Everyday Bliss

This story begins with a sleepy if fascinating conversation with my late night study-buddy, Jan. We’re both night owls working on decoding certain levels of human experience that we wish to be able to change, enhance or amplify. Among my peers, he’s one of only a handful who really gets the more arcane things I’m into. And like few others, he always tells me something I never knew before which sparks intense debate, discussion, learning and more research.

Being a wizardly sort, Jan lives in Berkeley. If you’re a magically gifted world-changer in the San Francisco Bay area, and need help changing yourself, he’s definitely your man. I give him my highest recommendation and you a referral to his website here for more information.

A Little Night Music…

Henrietta Lacks, mother of the immortal HeLa cells

This particular evening, Jan was speaking of immortality and mentioned the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, branded “HeLa” cells by scientists. I’d never heard of Henrietta nor her world famous cell cultures and finding out about them makes me want to spread the word rather like HeLa cells have spread…worldwide.

Henrietta Lacks was a homemaker living in Baltimore in 1951 when she was diagnosed with, and died of, virulent cervical cancer. During diagnosis, cells were taken from her tumor without her knowledge or consent and grown in some of medical science’s first cancer cell research.

Researchers found that HeLa cells had extraordinary properties. Unlike cells from other donors, they grew on everything. They grew out of control. They consumed the growth medium in their test tubes and Petri dishes and grew outside of them to infect lab equipment, entire labs and finally, the world. HeLa cells can survive freezing, dehydration, starvation, radiation and deep space. They are known to be virtually indestructible.

(There could quite literally be some of Henrietta Lacks in that glass you’re drinking from, right now. Mind that small speck
on the rim there. Yes…that one.)

Because these were the first cells to be cultured for study, labs across the world wanted samples, which were grown and shipped to Russia, Paris, Chile, Amsterdam, London, Reykjavik and many other labs. And from there due to their extraordinary growth properties, they spread outward like a virus, worldwide.

HeLa cells were used to first culture then find the cure for polio and other diseases. They have learned to masquerade as cells from different parts of the body, and even as different diseases. In one notable incident, documented by author Harold Schmeck, American medical researchers had the unenviable task of notifying

“…Soviet scientists that the cells in which their viruses were growing were not even derived from Russian cancer patients. The cells actually originated from Henrietta Lacks…”

This interesting yet devastating property of HeLa meant that worldwide, contamination needed to be assumed, studies needed to be trashed, intense cleanroom protocols needed to be established and millions of dollars of research had to be done all over again. A commission was formed to contain the spread of HeLa, and today, genetic sequencing ensures the purity of research from HeLa contamination.

Now that you know some of the background, we’ll be picking up this thread in later posts. As Jan and I debated, immortality is in the eye of the beholder – be it the individual or the collective. But for now…

Enter the Goddess…

Crazy? No. While this may all sound like science fiction, it is most assuredly science fact. Though the woman herself perished, her cells have achieved true immortality. HeLa just can’t be stopped, so in a way, Henrietta Lacks has become the first known modern Immortal.

And in an interesting twist which brings in threads of my history in Northern European shamanism, Hela is also the name of the Nordic goddess of the Dead. She is many things but poignantly, presides over the realm of those who died disenfranchised, of disease or old age – not honorably as the ancients would have had it, in battle.

The Norse feared a death at Hela’s hands. In Odin’s realm of Valholl (Valhalla), a warrior would fight the good fight all day, eat, drink and carouse with comrades all night. What more could one want in the afterlife? Helheim was comparatively boring, and decrepitude was a dishonorable estate for one who previously went a-viking. The famous poet-warrior and Paget’s disease sufferer, Egill Skallagrimsson wrote bitterly in his old age, of relegation to shivering by the hearth, subject to the whims of mere women (in this case, his cook):

‘Old haltered horse I waver,
Bald-head I weakly fall:
Hollow my failing leg-bones,
The fount of hearing dry.
Blind near the blaze I wander,
Beg of the fire-maid pardon,
Crave for a seat. Such sorrow
From sightless eyes I bear…’

Though he feared Hela and what he would have seen as death without honor, Egill welcomed her embrace when family and peers began to die. In Sona Torrek, after the death and interment at Digra-ness (the Skallagrim burial mound) of his son Bodvar, Egill writes:

‘Hard am I beset;
Whom Hela, the sister
Of Odin’s fell captive,
On Digra-ness waits.
Yet shall I gladly
With right good welcome
Dauntless in bearing
Her death-blow bide.’

(citation: W. C. Green, 1893, Kings College, Cambridge)

Hela is typically depicted, as in this image by the artist Thorskegga Thorn, as half white, living, and half black, dead. Nordic shamans befriend Hela and go through the death experience yet live to gain great knowledge for the Well of Wyrd (meaning Fate, and All-That-Is) lies in her underground realm. The parallels to the contemporary HeLa phenomenon are uncanny, and perhaps no coincidence.

Goddess, thy name is Henrietta Lacks.

Which brings me to the main theme of this afternoon’s symposium:

In what ways will you achieve True Immortality?

I’m not talking cellular immortality (which includes having children) but other ways. What will you leave behind you that will go on after your macrobody ceases to exist?

• As the great philosophers, what immortal thoughts, questions and other cognitions will you leave behind?
• As the developers of cures, what patterns or processes that help others will you bequeath the world?
• What other things will survive you – perhaps forever?

Here is a place to let the world know, and get the word out about the value you will leave beyond your physical death. You can do that in the comment form below and we can continue this most interesting and provocative discussion…

Attended the glorious San Jose Ballet and Symphony Silicon Valley performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana last night. I’ve been stuck on this piece of music for years and have performed it as an alto chorus member a number of times. It’s both sweet and bombastic  – the initial movement, "O Fortuna" has been used as a stage-setter in many heroic movie battle scenes.

As you can see from the promo photo at left, the stage was initially set with a giant Wheel of Fortune-cum-altar. No, you who are thinking television game shows, it’s the Wheel from traditional hermetic magic and tarot. With a pentagram in the center. Scattered in the audience, assorted gaggles of  Wiccans and hermetics burst into tears of rapture as the curtain went up. My partner turned to me and said "I’d go back to being pagan if I could get twenty guys to reliably show up and dance like that at rituals…and the set designer as well…."

While parts of the performance dragged, and local dance critic Rachel Howard of the San Francisco chronicle was ever-so (yawn) bored, the majority of the audience remained fascinated to the denouement and gave the cast a resounding standing ovation. 

The opening ballet, Summerscape, while well danced and whimsical, felt like a "cartoon before the feature" in contrast to what followed. Nice and well choreographed, it didn’t merit the endless rounds of standing ovation applause Carmina garnered for its sheer overwhelming technical artistry. Veteran Dennis Nahat ably choreographed both ballets, and the 130 voice chorus with its three featured vocalists, cloaked as monks (oh, the bass soloist! perfection!) contributed equally to Carmina’s soaring spectacle.

Was I alone in observing the deliberate mispronounciation of the lyrics in Carmina? I learned the lyrics while singing with a Cambridge, England church chorus. Our director and music teachers were German and Italian respectively, the languages of the Carmina. (well Latin, but Giovanni was well versed in his high church speak). I’ve never heard the C’s and G’s pronounced in quite the same way as the singers in SJB’s version – it almost seemed like a foreign language.

The fellow next to me had also sung in Carmina and, looking at me perplexed during the interval, said: "Was I hearing aright, or are they misprounouncing the thing?" Check out any CD of Carmina for compares.

I wonder – artistic choice or something else??  Comment, Herr Director?

If you haven’t been to SJB’s Carmina, you’ve already missed it, but do go and see Nahat’s venerable Nutcracker, opening December 9th. Well worth it for an evening’s dress-up and good funtime. Don’t forget dinner after the show at the inimitable Il Fornaio down the street. Best and thickest cappucino’s in San Jo. Tell Edgar and David that I sent you.