Commensality? -- But What Is, Impacts

You all know I'm a serial junkie. Grain free, of course. So (couldn't resist), isn't it going against the grain that I've taken so long to come out with the next in my Symbiotic - Commensal - Parasite series? Where have I been?

barnacles on a feather--were they there when the feather was on the bird?

As I would tell any friend of mine, the important thing is, I'm here now. In the meantime, though, I spent the weekend at a silent Sufi retreat and then took a hike today. I'm on day fourteen of a 21-day sugar detox, am getting things set up as a professional post-MFA writer (including sending my work out), have registered a domain name and committed to learning a new content management system for my "for real" website--oh, and I've been working. Stunning synchronicities, humbliing realizations, astonishing liftings of veils enabling me to understand what has been before my face but hitherto opaque.
No excuses -- but hey, I could blog for the rest of the month just filling in the details on that paragraph!

Commensal, though. The real reason it's taken me some time to get to this is that I find "commensal" hard to explain and even understand. "Symbiotic" is straightforward--life working together to make life. "Parasitic" (which we'll get to next time) is also a pretty clear-cut concept.
Commensal comes from Latin whereas the other two come from Greek. Maybe just a coincidence that it's more slippery. If it were a Greek derivative, it would be:
Syssitic. In other words, it combines the first element of "symbiotic" -- the sym/cum/co "with"
with the second element of "parasitic" -- sitos "food" (actually literally "grain"; NB the "mensa" in Latin literally means "table" but specifically a meal table and with an etymological connotation of grain harvest also).
The colloquial translation of commensalis/syssitios is "messmate" -- someone who sits at the same table in a communal cafeteria. In that situation, you'd think one diner is much like another. But in our parlance, technically a commensal  organism is one that feeds from a host without causing the host any harm or damage. The remora fish glomming onto a shark or manta ray is a commonly cited example, as are the barnacles on whales.
So it turns out part of my discomfort is linguistic/syntactic. The word "commensal" properly denotes a reciprocal (sym/cum/co = "with") relationship between two different diners/remoras. But our language is using it to denote a one-way benefit relationship between remora and manta ray.

Sometimes words just don't collide with reality in a logical way...

Reaching deeper, with all the messages I've been receiving lately on the interconnectedness of all of us, animalvegetablemineraletherial (and that's why we have differentiation) I just can't wrap my brain around the idea that something feeds on something else without affecting it for either good or ill. Something can be affecting me even beneath the threshold of my awareness. And something else that isn't even present can affect me because I believe it is. The idea that the barnacle or the remora or the commensal bacteria have no benefit or detriment to the whale or manta ray or human gut seems to me tantamount to saying that they don't have real existence. It's a disrespect to them! Surely the barnacle helps clean the whale's skin, the remora and bacteria likewise--if they're nurturing themselves from what their host doesn't need, in my book that's actually providing a benefit.
When I've been in social situations being served gluten/dairy/meat, being able to pass the food I couldn't eat on to a friend or partner was a boon for me--there's one kind of commensal.
On the other hand, for whatever scarcity consciousness reasons, for much of my life I've appropriated the "cleanup crew" commensal position whereby something's permissible for me to eat if no one else wants it and it'll otherwise be thrown out (like stray fallen pieces of fruit on the floor at the store or farmers market, or godhelpme leftovers). Current meditations--and, no doubt, the sugar detox--are helping me let go of that old pattern. 

Commensality is no one-way street! I am, therefore I impact.

Another Perspective on Sharing Suffering

It's been so long since I last posted--again! That outflow onto the beach that I pictured bearded with ice a week or so ago...

...is now shorn of snow and flowing freely.

As should I be, I can't help but feeling.
I don't know what's preventing me from writing more here.
It's true, I'm not settled on where "here" is right now. I've been talking about migrating this blog and changing its appearance for months now. The superficial blogger-internal face-lift I've given it recently seems only to have rendered it buggier and less user-friendly (user-unfriendlier?) so I may undo that.
And the blog displacement and stagnating migration intent are only highly convenient metaphors for what's going on in my own life at the moment.
I did just see 22:22:22 on March 22, which should have told me it's time to get ready for bed, but it made me superstitiously happy and excited to write at least "something." I do have a pretty neat photos post almost ready to go, too.
But the truth is, I had far too much work this past week. And my faculties seem to be diminished and less than equal to overburdened weeks. Apprehension of loss of my own particular brilliance on which I've always been able to rely has rammed me further into the posthole of despair, the tunnel stopped at one end.
Manic seems such a long way away, and meds only make the posthole tunnel less deep and final.
And I confess it's been so long since I've eaten or drunk anything without accompanying punishing nausea and pain, I'm starting to drive myself crazy with the frantic mental scrabblings of what I might add in or (more likely) take out of my diet. And this without "indiscretions" or castor oil punishments for well over a week.

I can't see the woods for the words, as I am saying a lot at the moment (quoting myself from a half-written poem). But I am recognizing how right my wonderful naturopath is in emphasizing that words can be my salvation. As I've been trying to think through my creative thesis for my MFA--it really is coming to that time already!--and suffering through everything I laid out above and many other life stresses, which make it harder to focus, I found a path by meditating on words. Passion is a tense of "suffering," and compassion (from Latin) or sympathy (from Greek) mean suffering together, sharing the experience. But if you choose to be a victim of your suffering, your passion, you are christ on the cross, excruciated, a grand and solo passion that can only be venerated or turned away from in pity and horror.
In other words, I need to acknowledge my sufferings as normal for someone in my circumstances rather than thinking of them as extraordinary and specific to me (even if my behaviors sometimes exacerbate the pain)--and then I can write about them in such a way that my readers will see themselves and suffer together--sympathize. Without the possibility of sympathy, what I write will be alienating; the crucified figure left alone in a desert place, the paradox of standing out when no one can bear to look. (After I came out of my worst period of anorexia seven or eight years ago, which was beyond excruciating for anyone who had to be around me, let alone for me, some friends and colleagues came up to me and shared that they had had to look away during that time; watching me die was too much to bear. The book of my life unreadable.)
I am learning to write a book for companions (sharers of sustenance) and compatients (sharers in suffering).