from: AlterBody (Propolis Press, 2013)

Symptoms manifest in the bo(mala)dy and remembering is the cure it is by bringing-toconsciousness of "un(lost)-conscious" to active remem(hybrid)-brance. This process is often called "working through" in the lim(loss)bo: neither total remembrance, nor total loss or forgetting, rather a hy(between)brid memory & loss.

From a sketch of the revised preface of Trance Poetics: Your Writing Mind (Wide Reality Books, 2013)
...Actually

the metaphors used to describe the immune system "fighting off" diseases and "pumping up" your immunity to fend off invading tumors or parasites isn't correct. Really, because your immune system is evolving simultaneously with the cacophonic yet totally synchronistic symphony of billions of chemical processes per second, it's more like a braided river: A network of small channels separated by small and often temporary islands.

The flow of channels that form this braided river work best when they are moving coherently: the channels are opened, blockages in the system are rebalanced. In the midst of this movement, a body is evolving into who heshe is at this moment. According to Francisco Varella, your immune system defines your identity. It is "self/non-self discrimination and defends itself only when it is excessively perturbed -- just as the channels of a braided river will do its best to push out, or diffuse, chemicals that are dumped into it. And our immune systems -- like our waters, our ecosystems, our forests and our economies -- are excessively perturbed. We are excessively perturbed and right now your immune system is evolving your identity in order to reject or absorb these perturbations into something useful that will allow you to survive.

This is useful knowledge for everyone battling the medical model.

Coherence: language changed with music, patterns, and meaning is a frequency, an emission of energy that provokes thought. Thoughts can trigger a chemical wash of cellular permutations and

reactions that always cause a physical reaction. Always. Think about someone you love and who makes you smile. As you think about them smiling, you can't help but smile yourself. And when you smile into thought you are regulating your heartbeat. You are calming your fight or flight response so that it can properly defend you when you really need to freak out. You are igniting a slight dose of serotonin that as it moves up and down your spinal fluid is stimulating your immune system. Just a little smile. Imagine what a daily dose of gratitude in the midst of all that sucks does for your immune system. Gratitude means remembering the most basic stuff: Im grateful that my heart is still beating. Im grateful that I have two hands that can type. Im grateful that I can think. This doesn't replace political and social action and it doesnt replace being pissed off the environmental and social injustices that are perturbing immune systems. It doesn't replace paying attention to and effecting actionable change in communities who are under attack. It simply means that the bodies who are not being sustained by the protective shells of corporate, institutional, or family tethers are protected by

their self-identified and evolving understanding of immunity. How are those of us existing outside of protective sytems supposed to survive with weak and tired bodies?

Is it such a flight of imagination to wonder if the language of poetry when it is read or heard with the frequency of music that in turn provokes thought that in turn ignites a chemical reaction in the body that in turn stimulates the immune system with the thought "I am alive! I am still alive!" might be itself a part of the reorganization of cells that form your identity at this moment as a person alive with language who then (because light is transmission) transmits that energy and that frequency to others through words that are the hinges of an emerging consciousness so that when we plants gardens in vacant lots we are passing on the knowledge of how to survive, not just through action, but through thought and evolutionary movement?