Ray

My dog, Ray, bit me last night.  He was asleep on my bed next to me like always except that he was upside down with his feet near my chest and his head near my hips.  I was falling asleep curled around him but was uncomfortable so I turned to face the other direction.  I'm not sure what happened.  Perhaps my sudden movement scared him.  Perhaps he was having a doggy nightmare and thought I was the perpetrator of his dream, like a combat vet suddenly woken in the night who suddenly tries to strangle his partner lying next to him, my Ray reached out and clamped down twice on the knuckles of my left hand as it passed over his body.  I screamed and he scrambled under the bed.  I felt the familiar swelling of the crushing blow and got up to evaluate the damage.  Had I not pulled my hand away, I might have gotten away with just a crushing injury but one of his teeth left a half inch slice between two knuckles.  It was deep but had not yet begun to bleed.  I knew from experience that this would follow.  I grew light headed and sat down on the ground and began to cry.  Not again, I thought.  I can't keep doing this and, it'll be another 3-4 weeks before I can entertain kayaking.  

Since Ray came into my life 9 months before, my kayaking plans had been affected three or four times by such incidents.  Last May I registered for an incident management class, a two day clinic at Deception Pass in Washington.  A week or two earlier Ray had chomped on my hand three times before releasing it when I was toweling him off following a walk in the drizzle. The wounds were no longer open but the hand was still yellow-green, tender and swollen .  I was unable to don my tight fitting NRS Maverick glove needed to protect my fingers from the cold water near the Pass where we'd be spending most of the day submerged, practicing rescues.

In September I was registered for a two day Navigation class. We would be spending the first day in the classroom and the second on the water.  The night before the first day of class, Ray had been sleeping near my feet.  This was unusual but we'd never had an incident during the night so it took me by surprise when he bit my foot as I rolled over.  With the padding of my comforter and sock for protection, the skin was not broken.  However by day two, my foot was too swollen and tender to fit into my neoprene boot or to tolerate the pressure I'd have to place on it to push against the kayak's foot peg during the forward stroke and I had to pull out of the day's activities.

In December, Ray was in bed with me before lights out when my son appeared in the doorway.  Ray began to growl.  "Looming behavior", approaching Ray on the bed or couch, is one of his triggers for aggression.  In this case, my son was a good 6 feet away and in no immediate danger.  Instead of asking him to walk away, I was hoping to calm Ray without removing the triggering stimulus.  I had no treats at the bedside so I talked to Ray reassuringly, "It's okay Ray.  You're okay."  Then I did something one might do to reassure a distressed child which, I learned, is the last thing you should do to a threatening dog, even when he is not threatening you.  I stroked his back.  This would prove to be the worst of all my injuries.  Ray struck my hand hard and fast though I must have seen it coming because he bit me as I was removing my hand.  This caused one of his teeth to slice through the tissue on the underside of my ring finger.  There were also two puncture wounds on the topside of the finger and a bleeding and bruised nail bed which today remains as a purple line marking the bottom 1/3 of my nail.  This was the only time I cried due to pain.  Without the aid of stitches, it took a good 4 weeks to to heal.  It has been healed a week or two now and I've begun to think about paddling again.  I've been checking the NOAA marine point forecast waiting for a break in the predicted high wind, small craft advisories to plan a day trip but now, another open wound. 

There have been other incidents as well, and I have cried each and every time.  My roommate has also been bitten.  She never cries.  Around my 3rd bite she asked me why I was crying.  Was it because of pain?  Like my electrifying scream, the tears were automatic but they were not because of pain.  Her question, lingered in my mind for several seconds before I answered, "No.  It's more like my feelings were hurt." 

It reminded me of the times when someone I loved did or said something so hurtful, something that someone who loves you never should, and you realize that they aren't capable of caring for you in the way that you want and deserve.  You are faced with two choices, both painful.  Do you stay, continuing to love and care for them knowing that they will continue hurting you, or do you walk away and mourn the loss?  When does the cost of caring outweigh the moments of joy?   This is the dilemma I face with each injury.  This is the reason I cry.

Unfair

Winding stone steps
Short yellow lights
A gnome's delight.

Tall grass with tassle blooms
Ground cover in periwinkle
Perrenials in yellow and royal blue.

A creek to my left,  heard but unseen, grows silent beneath my feet.
To my right it rushes downhill then under another street.

Atop the hill the view is bright and clear. I stop to take a photo of Mt Rainier. I'd pay a million dollars if I had it, to live in a house up here.

Then again,  I walk this street nearly each and every day. It seems unfair that they've paid so much for the view I see for free.

Words in My Mouth

Words on a page.  Words in my mouth.  Why did I speak those words?  Were they even mine to speak?  If not mine, then whose?  Yours?  His?  Hers?

What's in a word?  What meaning does it have to you?  Does it bring forth memory, a feeling, a vision, a reminder of the last time you heard that word uttered from your mother's mouth?  She said it in disgust, didn't she?  Now it has a negative connotation in your mind, though you hadn't realized it before.  In fact the word incites anger in you as though it accused you as your mother once had.  You become argumentative (though your boss had not used it to make an accusation).  Your pulse races.  You're irrational, can't see straight.  Your boss tells you to take it easy - just as your dad had when we walked in on you and your mom arguing.

"You always take her side," you'd said to your dad before raising your fist.

Your mom tried to pull you off.  She grabbed your wrist before you could throw a punch.  Instead he got a punch in first and you ended up hunched over - end of fight.  You never forgave her for that - not really.  You didn't speak to her for a week.  Then, bit by bit, it was swept under the rug and never spoken of again.

What Makes a Place Special

A year ago I had never written any pieces of substantial length and so I set out to do just that.  Now it seems, I am unable to write anything with brevity.  No matter what idea I set out to put down on paper, one thought leads to another and another.  The conclusion is always just out of reach.  

It is with this in mind, the desire to bring brevity to the palm of my hand and the ability to use it at will, that I have returned to the blog.  There is something of value in short and sweet even something rough and imperfect.  With limited time to write however I find that I do not pick up pen and paper to write about whatever in the same way that I used to. I feel that I must sit down to work on the larger piece and not get sidetracked with the smaller. However, just as we need a break from work, time to give our souls a rest, time to fill our experiences with something out of the ordinary, so too I must do this when it comes to my writing. 

I have recently been on holiday.  I use the term holiday as I have been recently watching Happy Valley, a Netflix series which takes place in Ireland.  After immersing myself in the language and culture of other lands in this way, I find that the language seeps into my vernacular and into my thoughts.  'Bullocks', 'bloke', 'sod' and 'holiday' are in the current mix.  After watching Narcos, another Netflix series about Pablo Escobar, the words, 'Nunca, nunca', 'presidente','plano o platos',  'puta madre' and the like populated my thought stream.   The holiday had been to Austin, TX.  When I was planning the trip, there were just a few people I was intent on seeing but after touch down and going to the find a bit to eat something happened.  I was sitting at an outdoor picnic table at the Yellow Jacket Social Club in the middle of December, no gas fired heater required, underneath a string of round globe lighted oak trees and a herd of motorcycles in the parking lot when I suddenly thought of all the people I knew in Austin, and I wished to reunite with them all.  It was like the environment of the place was seeping into my pores and I wanted to soak up as much of it as possible.  I wanted to blanket myself in the experience that is Austin.  What makes a place what it is if it isn't the people you know and love?

Getting a leg up

I am dictating this as I am in my car currently and I do not anticipate having ample time before my work shift begins to get in the amount of writing <comma> to lay my thoughts down on paper <comma> as I would like. I'm trying as best I can to speak in the same way that I would if I was writing but I'm finding it very difficult to find that same flow of thought <comma> the same ease of stringing words together one after the other as I would if I were writing.

Now I am experimenting with speaking more slowly as though I were writing. This seems to be one of the main differences between the spoken word and the written <comma> that being the speed at which the words come out.

I have never been an eloquent speaker. I stumble over my words.  I stutter. I have word-finding difficulties. These are problems I do not have when I am writing. Of course in writing you can edit and a fair amount of editing does occur. Still there is a flow, a meditative quality to writing. This is not something I experience when I speak. It is as though the words <comma> the concept that I want to convey is present inside of me like a cloud with the words floating randomly inside like gas molecules inside a container. I have difficulty picking the best words and in the best order.  This is less difficult when I am writing.

My experiment has turned up interesting results. The words are coming more easily. I feel less need to go back and remove periods and add conjunctions. The sentences are forming more easily <comma> in a more pleasing manner. Perhaps this is something I can implement in my daily life <comma> at work <comma> in situations where conveying ideas <comma> thoughts and concepts are important. However listeners might think it odd <comma> the way I am speaking. It is robotic <comma> the slow thoughtful speech. I find it odd listening to myself. Because I have been speaking this SA, it is not the essay I thought it was going to be when I sat down to speak it. I am not certain that I had much to gain from trying to speak my thoughts. As I sit here in the parking lot of the hospital finishing these thoughts I realize that it is taking time away from the writing.

47

At 47 I no longer think of myself as 40-something but rather 50ish.  Time no longer stretches out in front of me like train tracks with the infinity sign up ahead.  Being 60 used to be beyond infinity somewhere out there, in a land far away.  In the land of my 30’s, I was mired in an unhappy marriage with small children to care for and though each day was busy, they were also interminable.  Overcome with the trials and tribulations of parenthood, I didn’t think concretely about what lay ahead.  I lived with the "someday" mentality.  "Someday I'll do this."  "Someday I'll do that.”  That someday was always somewhere out there down the road, waiting for me to catch up to it and I believed I would one day happen upon it like a child finding a penny in the road.

Perhaps it is a natural part of maturing or maybe it is because I have more time on my hands to contemplate these things now that my children are out of the wicked woods of adolescence that I began thinking more concretely about my goals and what it would take to achieve them.   Let’s face it, the amount of time I have left on Earth to do the things I want to do, to go to the places I want to go and to own the things I'd like to own, is finite.  I expect that the last decade or two of my life will not be spent hiking mountains, taking adventurous travels or rowing sea kayaks, right?  I mean,  the end point of my life is nearer at hand than my start point.   The things I dreamed about two decades ago seem like folly to me now.  I want to create new dreams and in so doing, I have to ask myself, what is important to me?  What do I want to achieve, see, experience and what do I need to do to make those things happen?  In asking the questions, I realize that the power to do those things lies within me, and it always has.

************

It was somewhere after 40 when I came to terms with the fact that "someday" was in sight but the things I had dreamed of were not.  I wanted to beat myself up for having not made plans for “someday”.  I was stupid and naive.  If only I’d planned ahead!  I didn’t think these things consciously but there they were, riding the rails of my subconscious and following along in the caboose was the belief that I had my children too young.  I had not lived enough or worked enough.  I had not figured out who I was or what I wanted.  Now that I have allowed them to become conscious in the process of writing them down, I think that it was just as well to have had my children when I did.  Besides the usual health related arguments supporting childbearing during early adulthood, I’ve decided that early adulthood is also preferable because during that time we lack the wisdom, insight or foresight necessary to make meaningful long term plans.  Hell, 50% of us who are married with small children will no longer be married in another decade and we didn’t see that coming when we said, “I do”.  All the better I say, to be self-absorbed, frantic and frazzled in the pursuit of surviving the trials and tribulations of child rearing, parenthood, marriage and the balancing act of our multiple selves - self as mother or father, self as wife or husband, self as athlete, friend, child, employee, artist, member of CHADD, MADD or AA.  Is there still time to soak in the tub? Calgon, take me away!  Yes, what better time is there to be anxious, self-doubting, and to dream frivolously of touring the Canary Islands via yacht than in our childbearing years?  What is the dreaming of someday if not a form of a “Calgon, take me away” moment?  I say, the dreaming of frivolity served its purpose.  Those were dreams never meant to be fulfilled.

**********

When I was a teenager I knew without a doubt what it was I wanted to do and there was nothing my school teachers or my parents or any other naysayers could say or do to convince me that it was a fool’s errand.  I wanted to be a ballet dancer and I wanted to prove them wrong.  I pursued dance with single minded purpose throughout my youth and the dream of proving everyone wrong was realized.   Yet, I wanted more than that.   I wanted to be a soloist one day.  I can’t say that I gave it conscious thought.  This seems to be a trend.  I knew I was not principal ballerina material.  I did not have that extra something, the umami, that makes one stand out above all others.  I was okay with that, but I did want to rise out of the herd of the corps de ballet.  Perhaps my lack of daring to give form to this inchoate dream was part of the obstacle in making it so, but I’d proven the doubters wrong.  I was good enough to make it.  If only  “good enough” had been the only ingredient necessary to endure the pressures of the calling.  A tough skinned psychological makeup was what I lacked and I left dance in the nascence of my career.  

There were many things I loved about ballet such that even in my most downtrodden states, when I thought myself fat and ugly, someone doomed to be past over again and again, I still looked forward to the daily routine, the work in the studio, the progressive perfecting of the body’s positions, the movement through the toes, the building of strength, holding the leg higher and longer, and the control required in the air, on pointe or during adagio.  I looked forward to picking out my leotard in the morning and matching my eyeshadow and earrings to complement it.  I liked the excuse the cold drafty theatre provided to bundle up in leg warmers, sweaters and down booties and I liked the way whistling both echoed and got lost in the rafters.  I observed how the older girls in the company had applied their liquid eyeliner to make their eyes look larger and how they used white to highlight or browns to shade their features.  I’d come in the next day and try to replicate what I’d seen.   Like Pavlov’s dog, I became physiologically responsive to the sound of the orchestra warming up in the pit which was piped into the dressing room through the intercom.  It energized and excited me for the performance ahead.  The ringing, toots and strums of the various instruments was a cue.  It was  time to put the last bobby pin into my hairpiece and to step into costume.  I looked at myself in the mirror as the dresser, standing behind me, connected the hooks and eyes running up the bodice.  I felt beautiful and oh, so privileged.   Though the sum of these things equalled an enormous loss when I left, it was losing certainty of purpose which pained me most.

********************

I have few distinct memories of the following few years.  That period of time exists as a fresh painting wiped through with a wet rag. One snippet of conversation from that time has stayed with me.  I had gone to meet with my teacher of English composition.  It was the end of the quarter.  I sat in a chair facing his desk and he handed me my final assignment.  We discussed my writing and he asked me how it was that I still considered myself an artist now that I no longer was dancing.  I said that I still believed I was an artist.  I just hadn’t found my next vehicle for artistic expression.  The question highlighted for me the fact that I was adrift, searching, but I didn’t know what for.  Even without knowing the object of my calling, I still felt its tug.  

****************

Last August I took a short road trip to Whidbey Island.  I stayed at this wonderful place with gardens and bird fountains.  My routine was simple.  I woke, dressed, made my bed, joined my hosts for breakfast, and then I gathered my laptop and my water and made my way to the Adirondack chairs on the back lawn overlooking the gardens where bunnies roamed in and out of the landscape, bees gathered pollen from the lilies and birds splashed in the fountain.  As the shade moved during the day, so did my chair.  I inched myself farther and farther under a tree until my chair could move no farther lest I wind up sitting in the gardens themselves.  Every hour and a half I’d get up to stretch my legs.  If it was lunchtime I’d make myself a tuna fish sandwich and eat it while I strolled around the gardens listening to an audiobook on my phone.  On other breaks I might venture down to the neighboring dirt road which was closed off to through traffic by a chain which crossed the road at midway.  Large blackberries grew on the bushes across the road from a well kempt property with a large rolling lawn and scattered apple trees.   A broad woman stood on the front lawn raking debris.  Her hair was long and gray.  It was neither pulled up nor arranged in any particular fashion but rather hung there over the back of her dress.  It was the type of dress difficult to differentiate from a nightgown, a muumuu, white with large red flowers on it.  I wondered if she had adult children who would be lucky enough to inherit the property when she died.  She looked like she bought it years ago along with her husband who was now deceased as evidenced by her being the one doing the yard work.  She was capable and loved that home.  Why shouldn’t she stay on after his passing?  She took pleasure in the upkeep even if she was slower than she used to be.  I hoped she didn’t mind my stopping to pick blackberries.  The blackberry bushes were not on her property, still they seemed more hers than anybody’s.  They were on unimproved land across from her house.  Hers were the only eyes which gazed upon the bushes day after day while she tended the lawn or looked up from the kitchen window while she washed dishes.  That seemed enough reason for the bushes to be hers.  Indeed, I felt like a trespasser as I walked up and down that dirt road passing her house again and again during my 2 days on the Island but it was such a good road to stretch my legs on and to prepare myself for another sitting in the Adirondack chairs.  

When I took my break at 5pm, I kept thinking that I’d get one more writing session in before calling it a day but that never happened.  I’d go out in search of supper then take it to the water’s edge to eat where I sometimes watched the people and their small children walk past and remember what it was like to have my own small children.  It made me smile to remember.  I began reading a book from the shelf of the cabin I was staying in and when I returned from dinner I did not want to put it down just yet.  Before I knew it, the sun was setting and it was nearly 9pm.   There was a rhythm and structure in those two days.   I slept well and I exercised my body.  Life was balanced and I, at ease.

************  

Writing is many things to me.  It is  how I tease apart, sort and organize my mess of mixed up thoughts and feelings.  It is where I make meaning of things.  It is a way to know and to be known.  It is intimate in a way that conversations rarely are.  It is something that I look forward to, something that doesn’t have to wait for someday.  It doesn’t require a whole lot of planning or foresight and when my pen hits the page, there is certainty of purpose.       It is a way to connect to the universal.  It is a way to heal.

Sending hello to the electrosphere

That I've just published my first new entry in 6 months may have made you wonder where I've been and have I still been writing?  My latest post was an excerpt from an email exchange I had with a good ole friend whom I haven't had much contact with the last couple of years though she has been on my mind often.  I finally picked up my pen, so to speak, earlier this week and made contact.  I suppose I could say that in doing so I was choosing to power up my space suit, making an active choice to nurture a connection rather than to passively let it fade away.  In doing so, I have reaped the reward of not only a rekindled relationship but also the reward of prose.  So thank you to my Longhorn friend, Jenny, who has doubly blessed my life this week.  My absence from the online page does not mean that I am not still around, nor that I am not writing.  To the contrary, I've been writing.  Oh, I've been writing.  I've been writing something longer, with more grit at this point than gratitude though I think in the end product we will find that gratitude is the glue that holds the narrative together.

While I know that no one has been holding their breath wondering about why I'm not posting or if this  blogging was just a passing phase, something I wonder frequently, I felt the desire to wave out to my friends in the "electrosphere" and say, "Hello!  I'm still here and having fun.  I hope you are too and I hope you will continue to follow me as a commit myself to this journey of the writing life.  I can't imagine my life being well lived without it.  Where ever I am, whatever I do, never doubt that I am writing, too."

Focus

I want to own myself.  I want to be fully in control of my actions.  I want to make my choices deliberately, consciously, not by rote learning or automatic defense mechanisms.

I am often avoidant without knowing that I am being avoidant.  I am unconscious and in-deliberate in it.  Many of my feelings are still instantly suppressed.  This is a new depth of self-awareness.  It is  like journeying to a deeper level of a darkened castle in a video game.  I do not know in which rooms I will find the demons but I know most by name: avoidance, dishonesty, justification, self-righteousness.  They are all defenses of fear.

Bit by bit God is illuminating the rooms in which they are held.  I needn't be afraid of them.  They are known to me.  They have served to protect me.  They have watched me grow.  They are only waiting for me to release them into the hands of God.  Like children who have been separated from a beloved parent, they run from their rooms to greet me, happy they no longer have to be on guard and acting in extremes but are freed to bless my life with the assets they offer when used in moderation.

I am coming to know myself more fully and to appreciate the wealth in my life experiences.   I will never own myself one hundred percent of the time but I can be grateful for the process of self-discovery which brings not only knowledge of my shortcomings but also nurtures the growth of foundling capabilities and transforms old skills into expertise.

Where I focus my time, thought and effort is where I experience growth.  Am I using my time wisely to develop the qualities, skills and expertise that I say I desire?  This is the question I must ask myself again and again.

chapels

What makes a chapel, a chapel, I ask myself?  I come here seeking peace, silence, tranquility.  I look around the room.  I see the stained glass art hanging on the wall.   Beneath it is a long wood table.  A single vase with a dry arrangement rests at one end.  At the other is a guest book.  I recall turning pages in that book, reading some of the entries, the reasons others had come here.  Some were grieving the illness or loss of a loved one.  Some were seeking solitude, answers or guidance.  I recall reading the entry of an employee who had visited on her last day.  She left a testimony of what her work had meant.  She had come to say goodbye.  She had come to remember and to be remembered.  Feeling inspired, I wrote my own entry that day.  Remembering this makes me smile.  I continue scanning the room.  In front of me is a table made from a tree trunk upon which my water bottle sits.  I am sitting in one of five chairs arranged in a circle around it.  There is a couch against one of the walls with a side table and lamp.  The couch and chairs are upholstered in light shades of blue, the walls painted a calming green.  There is a place for Catholics to kneel and pray and a rug for Muslim prayer.  In one corner is a cabinet made of a warmly stained wood.  The upper half contains a historical display of religious texts.  I take this all in and decide that it is not the things in the room, exactly, which make this a chapel.  It is the subtraction of things.  

There are no discussions to be had here, no meetings, no supporting rationals to be given.  Here, I need not be “on”, ready to go, shoes laced.  The decor, it contributes, but its contribution is in that it is almost meant to go unnoticed.  Yet, I notice this.

I ask myself, is it the absence of things which allows for the presence of God?  If I took any particular moment in my life and subtracted what was going on, would I not find this same space?  Would I not find God?  

I come to the chapel seeking silence.  So then, am I not seeking God?  And when I am seeking God, do I not go to quiet places, to the wilderness?  Do I not go alone?  To give God my attention, I go to quiet places and I go alone. 

Meditation is a place of silence.

Meditation is a place of solitude.

Meditation is a place where I can be with God.

Meditation is where I go now, to seek silence, to seek solitude, to seek God.

Physical pain and menopause

I remember being a child standing in our kitchen with the avacado green rotary phone, oblong table and tall kitchen chairs with whicker backs when my mom said, "Dammit, I'm having a hot flash!"

"Laine," she'd say.  "Go upstairs and turn down the thermostat, will you?"

Turning, I'd run and climb the stairs placing my palms down on the steps ahead of me, scrambling like a bear as fast as I could go.  Atop the second staircase against the wall which lay ahead was an ivory trunk and above that, the thermostat.  Placing my hands on the truck I'd jump up and scoot my knees beneath me.  Standing tall, the thermostat was at eye level.  "Just touch it 'til it turns on," I'd hear my mom's instructions in my head.  Gently I'd nudge the lever and like an old engine uncertain of starting, I'd hear the air conditioner turning over.

When I was in my twenties and thirties, I used to live in Austin, TX where it is 100+ degrees in the summer.  When the temperature drops down to 98 degrees in the shade, it feels downright lovely out, "cool" one might say.  I played competitive tennis in that heat where my face grew red, not from sunburn.  No, before each match, practice session or drill group I'd rummage through my tennis bag in search of my Coppertone Sport sunscreen.  It had to be Coppertone Sport. I'd give it a good shake before squeezing its not too greasy contents onto my hand. Starting at my ankles I'd make my way upward, applying it at last upon my face. If I was to be out more than two hours,  this ritual was to be repeated.  My face did not grow pink from sunburn.  It grew pink from the heat.  During change overs I'd pull a rag from a thermos of ice water and place it on my face and neck while downing cold gatorade from another thermos, warding off heat stroke.

Today I live in the Seattle area where more often than not the temperature remains in the 40's or 50's and where I can be infrequently found on the tennis court yet frequently my face is red.  When this happens, the last thing I want to do is exert myself and the only thing I can think of doing is removing my clothing and sticking my head in the freezer.  Should an attack occur while in the car I roll down the window.  Should passengers be on board I know what to expect, complaints, but I have a remedy.  I turn to face them.   The sight of my flushed face qwells their protests.  If stopped at a light, I will stick my whole head out of the window.  I don't care how it looks.  In that moment all I care about is cooling the fuck down.  Yes, physical pain and menopause, what do they have in common?  They are two experiences which cause me to cuss like a sailor. 

The first perimenopausal symptom I had, though you will not find it written as a symptom anywhere, were hot flashes of the ear, typically only one ear at a time.  When this first began, I searched the internet looking for a cause.  Was it related to niacin or some other dietary factor, I wondered?  There were plenty of other people reporting this experience on the web and also searching for answers, but I found no definite known cause.  I was okay with that and let it go.  Sometime, many months down the road, this red hot ear syndrome extended to my whole face. It wasn't so bad, I thought.  I rather liked the novelty of it and it was well worth not having to suffer through monthly periods.  Then the hot flashes grew worse.  They became hotter and they lasted longer.  It wasn't long before the hot flashes spread down my body.  My co-workers pointed out my flushing arms and my girlfriend pointed out that my back was wet with sweat.  Soon it was not only my back but also my belly, neck, chest and legs.  I might as well have been playing tennis on a hot summer day in Austin, TX.  I was, however, strangely grateful.  If I had to suffer through this experiece, at least there was an external manifestation of my inner discomfort, something others could at least see and sympathize with. 

How different this is than suffering from depression where what people notice on the outside is only a hint of the suffering felt on the inside.  It sheds light on the physical acts some will take when they do not have the words to express what they feel inside.  Their acts become their words, their means of expression.  A cut, a burn, a noose, what are these if not visible manifestations of an internal suffering which knows no other way to be pacified, let alone to be accepted?

Turning Over A New Leaf

New post.  What shall I talk about?  Sundays?  Rainy days?  Mondays?  Today is New Year's Day.  In my mind I have a yearly calendar that stretches from January through December like the letter C or the curve of a bow.  December does not connect to January.  To go from December 31st to January 1st you must cross an inlet of blank space.  I have had the opportunity to inquire of  a few others about their internal calendars and none of theirs resembled mine.  Granted my sample is small, but still I find this interesting.  I wonder why my internalized calendar is this way.  

This morning I opened up One Day At A Time in Alanon which is a daily reader.  It has a short entry for every day of the year.  Now, I admit that I have gotten out of the habit of reading from this every morning so it didn't fully hit me that it was January 1st, New Year's Day until I parted the book cover and out of habit, headed toward the rear of the book where December's readings are located.  That's when it hit me that it was no longer December and that I could not read a January entry from the rear of the book.  It was time to start over, time to go to the front.  I closed the back cover, turned the book over and started from the beginning.  I turned a page and then another until I came to the heading, "January 1st".  That's when I got hit a second time.  My internalized calendar is read, like a book! It is turning over a new leaf, finishing a book and starting it anew.   The inlet of space between December 31st and january 1st is the space created when you close a book and turn it over to open it anew. 

To my recollection, my internalized calendar goes back for as long as I can remember, predating my few years of reading Alanon daily readers.  I cannot say exactly why I internalized the calendar this way but I can say that I found feet-up, arms-behind-the-head satisfaction in the epiphany that my internalized calendar not only isn't odd, but is down right poetic.  Indeed, starting your first few conscious moments of New Year's Day with an epiphany is not a bad start at all.

Somewhere

Who am I?
I am a dancer,  a writer,  an artist at heart.

I am a scientist,  a humanist, an intellectual.

I am not timely,  organized or well spoken.

I process slowly. I think deeply.

I seek meaning in actions,  in words, in art,  in silence. 

I find boredom in complacency.

I feel socially awkward.  I think of my friendships often.  I reach out to them infrequently.

I am one person in a country on a planet spinning on its axis around a sun in a solar system in a galaxy somewhere in the universe.

Who are you?
Do we matter?
What has meaning? Biologically? Individually?  Culturally?  Spiritually?  Artistically?  Professionally? Globally?  Universally?

What does it mean to be alive? Biologically? Individually?  Culturally?  Spiritually?  Artistically?  Professionally? Globally?  Universally?

What does it mean to be dead?
"You are dead to me. "
"It is dead to me. "
"He was dead to me,  once. "

I am alive.  No one is dead to me.  I breath,  eat,  think,  sleep, feel,  heal,  move,  express,  love,  withdraw,  confess, reach out timidly to people in a world spinning on its axis around a sun in a solar system in a galaxy somewhere in the universe.

simple questions, no simple answers

I was recently at a party when someone asked me if others were accepting when I told them that I couldn't deliver what they wanted.  My first thought was, they have no choice but to be accepting.  My second thought was, do they?

To answer their question, I had to ask myself what does it mean to be accepting? What does accepting behavior look like?  To me, acceptance means surrendering to reality, no longer resisting, pushing back or trying to change it to be what one wants it to be.  This means no arguing, foot stomping, chest puffing, silent treatment, guilting, shaming, or bargaining.  It certainly doesn't include name calling, use of pejoratives or threats.

The next question I had to ask myself is how do I define reality?  Reality is not the bendable thing I have tried to superimpose on my children, the type they could alter by pushing back or by any of the other before mentioned behaviors of non-acceptance.  Those of us who grew up with such malleable realities tend to lack in adulthood discrimination between the arbitrary realities set down by a weakly committed parent and the true realities of life on life's terms.  Even if you didn't experience this, acceptance doesn't come easily.  It requires an admission of powerlessness, not an American ideal.

We grow up hearing "we can be anything we want to be," "do anything we put our mind to," "we can overcome," "nothing is impossible," and "where there is a will there is a way".  These pump you up, feel good sayings I believe to be blatantly untrue and harmful.  I postulate that we would be better served by growing up hearing that "some things we cannot change," "where there is willfulness there is disappointment," "some things are impossible" and "maturity is recognizing when to surrender".  How much more peace might we all experience with such slogan soaked psyches?

As you might imagine, there was a long pause after I was asked that original question, a pause which belied the answer I wanted to give.  The truthful answer is largely, No.  Others are not accepting when I tell them I cannot grant them their wish, and for the most part, I am okay with that now.  It is not pleasant being in the presence of another who is fighting acceptance, but I've been there and I will be there again.  I do my best to greet others in the grips of willfulness with understanding and compassion because I don't like it when life doesn't go according to my plan and timeline.  So in those moments when I am receiving their push back, I try to remember that life is not going according to their plan right now and that sucks for them.  Most importantly, I try to remember that the person whose happiness is most disrupted is the one who has not surrendered.  In those moments I am grateful that this time, it is not mine.

I wrote this earlier this year while camping at Rock Island Campground in the Leavenworth area.

Will you meditate with me, Wise One?
Is this where you reside?
Are you inside of me or walking by my side?
Are you everywhere, by every tree I pass?
Waiting and watching, your patience outlasts.

I like that you are near me, never too far to hear my voice.
Of all that is good and wise, you make me feel deserving.
Tenderness, a gentle kiss, a forgiving heart, a kind goodbye.

With you I feel a rejoicing, a dance, a song of joy.
You're a parent, a friend, a breeze, a bird, a fire's flame, a kind word.
You're in the hardships, the lessons that I learn.
You spare me no part of you.  
Without the worst I wouldn't know the good that lives here too.

On spiritual practice

I have chosen to spend some time in silence today, to connect with God and to be with myself.  It feels good.  It feels loving.  I want to practice today continually asking God what his will is for me now.

Right now I am receiving the message that taking a shower, cleaning the kitchen and making meatballs is how he wants me to take care of myself.  Rather than those being dreaded and boring tasks, they become ways of saying, "Laine, you are important to me."  Hmm. That is a new way to think about it.  I can do the same when it comes to picking out clothes for work tomorrow or sitting down to look at finances.  For now, I look forward to getting out of bed.  I look forward to taking care of myself - in all of my affairs.

God - Help me to choose your will.  I can trust in so doing, that you will provide the time to accomplish all that is important.  If your will is for me to write, than I needn't make it happen.  You will give me the opportunity to do so.  I am glad that trusting in you and doing your will doesn't mean that something is sacrificed.  As I allow your will be become mine, the less I experience deprivation.  Thank you for transforming my life from one of self-sacrifice into one of abundance.

Transitions

As I have indicated before, things in my life are changing.  I am preparing to move.  I am preparing to lose my dog, my companion for 14 years.  My professional interests are changing.  I am transitioning into a life of unity with a significant other.  My relationships with my children are transitioning as one inches toward adulthood and the other grapples with adolescence.

I wonder though, when is life not in transition?  I've held this idea that life occurs in discreet segments of plateaus followed by abrupt changes but as I write this, I feel this idea is changing.  Perhaps we are in a constant state of transition which at times is so slow that we cannot see it.  As the external landscape of my life transitions, so is the internal.  My thinking, my beliefs, my views of myself, of the world and my place in it is also in transition.

What is this correlation between the external and internal transitions?  Is there one?  Certainly changing life circumstances can occur without internal change, at least I believe that I have had that experience though I could be wrong.  I do know from my own experience, however, that internal changes allow me to experience my changing circumstances in a new way.  Yes.  There is a link between changes in my thinking and changes in how I experience the world.  I suppose this is why that while I am moving through changing life circumstances, I feel relatively unperturbed and on the whole, at ease.  I feel this way because of changes in my internal landscape.  Today I am grateful for the process of internal change.

On Peace

It is Nov 1st, 2010.  We have had a short and late summer this year.  However, fall is officially here.  The leaves on the trees are turning shades of orange and yellow and are forming a bright carpet on the sides of the road day by day.  Soon enough the trees of St. Edward's Park will be bare and I'll be able to see the sunset over Lake Washington through their skeletons.  How different the view is season by season.

Often I walk my dog, Rango, on the trails,  headphones on, lost to the external world of people but tuned into the sight of nature and into my internal world,  wherever the music transports me.

Music is magical that way.  It brings forward memory, dreams from the night before and emotion you thought was dead and buried over events long past or events you never realized had significant emotion attached to them at all.  One day you find yourself listening to

"The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you coming home dad
I don't know when
but we'll get together then,  son
You know we'll have a good time then,"

and tears are streaming down your face.  For the first time in forty years you realize that you are grieving the loss of a father you never knew not because he wasn't physically present but because he wasn't emotionally present.  As your fingers could touch his skin and feel his warmth,  or your ears could sense the resonance of his voice or the rattling of his snores, so too you wish it could be so easy to feel connected,  loved, and that you mattered to him.  These are the types of things I think about when I'm listening to music and walking my dog on the trails of St.  Edward's Park.

At the waters edge I remove my headphones.  The gentle waves lap against the shore.  The leaves rustle.  A bird chirps. Kenmore Air passes overhead and the clopping of a runner's foot passes behind me and fades into the trails from which I came.

I continue my trek up the hilly trail,  back to my vehicle, back to what awaits me. My focus shifts from the present to what's next.  Anxiety and dread return but I know that on the trail, beauty surrounds me and peace lies within me.  I need only return to experience it.

It would be three more years before I would realize that the experience of beauty and peace lies not out on the trail,  but is accessible always within.  How nice to find this bit of writing nearly three years to the day,  to see where I was and to be grateful for how far I've come.

On Breaking Bad

What is it about breaking bad which resonates with the heart of me?  Is it that it is a story which  makes me think more deeply about the nature of good and bad?  Is it that at its core it is about existential crisis, transformation and connection?  Is it that I identify with the main character, Walt, who having lived his life according to other’s rules and doing what is expected has lived a canned life and yearns to break free?  Yes, yes and yes.

Walt, in facing his death to lung cancer, is freed to do what he previously feared, live life on his own terms, according to his own values.  It freed him to embrace himself.  The journey begins when Walt leaves his job as a high school chemistry teacher and part time car wash attendant to become a methamphetamine cook, a profession which will allow him to leave behind the legacy of having been a good provider for his wife and children.  He “breaks bad”.  Three of the primary, but not only, complex relationships Walt has are with his wife, his DEA agent brother-in-law, Hank, and his assistant cook and former degenerate high school student, Jessie.  It is through these relationships that we witness Walt’s transformation and the blossoming of his authentic self.  

Through the course of the show, Walt changed from a man claiming to do what he did out of self-sacrifice for his family, into a man who acknowledged to his wife what few of us can - that his deeds were done to fulfill his own needs.  This makes Walt for me, not only sympathetic, but a hero.  In contrast, Hank’s shallowness of insight and affection left me ambivalent towards his demise.  It was Walt’s grief at Hank’s death which moved my sympathies more than the death itself.  

Walt had been a hero to his teenaged son when living a life of pretense.  This was shattered in the end and never mended.  However, Walt gained a son in Jessie, someone who saw, accepted and I believe loved Walt for who he was. We see in the final scene of the last episode that Jessie, who could never do anything right in the beginning, became for Walt a beloved son that he was proud of.  In the end, Walt achieved that which I desire - an authentic life fully lived.

On Feeding the Creative Soul

Not sure what I will write about.  All I know is that after being back to work a week, my soul misses waking up and spending the first few hours meditating, thinking, reading and writing.  Even now, on my second day off I feel the call of responsibility - bills, grocery shopping, ironing, vacuuming, brushing the clumps of hair calling to me off of my dog's back and hind quarters, filing, culling through closets and cabinets and drawers in preparation for moving next spring, setting up the external hard drive for backups, retrieving files from the now dysfunctional  laptop's backed up drive and installing them onto the desktop and how about getting reimbursed from the flexx spending account?  When was the last time I balanced my checkbook?  On and on and on.

Meanwhile, it is probably the last week of eighty and sunny.  How much more would I prefer to be hiking in the Olympics?  Let's not go there.  All of these responsibilities seem so much more agreeable when I have my thinking and writing time.  What must I do to feed this need in the midst of real life?  I haven't the answer yet.  What I do know, is that this is a need.

Hey, this Imagine Dragons CD  I downloaded last night is hitting the spot.  Just another day in the life.  In this, too, there is something to be learned.  It's just another wave under the paddleboard.  Sigh.  Though it's not the amount of time I'd like to have spent writing, the 17 minutes it took to write this is enough for now.  It is a rough draft of perhaps something that will become something more in time, in time.  I am grateful to be in a place where I can recognized a need and honor myself enough to carve out 20 minutes to feed it.

On myself

Whenever I am finding fault in another,  I must turn it back onto me.  If I find your behavior disrespectful towards me,  then I must reflect on how I disrespect myself in the relationship.  When I am tempted to nag my son about going to bed earlier so that he has less difficulty getting up for school in the morning,  I must look at myself.  Am I not guilty of the same offense?  How much more fruitful would my efforts be if they were exerted on my own behalf. Just for today,  let it begin with me.