Category Archives: Body Modifications

Anthropocentrism, Bioregion, Body Modifications, Cosmology, Death, Environmentalism, Ethics, Health and Healing, Nature, Nature Spirituality, Paganism, Rites of Passage, Sustainability, Way of the Scavenger

A Pagan Argument For Organ Donation

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I am an organ donor. Or at least a potential one, in the event of my death. I’ve been signed up for over a decade through my various state driver’s licenses. I’m also on the bone marrow donor registry at Be the Match. I haven’t yet been a match for anyone, but I’m there for the call if they need me. (For what it’s worth, they really need people of color to increase potential donors for non-white patients, since white people like me are less likely to be a match for non-white donors thanks to tissue typing. But I encourage anyone who can join to do so, regardless of your race.)

I consider it an important part of my spiritual path to be a potential donor. I’m not especially invested in any particular idea about the afterlife, if there even is one. All I have guaranteed is the here and now, and what I have here and now is a body that I borrowed from the Earth. Every atom in my body came from food I consumed, water I drank, air I breathed. And when I die, I’m going to have to give it all back; I’m a huge proponent of green burial, by the way, and I’d like a spot at Herland Forest.

But not all of me may end up in that ground. If, when I die, my organs are still in good enough condition, I’d like them to go to people who need them. After all, I’m certainly not going to need them. I’ll be dead, and the worms and bacteria and other little critters won’t care that there’s no liver, or I’m missing an eyeball or two. I could selfishly say that since I am against embalming I refuse to allow any part of my body to be embalmed, and therefore refuse to be a donor on the grounds that it’s likely when the recipients die they’ll end up full of embalming fluids–to include my old spare parts. But as I said, that’s selfish, and I’ll sacrifice a few pieces if it means someone else gets to enjoy this world a little longer.

I’m not at all worried about not making it into some possible afterlife because my body wasn’t complete. Do soldiers who lose body parts in combat not get to go to the next life? What about tradespeople who end up losing a finger to machinery, or someone who had their original teeth knocked out in an auto accident? Hell, what about pagans who donate blood and plasma? I mean, really, we’re shedding hair and skin cells all the damned time, and we aren’t able to vacuum them up again, store them in bags and then take them with us to the grave. (Ewww. No, really, ewwww.)

Loss is normal. Other animals run around in the wilderness all the time with missing toes, shortened tails, cropped ears from fights, accidents, frostbite. Our medical technology just allows us to save more damaged bits and parts. The idea that only someone with a “whole” body gets to go to the afterlife just seems antithetical to reality. I mean, I had a large lipoma removed from my hip when I was seventeen. I’m sure it got sent to an incinerator (if it wasn’t plopped into a jar of preservative as a study specimen for students). It left a pretty big scar (which, quite honestly, I think looks really damned cool.) I also had my wisdom teeth removed a few years later. Am I automatically denied an afterlife, if such a thing even exists? Better to bank on what I know I have for sure–this life, and this world–than gamble valuable resources on the idea that there’s something after death and that somehow the integrity of my borrowed, physical body matters there.

I’ve heard arguments that organ donation is against environmental ethics. I am keenly aware of the fact that we have 7 billion humans and counting on this planet; it’s one of the biggest reasons I chose not to have children. Some of the population rise is because people are living longer overall. Organ donation helps facilitate that, though it’s hardly the biggest factor. I don’t think helping organ recipients live a few years longer (or even decades, as we improve post-transplant medicine) is that big an impact compared to how poorly people use natural resources. We could be a lot wiser with our consumption, make birth control and information on how to use it universally available to lower the birth rate, and make room for a few successful organ recipients while we’re at it.

I’ve also seen it said that organ donors are “cheating death”. Well, so what? I cheated death several years ago. I had a nasty case of diverticulitis that turned into peritonitis that put me on 48 hours of IV antibiotics, and I likely would have died had I not gotten that medical attention. Should I have just let nature take its course and died at the age of 31? Taken a chance on some herbs maybe working quickly enough to kill the fast-moving infection in time? Would you prefer I wasn’t here? And would you like to tell organ recipients that they should have died instead? Because that is what I hear people say when they say organ recipients cheat death.

Finally, I feel a responsibility toward other humans to make what resources I am no longer using available to them. It’s a little more complicated than dropping unwanted clothing off at a shelter or taking excess art supplies to SCRAP, but the concept is the same to me. Some people refuse to donate because they think their organs will be wasted on those who in their mind don’t “deserve” them, or who won’t survive long post-transplant. Sure, my heart may go to someone who end up dying six months later because it just didn’t “take”. But it might also go to someone who gets to live another decade, in which they may finish that book they were writing, plant trees for future generations to enjoy, or simply bask in a few more glorious sunsets. My corneas may end up with someone who dies in an auto accident three years later–but then given that over 90% of cornea transplants are successful, they got three years of sight they wouldn’t have had otherwise. No one knows for sure who will get my spare parts, and as I’d be dead I’d have no control over it. But isn’t death the ultimate act of losing control anyway?

As a naturalist pagan, my primary loyalty is to this world and the beings I share it with. And it’s because I feel so deeply for all of this that I want to make the best use of what I have to offer, down to my very mortal remains. You may have very valid reasons for not being a donor, and I respect your reasons, and if applicable your disagreement. But for me, organ donation is just one more part of my spiritual path, one that will continue my journey beyond death itself–even if I’m not around to see it happen.

Go here for information about being an organ and tissue donor in the U.S.

Go here for information on being a bone marrow donor in the U.S.

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Body Modifications, Cosmology, Environmentalism, Hiking, Meaning, Nature, Paganism, Physical Paganism, Rites of Passage, Seasons

Mine is a Paganism of the Body, Part I

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Early June 2015, north side of Yocum Ridge, Mt. Hood Wilderness, Oregon

Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look–

I am bellied up against a massive pile of fine glacial till the size of an overturned cargo van, draped over it like laundry laid out in the sun. This late landslide has all but swallowed the narrow mountain trail my hiking buddy and I have been traveling, an alternate route of the Pacific Crest Trail that saved us a harrowing river crossing thousands of feet below.  We’re three days into our backpacking trip, my first mini-through-hike, and his opportunity to add another section of the PCT to his already impressive record.

The surface of the till is gritty, all sand and no rocks–and no handholds. As my feet balance precariously on the six inches of trail width left uncovered, I lean hard into the mound, a task made more difficult by the forty pound pack on my back that raises my weight again by a third and lifts my center of gravity by several inches. I dare not straighten myself to rest my back or resettle the straps, because my toes and my balance are all that are keeping me from pitching backward down a hundred-foot drop at the edge of the half-foot trail. It makes no matter to me later that no one has actually died there in recent memory, only had to be pulled up from their long slide down by rescue teams. As far as I’m concerned the draw of till below me is gaping open to swallow me alive–and soon dead.

My friend calls to me encouragingly; I don’t register the words. He’s only a dozen feet away, safe on the other side of the washout, but he may as well be on the other side of the Muddy Fork valley. I’m halfway through: backward to known territory, or forward into the unknown. I hesitate, feeling the precious few inches of soil beneath my feet and the scrape of grit against my belly, shirt pulled up as I sag just a little.

If I panic, I’ll die.

I don’t even think to still my breathing or consciously calm myself. I’m terrified, but I know the cost of hasty actions. I look to my friend. “Stick your butt out more, and move your feet side to side. Keep your toes against the wall!” I do what he says, and I instantly feel my balance shift inward toward the side of the ridge. The pull of the pack back into empty air lessens, and I begin to move in a slow crab-crawl to my left.

It could have taken only seconds or days, I’m not sure. In those moments all that matters is the careful placing of feet and hands, the sensitive registration of my body’s weight and gravity as my balance shifted along the uneven surface of the till-hill. I become nothing more than a series of muscles, bones, tendons, lungs to breathe air and senses to choose the next action. There are no thoughts, no decisions, only the instinct to live. I am more aware than I have ever been in my entire life.

And then I am there, back on the undamaged trail, taking my hiking poles from my friend and moving away from the ordeal I just passed. A few feet pass and then we both stop to rest and breathe. He may have been through this sort of thing before, but he is shaken as well. We compose ourselves, have some water and rice crackers, and then continue our way along the trail toward the Muddy Fork of the Sandy River.

Before we arrive at the first crossing, we will have traversed two more of these landslides, with a third, lesser one on the far side of the valley.

November 2015, home, Portland, Oregon

I awaken in the dark of the morning; without my glasses I guess that the clock is beaming three-oh-something. Beside me my partner of several years is fast asleep; I’ve always envied his ability to spend the entire night in deep slumber while I wake and fret periodically.

Of course.

My bladder has decided to be unmerciful, and so I crawl out into the cool room to make the too-long journey down the hallway to the bathroom. I’ve done this so often I don’t even bother to turn on the light. It almost seems a waste of precious energy and heat to peel my arm away from where it’s wrapped around my ribs just to flick a single switch. I make it to my destination unscathed, and in mere moments I am ready to make the trek back.

Upon my arrival back at the bed, my lover has sprawled across my portion of mattress. Were I still in situ, his elbow would be laid across my head–not for the first time, either. I crawl back into the covers and attempt to salvage whatever heat I left. His ribs, on the other hand, get a bit of a nudge, and without breaking a snore he rolls back over onto his side.

…let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves

I curl up against his back, my feet tucked between his calves, one arm under his pillow and the other wrapped around his waist. Mary Oliver’s wild geese couldn’t get between us now. I take a few moments to settle, and then let my mind drift off into the daydream-land I’ve created for my very own bedtime stories, lulling myself back into safe slumber.

May 2010, Providence Portland Medical Center, Portland, Oregon

The pain is bad enough that I am openly crying, something that hasn’t happened since I was a child. This is no ear infection, or the bone in my hand I fractured when I tripped and fell in a spontaneous race with a friend. No, this has potentially worse consequences. Over the past couple of days I’ve had a growing sharp pain in my abdomen, first a general discomfort all over (indigestion, perhaps) but then worsening, and localizing in the lower right quadrant. I don’t think I’ve misplaced my appendix; all my other organs are as they should be. But the doctor has decided to send me to stay overnight for IV antibiotics, close monitoring, and possibly surgery.

I call my recently ex-husband, with whom I will only live a few more weeks until my new apartment is ready, to come pick up our car, and would he please bring me my laptop? Even on the phone he sounds more resentful than concerned, an increasing trend in our strained–but thankfully temporary–living situation. I am settled into a wheelchair and taken over to the care unit; although I could have walked, the nurse insists. This simple action of denying me my own mobility suddenly makes me feel weak and vulnerable in a way I have never been before, not even as a seemingly invincible child. The surgeon on duty terrifies me with threats of removing a section of intestine if I don’t get better; one of the diverticuli has burst open and I have a raging infection that could kill me. He has the bedside manner of a vulture.

I’m so scared.

I keep my sanity through my connections online, keeping in touch with people who are unable to visit but who care nonetheless. My closest friend visits as often as he is able, but obligations pull him away the next day. My tiny veins reject first one IV needle, then a second, then a third, then a fourth, until all the veins on the tender undersides of my elbows are blown and the nurses must resort to my more sensitive hands. I barely sleep; someone is in every hour to take my vitals, though my heart still beats and my temperature fluctuates less and less.

I rage at my body, as the restlessness eats at my mind. How could it betray me? I was only thirty-one; I’d been running three times a week for a few months now, a way to cope with the disruption of my life story that was divorce. I should be out there in the warm spring sunshine, my feet slapping against sidewalks in the wetland park, shaking off the trauma of the previous few years’ travails. Instead, I had doctors telling me I was closer to death than at any point in my existence; only the needle in my hand would know for sure whether more drastic measures should be taken.

Of course, it was another doctor who told me that my running routine was part of how I managed to rebound so quickly from the threat in my belly. My immune system, depressed for so long from too many hours in closed office buildings, and an increasingly stressful living situation, began to recuperate as my muscles firmed and the blood flowed more quickly through my veins. So now that effort pays off, as a mere twelve hours into the IV antibiotics the pain lessens enough that I am able to bend at the waist again without screaming. I even wheel the IV cart into the hallway and show the nurse on duty how, standing on one leg, I can pull my other knee up to my chest and it only hurts a bit, really!

It will be another day and a half before I am released, allowed to run–or at least limp–free, back to the new life I am creating. It is a life more aware of mortality; though the asthma I’ve had since I was young has limited my activities in cold weather and sometimes even curtailed my warm-weather running, it’s never tried to kill me. My gut, on the other hand, quickly flooded me with deadly bacteria with just the tiniest pinprick of a hole.

I listened to that breach, and I attended to it–thankfully I still had insurance at the time, or I might have become one of the thousands of uninsured who die from curable diseases each year for fear of crippling debt. But it left me scarred, in mind if not body. Now, even six years later, any tiny twinge in my midsection makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I go back to that helpless feeling, tethered to a sterile hospital bed by tubes of medicines, made impersonal with the thin drape of fabric they call a “gown”. And so I keep running, hoping to outrun that experience again, and I lift weights, ready to fight should it lurch across my path once more.

January 2016, Planet Fitness, Portland, Oregon

I just turned thirty-seven a couple of months ago. I went back to the gym for the first time in years just a few days before my birthday, though I paid for the membership weeks before then. I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

I hate the treadmill. Running in place never has the same appeal as wandering city streets and traversing parks, and it’s tougher to keep myself focused. The bounce of the belt below my feet never felt natural, and I long for grass and a bit of uneven terrain to challenge me. No hope there, though. So I make myself run a mile and a half–that’s it. I’ll just try to run that 1.5 faster each time.

Finally.

I step off the treadmill and, with a stop by the drinking fountain, I pop open my locker for my weight gloves. A long walk around the herd of ellipticals brings me to the rack of barbells, my first stop. I’ve left behind the twenty-pound weight, and pick up the thirty for a round of arm curls to get me started.

This is not the fast-paced churn of running, legs tangling and untangling with greater speed. No, here I get to watch the muscles work in slower motion as I face the mirrored south wall. I’ve never been especially strong in my upper body, but over the past two months I’ve already put on a respectable bit of muscle. My ritual includes closing out my night with a protein bar and some jerky, easily thirty-five grams for my body to grow on.

But not just yet. Now I am moving the metal bar up toward my chest and back down; I can feel where the muscles in my back and shoulders and arms and chest have all responded to this old-new stimulus. Seventeen-year-old track runner me would have been jealous; I’m already planning for when I move up to the forty pound weight. I’m squatting forty later tonight, and my quads tense in preparation.

I ran faster when I was younger; I don’t know that I could do an eight minute mile now. But what I lose in speed, I make up for in strength and stamina. There is no peak to my body; there is only change, and evolution. And, yes, eventually there will be decline in more respects than speed–but that’s an opportunity to become more proficient in other body-ways.

Perhaps in my golden years I shall explore the fine art of being slow.

Body Modifications, Health and Healing, Meaning, Memories, Rites of Passage

A Rite of Passage At Both Ends

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See that tiny little bar of metal in my hand? That was embedded in the upper edge of my navel for a decade, the one remaining piercing of a trio I got (navel, both ears) in 2004. These days getting your belly button pierced is a fairly benign modification; here in Portland even facial piercings often don’t register as odd. But for the person I was ten years ago, it was part of a personal revolution.

Everyone’s life goes through transformative periods, some longer and/or bumpier than others. I’m not talking the full onset of lycanthropy, of course, but the times that try souls–and personal resilience. Sometimes one event sets off a cascade of effects that brings a person’s whole life crashing down; any built-up stagnation comes pouring out in a series of messy floods. Eventually, out of this slippery mess slides not so much a phoenix reborn as a brand-new foal still coated in amniotic fluid, not quite sure what leg goes where, and in danger of being eaten by predators–but if the cards are right, that foal’s a unicorn and is going to go some great places once it figures those legs out.

That was my 2004, back when I was still living in Pittsburgh. In a space of about eight months I was dumped twice, moved three times, switched from a third shift job to a very early first shift one with a totally different skill set, and had the first really bad spike of anxiety in my independent adult life. Amid all that I decided that I needed to explore all the crazy things I never did as a fairly sheltered teenager years before, when I was isolated and friendless in a small town. I won’t go into too much detail about my much-delayed rebellion; suffice it to say the main things I retain from it today are a better understanding of Things Not To Do, my first tattoo, my preference for classic black high-top Chuck Taylors as everyday footwear*, and a hole at the top of my navel.

Everything but the shoes could be considered rites of passage to one degree or another. The piercing was probably the toughest of all in some ways, and certainly the most deliberate. I am not a fan of needles at all, and while I’m better than I used to be (I no longer panic while having blood drawn), at the time sharp things were a source of great fear. In order to confront that fear, I decided to get my ears and navel pierced. I figured they were the least likely places to experience nerve damage, and I’d already had my ears done once when I was a child (I eventually got tired of earrings and took them out) so the navel would be an additional challenge. Suffice it to say I went into the piercing parlor all by myself and survived the ordeal with nothing more than a chorus of “Ow, ow, ow”, but it was worth it for the adrenaline and the feeling of accomplishment. I had survived something I had thought I’d never do, and I felt pretty damned brave. I used that experience to help me get through other tough times and to challenge myself further; there were literally situations in which I told myself “Look, you had a piece of metal shoved through your skin and got through that just fine. You can totally handle this, too.”

Up until this past Saturday, my navel had the aforementioned (and pictured) little banana bar of steel through it. It was the original piece of jewelry I got when I had the piercing done. I kept it in because by the time it healed completely, I’d already had my ear piercings close up after less than a week of having to take them out at work. I was reading utility meters at the time, and my manager, who had aspirations of being a petty dictator (emphasis on the “petty”) had told everyone that no ear jewelry was allowed, not even tiny studs, in case they got caught on underbrush or other hazards while playing “Find the Meter” in people’s landscaping. My mutant healing factor must have kicked in, and by day three of this policy, I was no longer able to force the earrings back into the holes at the end of an eight-hour shift.

But I still had my navel piercing, and I hung onto it like the last remnant of my freedom. It lasted longer than that job did, longer than my time in Pittsburgh (plus a year in Seattle), even longer than my ill-fated marriage. As I continued to move from apartment to apartment, dealt with divorce and learning healthier relationship practices, survived graduate school, and settled into self-employment, the piercing remained as a link to a younger, more chaotic self. Not in any bad way, mind you; I was quite fond of it, and still appreciated my bravery even a decade later.

It was not to remain that way, though. I’ve been prone in the last few years to assorted problems in my digestive system, some of which are probably genetic and others–well, who knows where the hell they came from? So I got pretty good at paying attention to any pains in my midsection. Every so often I’d have a little twinge of discomfort right around the piercing that would last anywhere from an hour to a day. I never thought much of it; maybe it was just getting caught on my clothing. But this past week I had pain there that, although it registered around a two on my pain scale, didn’t go away, and I decided that in order to help in a potential diagnosis, the jewelry had to be taken out. Maybe I had developed an allergy to the metal, or perhaps my body was just sick of it. But if I wanted to be sure that was all it was, I needed to eliminate the possibility entirely.

Now, I’d been wearing this thing for so long that the ball had gotten stuck on the end; try as I might, I couldn’t remove it. For a moment I had nightmare visions of having to snip off the end with a pair of bolt cutters and then file the edges so it wouldn’t tear me up on the way out–and then I had the brilliant idea of seeing if a professional piercer might have a better idea. So my partner and I headed down to Ritual Arts in the Hollywood District, where resident piercer Shane 7 Wolfe somehow sweet-talked that tiny, stubborn piece of steel into cooperating. (Seriously, if that’s not the mark of a good magician I don’t know what is.)

As it turned out, removing the piercing didn’t make the pain go away, and as it got worse, I made the decision Saturday night to go to the emergency room. I didn’t want to wait until Monday in case it got worse, even though I wasn’t running a fever or showing other serious symptoms; I figured if I caught it early enough that at the worst I’d be sent home with some antibiotics. (The last time I waited on having abdominal pain checked out I ended up in the hospital for two days under IV antibiotics and the threat of surgery if I didn’t get better. Lesson learned.) It turned out to just be a mild intestinal virus from who knows where (maybe I didn’t rinse the dirt off the radishes I ate from my garden well enough?), and I was sent home with nothing more than a prescription to help with the pain if it got worse and instructions to just let it work its way through my system.

At this point I had the option to put the bar back in my navel. And I did seriously consider it for a moment. But then I thought back to all those times that I was worried by pain, and the confounding factor that the piercing entered into any potential assessment of the cause. I’m not likely to have my digestive system miraculously recover its intestinal fortitude (ha!), and it’s almost certain that as I get older (and especially now that the warranty has expired on my body, drivetrain and all) there’ll be more random flareups. So it’s more prudent to not complicate the matter any more than I need to.

And that choice became a rite of passage in and of itself. Whereas a decade ago the message was about bravery and facing scary things head-on, now that I’m well into my thirties I have more experience with those scary things. Rather than leaping in to engage them in battle, it’s a wiser choice for me to prepare for them if they make an advance. I’ve proven to myself time and again now that I’m more resilient than I sometimes think. I don’t need to look down at that little piece of metal to remind myself of that any more.

But I did hang onto it as a memento. It has a safe place in my home, and I’ll run across it every so often and remember. It’ll be a while before the hole in my skin closes up, too, and there’ll always be a scar to remind me of my brave act. I must admit that I prefer not having that constant feeling, ever so small, of something being there, moving around., filling up space. Even with today’s challenges, comfort has become more of a priority than ever, and I’ll take this little bit of comfort that moves me a little more into a new stage of life.

* I’ve been trying to find a sweatshop-free alternative that’s available consistently in the U.S. ever since No Sweat Apparel discontinued their lookalikes a few years ago and went wholesale-only. I’m aware of Autonomie’s Ethletics, which are a good option, except none of the distributors seem to ship to the states, and gods know how much that would cost even if they did. Suggestions are appreciated.