After the past 7 years, and several failed attempts, managed to climb Mt. Hood again.

This time, achieving my dream of climbing it solo.

Luckily, I was helped by the weather, and great climbing conditions.

Good to be on the Summit again.

Finishing up a hectic week in San Francisco -- covering the big annual scientific and research conference. Always amazed by how much work is being done out there. No cure, but at least this year, you heard rumbles by some of the scientist about that now being the target.

We did over 50 interviews and panels. Again, I feel privileged to meet some of these top doctors and researchers.

Our blog and interviews from there:

http://www.ifarablog.org/

Some things to think about during the church service yesterday. (My choir sang, so I got to sit in the choir loft hearing much of the service twice.)
Before our choir went out, our choir director, Mark, had us hold hands as usual, and gave a prayer. (Well, as Unitarians pray). The thing he said that stuck with me was that when we sang, to sing with "Acuity".

I think that is a good model for life. Another way of saying to be present. The Now is all we have, and everything else is just an illusion. Too often we miss this moment because we are living in this illusion. And we miss the people in our lives, because we are never really "with" them. I remember something that Mark had said in choir practice last week, that the greatest gift we can give to someone is our presence.

The other thing that got me thinking was during the minister's sermon. Why should we live as if our paradoxes always need a resolution? Trying to force solutions onto our lives, into the mystery of our being; it only forces situations and people into circumstances where they do not belong. I've often argued against fundamentalism for that reason. That compelling need that some people have to see things in black and white, the dogma of their truth, the inability to live in the in-between, in that mystery of the unknown.

"Morning Poem"

Every morning the world is created.

Under the orange sticks of the sun
the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches –
and the ponds appear like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.

If it is your nature to be happy
you will swim away along
the soft trails for hours,
your imagination alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit carries within it
the thorn that is heavier than lead –
if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging –
there is still somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted –

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered lavishly every morning,
whether or not you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not you have ever dared to pray.

-Mary Oliver




and....
to end this church inspired blog, we're singing this song by Holly Near, the words, and emotion of which touch me deeply:

On a rainy Oregon morning,

I go back to the video I did last spring:

AIDS and depression -- how we all deal with it.

Last night, I saw the movie, "The Road" about a post apocalyptic world where a father and young son travel through a stark devastated world where leafless trees fall mindlessly on an ashen covered landscape. They were walking the road toward someplace better, but where? It all seemed so mindless, their fight for survival among savaged people ready to kill them for food. Most times, griping their gun with 2 bullets, either to kill someone else at the slightest suspicion, or to use the bullets to end their own misery. The seems pointlessness of it all, as they create stories of why to keep on to keep traveling down that road, toward some goal. Where? All the while trying to sustain a belief to justify their existence. That somehow, they were the good guys, who still had the virtue of the sustaining fire of humanity within.

Falling asleep last night, I could only think that the world in which they live was so much like the landscape in which I seem to exist all too often within my own mind. Treading the hopelessness of AIDS, trying to sustain the fire within.

I remember seeing a report a couple of weeks ago about the high incidence of depression among those with type-2 diabetes. The constant monitoring and shots.

I think of the twice daily shots I do for Fusion, along with all the other medications I take. Mostly I try to do it out of habit, without thinking about it. What's the point of working myself up over a situation I cannot change?

In summer, I use hiking and climbing as my anti-depressant. But....Winter in Oregon presents another hurdle. I guess that's when just creating a habit, and then going through the daily motions comes into play.

Putting one foot in front of the other, believing that there is some sustaining fire worth preserving.

Back from Ecuador a couple of days ago.

Good trip. Exploring Quito, going to the Amazon, and ended up for a few days staying in the hills/mountains around Laguna Quilotoa. All the time finding time to hike. Of course, the highlight of the trip was climbing Cotopaxi.

I've often wondered about my relationship with hiking and climbing and having AIDS. Especially when it involves tough hikes and climbs of endurance. People may ask why someone living with a life-challenging illness would risk their health further by taking on physically demanding endeavors.

I see it differently.

In order for me to climb a tough mountain, everything else in my life has to be in place. I can't just show up one day, and start putting one foot in front of the other. My life has to maintain a balance to get to that point. If I'm truly serious about being successful, I must be aware of and maintain my physical, mental, and spiritual health. Each day, I must be motivated to exercise, eat right, avoid undue stress, and maintain a openness and awareness of what is going on in my life that might disrupt the goal of obtaining a summit.

Sure the climb itself is tough, but I know to be successful for the climb, everything else must stay in balance for months beforehand. I can't take things for granted. To work for that summit, I need to make sure my whole life is lived in health.

In some of the classes on living with HIV that I teach, I like to tell people who are newly infected, especially if they are in their 20's or 30's, that if they "get it", and realize how important their health and life is, and start doing the things needed to stay healthy (eating right, exercise, disease and stress management), then by the time they turn 50, they will in many ways be healthier than the average 50 year old in this country.

Being infected for going on 25 years now, I've probably had a harder time than most. Only recently being able to maintain an undetectable viral load. During all that time, I kept climbing.

On the day I climbed Cotopaxi, probably 25 other people reached the summit. I was undoubtably the only person with AIDS standing on the top of the highest volcano in the world.

More surprisingly, I think I was the only person over 50 to reach the summit that day.

That did not happen by accident.

That is why I am alive today.