh yeast mingled with newly baked bread and pastries drives me a little wild, the baguettes standing at attention in proud wooden racks, below them, the pistachio escargot buns lined up like serene rows of seashells beneath the gleaming window of the case. I see this all so vividly now. The white tile floor is worn thin by the history of customers queuing up for their daily bread. A woman is standing in line ahead of me, with her child tugging at her skirt, begging for some special treat, it seems. They are chattering away in a language I have not heard in far too long.
I drink all of this in, as if I had been starving through a famine for 14 years, and then suddenly, I am brought to a rich brocade of a room, and in it a banquet table is laid out with sumptuous foods just for me. I want to hold this moment forever and never leave this spot. It remains so ordinary, so much of the daily routine, yet so very miraculous to me as well. I have missed moments like this and the heady stimulation of a place with so much texture. An unbridled joy begins in my mind and wells up in my throat. Tear pools gather in the corners of my eyes. I feel resurrected from the dead.
* * *
I arrived in Paris originally as a junior in college, lugging my suitcase up a tall flight of stairs. I couldn't find the elevator because I was so nervous about meeting my host family for the first time. The door opened to my wide eyes, and before I could stammer out my pre-rehearsed introduction in French, Dr. and Mme. Dondey, along with their five children, spilled into the entrance hall from every direction. Immediately, they put me at ease, showing me to my room, and then teaching me how to make crpes for dinner. That night I climbed into my bed grateful that I had come to France and hopeful for what my future there held.
My early Paris days became a pleasant ritual of attending classes scattered throughout the city, followed by evenings with the Dondey family. Dr. Dondey would arrive home from work around 8 p.m. He would slip on a velvet smoking jacket and we would gather for drinks in the living room. Dinner would follow as a kind of leisurely tourism: A multi-course meal was always thoughtfully paraded before me, which ended with a plate of various cheeses and a fresh sliced baguette. I have no idea how long we spent at dinner each night except that by the time we rose from the table, it was nearly time for bed, and soon the ritual would begin again. Looking back, I appreciate better the rhythms of this existence, the careful attention paid to smells and tastes. Life was a repetition of the senses, so to speak, but it was never boring. Little did I know then that in the future I would eventually lose hold of this simple, daily sensory feasting, and long for its return.
Beyond our daily forays into food and drink, my Paris life was a sensual feast in other ways as well. On weekends we sometimes piled into the car and drove to a movie on the Champs-lyses. Or I might sit as a model for Dr. Dondey, who painted in his spare time, as Mme. Dondey read aloud passages from a Marcel Proust novel assigned to me in class, translating into English some of the passages I had trouble with. I remember one particularly vivid Saturday when we drove to the small town of Honfleur for the day, where we ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant, situated on a farm, with chickens bustling about beneath round tables draped with blue-and-white checkered tablecloths. Our table was set with thick white china and cloth napkins and our bottle of white wine sat chilling inside a silver bucket. We began the meal with a platter of oysters and shrimp and snails, and secretly fed bits of it to the Dondeys' dog underneath the table. Afterward we strolled into town and Dr. Dondey set up his drawing pad and charcoal pens on the stone wall that lined the waterfront to capture the light of the day, as the rest of us wandered around town, taking in its simple serenity. A faded white wooden sailboat lapped gently at the water's edge, basking in a mirror of water that reflected the rows of gray and white and ochre townhouses clustered like a necklace along the quaint harbor.
My year in France taught me so much about myself, my senses, food, art, and numerous other things. This was the year I sat in cathedrals for hours on end, researching Romanesque and Gothic architecture. It was the year I walked everywhere, more than I ever had in my life, for I was taken by the city's beauty and did not want to miss one bit of it. It was the year that awakened in me a love for food that would never leave me. It was the year I would repeatedly fall into bed, exhausted from the effort of speaking a language I had not quite mastered. But most importantly, it was the year I learned about the art of appreciation and its pleasures. Or rather, in France I learned the very art of appreciating pleasure - an art lesson that would, unknown to me at the time, become even more crucial to me later, and especially now.
I loved the way the French tended to savor the details of their daily lives, the way they valued the ability to appreciate something, to soak in its sensory richness. Pleasure was a priority to them. At least it seemed to be much more of one than it was in the United States. Slowly, as I found myself becoming more and more influenced by the French spirit of appreciation, it felt as if more pleasure was drawn into my days. The French seemed to find intense enjoyment from a wider spectrum of things: for example, the foods we typically pass by or the bits we normally throw out. That broader range even seemed to affect aspects of life like their relationships. In those days in France, you could be, say, a senior citizen and still be seen as attractive or regarded as sexy. The French savored their romantic partners the way they appreciated their wines. Older wines had certain characteristics; younger wines had others. But there was much to enjoy about both. Such outlooks expanded the lens through which I viewed life, which led me to palpably feel the enjoyment of life more and more.
Looking back now, the experience in France is important for my story and what I have come to learn about my journey. It has made me more aware of how oriented we Americans have become toward work and self-improvement, rather than toward the more immediate pleasures of daily life. We often miss how quietly those pleasures seep into so many parts of our lives. Even though I had been exposed to the French orientation toward pleasure at a young age, before illness took me down I could tend toward self-improvement efforts and the achievement fever that often permeates American culture, whether it was in my work life or when trying to get my body into athletic shape. It would take a major sickness to make me realize that while my self-improvement endeavors had produced some fine results, the balance had been tilted too heavily toward bettering myself and making future goals, and not enough on simply feeling joy and finding pleasure in the moment. Also, I saw how too much of an emphasis on self-improvement had made my days busier and sometimes more stressful, and it tended to make me focus on what I wanted to achieve rather than savoring what I already had and the life that was passing by. Memories of my time in Paris then trickled back and reminded me there was another way. It was as if my Paris experience had been sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere in my memory, waiting for a period when I had ample time for reflection and enough maturity to more fully digest and learn from the experience.
Wonderful memories of living with the Dondey family decades ago came rushing back to me, when, on this trip back to France, I had lunch with their youngest son, Laurent. I sat with Laurent and his family at a sidewalk table outside of a small restaurant along the St. Martin canal. Laurent and Nicki, with their two-year-old, Alma, had chosen the Htel du Nord not only for the view, but also because there is a famous French movie named after the restaurant and much of it was filmed there. The day was gray and damp, yet surprisingly quiet because no car traffic was allowed in the neighborhood on Sundays. Even though it had been ages since I had seen him, those passing years seemed to melt away, as if we were back in our youthful Paris.
In a way, having lunch with an old friend seems like such a normal event, but I will never forget it: not the jade green pedestrian bridges arching over the canal, not darling Alma stretching out her little hand to me so I could hold it while we visited the kitchen just to satisfy her curiosity, not the lively conversation we had comparing our respective cultures, not the taste of arugula and sun-dried tomatoes dancing in my mouth. The scene was exhilarating and surreal. While a part of me was discussing politics with Laurent and Nicki, another danced high above the scene, nearly out-of-body. I seemed to move to a chorus singing out to me that I was whole again. It wasn't just the dream I had been having of regaining my former self. It seemed to be happening. A similar chorus in my head would serenade me throughout the holiday, and by the end of my trip, I had come to believe it. It seemed ages since my health troubles had severed me from much of my self, especially from my adventurous and exploratory spirit, which delighted in traveling to far-flung destinations. For years I had lived like a wounded bird, limping about on one leg, unable to fly. My illness not only cut me off from a central pleasure but it also deprived me of seeing my friends abroad, which for me is one of life's best experiences. Sitting in that restaurant, I felt like I had whiplash, going from such a confined life to having lunch with Laurent and his family as if this was an ordinary day.
Part of me had been in this city before; but part of me had not, at least not in this way. It was as if I had been deaf the last 14 years, with no hope for recovery, and then all at once I could hear the singing choirs of life all around me. My senses had never felt so alive, my heart never so wide open to the world. I felt like Rip Van Winkle, awakened after too long a sleep. All around me, rose petals seemed to be falling from the sky. I wanted to collect them, take them to my skin, and convince myself that I had been remade somehow.
"Laurent," I gushed, "I just have to tell you that a part of me cannot believe this is happening. For years, I thought I would never again visit this city, would never see old friends like yourself, let alone feel my body and mind rejuvenated in this way. I thought parts of my life were finished. I feel so grateful." Laurent smiled, as if touched by the thought. He didn't quite understand the enormity of my situation, what I have been through, or how this experience in Paris and all that it stands for in my mind became symbolic of so much of my transformation and my journey. My pain, in this moment, was countered by those sensory pleasures I rediscovered in the city of lights.
After my moment of rapture, we resumed our conversation. How could I articulate at this time that for me being back in Paris, this light- filled city where I once lived and had visited every few years until this tumultuous 14-year interruption of my illness, has felt like the test of my life. It represents where I long to be now, where my senses and the pleasures of life might be restored to me. It has shown me just how radically I have changed. I realize that though illness has taken much away, much still remains. On all of my previous trips to France, perhaps I'd altered or grown in small ways from one visit to the next, but the changes were too subtle to notice. This time has meant something else altogether. It is as if some new planet or bright star has appeared in sight.
How could I have known back then, in those early salad days of Paris, that my life would rupture so violently and completely, that I would never be the same as a result of it? And how could I have known that in some sense, I would end up different today in surprisingly wonderful ways as well? Part of me feels astonished by the unexpected life I've acquired, even by the fact that in this moment I know I will write a book about it all. I think about how little I know for certain about what lies ahead and that all I can be sure of is this moment of transport, memory and renewed health.
In many ways, I realize all at once that I want to tell my story about what it has meant to have been dropped out of normal life for over a decade and what that experience has taught me as I struggle to return, changed from what I once was. But I also realize I need to write about this because I know now that so many other people also struggle with a little-known sickness called multiple chemical sensitivity and other chemical-related illnesses. I am saddened by how many of us suffer in silence, and always under a cloud of suspicion. That's part of the suffering. I want to contribute by giving the illness a voice and a habitation. I want others to understand how I arrived at this point of view, this new way of perceiving the rhythms of life, in addition to how I came to be sick. I am lucky and at an advantage, in some sense, because I fell ill suddenly and the cause was obvious. Therefore, I can understand things more clearly. For many, however, the symptoms emerge so slowly and so subtly that over time it is difficult for them to see their connection to the everyday pollution and chemicals that inhabit the air or water around them.
* * *
I stroll toward the Tulerie Gardens on one of my last evenings in France. On my way back to the apartment, I see an elegantly dressed violinist and harpist. They're playing a haunting melody beneath a stone archway of the Louvre. I stop and listen. The music is soaring through me and over me. I continue on, passing picnicking families on unfurled blankets and lovers sprawling on the grass, their bodies reposed and intertwined. Straight ahead, in the distance, the Egyptian obelisk at the Place de la Concorde is a glowing sentinel reaching for the setting sun. The grand and imposing Arc de Triomphe lies far behind it, anchoring the end of this axis that begins with the Louvre. I see it all, and in fact feel it all, as kind of a part of me.
My days in France have all been like this, drenched with the impossibly beautiful. The sights, sounds and smells of this city have meant so much to my spiritual journey. Ecstasy courses through me like a wild river spilling over its banks, with almost too much emotion to contain. All at once I need to retreat to a caf to find a quiet, reflective moment. Visiting Paris has been like looking through a kaleidoscope of dazzling color shapes. Sometimes I am exhausted by trying to make sense of it all, even if my senses themselves can never be exhausted by this place. Being here has pulled up that heavy anchor holding me to my house, most often chaining me to my bed, where I have lived in a state of survival, just trying to make it through each day. At home, a great part of my attention and energy is always spent calculating what my health can handle at the moment, or carefully budgeting and measuring out the day's activities in coffee spoons. I am sick, so I must follow through on healthcare tasks and appointments. I've had to do this in France, too, but much less, and I admit I feel as light as the air here. (Continues...)
Excerpted from Poisoned By Pollutionby Anne Lipscomb Copyright © 2009 by Anne Lipscomb. Excerpted by permission.
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