mysterious middle

on break

2008-08-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting because my writing energies have been going elsewhere -- I write for work, of course, and in recent months I've been writing a memoir, which has cut into my time for the blog.

Writing a memoir is fascinating and dicey, and wonderfully useful. At first it was just plain fun, but as I moved forward out of the fog of early childhood into adolescence, I began to feel what I was writing. I took a brief foray through puberty, during which I -- the adult writer, looking back -- was sulky and perversely uncommunicative. No fun indeed, but giving voice to that 12-year-old, who didn't know then how to communicate, has been liberating.

I think I hated her before. I was such an unhappy kid, and I looked back on that period of my life with some horror and dismay, and did my best to ignore it for many years. Writing memoir forces attention on eras of my life I'd rather sweep under the rug. And while it brings up the old snarly resentments, it has also given voice to that silent, surly kid, and she turns out to be smart and funny and searching. I don't hate her anymore. I like her. I have sympathy for her.

Also, good writing miraculously overcomes old prejudices and resentments. My readers noted that my mother came across as rather ideal, and my father seemed full of faults. I've been told that before -- I've viewed my parents that way since I was about two. But writing characters that way is just two-dimensional. It can't be true. I care about writing well, and conveying some truth. This was revelatory for me. I'd clung to the belief that my father was the source of all my problems for decades. Now, suddenly, I had to recognize that my own belief was getting in the way of seeing him whole -- and, consequently, seeing me whole.

That's not an easy transition. And not an intellectual one. It took some grief. But what a recovery process! As in rescue and recovery. As if I went into a house crumpled by a storm and found my dad in there, warm and breathing and alert, long, long after I'd left for him dead.

I haven't done too much work on the memoir in recent weeks. I've had visitors and work to preoccupy me. Summer is always such a headlong rush through the sun. But I think I'm also afraid of what may come next. Will I step on another land mine, or some gnarly little nest of shame that I've left alone for years?

It's not all like that, as I've said. It is often fun. But intense. And I think I'm a little frightened about how it will all turn out. You'd think I'd know. But there's so much that I haven't known, that I've learned through writing this story. So even though I know the chronology, I have no idea how it will end.

happy fathers day

2008-06-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

I've been getting feedback on some of the writing I've been doing about my childhood: Gee, my readers say, your mother comes across as perfect and your father comes across as the bad guy.

Although not a surprise, it still jolted me to an awakening. My mother is not perfect, and my father was not a bad guy. I read some of what I'd written and I saw a passage in which I contrasted myself to my father: I am empathetic, connecting and supportive, I wrote. The contrast was implicit: He was not.

But when I read that, I found myself thinking, geez. Maybe I am empathetic, connecting and supportive, but I never directed all that warm energy toward Dad. With him, I was defensive, abrasive, evasive, coolly friendly, occasionally surly and pouting.

I did some rewriting. Then, during a psolodrama a few weeks ago, I heard tiny words echoing in my head: "I miss my daddy."

"Daddy?" I thought, with some indignation. I had not thought of my father as "Daddy" since I was four or five.

The words were so loaded I put my hands up to my ears, not wanting to hear them. I didn't feel I could embody them, at least not fully, so I let my fingers do the talking. "I miss my daddy," my right index finger told my left index finger. "Well, that's all very well and good, but what do you want me to do about it?" my left index finger asked bruskly.

I have always blamed my father for many things. But now I'm recovering the original, unfettered affection I had for him when I was very small, and he was my daddy. I am uncomfortably aware of a whole apparatus of defenses I developed toward him early on, and have never quite put down. Suddenly, it's not all his fault. A lot of it is mine, too. This is not to say he wasn't limited -- he was often depressed; he favored his son over his daughters; he wasn't really approachable on personal subjects. But I, too, have been limited.

I spent this past weekend at a psolodrama workshop. The first night, I did a psychodrama about him. First I pictured him in relationship to my mother: He was standing in a defensive posture, pointing accusingly at her. Then I went off with him alone, to the circus, to play, to reconnect. But there was a gulf between us, which in my imagination came from the back of his throat, and reached back in time to his own childhood.

I traveled back and imagined what it was like in his household -- an Irish Catholic middle class home in the 1920s. He was the youngest, and there was a lot of drama going on with his siblings, and I expect a lot of expectation put on my father to achieve -- which he did, but I think at some expense. I imagined his iron-fisted mother, and his father with his back to the family; he called them "Mother" and "Daddy" when he wrote to them from college. In this childhood scene, my father as a boy was lost and lonely.

I returned to the scene from my own childhood, and changed my father's stance. He turned away from my mother and faced me. He stood up straight and put his hands at his sides.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of," I told him. Then I stepped into the role of my father, and heard what I'd said. It hit me like lightning.

"I don't?" my father asked. "I always thought you were ashamed of me."

"You have nothing to be ashamed of," I told him again.

This was all stunning to me, because of course I have been ashamed of my father. To tell him that he has nothing to be ashamed of is a shift. To step into his shoes and hear those words was amazing.

The next day, in an exercise called "The Empty Chair," I pictured him sitting in a chair. When I saw him, sitting there in his business suit, smiling a little coyly at me, my heart lit up. The facilitator asked me how it felt. "I'm happy to see him," I said. "And that makes me sad, because I don't remember ever having been happy to see him before."

The exercise went on, and Dad and I danced and sang to the Bee Gees song "How Deep is Your Love?" We had a lot of fun together. Dad was always a fun guy.

I'd been fearful of what it would mean to remove all this armor I'm suddenly aware I've worn most of my life around my father -- even in the eight years since his death. Now that I slowly peel it off, I feel a little softer, a little happier, a little more accepting and less snappish.

Is it an odd coincidence that this happens around Fathers Day? Is it an odd coincidence that this happens just as a bit of money from my father's estate comes my way? Maybe.

Thank you, Dad. I love you.

cats and tweens

2008-05-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

The cats are both home and eating, back to their usual selves. They each have their front legs shaved around the shin, like poodles, for where they had catheters attached. Nora violently rejects all medicines, and stalks off after I (try to) administer them, bristling with indignation. Nicky, as usual, is more easy going and takes his meds without much resistance. I think it's OK that Nora isn't downing most of her medicine; she's eating and the virus seems to have passed. Her problem now is that the medicine she spits out gets over her coat, in hard-to-wash places. Again, the indignity!

I am flooded with relief and gratitude. Pets are companionable without offering the many challenges that human companions bring to the table. They love me, I love them, simple as that. So they lodge pretty deeply in my heart, and ... well, it's only the three of us living here together, so they play a pretty big part in my life. The prospect of losing one of them, then both of them at once, rattled me. Hooray! We've got some time left.

Meanwhile, I've been writing a lot about puberty, lately. Why on earth would anyone want to revisit puberty? It was possibly the most painful period of my life (and that of many). Writing about it is reclamation. I hated myself, and everyone around me, when I was in middle school. Now I get to go back and see all of us as human and worthy of compassion. That's useful.

That girl was horrified at the prospect of growing up; she was also cynical, and observant, and funny. I like her. I don't think she'd be easy to spend time with (hell, I'm writing about her, and I can tell you she isn't). But she's very sharp and I respect her. She had something in common with my cat Nora -- the outrage and indignation, the anxiety, the pluck. The tendency to spit out things that are thought to be good for her.

And Nora, who is sitting here on my lap, is also soft and cuddly and always open to eye contact and conversation. Right now, she's purring.

kitty update

2008-05-26T14:01:00.000-07:00

The cats have started eating in the hospital. Nick, apparently, is chowing down. Nora is nibbling more delicately, so the vet has told me to wait out the day today, and check in this evening about the prospect of bringing them home tonight.

Phew.

kitty update

2008-05-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

Nora has gotten sick.

At the same time, Nicky's ultrasound came back clear. No cancer, no inflammatory bowel disease. Also, no kidney disease, which is the bane of elderly cats. However, when cats don't eat, they get fatty deposits in their livers and develop liver disease, which Nicky must be flirting with, since he has hardly eaten in five days.

Nora is high strung, and at first I thought she was just freaked out about Nicky. Then she went off her food, too. When she reluctantly downed a treat, she threw it up immediately. In fact, she's been throwing up a lot. Just more delicately than Nicky was.

So now they're both hospitalized for the weekend. The vet says it's either a virus or a toxin. Their environment hasn't changed, which suggests a virus. But if it's a virus, it's really hanging on. If it's a virus, I would have had to have brought it into the house somehow (that is, on my shoes or hands). Last Saturday I went to three animal shelters with my friend Sara, so it's possible I picked up a kitty virus. That
seems the most logical.

If a cat stops eating, it develops liver disease. So the hospital has both cats on IVs -- hydration and food. The aim is to stop the vomiting and kick start their appetites. The vet said we may never know what caused this, but they might both recover.

I'm more worried about Nicky. He's so gaunt at this point -- it's like he's given up the ghost. But who knows what the hospital stay will do for him. Meanwhile, I've stocked up on tuna for their return.

The vet called earlier with an update. They're still not eating, but they're holding down the food they're getting through the IV. (She also reported that Nora is vexed.) She said at the animal shelters I might have picked up something that cats get vaccinated for, but they can still contract. It kills cats who don't get the vaccine. She said she's glad to see they've stopped throwing up -- she thinks that's promising.

This has been kind of harrowing, but now it's interesting, too -- detective work.

feline friendship

2008-05-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here with one cat on my lap and the other in the hospital. Nicky, the one in the hospital (the gray cat on the right in the picture), stopped eating and drinking on Monday. A big bruiser of a cat, weighing in at almost 14 pounds, he had dropped to 12 when I got him to the vet on Tuesday. He'd been losing weight, and I hadn't properly noticed, because otherwise he had been his usual sociable, easy going self.

He's been at the vet every day since. His urinalysis and blood work revealed nothing. An x-ray indicated some inflammation around his intestine. Today, he's getting an ultrasound. The inflammation suggests he either has inflammatory bowel disease, which is easily treated, or he has lymphoma ... also treatable, but more daunting, requiring first a biopsy and then chemo.

Nicky and Nora came from the same litter. They're 14 years old. At this point, I know they won't be around forever, and I'm grateful every day for all the warmth, comfort, and feline friendship they bring to my life. They have been through a lot with me.

Nicky greets people at the door, socializes with them, plays fetch, and gravitates toward me if he senses I'm upset about something. The other night I couldn't sleep, I felt such despair at the prospect of losing him. I started to cry. He got up from the foot of the bed, his usual place at night, and sat down beside me.

Nora, always more high strung, has been alarmed. She hisses at poor Nick, who has always been the dominant cat. She keeps an eye on him the way she might on a strange cat in the house. She has been throwing up a lot, although not losing any weight, so I attribute her vomiting to nerves, or perhaps a sympathetic reaction to Nicky's illness.

I hate putting Nicky through the indignity of all this medical care, of having to spend all day at the vet with an IV, when he could be comfortable at home. And I have to wonder how much money should be spent keeping an old cat alive. But he has been my faithful companion, my familiar, for so long I can't just let him shuffle off, especially if it's still possible that he could be treated and recover without too much suffering.

Thank god for the process of gathering information at times like this. It serves a dual purpose. We learn more, and while we do it, we get a little time to begin to come to grips with all the eventualities.

God bless Mr. Nicky Poo Cat. I love him.

reiki

2008-05-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

I got sucked into a vortex at work, and am only now scrambling out of it. In the midst of it in March, I devised a trap door for myself, and planned a vacation this first week in May. I spent five days in Oregon (OK, three days in Oregon and two traveling). Now home, I still have a couple of vacation days in which to loll around, hike, read and relax.

In Oregon, I got sucked into a far more fertile vortex when I spent an hour on the reiki table. My coach, who lives in Oregon, is a reiki master. I'd never had reiki done before. I felt curious, even inviting, but also skeptical. She started with her hands on my forehead. I found myself thinking at a furious pace; I attributed that to mild anxiety about the reiki.

Then she moved her hands to my temples. She seemed to be moving them in a circular motion; I realize now her hands sparked a whorling sensation behind my closed eyelids. New age music played at a low volume; I began to sense the lines of music viscerally, like swimming eels, spiraling right into me.

Quite suddenly, the frantic rhythm of my thinking slowed. Now I inhabited my mind; before my mind had inhabited me. My coach moved her hands to the back of my head, and in time, to my collarbone.

They felt warm and still there, centering. I thought, "uh oh, here we go, all this workaholic energy is finally moving out of my head and I'm returning to my body." That's a good thing, but there's a price to pay. Workaholism is a great way to run from feelings. Letting it go means opening to the feelings I'd been avoiding.

I found myself spontaneously taking deep breaths, as if receiving energy in my chest and heart. Lately, writing about my father, I'd awakened to and felt a lot of his shame. Maybe that contributed to my frenetic pace. Not that workaholism prevented me from feeling shame -- shame is a head game, a control tactic, just like compulsive behavior.

I began to see my shame as a rigid mask, and that underneath it, if I could shed it, I'd find sadness, tenderness, hurt. That's how it works for me with grief: I constrict against it, feel guilt or shame before I'll just release into sadness.

I continued to take long drafts of breath, and tears welled up in my eyes. I thought of my stepfather, and his unashamed love for me, and felt such gratitude for that -- for all the love I've received from many people, unrestrained and unafraid. I recognized that my father had that love, too, but he had an armor of shame blocking its path. I felt sad for him. I felt sad for myself, wanting something he couldn't give me.

My coach finished at my feet. I sat up, stripped of my own armor, tender and grateful. That's the way to take a vacation.

smashed skeeter

2008-03-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've written, voraciously, since fourth grade. Somewhere in there, I also learned that it wasn't really OK to be sad. In college, I noticed that I didn't cry much, but I could be sore, bitter and resentful with ease. Still, I wrote and wrote. Writing was a vent. A Jacob's ladder, too. I was good enough at it that it led me places.

I wrote, but there was always this fierce little cap of judgment on my words. Emotions were either not OK or they bloated beyond proportion. Maybe that's what they needed to do just to get my attention. Along the way, I began to move and find feelings in my body. Along the way, I stopped thinking quite so much. I began to honor the stories that arose without needing to force them into some kind of sense. I began to feel tender toward myself. Off popped that cap.

The writing that has rushed from me since then has been keen, fluid, bliss. I started with recent history and moved back. I discovered at 14 I had a voice -- tart, funny, filled with longing. What? I was funny at 14? I had to write more.

The old wound I return to when I'm feeling my worst has always been this: I don't feel seen. As I wrote, I realized I have a profound opportunity: To see. To witness myself as a child prone to hiding. To hear what she has to say.

I started on New Year's Eve. The words and stories burbled out of me. I felt exuberant, liberated. I wrote and wrote.

Then a writing group formed. I was invited. Somehow, I became the first person at the first meeting to have a piece read and critiqued.

What a mistake.

I wasn't ready for it. I was blithe, unguarded, out there. I'd become so identified with the child's voice in my writing, I went to that meeting like a kid looking for affirmation. Instead, I got critiqued.

I felt smashed, like a mosquito, a smear of blood, a dark pulp of flesh with tiny, spiky shards of wings and legs sticking out.

Maybe now is not the time for my writing to be critiqued. Perhaps it's more important to listen to this young voice of mine than it is to get it technically up to snuff. The technique can come later, when what needs to be said has been said, when the story comes clear.

Right after the writers group met, I reacted as if I'd been traumatized. I ruminated and had trouble sleeping. There followed a jag of exhaustion. Then I visited an old teacher of mine -- who had seen me, when I was young, through my writing; who saw its importance and encouraged me as a writer. When I visited her I was drunk with excitement. It was wonderful, but I could tell that I was not on keel. I needed her to see me, as she had in school. After feeling shut down by the writing group, I was desperate for a lifeline.

I stopped writing for weeks.

Now I'm back to it. The fluidity is gone. The judgment is back. I'm stunned at my vulnerability. I've been in groups before; I've received plenty of feedback and editing in my life, and I've never responded with such frantic sensitivity.

It suggests that what I'm writing is important. That the process of witnessing myself as a child is fragile. This must have happened before, this youthful thrill of being seen, followed by some kind of crackdown. I don't know how or when or why. All I know is that now I have not just an opportunity, but an obligation to keep writing, and see what this shrouded child has to tell me.

all yanged out

2008-02-24T07:40:00.000-08:00

The air has sputtered out of me.

I got back from vacation and launched into a month of overdrive.

At work, I'm still doing double time, subbing as a search is conducted to fill the position. It's fun: I'm working on bigger, deeper, more challenging stories. Unlike the last time this happened, I'm not auditioning for the job, so that stress is absent.

My social life has been in high gear as I apply my new practice of being open-hearted, truthful and discerning on dates. After the Wiccan, I clearly articulated that I need to be with someone who listens, and right off the bat two men appeared who, without prompting from me, brought up the importance of listening. It's as if I've cleared up the interference, the static of grief and fear that was getting in the way of relating to men, and now I have an opportunity to really get to know some of them.

I had been writing my own stuff, as opposed to work stuff, as well. And giving coaching/ editing support to a friend as he starts his own business up. Two weeks ago, I visited friends out of town. I'd planned to do it again this weekend. To learn how to downhill ski!

Then I got a stomach bug, and then a winter storm put the kibosh on travel, and that's when my brain conked out. My stomach has quite recovered, and I find myself still unable to think.

That's how it feels. The truth is, I can think in certain ways. I spent hours on the phone yesterday with two different friends talking about relationships, and fear, and broken hearts. It felt hopeful and open-hearted and energizing.

I can do yin; I just can't do yang. I've been pressing forward on so many fronts with such energy, I can't take another step forward. I can, however, sit back and be receptive.

Unfortunately, I still have work to do. It will be a tad quieter this week.

I used to fight this fuzzy state of mind when it arose. Now I kind of enjoy it. It feels like a reprieve -- as long as I respect it, and don't try to power through it. So, while I will probably next weekend visit the friends I'd planned to see this weekend, chances are I'll opt out on the ski lesson. Sitting in the lodge and sipping cocoa sounds more like my speed.

the wiccan

2008-01-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

For all the excitement around dating, I've only had one date this month. Still, it was revelatory.

First, I contacted him. I hadn't been initiating contact before, following some obscure logic that told me a man could not be interested if I made the first move. He responded enthusiastically. He wrote that he felt that his Wiccan beliefs and my (loosely) Buddhist beliefs could be in sync. We exchanged a few e-mails. His were witty and fun, but he wasn't asking any questions about me. I suggested that he might. He wrote back, "what's your favorite food?"

Still, we graduated to the telephone. He told me how he was dealing, Wiccan-style, with a problem he had with someone. It impressed me. He did most of the talking, and he acknowledged that. "I'm a little shy," I said, because I felt a little shy. "It helps if you ask me questions."

He called again the night before out date. Again, he talked and talked and did not engage me. By the end of the conversation, I felt shut out and discouraged.

As luck would have it, right after that phone call, I had a phone meeting with my coach. We talked for nearly an hour about my discouragement. "This is triggering your tape about not being heard," she said. Yes! Well, that's just a tape, let's acknowledge and move beyond it. This date would be an opportunity, she pointed out. I could show up. I could be clear about what I needed. I could honor this man for the time and energy he was investing. Or I could go in anticipating feeling unheard, and spend the entire dinner being sullen and difficult.

This seemed like radical advice. I began to see all the ways I withdraw during a date (and at other times) because I'm not feeling seen or not feeling heard. My behavior reinforces the bad feelings. So I went on this date determined to engage, and to be open with this man, and to see what happened.

We met at the restaurant. He brought flowers. He pulled out my chair for me. And he started to talk.

I made efforts to jump into the conversation. And at one point, I advised him to ask me questions. When he asked me what my major was in college, I coached him to ask me a question that requires a longer answer. He did, and I began to answer him ... when he interrupted me and went down another conversational pathway.

I enjoyed a lot of what he said. He's funny and smart and a decent man. His flirting went into flatteringly high gear toward the end of dinner. "I'm still not comfortable just talking," I told him.

Will we see each other again? I don't think so. Am I writing him off too quickly? Should I give him more time? I really don't think so. I gave him all the tools he needed to win me over. And I appreciate how he showed up -- sweet, eager, charming. I thank him for that.

It makes me realize how listening is probably the most crucial skill a man needs to win my heart.

Dating is so frenetically goal-oriented. Is this the one? Drat, it's not! It's like playing the slot machines. Once in a blue moon, you hit the jackpot, and the rest of the time you're slowly giving your goods away for no return. Rather, it can be that way.

I begin to see it's possible to be process-oriented on a date. To be curious and engaged, open and discerning, and to take each opportunity to be honest and say "this is what I need." To not fall into a routine of deflection and disappointment, but rather, even when it's clearly not the right guy, to show up with respect and interest. Dating becomes an end in itself, a chance to learn, rather than a means toward finding that jackpot. It's not a waste at all. It's an opportunity.

death valley

2008-01-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

I've just returned from there, infused with sunlight, and consequently brimming with warmth and energy and gratitude. My friends and I bought a tube of sunblock, thinking it was SPF 75. Only after we left Death Valley, after days of hiking under the warm January sun, did we scrutinize the tube and see that the SPF was actually 15. No matter. I return a little bit wiser and a little bit tanner.

The lowest point in North America -- at least the lowest point not under water -- is in Death Valley. Badwater salt flats drops 286 feet below sea level. Apparently a harsh, briny spring under the surface burbles above ground and quickly evaporates, leaving crystallized salt. It looks almost snowy. Snow-capped mountains rise up in the distance. We drove out to Badwater at night, with the moon nearly full and a cloudless sky. Chilly moonlight made the salt flats blue; it made us all blue. Everything was sheer silence, except for the occasional whisper of the wind through the nearest canyon, and the crunch of our feet on the salt.

One day, we climbed up a narrow trail that crawled across the face of a cliff, and on up onto a round promontory, Zabriskie Point. From there we could see over the flats to the mountains beyond, and Telescope Peak. Red and yellowish valleys and outcroppings spun around us, once carved out by water, now completely dry. We hiked through Mosaic Canyon, which did not live up to its name, but did feature gorgeous narrow sluiceways of pale rock, rubbed smooth by whitewater. Pioneers came through Death Valley one winter after the Donner party perished in the mountains to the north; they figured it would be an easier, safer journey west. They ran into desert, surrounded by mountains, and found very little water. There's no easy way out of Death Valley. Except, now, by car.

Furnace Creek Inn was built in the 1920s, and has grandeur and art deco pizazz. We stayed at nearby Furnace Creek Ranch, which is not quite as grand, but that's where the general store and the post office and the Borax Museum can be found. Borax is what the miners came to Death Valley to unearth.

We'd buy lunch supplies every day at the general store before our hike. The first day, two of us bought turkey pitas. Straightforward enough, you'd think, but there were two problems: They were moldy, and whoever made the sandwiches did not know to put the meat inside the pocket. Instead, two pieces of pita bracketed a slice of turkey.

The sandwiches were truly the worst part of the trip. Desert daisies sprout, brilliant yellow flowers along the side of the road, winking in the sun. The rugged, arid landscape shifts on a dime; here, rocks and ugly shrubs stud the earth; there, sand dunes ebb and flow, with sand as fine as that of the Jersey Shore. Here, mountains rose up in rocky slides right in front of us; there, we saw a grove of date palm trees.

I went up to the inn one day for a massage, and had an amazing Hawaiian style treatment called lomi-lomi. The massage therapist would reach under me from different angles and lift, and my body would drape down over his arms, gravity pulling on my tired muscles. I left feeling like a noodle, and walking an inch or two taller.

The last day, we drove out of Death Valley to an old mining town, Rhyolite, now a ghost town. Tom Kelly built a bottle house there, out of old, never-washed beer bottles. The Cook Bank crumbles, but leaves the magisterial columns of its facade. There's rubble where the whorehouse used to stand, and the fancy looking train station is in decent shape. Rhyolite thrived a century ago, for about three years. The miners dug for gold. I'm not sure what happened -- did the gold run out? Did they never find it? But the town fell apart as quickly as it came together.

On the outskirts of Rhyolite, long after its demise, a Belgian artist took up residence and installed a very odd sculpture garden. It's godawful, but remarkable, in part because of its context on the edge of a mountain ghost town. My favorite piece, and perhaps the most awful, was a 12-foot tall nude blonde, constructed entirely out of concrete blocks; her breasts and buttocks are square, as is her yellow patch of pubic hair. The artist gets points for audacity.

That last night we drove to Pahrump (not named for "The Little Drummer Boy," but for an Indian word describing the landscape), about an hour west of Las Vegas, because we needed to get to the airport the next morning. On the way to Pahrump, I sat in car behind the driver, watching the full moon rise beside a mountain, which was bathed in the peachy light of sunset. The moon cast its own pale light on ribbons of clouds above it. I was content.

adieu, mr. ambivalence

2008-01-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

Mr. Ambivalence has, not surprisingly, disappeared. This is what my friend, the dating guru, predicted. If he's clearly ambivalent, he'll come on strong at first and then flake out. Hot, then cold. This is no disappointment. Dating Mr. Ambivalence ushered in much learning.

First: Listen to what the man says. It's information, and it's probably true. If he says he's ambivalent (in so many words), then take him at his word. There's a tendency to assume that mutual attraction has some kind of powerful magic that will overcome all obstacles. No. The obstacles are there. They're explicit. And occasionally, they're stated right up front. And they have a lot more gravity than romantic spark does.

I find this empowering. I believe in falling in love; I've done it. But somewhere between that initial pull and really giving your heart away comes discernment.

Also, the whole thing with Mr. A. ultimately led me back to myself, and my own ambivalence. That path was also empowering, and frankly more interesting than any romantic intrigue. I sat with the discomfort. I found fear and sadness. I opened myself to a spurt of grief. Then, like the Grinch's, my heart grew two sizes. It has felt that way, at least. What came to me was that I have had this love, it nourished me for a time, and if I acknowledge and honor it, then I know that I can love. Gratitude!

I have been loved, and so I must love. That doesn't pertain only to potential partners.

I am aware, as a result of this, that for the first time in my life, I am not approaching dating and relationship with the bruising reservation that I'm damaged merchandise. I've always had something to apologize for at the beginning of a relationship. My wounds, my inexperience, my confusion, what have you. I don't feel that way today. I feel more as if, hey, whoever gets involved with me is a lucky guy.

Imagine.

Bring him on.

the benefits of carrying a flashlight

2007-12-28T14:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I spent a chunk of the morning with a curator of ancient Greek art. She didn't have her flashlight with her. Apparently, curators of ancient art usually carry flashlights at work. She mentioned a retired curator who had come to a recent exhibition opening, flashlight in hand. There are amazing things -- designs, traces of color, engravings -- on old Greek art that it only takes a flashlight to find. And if you don't know to look for them, you might not even see them with the flashlight. Once you know to look ... well, curators today are still discovering new things on ancient Greek statues.

It helps to know what you're looking for. I've been turning up the wattage on the flashlight I occasionally shine into the dark crevices of my psyche. Honestly, sometimes I don't even know that I'm standing in the pitch dark. Then there's a little glimmer -- in this case, the recognition that yes, I'm ambivalent about dating -- and the more I look, the more subtle and interesting things I find.

First, I felt trepidation and sadness. I could see that I'd gotten stopped up around dating because I still had some grief to feel my way through about my last relationship. I hadn't done it because, of course, by now I should be over the whole thing, I shouldn't be thinking about it anymore, should should should. Boy, does "should" get in the way of movement.

I felt that I could not make room in my heart for someone else, because I didn't want to push my ex aside. In fact, I was tired of being angry with my ex, tired of writing off the relationship as a disaster. I found myself remembering what richness there was for me with him. How being with him opened my heart more than it ever before had opened.

This is not to say I want to go back to that relationship. I do, however, want to honor it.

So I felt the sadness of that for a few days. Now I feel something else happening: My sense of things moves from what I lost to what I gained, and I find myself wanting to embody and manifest all the good things that came to me through that relationship. I got love, now I have love to offer. I don't mean that in a grasping way. I can bring that sensation -- solid, abiding, trustworthy -- into any relationship that I have.

I'm not exactly sure how to do it. But it feels like what's next.

This sort of awakening is the incredible benefit of carrying a flashlight, and being willing to see what's there to be seen, even if you didn't expect it.

yuletide carols

2007-12-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

I remember my first cynical Christmas. It came with puberty. The magic of the holiday fizzled. I knew that life basically sucked. Pretending to be jolly didn't help. I especially remember going to Midnight Mass; for some reason we went to a Mass in White Plains that year, which is not where we usually went. The lights, the good cheer, the Christmas sermon -- the whole thing struck me as a sham.

This year, friends came from far and near to my family's annual caroling party on Saturday. We've been doing it since I was 10. We gather at my mother's house, stoke up on lasagna and garlic bread, then go out into the night to sing and breathe garlic all over our neighbors. After we've reached the last house, we walk home, singing the songs we may not want to inflict on an audience, such "Good King Wenceslas." Then we munch on a smorgasbord of cookies, play improv games, and laugh and laugh. We had people there aged 2 to 80.

At least two people said they felt compelled to come this year because they'd lost a parent. Another friend, who had this year experienced the loss of her marriage and the death of her sister, said that caroling was her big holiday celebration; Christmas itself would be more muted. Another friend's mother has been in and out of the hospital all year.

That morning, I'd recognized that my cat, Nicky, had some kind of growth or swelling beneath his chin. It was hard and substantial, and I couldn't believe that I hadn't spotted it sooner. I thought he'd been looking more leonine. In fact, his jaw had been getting bigger.

This frightened me. Nicky is a solid, sweet, even-tempered cat. He is my faithful friend. He has seen me through a lot of angst and loss, and accepted me at my worst. I made an appointment at the vet for Christmas Eve, and then went off to sing carols, surrounded by people who all had their own heartache.

We sang with gusto. Often enough, we're a spotty singing group. This year, we had a handful of women who could sing harmonies, and most of the rest of us were on key. We sounded wonderful. We came back and played goofy games that had us roaring with laughter. My four-year-old niece invented her own game, and orchestrated the whole group through it, and it was a big hit.

When you're little, the world is a magical place, with gifts and Santa and beautiful lights and mystical rituals. Then the veil falls away and you see the other side of things: how desperate a place the world can be. How painful loss is. How messy it is to be human.

The truth is, though, that when you grow up, those two things come together. The magic returns because our hearts break, and where they break they are tender. The magic exists because we know how dark it can be out there, maybe especially on the shortest day of the year, and yet we still pull together and sing.

I took Nick to the vet yesterday, and he had an abscess, which was drained, and now he's on an antibiotic. On New Year's Eve, we'll go back to the vet and see if the problem was simply an infection, or if it has a more serious root. In the meantime, it's Christmas. God bless us, every one.

that's what you get for all your trouble

2007-12-18T06:59:00.000-08:00

More on the love front. A tiny burst of awareness (I'm actually ambivalent about getting into a relationship), and a guy shows up. The aforementioned guy, who is equally ambivalent.

I'm excited about this. Not the ambivalent guy. Honestly, I don't know whether we'll stick (the Magic 8 Ball would, I think, say "signs point to no"). It's my own ambivalence, and the opportunity to shine the light of attention on it, that has me all aflutter. The needle on my curiosity meter has shot into the red.

I had dinner with my keen-minded friend the other night, the one who pointed out that I was writing men off too quickly. She's wickedly astute about dating. Talking with her, I recognized that part of the reason I'm attracted to Mr. A. is because he's ambivalent. That's sobering! But natural, since I'm so hot-and-cold myself.

I have the opportunity to throw all my hot-and-cold feelings at this man, or I can own them and sit with them and let them evolve. To be clear, that's not a choice between dating him and showing him the exit. It's a choice between being unconscious and being mindful.

Sitting with my feelings, I'm aware of tension in my chest and solar plexus. The image of a person with no arms arose in meditation the other day, associated with this tension. Perhaps that's a kind of helplessness. Then, the other night, I awoke with heartache welling up. Maybe that's what the tension's about -- I've been keeping that at bay.

Logic tells me that ambivalence and fear are an outer layer of unfelt grief. I may need to bring some tenderness to bear on the situation. At any rate, the point is to abide with what comes up, and not push myself into a relationship if I'm feeling nervous and afraid. The more I learn about myself and own what's been driving my defensiveness, the more open my heart will be, and the more likely I will be to find a man who meets me with an open heart.

Jim night

2007-12-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, my friend Susan and I have a Jim night. My friend Jim died in May, 2006. Susan is his widow. In the first year after his death, we met three or four times. I'd go up to her house for an overnight. We'd sift through Jim's old photos, have a slide show, and read aloud from his writing. It helped each of us reconnect with Jim; so much of him is palpable in his words and photos.

We haven't had a Jim night since the anniversary of his death. My grieving process welled up at the point, and then after a month it waned, and these past few months I seem to have left it behind. Still, the Jim nights are comforting, so last night we did it again.

We feasted on Susan's homemade chicken soup and banana splits before we got around to Jim. The two of us went down to the basement and Susan fished a plastic bag filled with photos from a box, and then found a smushed accordion file packed with clips and papers. We sat beside each other at the kitchen table and sorted through the photos. There was an old snapshot of Jim as an infant, in his dad's arms (his father was hateful to him). There was one of Jim at 7, all in white -- suit, shorts, shoes -- for his first Communion. There was another of him at maybe 13, looking pinched and harrowed.

Then jump ahead to 1993. Jim turns 50 and throws himself a bash. Friends and family come from all over. He's holding babies, embracing people, grinning, lit up, whole.

Jim was a drunk for 30 years. He got sober in 1987. While he was gearing up to get sober, he ran marathons, he went into therapy. He always had a north star, even when he drank. He knew things could be better, and that he had some power over making them better. He reached out to people and groups that could help. He took responsibility for himself. The more accountable he became, the more gratitude opened him up. The more open he got, the more light and kindness poured out of him.

We read a newspaper clip about an ultra-marathon Jim undertook with a friend in 1982 in the Catskills. It involved running 18 miles, then biking, then canoing. He and his buddy got disqualified after they ran into trouble with the straps on the canoe during the portage.

We read through his calendar from 2003, the year he moved in with Susan. He'd note all his self-improvement activities: work out; contact new account; big book step study; toastmasters. Not to mention his daily meditation on compassion, which he wrote up and sent out to a small group of subscribers. I was on that list. I enjoyed getting the e-mails. I didn't once reflect: Jim is meditating daily about compassion. What can I take from his example?

Finally, we read a letter he wrote to his high school English teacher, Mr. Doyle, in 1997, 40 or more years after taking the class. Mr. Doyle had once said to him, or written on some paper, "you can write. Keep it up."

Jim lost writing to drinking, but when he got sober, he took up the pen. This letter, in two, double-spaced pages, told his story. Toward the end, he listed his accomplishments as a writer: a short play produced; skits on cable access. I was involved in those. They were darkly, acerbically funny. It was my assigned task, at his memorial service, to talk about his creative life. It came from a deep, bitter place, and it brought him great satisfaction and much laughter.

He concluded the letter saying something like this: "I had a therapist once who urged me to go to AA. Her words saved me from death. Your words made life worth living."

Jim connected. This letter to an old teacher was open-hearted reaching out. He told people what they meant to him. He did a lot of clearing out of cobwebs over the years, learning about himself. But always, I think, compassion lay at the center and ran through him like a current. He wasn't always kind; he could snap. But his aim was to cultivate compassion. He knew it made him a better man, and it made all of us around him better, too.

I still have so much to learn from him.

what do you get when you fall in love?

2007-11-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

If I don't write dates off immediately, I might actually have to contend with some of these men, person to person. Ohh, this is humbling. I hadn't realized I was sitting back imperiously, not letting on that I'm actually kind of afraid of truly connecting with someone. Maybe not realizing it myself. I thought I was being open, social, even generous.

Yesterday I spoke to my coach, first about balancing my seasonal fatigue with dating -- it seems more important to take care of myself right now than rev up and go out. But the more we got into it, the more my bundle of anxieties about dating began to unravel. Understand, I hadn't even acknowledged that I had anxieties about dating until very recently.

"I'm not going to fall in love!" I brashly declared. I didn't mean "Poor me, I'll never find someone." I meant, "I'll be damned if I ever do that again!"

Jeez. I didn't even know that sentiment was floating around in there. My coach called it a "structure of knowing" and ran it through her four boxes. The first box is the belief: "I'm not going to fall in love." The second box is how I show up with that belief: I don't give men a chance. The third box is how that makes me feel: Safe, but afraid; guarded; judgmental; withdrawn. The fourth box is how people show up around someone manifesting the third-box characteristics: Frightened, put off, isolated, not connecting. Which circles back to validate the belief in the first box: I'm not going to fall in love!

Ducky. That's what I get for all my trouble.

I became very irritated with my cats. It was the only thing to do. The four boxes work here, too. I'm ticked at the cats; I push them away and growl at them; it makes me ashamed and more vexed; the cats volubly throw up under my bed at 4 a.m.

I suppose the important thing here is to recognize and feel my way through this resistant part of me. My plan is to go on a date with someone equally ambivalent. At least we'll be in the four boxes together.

Oh, yeah. And then I'll hibernate.

November

2007-11-22T09:47:00.001-08:00

The darkness has once again taken me by surprise. Funny, I should be able to plan for it by now. The week before we lost daylight savings, I ran around fanatically for work, and ramped up my carbs. That first Sunday, despite the extra hour of sleep, I stumbled through, logy and irritable, and continued the carb assault. The following weekend, I recognized that I was exhausted and trying to fuel myself with bread and sweets. I decided instead to just be exhausted.

Last year, the SAD hit and I said, OK, I am not going to push myself. I'll work, as I need to, but otherwise I'll hibernate as much as I can. I pulled in, slept, stayed at home, and anticipated a very boring holiday.

I was wrong. The better I took care of myself, the more tender I grew. My body rested and my heart awoke.

I just read up on SAD on the Internet, as I do every year. It's characterized by low energy, loading up on carbs, sleep, and depression.

I disagree. We load up on carbs because we have low energy. We push ourselves to do more than we feel we can, and we get depressed and irritable. I found last year that when I simply respected my energy level, I was not depressed at all, and I didn't need the carbs.

Respecting my energy may be tougher this year, as I've taken on a temporary onslaught at work. To balance that with the imperative to tuck in and cozy down is a challenge.

Yet this year, I'm excited about the possibility of a slow, easy holiday season, and I hope that respect and quiet will once again lead me to mirth. We'll see. Striving for mirth is an equation for a bad mood.

In last night's psolodrama, I felt as if I was in a swamp, over my head. I looked up and saw light shining through muck. I became the muck, which took orders from no one and moved at its own, incremental, self-satisfied pace. Below its surface, I felt a glimmer of fear, I felt unsteady, and yet I also, in time, felt cradled and held.

I attended to the little glimmers of emotion that lit up in my solar plexus: not unpleasant vulnerability, openness. They'd flicker, then subside. When they subsided, I felt my belly tighten, I felt myself on guard. I pictured this bulb of light, covered up by dried husks, like those of corn on the grill. I became the husks: "We are safety," they said. The bulb of light had no voice, but occasionally went "Ping!"

I lay down on my back. Above me, I saw a plate of amber. Light glowed through it. I was not uncomfortable. I rested my hands over my solar plexus, and felt a tingle of energy there. "Ping!" it called, rising lightly up and out of my throat. "Ping!" With each "ping," the energy grew, my voice opened and strengthened, I felt it resonate there in my center. I paused, and felt the ball of energy there hum. "Wow," I commented to myself.

The gong rang, marking the end of the psolodrama, and it, too, resonated right through me.

I danced over to my witness (psolodrama is always done with a witness). "There were three similar images," I said. "There's the muck, and the husks, and the amber. In each case, there's light coming through them. To me, the muck feels like the exhaustion. The husks feel like protection. The amber -- I don't know. It's beautiful. It's also smooth, like the tabletop in my psolodrama a year ago, which was the lid over my fluid emotions."

"Yes," said my witness. "But this time, you're beneath it."

Aha! Yes. I honestly don't know, exactly, what these images or this psolodrama is about, except that it has something to do with the SAD. And it holds some promise that this year, like last year, there's a light within the darkness.

lightning

2007-11-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

A friend confronted me about my dating habits last week. I've developed a pattern of going out once, and writing a man off quickly. No muss, no fuss. No relationship.

Oh, there have been a handful of guys I've been out with a handful of times, and each time things sort of ... dwindled.

Lately, though, it's been a date to a man, then I decide he's too this or not enough that, and I vanish. Like the latest guy. He lives pretty far away. My friend called me on the carpet. She said "Don't tell me about him. Tell me how you felt when you were with him."

Harumph. Well, he made me laugh, and I felt as if I could talk with him.

"That sounds like a good reason to go out with him again," she said. And she's right.

I realized that I'm waiting for lightning to strike. This is embarrassing, because I know it's naive. Yet there I am, standing hopefully under a tree on the golf course, praying for rain. I have another friend who realized that whenever lightning struck, she got third-degree burns. So she nursed herself away from those magnetic connections and opened herself to dating men who didn't make her heart sing. She found a good man.

Yet, I know that I used to set my sights on a man, to cast out a line and become fixated on reeling him in. It never worked. The line always broke. And when I did that, I lost myself; all my consciousness was focused on that catch. I know I can't do that anymore.

I've got to find the middle ground, a place where I'm open and receptive, and still grounded in my body, neither giving myself away nor being swept off my feet. A place in which I realize I'm not going to find someone perfect, but I might find someone I can work with. A grown-up place. It's too bad; fairy tales have their allure. But they rarely truly end happily ever after.

Still. I know couples who met, felt immediate lightning, and now have functional, long-standing relationships. So what's the answer here? Is there one?

cats

2007-11-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

I've got two of them, Nicky and Nora, a brother-and-sister pair from the same litter who, at 13, still chase each other wildly around the house in the middle of the night, much to the frustration of anyone downstairs who might want to be sleeping. Nick and Nora aren't very affectionate with each other. I lived with a roommate who had a cat, Woodrow (legend has it, Woodrow is the kittiest cat there is), when mine were still just adolescent kittens, and Nicky and Woodrow would snuggle and sleep in a big, furry, feline Mobius strip together. Nick and Nora do not snuggle with each other, although they each snuggle with me.

Nora, who sleeps next to my pillow at night, tunes into me too well. If I'm anxious, she's anxious. If I'm having trouble sleeping, she's more likely to pace, and when she paces, it's back and forth across my pillow. Stepping on my hair. She's always been more verbal than her brother, and usually seems more alarmed than he does. There's a bit of Chicken Little about Nora. And she's all-girl, despite being neutered. She likes to come into the bathroom and watch when I'm putting my makeup on. She has beautiful markings on her gray, brown and white-striped face, markings that play up her green eyes as if she's spent the day at Elizabeth Arden.

Nicky sleeps at the foot of my bed, or, if it's colder out, he's a solid presence against my left hip. He doesn't involve himself in the dramas that Nora and I get caught up in. He's low key, easy going. He'll sleep through anything that isn't food-related. He's a big gray cat with movie-star good looks. Both he and Nora make a lot of eye contact with me; it's our best means of communication. I don't understand people who think cats are aloof. My cats engage.

For the first few years I had them, I bonded with Nora -- we were so alike! -- but not as much with Nick. Then I had a friend visit with her four-year-old daughter, who chased Nicky around the house and tried to pick him up; he was probably just big enough for her to heft, and he hung like a limp rope from her hands. He didn't merely put up with it. He stuck around. He enjoyed the company. I realized then what an exceptional guy he is, how social and open and willing to try anything within reason, how gentle with kids. I saw Nicky freshly. I felt badly that I hadn't truly seen and appreciated him before.

I don't talk much about my cats, but they take up a big space in my heart. They're a positive current in my life; they only rarely run into problems. I live alone, and they provide me with warmth, daily ritual, companionship, conversation. They're good sounding boards (Nicky a little better than Nora, who can get worked up if there's an issue that needs sorting out). My house would feel empty without them.

post-feminist

2007-10-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

When I was just out of college, I had a job at a neighborhood arts council, where I worked with three other women. I was the youngest. The oldest, in her late 40s, was a radical lesbian feminist. We'd spar. She tried to convince me of the evil and uselessness of men. I resisted.

Whenever she had her period, she'd come into the office and announce, "I'm bleeding," as if someone -- a man, no doubt -- had taken a knife to her womb.

Once, the four of us went out to lunch to celebrate getting a grant. We ate in a rotating restaurant at the top of a ritzy hotel. On the way back in the car, feeling festive, we decided to sing. But what? What song did we all know?

I looked slyly at my older colleague.

"How about 'I Enjoy Being a Girl?'" I suggested.

There was no pause, no question, no reservation. The three of us straight women -- feminists all -- launched into a rousing rendition of this ode to traditional girliness.

"When men say I'm cute and funny
And my teeth aren't teeth, but pearls
I just lap it up like honey
I enjoy being a girl!
I flip when a fella sends me flowers
I drool over dresses made of lace
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound-and-a-half of cream upon my face!"

Our colleague, trapped in the car with us, cringed.

God, it was fun, and I felt a little ashamed of tweaking her, and a little guilty for not being a good feminist, but I loved that song, and I do flip when a fellas sends me flowers, although at the time that hadn't yet happened.

Enjoying being a girl has not come easy to me.

I was born from my father's head, clad in armor.

When I was in high school in the early 1980s, the American Association of University Women awarded me an engraved dictionary in recognition for my strong voice on behalf of women. In college, I took women's studies classes. I examined society and found it unjust to women. The boyfriend of a friend of mine observed of me, "she doesn't like men."

Recently, I saw an astrologer who told me that in my birth chart, the asteroid Pallas is so close to Venus that there could be trouble. "Think of Botticelli's Venus," he said. "Born fully formed and naked out of the sea. Pallas Athena was born from her father's head, clad in armor."

A lot of my identity as a young woman was a response to my father's fear of women (and, I think, his suppressed anger at them). Kaboom! Out of his roiling psyche pops me, his eldest daughter, warrior woman.

But oh, Venus! I love Venus, and I don't fear her. Maybe I did when I was younger. I feared men, and I feared Venus. Now I love them both.

It took some work. I called my dad and insisted we talk about love. We never had before. Soon after, I took acting classes and focused on characters such as Juliet and Molly Bloom, invoking Venus. I laid down my arms, and opened up my arms.

I recently saw "Global Feminisms" an art exhibition of contemporary feminist art. Curators boasted that the show is post-feminist, multicultural and non-dialectical. It's not about us and them, they said, but about the many kinds of feminism throughout the world.

Yet much of it still was about us and them: Oppressed and oppressors. Victims and aggressors. I struggled with this show, because women are indeed victimized, oppressed and taken advantage of all over the world, and I, as a middle-class woman in the United States, am in a position of tremendous privilege. I don't want to ignore or deny the experience of others.

Nor do I want to ignore or deny my own, which is no longer built around my father's inability to see me. It's built around my ability to see myself.

Art theory, which after years of focusing rightly on the power dynamic between artist and model, is now beginning to consider what of ourselves we see in our models. Model as a stand-in for self. It's owning the feminine, rather than diminishing it to an object of desire. The artist sees the model in himself; the model sees the artist in herself.

I see my oppressor, and he is me. Not somebody out there. I can be angry at the world for oppressing me, or I can own the power I have and do something about it. And when I own my own power, hello Venus, that frees me up to drool over dresses made of lace.

waiting for the bus

2007-10-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

A strange turn of events at work. Or not so strange: The exact same thing happened two years ago.

The guy who works above me has left. When this happened two years ago, I applied for that job. I also stepped up and filled in the position while my boss conducted a search. It was a long, drawn out process that gave me enough time to grow into the work I was doing and prove that I could do it well. Ultimately, though, my company doesn't want to hire from within. So they hired from without.

He stayed a year. When I heard that he'd resigned, I panicked. Here I was, standing at the same bus stop, waiting for the same bus ... you know, the one that hit me the last time it came through?

For a week, I stewed. When I spoke to my coach, she asked, "Do you want the job? In your heart, do you want the job?"

I didn't have to think about it much, but I did have to summon the courage to say it.

"No," I squeaked. "I just feel as if I should want the job."

Who wouldn't? It would mean more money, benefits -- which as a freelancer, I don't have -- health insurance, profit sharing, 401K. It would mean visibility and a certain amount of power.

But I have just spent an exultant summer doing my own writing, percolating my own projects, reaching out and building community in the city where I live (which is an hour away from the city where I work), relaxing into myself in a way that I haven't done in years. And this to me seems more valuable than the money and the power.

Phew, then. I don't want the job.

I want to pursue my projects. Continue the work I'm doing, of course. Pitch in to help out during the interim -- and have all of the fun and none of the angst I experienced the last time.

So why do I feel dodgy and small? It's ego, I suppose. I'd love them to come to me and say: "We made a mistake! We want you!" They're not doing that. In fact, I had a candid conversation with my boss, who seemed just as reluctant as I to step out, trying to hail that same bus. The truth is, once again, the higher-ups simply do not want to hire from within. It's not splashy enough for them.

I have hit my ceiling. This situation, which is more political than it is based on the quality of my work, makes me sad and frustrated. At the same time, a friend points out, "You know what you want, and they're giving it to you." That is, I know what I don't want, and they're not going to give it to me.

It also forces me to acknowledge, as I have since the beginning, that as much fun as this bus route has been -- it's been a tremendous experience -- it's not taking me where I want to go. So maybe I'd better go catch another bus, somewhere else.

source material

2007-10-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

I am not, thank God, what I used to be.

And I am. Exactly what I used to be.

I've been working on a piece of memoir writing about some experiences I had in college. For research, I dove into the archives: old journals and letters home. I have never liked reading old journals; they're too often stocked with angst I don't care to return to. But time enough has passed since college that I can read these scribblings with some compassion, as if they were written by someone else.

This one really took me by surprise. I spent my junior year in Ireland, where one October day 24 years ago I had a little epiphany, which I relate in a letter home:

"Over the weekend I went to Galway with another girl from the school, S. Friday night we were sitting in a nice pub listening to a live Irish band, and we had been talking, touching on rather significant subjects all evening. We were discussing two others who had come with us, J. and E., who had hooked onto each other upon first meeting and are now very tight and un-open to other friendly overtures. I said that they acted as each other's support system, and I said so with a tone of vague disdain."

Italics mine, circa 2007. And, apparently, then.

A tone of vague disdain? Reading that now, I find it unbelievable. But I digress. The letter continues:

"'Funny, you should say that,' says S., 'because support systems are good.'

"'They are?' say I. 'This is interesting.'

"'Yes,' says she. 'Just the other day, I was pretty depressed and I started to think: I have a support system in my acquaintances, a stronger one in my close friends, a deeper one in my family, and...'

"'The ultimate support system in yourself,' I say.

"'Well, a deeper one in myself, but I think the ultimate support system is God,' she says.

"'That is basically what I mean when I say self,' I respond. 'God is the deepest of inner resources.'

"But this whole thing struck me funny because I thought support systems were bad, a sign of weakness, and she thought they were good. Moment of Revelation.

"'This is interesting,' I say, '...I guess I've come to think that a major lesson in life is that you can only rely on yourself.'

"That night I wrote down in outline form:

"Support System -- Good or Bad?
-I feel my support systems have failed me
-therefore I have no confidence in support systems
-human relationships are support systems
-I have confidence in only myself, that is, I feel I can rely only on myself
-therefore, I have no confidence in human relationships
-Also, since my support systems have failed me
-I must not be worth succeeding for
-I have very little confidence in myself

"This is horrible."

I guess it was, although now I find it kind of funny. That outline isn't my usual format, but it represents a typical, almost compulsively traveled neural passage that I maintain to this day. I constantly, relentlessly parse and analyze and try to make sense of myself, how I feel, and how I operate in the world. Now I recognize it as a reflex, and not a process that necessarily contains the truth, although sometimes it can help move me in that direction. So there I am: The Same.

On the other hand, I'm astonished that the 20-year-old me would actually have mocked support systems. Now, I'm a big advocate of them. I am blessed with friendship.

After I read this, I rang S. up. Yes, we're still tight. I read her the passage. We both remembered the night, the pub, the roaring fire after a rainy Galway day. We did not recall this particular snippet of conversation.

When I read back her words "I think the ultimate support system is God," she uttered a surprised, monosyllabic laugh, as blown away by her godliness as I was by my guardedness. S. is a spiritual person, but she doesn't throw the word "god" around much, or lightly.

"I was full of wisdom," she commented, a bit critically.

"Well, you are," I said. "That's something you do. It happens all the time. I'll be getting emotionally wacky, and you'll say something grounded and reflective and helpful. That hasn't changed."

"Well," she said. "I think I'm a little more cynical now than I was in college."

And I think I'm a little less.

having my druthers

2007-09-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Since June, I've been working with a coach. After years of dissecting my psyche in therapy, this is a shift, and a rather lovely one. Instead of approaching every woe and worry with a scalpel, I'm more likely to honor it and move on.

My coach elicits from me the values and dreams that get my heart thrumming. The values include creativity, playfulness, self-reflection, honesty, witnessing and storytelling, among many others. Making the list was not an analytical exercise, but an emotional one. Just going over it seems to bring the chords that resonate through me into harmony. The dreams are not merely dreams, they're rooted in who I am now: To be a damn good writer is one.

When I get off track, which I do often enough, she coaches me to return to these values and intentions. For instance, I have a lot of fear about writing a book. We don't spend too much time looking at the fear -- it's old and familiar, after all. It cropped up when I tried to reach someone to interview for the book and kept hitting a brick wall. I e-mailed, wrote and mailed a formal letter, and left voicemails, to no avail. I wanted to forget about the whole thing. My coach suggested I call one more time, leave an inviting voicemail, and then let it go.

I did not want to make that phone call. I knew I'd just be foiled one more time. I was humiliated before I even started. Then I noticed my intention, pinned on the wall next to my computer. It reads like this: "Afraid? Hey -- I'm more interested in being a damn good writer."

It's true, I am. I said it out loud, and knew it to be true, and swiftly made the phone call. A live person answered, someone who knew who I was and could help me. Triumph!

These frame shifts don't deny the fear, the worry, the monkey mind. Nor do they suppress them. They simply say, hey, I'd rather be dancing in possibility and in hope than in anxiety.

At a moment when I felt particularly cynical about dating, my coach asked me who I want to be in a relationship.

"Well," I said, not sure what to say. "I think relationship is a spiritual path, and I'd like to walk it side by side with my partner, honoring his journey, and having him honor mine."

"So, you want to be an honoring, spiritual traveling companion?" she said.

"Yes!" I declared, glowing at the idea. "Yes, I do!"

"Then go on a date, and be that on your date," she told me.

On the first date, I had trouble pulling it off. I found myself nervous and not connecting. I thought, "be an honoring, spiritual traveling companion." But I didn't know, really, how to implement it.

On the next date, with another man, it shifted from thought to action. At first I was antsy and uncomfortable, but I took a deep breath and thought "be an honoring, spiritual traveling companion" (if I'd really been on my toes, I would have thought: "nervous? I'd rather be an honoring, spiritual traveling companion." I find using the whole equation makes the shift easier).

I grounded myself. I tasted my food. I listened to my dinner companion. In short order, I felt engaged, open and connecting. I had a lovely time. I also knew, by the end of dinner, that this was not the guy for me. Just because I was engaged and open did not make him the right fit.

I have never had such clarity and such a good time on a date that was random, shall we say, rather than fated.

All this seems almost too simple. It's not. As soon as I step over one hurdle, another arises. Every step I take about my book idea is in some way a battle. I don't worry any less, or any less intensely, than I ever have. I just don't listen to the worry as attentively.

Hey -- I'm more interested in being a damn good writer.

shriven

2007-08-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

Shrive is a Catholic word, meaning to administer the sacrament of reconciliation to, or to free from guilt. It's a church word, but I don't associate it with the church. To me, it means to be cleansed, perhaps in a way that brings you to your knees. There's reckoning, and there's forgiveness. Neither is easy.

Once or twice a year, I have a dream that rocks me. The intellect of my waking life is in recess. My emotions rush through unchecked. This happened the other night. I can hardly remember the dream; it involved some troubled youths turning their lives around and showing up to help at a clothing drive. My heart melted. I didn't cry -- sometimes these kinds of dreams leave me weeping so deeply I wake up. But this wasn't sad. It was grave and tender.

My teacher Joel, who taught me how to do psolodrama, set it up as a dialectic. Move from one character to the next. Engage them in dialogue. I've been doing psolodrama for years now, and it's a wonderfully revealing process. I'd go into a whining character, and then react to that with a bullying one. Those are two less than pretty parts of myself, laid bare.

The last two weeks of my psolodrama practice, though, I find I've been resisting this imperative to go into character and start up a dialogue. Today, I started my psolodrama simply breathing, my hands fluttering up and down with each inhalation and exhalation. At the bottom of each breath, I felt grounded. So I lay down on the floor.

I flashed on my whiny, anxious self. I thought: I don't want to go there. I don't want to take up that character, to get into the old polarization. It just felt tense. Neither, though, did I want to reject what had arisen. So I got up and embodied anxiety, pulling at my hair, twisting up my face. I did not speak. I did not want to give it that power.

I lay back on the ground, opened my hand to my anxious self, and said "Welcome."

Tectonic plates shifted. I felt a choice: to live from a grounded place, rather than an anxious one. The dialectic I'd run through so many times in the past had exposed the whiner and the bully, and turned up their volume, pulled the line between them taut. This was something different. No argument, no tension. Just "welcome," and a return to groundedness.

I gasped. "Oh my god." Undone, I said: "I can't imagine what will happen."

But of course I was already in the river of imagining. I didn't need to steer the boat; it was moving right along.

I sensed a ball of energy, about the size of a bocce ball. It was blue and white, like the earth: the sea and clouds. I held it over my belly and gave voice to it -- deep, watery sounds. I became the ball. I released into it.

I stood up. "The soles of my feet on the floor," I said. Then: "Ocean. Ohhh-shhuun." I was surrounded by water, buoyed by it, yet my feet were on the floor. I felt the sun on my head. "Sun!" I called out. "Ocean" and "sun" sounded, somehow, like the same word.

Bliss.

"I love this!" I sang. I loved the word "love" in my mouth. "I love this!" I sang out again.

I returned to my feet on the smooth hardwood floor. I heard the wind riffle through the trees outside. I heard the crickets sing.

The gong rang. My psolodrama was over.

thievery, betrayal, and modeling

2007-08-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

I make an appearance this week in someone else's blog. I'm an extremely minor character in a memoir she is publishing on line. She changes my name, and briefly describes me, getting some details wrong and some right.

I have become a device for forwarding someone else's narrative. It's not me at all, really. Just a little sleeve of description, a few words that couldn't hold the real me at all.

We writers tend to think of ourselves as invisible observers. We record what we see and remember, capturing people in the prism of our narratives, like fish in a net. Taking possession of them. Using them to get a point across, or draw out a truth about the narrator. (In my case, the blogger was envious because I was a working writer, and she was not. My character is there to illustrate her longing).

Yesterday I met a printmaker who also happens to be her painter husband's muse. I'd seen her in his work for years, usually nude or clad just in her underwear. His works are essays in desire; painting her, he holds onto her in the reservoir of his imagination, even as in real life she eludes him. Yes, they're married. Of course she eludes him. That tension, of wanting and never quite having, is taut in his works. That, and not the pearly flesh, is what makes them good.

I had only known her through his paintings. Here she was, standing in a gallery, in front of her own art -- comic prints of forlorn, pop-eyed aliens in tones that capture the nuances of moonlight.

And, of course, she wasn't at all the woman I'd thought she was, guessed she was, just from her husband's paintings. She was shorter, for one. She had better things to do than languish in her underwear. She had her own imaginative life.

How gracious of her to agree to be his muse. As a muse, her self is lost in the chimera of what he needs her to be, and then what his viewers need her to be. That is a far remove from the real woman.

Isabel Allende steals from her friends all the time. "I tell this to all my friends," she says. "Everything they say can be used against them.

"But writing is something that you have to do," she goes on. "You don't have a choice. If you are offending people, if you are revealing secrets, it's too bad. You are helpless. You have to do it. Just go ahead and do it. I've betrayed my friends, my lovers, my husband, my children. Everybody! Writing is about lying, and about betraying."

Alice Walker responds, "if you just think about it as being loyal to yourself, rather than disloyal to your mother, I think this will relieve a lot of your guilt."

We artists use our loved ones all the time. We take little details of them -- a long, perfect thigh, in the case of the painter and his wife -- and massage them into something we need them to be. Greedily, we objectify them. Rarely do we really capture them. Selves cannot be captured.

The blogger has her own lens through which she sees me and others. Most painfully, she sees her family, squashing them down into paper-doll proportions with her anger. She is being loyal to herself, saying things she has never dared to say, fumbling through her feelings and memories to try to make sense of her life. That's good; that's what artists do.

But I wonder if good art, and good writing, are more open-ended. Anger and blame are so limiting. Ultimately, the work reveals everything about the artist, and little or nothing about the model. That's not me in her blog. That's not the printmaker in her husband's paintings.

It's a curious thing that art by nature objectifies, when its aim, I believe, is to awaken us to our own fluid, gnarly, unportrayable selves.

writing windex

2007-08-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

I have loved writing since fourth grade, when I wrote my first story. It was long, for a fourth grader, and, not surprisingly, sudsy. It was the story of a family whose father had gone off to war. I remember my brother pointing out that it was maybe a little too similar to "Little Women." I didn't care. I hadn't read "Little Women" yet.

In fifth grade, I wrote a story from the point of view of a family's new puppy. Then I got to read it out loud in class, and everybody laughed. Not only was I a writer; I had a knack for public speaking. That year, I also wrote my first book (and only one so far). It was about an ugly girl with evil parents and a heart of gold. I bound it between two pieces of shirt cardboard, held together by wallpaper left over from our hallway -- sparkly, textured, fuzzy abstract dapples of gold and brown and olive.

I've been writing ever since. In college I designed my own major so that I could combine writing and anthropology (not that anthropologists don't write!). I called my senior thesis an "ethno-narrative." I wrote five short stories about Ireland.

I grew up and became a journalist, and still love writing, every step of the way from encountering who or what I'm writing about through the editing process. Could it possibly get better?

Yes!

The last week of July, I took a writing workshop. I haven't done that in a long time; after all, I already know how to write, don't I? The writer Vivian Gornick gave the opening lecture. She spoke about how the more honest you are in your writing -- and here I have to go back to that word of elusive meaning, transparent -- the more the fuzz and grime falls away from your story. It's like polishing a mirror, or a window. All the crap that gets in the way in relationships, all the false identities we build to keep ourselves safe, the judgments and the "oh, don't pay attention to little old me!" -- gets in the way of telling the story.

For a Buddhist-type like me, this was manna. I already love writing. Here it was being presented to me as a tool for clarity, and in a different way than I'd consciously used it before. I've striven for clarity by using writing to figure things out. I was all up in my head. Gornick instead uses writing to step out of her own way, in order to see what is revealed.

I knew this, but I'd never articulated it. After all, if I'd only been using writing to figure things out, I would have gotten fed up with it years ago.

I took writing workshops in college, and I don't remember discussions about technique. We must have had them; I just didn't digest them. (My sophomore composition teacher was a bit of an ogre). At this workshop, I dove into them. I suggested that writing a story in the second person is aggressive. It is; it takes the reader by the lapels and insists that the story is his own experience. My teacher countered that it's also a way to distance the reader from the narrator, so the reader doesn't feel pity or the need to take care of the narrator.

Five straight days of this type of conversation, and I felt as if the interior of my skull was being washed, scrubbed and rinsed.

I didn't bring something to write to the workshop. I took the workshop in order to help me jumpstart my book idea, but I have so much more research to do on the book before I begin to write it, I had nothing. I went home the first night and wrote a little memoir piece about my ex-boyfriend's mother. I didn't have to bring it in to the workshop until Friday, so every day, after more enlightenments about technique, I came home and added, erased, and edited.

In real life, I write for a daily newspaper. I don't have the luxury of rewriting. It was luscious.

I took the piece to class, and got some positive feedback, which was lovely, but what really helped was the constructive feedback. I realized that what people missed in the story pointed me directly to things in my own story that I am still unconscious about.

Wow!

By week's end, I was staggering around campus, giddy, burbling to my classmates and teacher, gushing, revealing things about myself I never would have anticipated. I'd lost control, or surrendered. Which it turns out is what writing is really about.

rock star

2007-07-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Last week I was all abuzz and excited about not being good enough.

I'd never detached from that belief enough to get excited about it before. But I was seeing the fruits of it everywhere. It particularly jumped up whenever someone complimented me. That happened a lot last week -- do I usually receive so many kudos? There were compliments for my haircut, for a project at work that got a lot of exposure, for my friendship.

Always, my reaction was the same.

An example: I had a phone session with my coach. I told her, right off the bat, that I'd completed all my action steps. "That's great!" she exclaimed.

I shrugged it off. "It's OK," I said, sounding and feeling cooler than tepid. Then I heard myself. Do I really deflect compliments and praise like that?

All the time. Habitually. Now that I'm observing it, my friends have been affirming the observation.

My new practice: Accept compliments.

Refusing to take in praise is part of a larger formula, a manifestation of a pervasive belief that I'm not good enough. Not good enough to be singled out with praise, for instance. But also, when I don't follow through on a promise to myself, well, that's all right, no surprise, because I'm not good enough, anyway.

This may sound like a lot of crap, coming from someone who is relatively bright and self-aware.

It is a lot of crap. But I've been living by its dim lights all my life. I now have to wonder if I got some perverse satisfaction out of not doing perfectly well in school -- out of just doing well enough.

It doesn't really matter where this half-assed sense of identity came from. What matters is that it gets in my way now.

My friend who practices neurofeedback came to visit last weekend. She'd done some neurofeedback on me last March, and I'd had a bit of a meltdown immediately afterward. But we'd tried again in June, and despite my apprehension, it went well. So we tried it again last week. And from the moment she started swabbing my neck, prepping me before affixing an electrode, I fell into confusion, anxiety and judgment.

As in March, I assumed whatever she read about my brainwaves suggested that I somehow don't measure up.

This is odd. My life and work suggest that my brain is functioning perfectly well. Why should a map of my brainwaves at a particular moment carry more weight than that? Yet I took it, like bad scores on a standardized test, as proof that I'm not functioning. Not good enough.

One of my action steps for this week is to conduct an inquiry into how the thought "I'm not good enough" gets in my way. But this week, I am not abuzz and excited about not being good enough. This week, since the neurofeedback rattled me, I've been logy, restrained, careful. Not terribly ambitious or interested.

In addition to meeting once every two weeks with my coach, I meet just about every week with a friend for peer-coaching. She sometimes completes her action steps and declares, "I'm a rock star!" I complete mine, but hem and haw about them. Or I don't complete them at all.

On Monday, when I met with her, checked-off action steps in hand, I grinned. "I'm a rock star!" I said.

It felt good.

I'm not feeling like a rock star right now. But I am, reluctantly, conducting my inquiry here. I am taking this action step, and all the other goddamn action steps. At this moment, I'm more attached to being disgruntled than I am to being a rock star.

Nonetheless.

I am a rock star.

pre-calculus

2007-07-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here's what I know about Mr. N., my 11th-grade math teacher:

He adored Barbra Streisand.

He was rumored to have been in a religious order -- as a Christian brother, I believe. So, for several years, he was mostly surrounded by men, in a rigid ecclesiastical structure built to protect the pulpy heart of faith at its center.

I hated him.

(Maybe there's something I can learn from this; maybe Mr. N. can go from being a teacher with a tiny t to a Teacher with a big T, emblazoned on his superteacher chest)

He called us by our last names: "Mr. H." "Miss M." Not that he called on me often. He never, not even in one-on-one conversation, called me by my first name.

He was married. I don't think he had children.

I was afraid of him.

(Fear is a teacher. I didn't know this when I was 16. I didn't know that I could acknowledge my fear and move forward anyway. I didn't know to look up at Mr. N., grin, and say "Hello, fear." Had I, I expect he would have been tempted to slap my face.)

Unlike the other teachers, he wore a suit and tie to work. The geometry teacher, Mr. M., wore polo shirts and plaid pants. Mr. C., who taught European History, wore leisure suits. My cool, nebbishy ninth-grade English teacher Mr. P. wore jeans and oxford shirts with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his deliciously hairy forearms. But for Mr. N., it was a worn, dark gray suit; a tie; short-sleeved shirts that were not quite white.

(I think, truly, that he was an unhappy man; a deeply sentimental man; a man who cried easily, yet someone who would resist sympathy like an angry bull).

In the classroom, he had his favorites, whom he cosseted. The rest of us, he scorned. If you couldn't solve an equation, didn't understand a process, well, that was evidence of your lack, not his. In fact, he took it as a personal affront.

I dreaded his scorn.

I have never been a person to draw scorn. Even back then, when I felt nobody knew me, that I was so unseen I barely existed in the usual high school constellation of jocks, greasers, nerds, and the smart and popular kids, I somehow garnered respect. I wasn't relentlessly teased, like some other kids on the fringe. Nor was I singled out in classrooms by abusive teachers. At least, not often.

"Miss M.? Do you know the answer?" Mr. N. demanded.

My throat tightened. I turned red.

"Miss M.? We're waiting. I'm sure Mr. H. and Miss D. have better things to do than twiddle their thumbs while you learn how to speak."

Yet the weird fiction of equations, their codes and their spiraling meanings, couldn't fix themselves in my head.

I'd loved algebra. Mr. M. -- now there was a tough but loving math teacher, who made algebra an adventure. I'd suffered through and got the hang of geometry and trig. But pre-calculus … well, either it had a degree of abstract thinking my tiny brain could not muster, or … could it be?

It wasn't being explained well.

Nah. Must have been my tiny brain. My too-concrete thinking. My fault. I just wasn't good at it.

(Poor young self!)

I was no dope. In fact, I was on the AP track in math, not to mention science, English, and social studies. I knew I was on the outs with Mr. N.. I met with him privately for help and still could not get my mind around the work. I hated it.

And my older brother -- well, he had done so well in Mr. N.'s class. He was a natural! That was the sad thing. I could imagine Mr. N. shaking his head, perplexed, unable to conceive why I would be such a disappointment, after young Mr. M. had done so well. He might even shed a tear about it.

He cared that much.

(There's an echo, here, and perhaps even an exaggeration of my life at home, where my brother was the anointed one and I scuttled around in the background. My father, however, was not scornful, at least not of his kids.)

I remembered my dad, coming home after coffee hour with my fourth-grade teacher, exclaiming, "I hear you're a wiz at math!"

That was me. Mighty at 9. Washed up at 16.

I dropped pre-calculus.

(A mistake? A triumph? Certainly, a turning point.)

Well, technically, I dropped credit for the class. I chose to audit it. That way, I had no incentive to do well, but I could tell myself that at least I'd stuck with it. I was a ghost-student in the back row, dreaming away class time, not even doing the homework. And I continued to suffer Mr. N.'s withering glances.

English class was my refuge and my inspiration. I wrote an essay about my baffling experience in math class for my English teacher, dapper Mr. P., in seersuckers or plaid. Mr. P. had also taught my brother, but I knew that he delighted in me, my writing, and my presence at his seminar table.

Pre-calculus with Mr. N. I took it as proof of something I already knew in my marrow. I wasn't my brother and could never be. No matter how much I wanted that attention, I couldn't get it. I was inferior. Not good enough. I couldn't hack it.

Three years later, at the beginning of my sophomore year in college, I woke up. I realized, with joy, that I didn't have to be like my brother. That I had my own gifts and talents. That my intelligence had different qualities than his. And mine, I thought with great relief, didn't have to include math.

The sad thing is, except for Mr. N., it might have.

(Let's not place blame here. Let's take responsibility. It's not too late for me to recover pre-calculus. Odds are, I won't. I always loved writing, and math, well, it was a class I had to take. I haven't gone down the wrong road. I have, however, taken some of the road signs too seriously. The ones that say I can't do it, I'm not good enough, don't pay attention to me, anyway. Maybe it's time to change the road signs. Thank you, Mr. N., for making one of the early ones so big and bright.)

transparent

2007-07-08T11:39:00.000-07:00

We strive for transparency, someone says in a comment on the previous entry. What does that mean?

Good question. Transparency is impossible to achieve, because we're all opaque, even to ourselves. Sometimes especially to ourselves. What we can strive for is being truthful and authentic in the moment. We can attempt to follow ethical guidelines that keep us real. Even then, desires and fears cloud the picture. They always do. The better we acquaint ourselves with our desires and fears, the more transparent we can be. Even so, there's always a fog to cut through.

Meditation is, for me, an exercise in learning personal transparency. Lately, when I sit down to meditate, my head has been spinning. I've been juggling work projects, trying to keep track of too many facts. I feel excitement and some fear about life -- the possibilities of new projects, of dating, of feeling at home. I sit to meditate, and notice immediately that my head is spinning. Then I quickly lose my moorings and get caught up in whatever tiny drama going on in my life has the most magnetic appeal.

I catch myself, attend. Note the onrush of thoughts. Note how that feels in my body -- today, it felt as if I had a little balloon of churning energy attached to the front of my chest.

Occasionally, somewhere in this process, a veil lifts, and I recognize that I've been seeing the world through a particular lens. One that I needed to frame things with, for some reason, in order to feel safe. That lens might be fear -- I keep safe by being vigilant and alert and aware of everything that could go wrong at any moment. It might be shame: If everything is my fault, then at least I have some measure of control. It might be optimism.

When I finally see the lens, everything shifts, and I feel transparent, I feel liberated. It's not that I've been telling myself a lie; it's just that I've gotten stuck in a way of thinking that puts me in a particular box. Now I see the box, and I can step out of it.

In short order, I'll be in another one. So it goes. We box ourselves in; if we're lucky, we recognize those strictures and can let go of them.

But transparent? No. Look at all the folks on dating websites who say: "No head games." I aspire to that, but is it really possible?

Maybe it isn't transparency we should be striving for. Maybe it's simply self-awareness and honesty.

things we don't let ourselves think

2007-06-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

I try to be optimistic. It works, until I find I'm pessimistic. Which everyone knows you're not supposed to be. It's a downer.

So I pretend to be optimistic, and keep the pessimism under wraps. Even from myself. Then I find myself snarling at my cats and yelling at other drivers.

But if those things we secretly think keep snaking around under the surface, they take on power. I've been secretly thinking that life kind of sucks, but I know that thinking like that does me no good, so I don't acknowledge it.

This is why I do psolodrama. The other day I did one that started out sweetly enough: I was dancing around, bopping in the late evening sunlight, listening to the birds. Then a word came to me: Don't.

I put my hand out, like a Supreme singing "Stop in the Name of Love," and growled it: "Don't."

Then I went back to dancing, ignoring what I'd just said.

But it came back, and I moved to another space and really embodied it. "Don't." It was raw and angry and tense. "Don't be so light," I roared.

The dancing girl ignored the darker, angry character. She just danced.

"Don't," I hollered, and tackled her around the legs to keep her from dancing. She kept bobbing around. "Don't be so light," I growled at her. "Don't you know we're all just going to die?"

She didn't care.

But I, on the floor, felt energy surge through me -- the energy of "Don't." I knew I'd been holding back on it for some time. I knew it was my pessimism. It felt powerful. It felt, dare I say, great. "We're all just going to die, so why dance?" I exclaimed. "Die, die, die," I sputtered, and it came out percussively, in its own rhythm.

The dancing girl danced to it.

Then the "don't" part of me softened, let the girl go, and turned belly up. I felt suddenly more tender. I felt relieved. I got up and danced.

That black energy lurks around and poisons things until it's given its due. Everything simply needs to be noticed. We're so used to being selective, to pushing away the bad thoughts and feelings because we think they're somehow wrong, that they make us wrong.

No. They just want to be noticed and honored. Then they can be on their way.

I'm the grownup

2007-06-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

I'm a hider, and I like hiding, and dammit, you can't take that away from me.

I'm a performer. I love an audience. I love having no script, just whatever story's in my mind to tell, just the room to tell it. Give me that spotlight.

Hiding has many advantages. Nobody picks on me. I'm generally respected and thought of as nice. I can sit in the corner of a room quietly and suss out how everyone else feels, how they're getting along. I don't have to take a lot of initiative; I just do what comes to me to do. There's safety in it, but also a kind of ulterior power -- the power of watching and knowing and being able to show up at the right time with the right answer, because I've been observing things.

Performing is a joy. I don't have to worry about attending to anyone else, about knowing how anyone else is doing, because I command attention. The audience is, generally, welcoming, trusting that I have something worthwhile to share. They want to like me. And I, filled with welcome and bonhomie, love them.

Hiding has gotten in my way. The paths that I've followed have mostly been offered to me. I haven't carved them out for myself. The idea of sticking my neck out makes me shrink. For instance, I'm shy - I haven't really gotten to know my neighbors. Why is that? I don't think they'll be interested in me? I have nothing to offer them?

I remember working at a camp when I was 22. I was shy, evasive, wary. Then I realized I was working with children. I was the grownup. It's my job to reach out, to show up friendly and interested. It worked.

I still have not learned to deploy this with adults. Rather, within certain strictures, I'm quite good at it -- say, a professional interaction. Whereas at a party, I can easily get lost, drifting back into the kitchen to check on the food.

Yet I bet it works with adults. I have friends who do it. They walk up to complete strangers and start conversations. How I admire that.

Performing can get in the way, too, if I don't keep it in check. Commanding the floor at family gatherings, for instance, can sometimes be sweet, and sometimes be an ego-fueled mission to control the party.

But stowing myself snug as a grub beneath a big boulder, where nobody will notice me, where I squirm if I somehow get exposed to sunlight, has done me more damage than hogging the spotlight.

I wonder if all that safety is worth it.

the question of self-pity

2007-06-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

Vanessa Redgrave as Joan Didion cries once.

As Didion, in Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" on Broadway, Redgrave, who has this sonorous cello of an instrument in her body and voice and soul, plays Didion's piccolo.

Didion, as a character, is complicated. Her pain is undeniable. Her daughter falls into a coma. Her husband of 40 years dies suddenly, slumping over in his chair after a day at the hospital and a drink. Her daughter dies, in contrast, with excruciating slowness.

Thinking about this, Didion begins her book and her play, raising "the question of self-pity."

She sees this about herself: She's a cool customer. She sends people home when they offer to stay with her. She memorizes medical texts in order to comprehend -- as if she could ever comprehend, as if knowing technically what has happened could possibly help her comprehend -- the loss of her family.

She sees this. She observes compulsively, as if her observations and self-critiques will somehow weave into a net and break her free fall. She does not acknowledge that she is in a free fall. She works very hard to maintain herself.

How is it that this book has become a phenomenon and made it to Broadway? This is no manual for grieving. This is an exercise in denial. Her words are breathless, relentless intellectual acrobatics, undertaken in an effort not to fall. She describes, describes, describes, but does not acknowledge the utter loss of control that grief brings. Grief undoes us. We are never willing to be undone. But if we let grief do its work, if we surrender, then we can begin again, somehow.

I am in favor of self-pity. It gets a bad rap. If Didion would soften her stiff upper lip just a bit, if she would step outside herself and see the devastation she's been through with a shred of compassion, rather than clinical observation, if she'd just for a moment take her finger out of the dam and let it burst -- it would be awful. But it would be better than "The Year of Magical Thinking."

Driving to New York and back to see "The Year of Magical Thinking," my friend and I listened to a tape of a panel discussion, "Giving Birth, Finding Form: Where Our Books Come From," with Alice Walker, Isabel Allende and Jean Shinoda Bolan.

Walker, on writing her novel about genital mutilation, "Possessing The Secret of Joy": "By the time I actually started, I was in such a state of grief that the only thing that could sustain me was to go outside and just lie face down on the earth."

Walker, explaining what made her, as a child, feel like an outsider: "An act of violence, when my brother shot me when I was a child. And the subsequent refusal of my parents and my family to blame him for shooting me. Rather, I was blamed for being shot. That sucked then, and it sucks now."

Allende, on meeting Jean Shinoda Bolan: "My daughter died recently. A few weeks ago. ...(One) terrible day, I was really desperate. I was going someplace. There was a traffic jam. I was so uncomfortable that instead of just waiting, I tried to turn around, I turned around, and ended up, without even knowing, in Book Passage. And Jean was going to have lunch with a friend, and she decided she needed a map. So she went to Book Passage also.

"I'd never met Jean. We would have been there at the same moment, in the same place, but not knowing each other. Then the owner of the bookstore introduced us. She had been telling me, all the time, that I needed therapy and I should go to Jean Bolan. When I appeared in the bookstore, and Jean did, she couldn't believe her eyes. This wonderful chance of introducing us. So Elaine said, "Isabel, this is Jean." There are so many Jeans in the world, and I was so upset that I didn't realize that it was the Jean. So I somehow say, "hi," and Elaine said, "How are you doing?" And I started crying. Poor Jean thought I was totally crazy, that I needed electroshock."

"I lay face down on the earth." "It sucked then and it sucks now." "I was really desperate." "I started crying."

Walker and Allende don't fend off grief. They're in the thick of it. They cry. Then they laugh. Allende actually laughs frequently throughout the panel discussion.

Didion, poor woman, appears to do neither. Maybe it's just too much loss, maybe it's just too soon to feel it.

What could possibly be worse than grief?

Resisting it.

find someone stunted

2007-06-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

I'm here to advocate for self-pity.

I like to commit to feeling bad. There's a romance to it.

I was caught up, a few weeks ago, in all the losses I've suffered in recent years. Yes, sure, everybody suffers losses. But my losses! They stand out. They stack up to a cumulative loss, across the boards -- relationship ending, death of a friend, job let-down. Death in the family.

They deserve some sturm und drang.

The trick is to not feel guilty. Feeling guilty about self-pity really interferes with the flow. And by flow, I mean something akin to menstrual flow on a heavy day. With cramps. God knows you don't want to stop that up. But you may need something to absorb it.

A soppy movie. "Sea Biscuit." "Love Story." To be fair, these can sometimes merely serve to prime the pump. All that woe can be infectious.

My tactic is to hunker down. I curl up in a ball and frown. I talk a lot about all my problems. Nobody who listens can really help me -- that would defeat my purpose. If someone does offer a valuable insight, I get angry. I'm not looking for help, for insight, for comfort! I'm looking for affirmation.

Just last night I was complaining to a friend about my bad luck with dating. She offered trust, faith, confidence in the process, positive thoughts about me and what I have to offer. I would have none of it! Who needs that kind spin when you can dwell, safely, in cynicism and resentment? My social life is doomed! That's more clear and defining, and a hell of a lot emotionally juicier, than "I'm open and I don't know what's going to happen."

That emotional juice of being forlorn and unloved ... it's heady stuff.

Here's what I wanted to hear:

"I suppose you are too old, and certainly too deep and too complicated, to ever attract a solid man. You have a talent for drawing in tortured types. Maybe you should aim yourself in that direction. Find someone stunted. It may be the best you can do. If you're desperate enough. Alternatively, you could settle for a life of loneliness and celibacy."

Now this works for me. Not because it's the unfiltered truth, but because it reflects what's going on in my head, all the trash talk that I'm thinking but can't say out loud.

Then I can laugh. The self-pity on its own may not help, but a willingness to embrace it and ride it to the other side can do wonders.

when I grow up, again

2007-06-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

Here's another one. When I grow up, I'd like to be the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield. Like Carol Burnett, he is present in the moment. Like Anne Lamott, he views life through a spiritual frame. The thing I like most about Jack Kornfield is his compassion, for other people and for himself. I've read his writing and listened to his dharma talks, and his compassion comes across as vital, rushing like a generous river. There's patience in it, and exuberance. It's a practice of seeing others (and oneself!) without judgment, and with warmth and joy.

Compassion comes from being able to witness. I've developed a pretty sturdy witness in myself over the years. I have to do it for work: I interview people, and I hope make a space for them to express what really moves them about their own work. I'm good at this. I've also cultivated an inner witness, not working too well lately, but when it's functioning I can step out of and begin to deconstruct whatever drama I find myself in.

I realize that I've always framed witnessing as an intellectual practice -- that's the deconstructing, which can be useful and disarming. For Kornfield, witnessing is a practice of the heart. It's not about analyzing -- it's about really seeing someone and honoring that person's experience in the moment, whether it's grief or joy. Sometimes I do this well. Other times I don't.

I'd like my compassion to be as fluid and generous as Jack Kornfield's. It's much more stopped up and intellectualized. However, the first step to uncorking it is to soften my heart toward the cork.

One more thing about Jack Kornfield: His dharma talks can open my heart. Like Carol Burnett and Anne Lamott, he knows how to tell a story in a way that pops the lid off a larger truth.

when I grow up...

2007-05-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

Who did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be Carol Burnett. She's funny, quick on her feet, able to make fun of herself. A great physical comedian. That's important because she's not just creating out of her head, but out of her body. She has been through stuff in her life -- an alcoholic mother, the death of her daughter -- and she keeps showing up, apparently with some joy and relish for her work. The two things I liked best about "The Carol Burnett Show" were the first few minutes, when she answered the audience's questions, and the classic moments when she and her castmates broke character, cracking up. Both revealed a degree of poise and self-awareness, even as she was seemingly losing control of a scene, that kept things moving.

I still want to be the writer Anne Lamott (maybe I still want to be Carol Burnett, too). She and Carol Burnett share comedy. Lamott has a wry, self-deprecating style that salvages her as she muddles through crappy things like loss, death, parenting, chaos, resentment, and the Bush administration. She's Christian, but she's not sanctimonious. She's an irreverent Christian. That's my kind of Christian. Even as she's laughing at herself and the world, she makes all the crappy things tolerable, or even acceptable, or even ... shall I say it? Somehow sacred. All that crap turns out to be good compost.

Me, I can be sanctimonious. That may be my downfall. I'd rather be funny.

telling secrets to myself

2007-05-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

I've recently been practicing another form of psolodrama, the stream-of-consciousness performance I do that's a kind of meditation. Formally, psolodrama is done with a witness, who provides a safe container for whatever happens, and who reflects back what occurred. I have a regular practice doing this with a friend, who is a wonderful, trusted witness.

Lately I've tried it without a witness. I meditate, then segue into authentic movement, and in time words, images or characters arise. I've discovered that even with a trusted witness, there's a social part of me constantly at work, constructing who I present to the world ... even within the odd, discursive narratives of a psolodrama.

Without a witness, there's no need to construct, explain, or censor anything. I've done this three times, and nothing has arisen that I would not share with a witness, anyway, yet it has been qualitatively different. My movements are small. I speak in a near whisper. There's no social imperative to narrate or clue someone in to what's going on, or even to speak loud enough to be heard.

I'm fascinated by the tininess of my solo psolodramas. They're small and quiet, but deeply felt. Things arise and I watch them with far more equanimity than I am able to muster while meditating, when my mind busies itself assessing whatever passes through. It feels as if I'm whispering secrets to myself; myself listens, rapt.

For instance, the last solo psolo I did, the first word that rose to my lips was a hushed "hurt." Had I been doing this in front of a witness, I would have done one of two things. Either I'd have pushed "hurt" down and moved onto something a little less sensitive, or I would have blown it up into a parody. But the truth of this was neither of those. It was a single, quiet word: hurt. I simply let it be that.

An image arose, in which I sat in the sun on a lake's bank, dipping my hand in the cool water. I brought water up to my mouth; the taste brought tears to my eyes.

That was the entire psolodrama.

The other night I had the chance to watch a 10-year-old video of skits the improv group I was in at the time taped for cable access. We were funny. It was odd to see myself. Younger. Attractive (surprise!). Quick. Vital. And kind of brassy. My voice has a timbre that cuts through fog. I wouldn't say I was abrasive, but I was commanding.

Watching it, I wished I'd showed up occasionally more quiet.

I think of how circumscribed and minute these solo psolodramas have been. Now, there's quiet. I'm listening intently; when I speak, I'm barely audible. How unlike me, at least the me that shows up in comfortable social situations. The confidence and ease are gone, but there's a different kind of clarity in the hush, and a different kind of command.

Myself, I can't wait to discover what I'll have to say.

nutcracker

2007-04-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

"We have to die a little before we can grow."

El Gallo, the narrator of "The Fantasticks," says that near the end of the play. There's no way to do it easily.

I had this vision, as I was doing a psolodrama the other day, of a tiny little toy soldier. He was surrounded by darkness. He was, perhaps, the size of my thumb, a wooden soldier of the nutcracker variety, with a big red hat and a tan doublet and a severe black mustache and beard.

I became the soldier, erect and stiff, able to move my sword arm slightly, but not my legs; able to close my jaw with great efficiency. "I can stand up to anything!" I declared. "Bring on the deluge. I can withstand it!"

I was baffled. Where did this image come from? Then I recognized him. He's the good soldier. He rises to meet challenges and shoulder burdens. He relishes his tenacity. He makes it through things. He's a survivor.

And he's stiff, withheld, and kind of harsh. He's my fallback position, how I most naturally respond to adversity -- nobly, and with gritted teeth. The good soldier is not a bad first responder to personal crises -- efficient, strong, even determinedly optimistic.

Then he gets in the way, especially when what happens causes me to die a little. The little soldier is there with a crash cart.

April has been a tough month for me. The good little soldier finally failed me. I felt sad, beaten down, and pessimistic. I questioned my mental health. I was lost.

But you know what? My mental health is, I think, good. It's easy to pathologize sadness and confusion. They frighten folks. It's a pity, because sadness and confusion make us more whole, compassionate people.

I started to be interested in my feelings, rather than fear them, and then they began to make sense. My unconscious ushered up images, stories, clues -- like the little soldier, and the Ken dolls. These helped me to see two narrative arcs in my life that are poetically contradictory.

One, the plotline of my life in recent years, is about accepting my losses, feeling them, and dying a little.

The other follows on the epiphany I had last December, when I was overcome with gratitude and joy, feeling a lid had been lifted from my emotional life. At the time, I knew the lid would come back down, and it did as the holidays passed and I returned to work. I realize now the lid may be there -- the shame, the judgment -- but the seal on that lid is shot. I feel more. I cry easily. I am more and more alive.

four ken dolls

2007-04-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

Something bothering you? Make it into a 10-minute one-man show.

I miss performing. I have my psolodrama practice, which I cherish, but it's more meditation than performance. But coming up with a framework for a story, then getting up in front of people and telling it, hitting the beats, riding the wave of the narrative, is especially cathartic.

I always told stories from my life, usually trying to make sense of what was happening in the moment. The day of the performance, I'd come up with an idea, then I'd map it out. I'd write an outline, but not a script. I might have one or two phrases in mind, but otherwise I'd improvise.

In the show we did after 9/11, all I knew was my confusion about hearing all these declamatory, blaming voices, from far left to far right. I got up and played all those characters, and in so doing made space for the profound not-knowing that lay underneath all that certainty.

Theater is ritual. Ritual gives a form to our deepest stirrings, our confusions and transformations. It heals us and moves us on through.

Lately, I've been rocked with confusion, grief, sadness, anger. I can go around feeling ashamed of that or wondering what's wrong with me. Buddhist teacher Tara Brach says "whenever there's fear, we feel that something's wrong. Sometimes we aim that at ourselves. Something's wrong with me. I'm bad. That's the trance of unworthiness, and it burdens us with shame and anxiety, depression and anger."

I go back to last summer, when one friend asked, "What if everything is all right?" and another had a teacher who responded joyfully to her confusion.

"I feel joyful about my confusion." The idea makes me giggle, which means it actually works.

Last summer, I also read a wonderful article in Utne Reader about how to get through trauma. The answer is, don't run away from the pain. Honor it, give it voice, ritualize it.

Last night I had an idea for a performance about the major events in my life in the last three or four years. There would be props: Four Ken dolls, each dressed differently. The first, in boxers, would be my ex. I'd embrace him and act out how safe and profoundly welcomed I felt with him. Then, a great invisible arm would snap him away. The next, in jeans and a polo shirt, would be my friend Jim, whom I felt so at ease with and appreciated by. Maybe he'd ride up on my shoulder ... until the great invisible arm of death snapped him away.

The third Ken would be in a suit and tie -- metaphorically, my boss, who suddenly started cosseting me and nurturing my work and making me feel good about my position in the world. He'd talk to me, pat my arm, I'd glow. Then, a great invisible arm would snap him away. Finally, a fourth Ken, in sweat pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. This is my therapist, who helped me open me up and find acceptance of myself in ways I could never imagine. He might stand by exuding warmth as I thrashed around or cried.

Then, of course, a great invisible arm would snap him away.

In the end, of course, I'm left there without my dolls. And that's sad. But what have I still got? Myself, everything those Ken dolls gave me, and the ability to tell the story.

fantastick

2007-04-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I shouldn't have gone to see "The Fantasticks."

I'd never seen it before, maybe that's why I went. My folks have season tickets to the theater here, and my mom has a sensitive back, so my stepdad called yesterday and offered to take me. I was tired, distracted, overworked, and probably could have used a quiet night at home. Except that I spend too many quiet nights at home watching TV, and watching TV, it turns out, doesn't fill up the well. It merely distracts me from how empty the well is.

The moment the house lights went down, I felt a connection, a quickening. There was a toy carousel I couldn't take my eyes off of. And a girl, an exuberant, expressive 16-year-old girl in a simple, swirly dress, ready to be loved.

I knew her. I thought of myself, years back. I thought of myself in love, wide open, marveling, drunk with hope. So much has happened since then. A lot of hard things have happened since then. I sensed her open heart; I felt my constricted heart. I recognized myself as a cynic.

But oh that girl, the heroine, Louisa. She was vivid to me, prancing and swooning and exclaiming across the stage. She had something for me.

Act One proceeded. Boy meets girl; they fall in love; their parents object; they fall deeper. They meet opposition; boy conquers opposition. They all live happily ever after. Curtain.

I thought, oh well. This is pretty pat. Perhaps it isn't the magic I thought it was. This was both a disappointment and a relief.

Act Two. Boy and girl struggle, resist, push each other away. Boy goes off to find himself. Girl gets seduced by glamor, glitz, by seduction itself. All here presented allegorically, as unreal as a fever dream.

Then in the end, they find each other. Each wounded and regretful, each a disappointment to his or herself. They see each other again, but this time not through the lens of romance. They see each other simply. They fall into each other's arms, cling to each other, filled as much with grief over what they've been through as they are with gratitude for having found one another again.

The gallant rake of a narrator sings "Try to Remember."

I, in my narrow little seat, cannot hold back my tears. As we leave the theater, I try to tell my stepdad what the play meant to me. "From the beginning," I start, but I choke up and cannot speak. We walk through the streets with me crying, he with his arm around me.

This was not, specifically, about grief over my relationship, which ended more than two years ago. Nor about Jim's death, nor Betty's, nor not getting a job I'd worked myself to the bone to get. This was not, exactly, about all I've been through in the last few years, although all of that was in the recipe.

It was that girl, Louisa. The loss of innocence. Hers. Mine. After the loss of innocence follows cynicism, but then there's a kind of restoration. Not of innocence, exactly; you can never restore that. But of hope, of possibility, of redemption. Somewhere between the cynicism -- which is a tactic to avoid feeling -- and the hope, there is pain.

This is why T. S. Eliot said "April is the cruelest month."

Bibe

2007-03-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

My stepmother Betty died last week.

I loved her, and the woman could drive me crazy.

When I first met her, I bristled at her; I was coolly polite. I was probably 20 and did not want a stepmother, and this woman, I thought then, was in many ways my polar opposite. She was all style; I was all substance (or so I thought then; it may be that I was just young and bereft of style, and she had more substance than I knew).

Betty, whom we called Bibe, was a tiny woman with a big personality. She was a generous hostess, who never let you leave her house without a lovely parting gift. Her style was classic but comfortable; her wardrobe was from Talbots and Nordstroms, but she had a passion for bargain shopping, and might bring a high-end cashmere sweater home from a church bazaar.

For all her gentility, Bibe had an incisor wit. She told long, hilarious, occasionally bawdy or scatological stories. She was a lady, but she wasn't shy about a little bathroom humor if it was part of a grander tale.

The horrible medical narratives came fast and furious, like the one about when, visiting Florida, she found herself standing beneath a mango tree, inhaling the dreaded fumes of the mango. Her throat swelled up. She erupted in hives. She was rushed to the hospital. She loved to tell that story.

She was full of such cautionary tales. If you were pregnant and over 30, chances are she'd tell you the story of how, giving birth to her third child, all her female equipment collapsed.

Bibe tried to restrain herself, but sometimes she couldn't help but offer unsolicited advice, especially about relationships. She told me before I acknowledged it myself that my last relationship was over. I didn't speak to her for months. Even though -- or perhaps because -- she was right.

Then there were the occasional political disagreements. Or perhaps they were generational. Over dinner one night in the mid 1990s, talk turned to the William Kennedy Smith trial, and the alleged victim, known only as the woman with the blue dot over her face, which is how she appeared on television.

"She went for a walk on the beach with a man she didn't know," Bibe tartly pointed out. "She got what she deserved."

I exploded at her. No woman asks to be raped, I said. We argued. Hotly. We both cited "Thelma and Louise." Ultimately, we agreed to disagree.

She and my father were giddy in love. They met before her first husband died; Dad once asked her husband, Steve, for permission to dance with Bibe at a party. After Steve's death, they became bosom friends.

"Well," Dad said over dinner one night at the country club, as Bibe was flirting with a visiting soccer team at the next table, "I suppose we should get married."

In her version of this story, she glanced over at him, said, "all right, then, I suppose we should," and returned to her flirtation.

They married in 1989. Both were 71.

They were foils for one another's wit. Dad was fey, light-hearted, daffy (at least socially, in his heart of hearts he could be darker). He could set up a story and Bibe would swoop in with the punch line. Ba-dum-bum.

Dad could also be gallant, and that, to Bibe, was irresistible. They loved to dance. Dad didn't know much about it, but he gave it the old college try. Bibe was a star on the dance floor. I danced with her at my brother's wedding in 1997, and she tuckered me out.

I loved these things about her: Her dancing, her stories, her self-deprecating wit.

She didn't understand when Dad acknowledged that he'd been depressed most of his life, went into therapy, and started taking anti-depressants. She worried that she had done something wrong. The truth is, finding happiness with Bibe had given Dad more hope and self-worth than he'd ever had before. The truth is, she'd done everything right.

Bibe was the opposite of a pack rat. After my father died, I was back down to her place within two weeks with my boyfriend in tow, to clean out everything from storage. On the one hand, she sincerely wanted us to cherish our lineage by taking silver, china, crystal and the like. On the other, she sincerely wanted it out of her house. Hence the lovely parting gifts.

I didn't visit her as often as I should have. I loved listening to her tell stories, but I also feared her lack of understanding. All she wanted was for me to be happy. I wasn't, always, and sympathetic listening was not her strong point.

But you know what? Bibe loved me, and for that I have to thank her, because my response was mostly resistance for some time. I came to love her and respect her, too. It took a little while, but Bibe was nothing if not persistent.

Once, when I was 24, she baked me cookies and mailed them to the wrong address. Weeks passed, and the box of cookies eventually got returned to sender. She called me, corrected the address, and put those cookies right back in the mail.

My roommate and I munched them down, stale and powdery, one night after we'd been out drinking.

They hit the spot.

double decker

2007-03-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

I recently had electrodes glued to my head in order to map my brain waves. A friend of mine practices neurofeedback, and agreed to run an EEG on me.

I was curious. At the same time, I wasn't feeling well. The night before I'd been suddenly struck with fatigue, which later proved to be the first symptom of a stomach virus. My brain and my body were compromised.

My friend asked if I'd ever hit my head. Yes, I said. In Ireland. I was 20. It was a bus accident, and I had blacked out.

The map revealed two things. First, my brain was carpeted with theta waves. That suggests I walk around in a trance-like state akin to REM sleep. Theta waves are slow moving, deeply relaxed, unfocused but creative. I expect that the abundance of theta waves reflected my oncoming virus. I was not at my most alert.

The second was an increased amplitude (or was it frequency?) of certain waves in my prefrontal cortex -- just where my skull smashed metal in that bus accident. This suggests a bit of stress and adaptation around that area. This may also have been triggered by my virus.

I don't think much about that bus accident; it was not a defining moment in my life. As far as I'm concerned, my brain has been generally high functioning since then. Even if all of this is incidental to my virus, why is it that my time in Dublin has come back to me three times in the space of less than a week?

Is something beckoning to be revisited?

It was the last bus, leaving O'Connell Street at 11 p.m., hitting Ballsbridge about 12 minutes later, and on home to Dun Laoghaire. I rarely stayed out this late, even rarer did I do it to drink. But there I was, just past 11, a pint -- at least a pint -- of Harp still sloshing in my stomach. A friend boarded another bus. I got the 7 bus to Dun Laoghaire.

I sat in the middle of the lower deck of the pea-green double decker, behind the exit door. Outside, the air misted. We sped off. Was the driver leaning on the gas? We seemed to be hurtling through the night. Too fast.

I focused ahead. The wipers beat a slow rhythm on the windshield. A little sportscar darted in front of us, like a rabbit teasing a hound. But rabbits don't tease hounds. I noticed that the driver didn't slow.

Too fast...

I don't remember the crash, and I don't know what happened to the sportscar, or its driver.

I came to on the floor of the bus, lying on my side. For a moment, I didn't move. I didn't know where I was. I sat up; I put my hand to my head in consternation. It was still the bus; I was sitting on the floor. There were little moans and gasps around me. I brought my hand down and saw it covered with blood.

There weren't many people on the bus, all told. The driver, the conductor, and maybe six or seven more of us. I don't remember getting off the bus -- I think we were told not to move until the ambulance arrived. I do remember a helpful person walking me to the ambulance, which, with several people seated on benches on either side, had much more the feeling of a paddy wagon. By now I must have had gauze taped on my head.

I'd been seated directly behind a metal pole. The impact threw me forward, crashing my forehead into the pole. How I also ended up bleeding from the back of my head, I'll never figure out.

The ambulance trundled us to a hospital in Wicklow, which seemed very far away. I remember it as dimly lit and Edwardian, more homey than antiseptic. I got nine stitches in my forehead and a couple in the back of my scalp, plus a tetanus shot in the bum. I remember feeling guilty about calling Moira, the woman whose home I'd been placed in by the school I was attending. She was 30, but seemed to me more like 55. It was late; I was sure she'd gone to bed; now she'd have to drive out to bloody Wicklow to pick me up.

When she saw me, her face hardened. I assumed she was angry. More likely she was frightened by how I looked: swollen, black-eyed and blood-encrusted, with gauze padding about my face and head. Gruffly, she drove me home. She made a hot water bottle for me and poured some more hot water into a cup with lemon and honey. She would have offered me a glass of whiskey, she said, but you're not supposed to let a person with a concussion drink. She took my picture. I'm not sure why we did that; it was a dark and twisty thing to do, but Moira was in many ways a dark and twisty person.

I'm glad to still have the picture. I look apologetic and a little bemused, amid all the bandages and bruising. I also look, just a little bit, like Frankenstein's monster, with stitches and sunken eyes and a misshapen head.

That was December, 1983. More than 23 years ago. What I remember most vividly is that afterward, I couldn't wash my hair until the stitches came out, and I complained about it. Moira, a club-footed Irish woman who had suffered through many failed corrective surgeries in her life (nine!), did not brook my whining. In Ireland (at the time, anyway), bathing was a weekly event, not a daily one, and I was an American princess for being upset about not being able to wash my hair. After that, I held my tongue.

I have another picture, shot two or three weeks later, when I was home on Christmas break and my sister and I went to Sears to have our photos taken, as presents for our folks. The scar, rising from directly above my nose to where my third eye would be, is rosy. My face, ordinarily narrow, looks plump -- still, perhaps, slightly swollen.

I still have a scar above my nose. I googled Moira; she still lives in the same little attached house in Dun Laoghaire. My poetry professor teaches in California and is still a bright and vivid literary voice. The sculptor Anne Truitt died in December, 2004, at 83.

My time in Ireland was a fertile moment in my life. I was so unformed, but that time in that place, with its long drizzly nights, was one of unknowing and of quickening. I got batted around in many ways. In a new place, I was disoriented, somehow less the solid self that I had always known. I think the dissonance between the self I was there and the self I had been made me vulnerable, but it also made me less smug and more open. I think I first glimpsed there the courage I would need to grow up to be who I needed to be.

I'm still just glimpsing it.

defenseless

2007-03-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

Now I'm re-reading "Daybook," Anne Truitt's first book.

Truitt worked to put together two retrospectives in the early 1970s. It was, apparently, harrowing.

She wrote, "I felt crazed, as china is crazed, with tiny fissures. It slowly dawned on me that the more visible my work became, the less visible I grew to myself. In a deeply unsettling realization, I began to see that I had used the process of art not only to contain my intensities but also to exorcize those beyond my endurance, and must have done so with haste akin to panic, for it was a kind of panic I felt when once again inexorably confronted by my own work. Confronted, actually, by the reactivation of feelings I had thought to get rid of forever, now so objectified that I felt myself brutalized by them, defenseless because I had depended on objectification for defense. I also felt that my failure to come to terms with these feelings as I was making the work had deprived me of myself in these most profound depths. It was as if the artist in me had ravished the rest of me and got away scot-free. I had the curious feeling of being brought personally to justice, but obliquely."

I did not know that sculpture could bring its maker to justice as ruthlessly as children bring their parents to justice. It's chilling. Perhaps it is Truitt who is ruthless with herself. At the time of her retrospectives, she had apparently not owned the artist part of herself. Like Jekyll and Hyde, she went into her studio and split off from the rest of her life, funneling her demons into her work and leaving them there.

So often, this is what art is: Giving clarity and form to something previously inchoate within oneself. And if this art is to have substance, it cannot merely be an intellectual process. It must pull at the roots of the stuff inside that makes no sense, the shadows and the contradictions and the false assumptions of an individual or a society.

Still, it's surprising that minimalist sculpture can bring back old pains in the same awful way that reading ancient journal entries can. An effective, finished sculpture (or dance piece, or novel) has a completeness and a distance to it, a self-hood, that old scribblings in diaries do not. You don't look at an Anne Truitt sculpture and think, "yuck -- that one's dripping with self-pity."

She started her journal because she recognized that she needed to confront, accept and integrate the artist part of her. It wasn't so much about the demons she left in the sculptures; it was that she was not owning that these powerful things came from her. She resisted the label "artist" and all the special, potentially egotistical things that went along with it. She was, after all, a pragmatic and humble woman.

Yet isn't it really evidence of humility to accept and value your own power, talents, voice and vision? Hiding that light under a bushel is controlling -- even, in a way, prideful.

I first read Anne Truitt when I was 20. That same year, I met my poetry teacher, who had the same kind of toughness and fragility that Truitt evinces in her books. Why are they coming back to me now?

Maybe it's time for me to stop being squishy and pushed around.

Maybe it's time for me to own and advocate for my own voice and vision.

Maybe...

Anne Truitt

2007-03-13T14:36:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I went to my alma mater, and I finally saw sculptures by Anne Truitt.

I say "finally" because I first encountered Anne Truitt in 1984, when I was in college, and I picked up her published journal, "Daybook." I remember finding it at the college bookstore. I packed it away and took it on my junior year abroad.

As a writer, and a writer engaged in reflecting on the creative process, I read "Daybook" rapturously. Truitt was a wonderful writer, hard-nosed with herself, naked with her flaws and vulnerabilities. I knew nothing about art, had never studied it. I got the sense that Truitt built simple, planar wood sculptures. What the point of such things was, I did not know. But I loved her through her writing. I wrote her a fan letter, and she wrote me back.

She wrote two more books, which I read with equal joy and satisfaction. By the time I read the third one, "Prospect," I was grown up. I had, despite my lack of art education, become a visual art critic. I had also, unwittingly, become her enemy. I wrote her another fan letter, in which I chided her for taking critics too seriously. She did not respond to that one.

I hadn't thought of Truitt in some time, but within the past month I saw her mentioned in something I was reading. I googled her. I found her obituary in the Washington Post. I read lyrical descriptions of her art, positioning her as a pioneer of Minimalism. I sifted through the Post's archives, reading every reference I could find (Truitt lived in DC).

But I had never seen, nor even sought out, her art. Reading her journals was a private, intimate experience. Looking at her art is a professional experience. That's not particularly fair; looking at art is always a private affair; what goes on in that interchange between sculpture and viewer is a physical, one-on-one interchange. At any rate, I didn't look for Truitt. Perhaps I was afraid I'd be disappointed. Minimalism can be bracing to look at, but often it's an intellectual exercise, not a deeply felt one.

Then I was taken unawares by these two pieces. I found myself stepping into a gallery where these sculptures stood like sentries on either side of the door. One was dark, cloaked in velvety tones, burgundy and deeply-shadowed blue. The other was a beacon, glowing in degrees of pale pink, like the very edge of the morning as the sun debuts. Both were roughly six feet tall, human-sized, ready for conversation. Except they weren't human: They were distilled, moments slung with emotion and portent, embodied in wood and paint.

They were gorgeous, inviting, bold and humane. I was humbled.

teachers

2007-03-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

Two of my professors in college saved me. Or salvaged me. Or maybe I should say found me, because I sure was lost.

The first, my anthropology professor, first attracted me because she was dynamic but approachable. She was one of those cool, free-wheeling professors who likes hanging with students, who maybe gets a little ego charge from it.

I asked her to supervise my internship at a shelter for battered women. To get the credit, I had to keep a journal. That was like asking a bird to sing. I poured myself into that journal, trying to understand myself through the lens of the internship. My professor read my journal and saw in it a kindred soul -- a messy, yearning, lyrical young woman trying to make sense of the world. She took me under her wing.

Most importantly, she told me yes. Yes, I could spend my junior year abroad. Yes, I could design my own major, shape it according to my own intellectual passions. Yes, yes, yes! She was a regular Molly Bloom of the intellect. And so important in affirming who I was, who I still am.

My poetry professor in Dublin was tougher. Reviews of her collected poems, out last year, reflect on her "moral courage" and her "fierce intellectual determination." Her language, her ideas were crystalline: clear, faceted, incredibly strong. Oh, she was daunting.

I have never been tough in quite that way; I am not crystalline. I do not have the knife's edge with language nor with sentiment that she wields. I am, in many ways, a squishier person than she, for good or bad.

But I knew her. Right off the bat. She knew me, too. We shared something, above and beyond our love of language and passion for writing. It had nothing to do with the muddle of youth, although god knows I was busy with that, and deeply committed to it.

When I read the review that mentioned her moral courage, I thought: Does the critic know what a construction moral courage is? What a defense against the world? How exhausting it can be?

I do not mean to deride my teacher. She continues to be an exemplar for me of clarity, strength, intention -- indeed, moral courage. That strength and that intention are useful. They are necessary if you want to carve out a place for yourself.

Courage, intellect, craft, and morality shift and glint, like plates of glass. The interstices are there, too, little slivers of chasms opening, even beckoning, amid the show and the strength. They're shadowy, dappled with light, hard to read. There's softness in them.

We had a conversation at the end of my year in Dublin. I wish I could remember it more clearly. It had to do with arrogance, and having to be arrogant to succeed. Perhaps we were talking about another poet, a man, a literary lion. You could say that his arrogance was bloated and prideful, entitled -- or you could say it had to do with knowing one's own worth.

"But you have that arrogance," I said to her -- meaning it both ways. It felt nervy, dangerous to observe the truth about her, to speak it.

She looked at me. Seen. Her blue, blue eyes were sly.

"So do you," she said.

ordinary people

2007-03-02T19:42:00.000-08:00

God forbid that I, or anyone I associate with, be ordinary.

I've been reading a blog in which the writer repeatedly indicts others for their ordinariness.

Ouch.

It's a funny idea, being ordinary. Sort of like being beautiful. That is, it's impossible to pin down, slippery, the kind of word that turns in on itself and gets freighted with outrageous meaning.

Except, of course, it's a burden and a privilege to be beautiful, and to be ordinary is to be unburdened, to not have to live up to any expectations. A relief.

I do not like to think of myself as ordinary. I'll give you that. And I'll tell you that it's when I cling to the idea that I'm extraordinary that I'm most unhappy.

I do have my own gauge for ordinariness, which I tend to apply only to men I'm dating. It arises at my pettiest moments. I have marveled that I've ended up with someone in such an ordinary job, with such an ordinary family.

It's easy to critique men I'm dating, god love them. They don't deserve it, but in my little world, in my little, frightened head, that's one reason they're there. It's easier to critique them than me. And my assessment about that guy's ordinary family? Waaaay off.

I cannot say, though, that I apply the gauge to others. I don't look at friends or family and turn my nose up at their ordinariness (how could I? They're in my inner circle, and anyone close to me could never be ordinary). I might sometimes frown on the Britney-watchers as ordinary, but I have to admit that I am a regular reader of E-Online. Oh, and I watch a lot of TV.

The truth: Nobody is ordinary. Every soul out there is interesting, quirky, kinked up, broken, lovely, blossoming and fascinating in his or her own way. To call someone ordinary is to refuse to truly see that person. It's a defensive declaration. A writer who describes a character as ordinary -- that's a failure of imagination. It tells us nothing; or, it unfortunately tells us far more about the writer than about the character.

The other truth: Everyone is ordinary. Small in some ways. Large in others. Almost all of us will be forgotten.

By that measure, the people not so easily forgotten, the people most missed, are those that really touch and connect. They may, by some standards, be ordinary. They may work in an ordinary industry, like technology or finance or service. They may do pilates, or color their hair, or let it go natural. They may wear leather jackets, take vitamins, and in many ways fumble through life.

But if those people make you laugh until you weep, if they sit down and really hear you in your pain, if you can be yourself around them, if they help you or just smile at you on a bad day, is that ordinary?

Wouldn't it be great if it was?

soda jerk

2007-02-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

I am Lana Turner, sipping a root beer at the drug store soda fountain. Any moment, a Hollywood producer will amble in. My insouciance and fresh beauty will catch him off guard. Destiny, take me in your arms!

A few weeks ago I wrote a query letter to a literary agent. Several years ago, this literary agent had said to me, "if you ever want to write a book, let me know." Since then, thinking I should write a book, I've pitched him a couple of half-baked ideas. He's politely written back, declining my suggestions. I didn't pursue them.

I'm sipping my root beer at the soda fountain. Minding my own business.

This latest is not a half-baked idea, but neither did I make a full-blown proposal. It was simply a query letter. He dashed off an e-mail immediately, saying he'd look at it. I haven't heard from him since. When you pitch a story to an agent, you're supposed to send a package: A chapter, an outline, a cover letter.

I'm at the soda fountain.

Several years ago, I was sitting at my desk at work when the call came. It was a writer at the major metropolitan daily in my area. "There's a movement afoot here to give you enough work to leave your day job," she said. Whisking me away to my destiny.

That was my destiny for awhile. I think I'm past it now. Shopping around for another destiny, here at the soda fountain. Waiting to be scooped up.

I wonder how much time I've spent waiting to be scooped up. Waiting for the right person to notice me and recognize my talent. It doesn't seem a very productive or fulfilling way to live a creative life.

Where do I come off dropping a simple query letter in the mail? Why do I expect to not have to sell myself, like every other writer out there? I don't like the prospect of selling myself, for one. Then, I am used to sitting around waiting to be noticed. It's not a very satisfying position to be in, but it's familiar and moderately comfortable. Plus, I get to keep this myth in place, this magical thinking that One Day I'll Be Discovered and Live Happily Ever After.

What if a natural part of work was actively seeking attention? What if I sold myself? What if I insisted on being noticed?

Maybe I'm not Lana Turner.

coping with the inevitable

2007-02-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

I've parachuted back to earth, and landed with a thud.

I took a rather magical vacation after I spent a month hibernating. So far, it's been the best winter I've had in years. Now I'm back in the real world: I've done my taxes and I owe, owe, owe. That's a good thing, in that it reflects an uptick in my income, but holy mackerel, it's still a blow. I feel, momentarily, screwed, held back and taunted by my federal government.

This will pass -- I have the money and can pay the bill. But it has been a week of constrictions. A virus took me out for four days. My first-floor tenant woke me up with hot-water-heater issues, and I'm really thinking I should insulate the basement ceiling. I am going to refinance, in order to remove my ex's name from my mortgage, and how that will play out is a big, scary mystery to me.

Can you hear the anxiety ratcheting up? My voice gets higher, shriller. Other tiny items explode, in my mind, into disasters: The guy I think I like hasn't called; he must be blowing me off. My boss has been out of touch; she must hate me. That friend I e-mailed last week hasn't written back; she hates me too. I am alone and isolated and unloved! Oh, woe, woe, woe!

What this adds up to, emotionally, is a big, messy ball of feelings -- sadness, anger, self-pity, fear.

And I'd been trying so hard to feel the love! Wasn't I doing a good job at that?

In December, I woke up. I found myself embracing, accepting, celebrating my feelings. I had one lovely moment of being overcome with sadness and warmth about a friend moving away, then getting caught up in a rush of joy and compassion for myself in my sadness. I said at the time I didn't expect that clarity and openness to last, and it hasn't. But maybe there's something I can learn from the experience.

For instance, I have a friend whose father is dying. She's long feared this. Now it's happening. My father died six years ago; my friend Jim died last year. I don't fear the death of loved ones in quite the same way I used to. I realize now that I'm equipped to deal with grief and loss, if I open my heart to the process and just let myself feel. Surrender. That's what we're made to do; that's what grows us. Not so easy.

Meditating today, I became aware of fear tamping down and restricting my sadness. Fear of my own feelings is a serious pain in the ass, and my path at the moment seems to be letting that fear go. It's my dad's. It's my culture's. It's a straitjacket. The more fed up I get with it, the more it has me in its grip.

I don't know how to let it go, but since December I've had a template of a more fluid and open-hearted way to live, and that gives me something to move toward, even when faced with death. And taxes.

in the flesh

2007-01-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

I went to see a medical intuitive while I was in Arizona. It was a grounding and enlightening experience. And I'm tired of feeling as if, when I tell this story, I have to amend it with justifications and validations to assure folks that I am neither a patsy nor a flake.

Healing (and I use that word in the broadest sense) is not empirical. Growing and learning are not empirical. They happen in spurts and watersheds, spurred on by intuition, metaphor, revelation and synchronicity. Even if we're just talking about physical healing, many things contribute to or hinder it, which are impossible to harness and difficult to comprehend. If healing is always poetry, why do we often limit therapies and diagnoses to scientific, proof-based thinking?

Science and proof have brought us a long way, don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for all the technologies and therapies out there that prolong life and save lives. Science is one very important lens through which we need to view our health. There are others.

Like active imagination. It's a river, constantly flowing through and around us. What arises may be metaphoric or mythic; it may echo back to my childhood; it may be filled with archetypes. Things bubble up that take me by surprise, or that make more sense than I could have dreamed. A familiar song may make me cry. Grief arises. Or delight. Or Bruce Springsteen.

This work is the life of the body. We hold onto things that don't get properly honored and expressed; they hole up in us and make us afraid or dead inside or anxious or wounded. Literally. We run from the pain. When we finally turn and face it, it washes through us like holy water. The stress of resistance turns out to be more painful than the pain itself. And that resistance shows up in our bodies and our minds, which are one.

True, there are physical problems that are simply physical problems. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. But they affect our minds, get tangled in our psyches.

My health has always been good. I went to the medical intuitive because sometimes I suffer from bouts of fatigue. I've mentioned this to my doctor, who has been not curious. The medical intuitive listened to me, so she gets points for that. She told me my adrenal function is low; that sounded logical.

From there, she went into my digestive system, other glands, my reproductive organs. While she was talking about my intestines, she mentioned a nutritional supplement that comes from soil (ick.) As she talked, I was back in the most recent psolodrama I'd done, in which I'd been lying at the bottom of a deep hole in the earth, talking to a worm. The worm's mantra was "ingest, digest, egest."

I don't mean I remembered the psolodrama. I was in it. I thought, holy camoley, my body was communicating with me about digestion! (Then there was the dream I'd had a few days earlier in which the take home message had been "stop eating cheese." Cholesterol is an issue). The active imagination doesn't just traffick in information about my psyche. It's got messages from my flesh and bones, too, as insistent and clear as the cat sitting in my lap right now, reminding me it's time for her dinner.

Medical science objectifies our bodies. That's one very helpful way to learn about them.

Another way is to listen.

gratitude, con't.

2007-01-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

My therapist, teacher and friend, Joel, leaves next week for Thailand, where he will settle, perhaps for several years. Perhaps for good.

I first went to see him as a coach back in (gulp) 2002. We'd been performance colleagues and acquaintances. He was studying drama therapy. I'd hit a snag in my relationship that had unveiled a snag in myself. I knew I needed help. I did not want to sit in somebody's office and talk. Talk is limited (if not, in a therapist's office, cheap). I can analyze until the cows come home and still not comprehend. Comprehension comes when we get the issue in our gut.

From day one, my work with Joel has been revelatory. I wasn't analyzing. I was playing. Dancing, squealing, laughing, pretending, embodying characters. Acting out dreams as if they were plays. Improvising scenes from my life, but spicing them up with fantasy.

Working this way dropped me out of my head into the imaginative realm. I deal with archetypes and behavior patterns creatively and intuitively. I get right into the muck and can work with it actively, rather than just think about it.

Lightning strikes frequently.

Here's an example. I started to see Joel because I had a habit of melting down into a blubbering mess with my then-boyfriend. For three years, he was sympathetic and supportive, but after awhile it began to weary him, and he said he felt I was being manipulative. I had to consider that he was right.

Within the first few weeks with Joel, I found myself in a structure called Life/Dream Scene. In it, you act out a dream, then introduce an element from your real life. I plunged into a dream I'd had soon after my father died. In it, Dad and I were having a grand old time at a ski resort. Joel coached me to bring in something from my life, and I flashed on a time when I was 12, going cross-country skiing with my family. I kept falling down. I fell and fell, and finally sat on the snow, damp-assed, and cried about my whole miserable life. Dad was with me, but at a loss. He didn't know how to respond, how to comfort me.

Something coalesced for Joel as he watched it. "That's the behavior pattern," he said. "You're falling down, bursting into tears, demanding attention. It's futile, but you do it anyway. It does something for you. Fulfills some need."

I heard the logic of this and felt stunned. No, I felt as if he'd found me out. He ripped a mask off my face I didn't even know I was wearing, and left me, blinking and tender, in the direct light. Strong, sturdy little soldier me ... had a dark side, in which I looked more like a drama queen. We labeled the pattern "falling down." Then began the business of working on it.

Today, after nearly five years learning from Joel, and with a regular peer practice (specifically of psolodrama, a technique Joel developed combining elements of vipassana meditation, authentic movement and psychodrama), I live in my body much more than my head. My intellect does not get in the way of my feelings. Most of the time. At least, I run from my feelings less than I used to. They're not so frightening to me.

I now have the tools to step into the mythic river of my imagination, and see what bubbles to the surface. This has become a sacred ritual. Dreams, loss, death, love, energy, and ambition rumble through me and I get to watch and be moved -- literally and figuratively -- by it all. And it's still fun; it's vital. It launches me into the parts of my soul that are most alive because they hurt and yearn and criticize. I play all those things to the hilt, often comically, and that honors and exorcises them in a way that wouldn't if I were just sitting around talking. The parts that most of us spend a lot of energy suppressing, I embody.

Why isn't everyone in this kind of therapy?

Joel, a Buddhist, has opened up my meditation practice to metta, the loving-kindness meditation. I've meditated on and off for years and found it a great source of insight and equanimity. Metta, though, has transported me from anger and resentment to compassion and affection. It helps me to put down a victim framework I've always felt at ease in.

Joel is not perfect. I've known him for 10 years and seen his imperfections. But he practices being an honorable man -- he shows up, he's accountable -- and he practices bringing a warm heart to his relationships. I have been more nourished by his presence in my life than I can say.

Godspeed, Joel.

time and space

2007-01-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

Seeking more sun, I went to the Southwest. Sedona, Arizona.

The sun was plentiful, and brilliant as a diamond. It was cold, though, and my friend Betsy and I wore several layers on our hikes, and lit fires at night.

I had a dream last night that I had somehow signed up to live in Montezuma Castle (pictured), the best-preserved cliff-dwelling of the Sinagua people. They lived in the area -- often perched on cliffsides and hilltops -- for 400 years, and left before Columbus came ashore. Between 35 and 45 people lived in this particular community at any given time, high above the Beaver Creek flood plain. They'd scurry up ladders to get home, carrying water, food, wood, and whatever else was needed upstairs. (In my dream, I thought, 'Well, at least it will be good for my legs and glutes.') There are 20 rooms in this castle, accessible (although not to us) from roof hatches.

The material about the Sinagua -- and Betsy and I read our share, at three such sites -- says they mysteriously disappeared around 1400. Nobody knows why. Drought? War? Surely not floods. Yet they were there for 400 years. I pictured time stretching out on either side of most of the people who lived there, and the security of being rooted (even in mid-air) to one place, in one community, for so many generations. I can't really conceive of 400 years. To me, with my human lifespan, it has the feeling of forever.

We lose this sense of time's vastness, living, as we do, in cities and suburbs, where our surroundings update quickly and cement us in a bubble of the present. In Sedona, though, you can't miss time in the landscape. The huge, odd red rocks jutting up remind you of how long they have been there and how quickly you will pass. They frame life. We arrived at night, but our first morning out in the bright sun, I said, "I can see how anyone living here would see these rock formations as deities."

I'm glad to be reminded of time. Like looking up into the vast night sky, it reminds me of my true size. It's surprisingly comforting to be tiny.

at the grocery store

2007-01-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

It's January. The party's over. Time to get back to work.

I have had the oddest month. I was tired and foggy throughout. The last two weeks of December I was sick with a virus that, in addition to making me sniffly and sneezy, effectively tripled my tired-and-foggy quotient. I did not resist. I did not complain. Truth be told, I enjoyed it. Like a bear, I went into my cave and slept. I gave up on pushing myself or making any demands. I stayed home a lot.

It was the happiest month I've had in a long time. That took me completely by surprise. I felt gentle and open and fluid.

Notice I'm writing in the past tense. I haven't abandoned all that, but I'm aware, as I recover from my virus, of my mind clicking into gear again. Expectations begin to shape my experience. I think about what has to happen next. I'm aware of my mind ... my chattering ego, my judgments, my fears ... getting in the way of spontaneous feeling. There are so many ways I stop myself from going to that sacred place in which I honor and listen to and respect whatever arises.

I spent Saturday, my friend Jim's birthday, with his wife, Susan. We had a lovely time. We read aloud plays he had written. We looked at carousels of slides he took 40 or 45 years ago, when he was a carrot-topped kid in the Air Force in Turkey, fighting the Cold War.

Such warmth, such joy, such sadness. I listened on Sunday to a Jack Kornfield dharma talk. He speaks about compassion. Fellow feeling. How bittersweet it is to have your heart flood with love for someone in pain. As I was listening, I was aware that I'd always seen "cultivating compassion" as something that takes work. That's not quite right. (I frame a lot of things according to how much work they take, and that's faulty thinking). It's not right because true compassion can't exactly be cultivated. You can't make it happen. It arises spontaneously. You can till the ground, but you cannot force that flower to grow.

Afterward, I went to the grocery store. I looked at people as they passed. I was aware how every one of them had a complicated life, with pains and confusions and warmth and joy. I realized that I usually walk through the grocery store with blinders on, ignoring the other people there and focusing on whatever I need to find next to put in my basket. I liked looking at them, recognizing that they were as full of hurt and sweetness and confusion as I was.

The next evening, I was aware that I was sad, but the sadness felt both restrained and pulpy. I felt the compulsion to somehow pump it up. My head really got in the way. I recognize this. This is how I ordinarily operate. Recognizing it, I tense up around it and become even more restricted, pushy, and judgmental.

What to do? Relax, let go, I suppose. Don't think about whatever has to happen next. Return to the cave. I'm not sure I know how to do that (there I go thinking, again).

Quiet.

illuminated pool

2006-12-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of a psolodrama, I had a vivid image of a smooth tabletop over brilliant blue water. The water shone the way a lit-up swimming pool glows at night; it was warm and vibrant. I became the water; energy danced through my body.

Then I became the tabletop, and lay flat on the ground.

"I am smooth," I said. "Solid. Expansive. Reliable."

That last word rankled me. "Reliable," I said again, this time growling. My hands curled into fists. "Reliable," I roared, standing up. Something about being reliable was really pissing me off.

"I'm reliable," I said. "I'll do that work. I'll meet that deadline. Got a problem? Lean on me." I was picking things up as I went, gathering them in my arms, more and more commitments and resolutions and ways to be good, until there were so many they towered over me.

Then I dropped them. Whoo! I squealed with glee. "I am not reliable," I hissed. It felt thrilling and illicit.

All the promises and guarantees I'd made, I flung one at a time to the ground. "Not that, and not that, and not that," I said.

I felt different. I felt, somehow, that putting all that reliability down opened up space for other things. For sadness. For happiness. For just being with whatever was going on. As if being reliable had somehow, up until now, gotten in the way.

The tabletop, clearly, was my reliability, and the water beneath was my emotions, or what I like to call my emotional body. I've always had emotions, but there's often been something exaggerated about them. I've manipulated boyfriends with my tears, for instance. My emotional body is more nuanced and fluid and responsive. Always there, on or near the surface, rather than flaring up like a geyser. More subtle.

I have, apparently, used my reliability as a way of steering past my feelings. I managed my way through my friend Jim's cancer and death by throwing myself into work, and devotedly showing up for Jim. Those aren't bad things. But somewhere along the line in being such a good doobie, I circumvented my soul.

That's what happens with coping strategies. They have very good purposes, at first. Then they grow rigid and reliable, and keep us from what we fear: Ourselves, our feelings, our vulnerability.

As I was talking with my witness, I had a fleeting thought: Too bad this won't last. By "this" I meant my fluidity, my openness, my connection with my emotional body. I've had a quiet December, and it's allowed me to bubble with joy and grief and whatever arises. But somehow I envision myself, once this hibernation period has passed, as returning to the rat race, and putting the lid back on my feelings.

I said it out loud: "This won't last." Tears rose to my eyes.

I don't want to put the lid back on. I feel so grateful to have this light-filled pool, this emotional body that embraces pain and delight. I'm uncorked. Like a wine, I'm breathing, getting fuller and more nuanced.

It's interesting that there's a part of me that anticipates recorking as a necessity.

For the moment, though, it's Christmas. And for the first Christmas in a long time, I'm feeling hopeful and jolly and merry. And grateful, grateful, grateful.

Merry Christmas.

gratitude, con't.

2006-12-06T07:18:00.000-08:00

Community. I'm noticing that I don't have enough of it. I've lived here for more than two years, and I've been caught up in work and death and other stuff for most of that time. I'm yearning to build some community for myself. And when I get whiffs of it, my heart gladdens.

I took another psolodrama intensive this past weekend. By now, I know the exercises; I know the form. The intensive, then, is less about throwing myself into the work. This weekend, the group was intent, involved and open-hearted. I did my own exercises, but mostly I was buoyed by witnessing the work of others. At the end, saying goodbye, I told each person what I appreciated about what he or she brought to the workshop. Exuberance, insight, willingness, depth.

It's funny. Most of my adult life, I've framed a lot of my problems around hiding, or not feeling seen. Suddenly, I'm seeing others ... something I hadn't even thought about, or included in my hurting little paradigm ... and it nourishes me.

I'm also grateful to be acknowledging my own limits. Every year I drive myself into a wall in December, working too hard, socializing, fixating on whatever must be accomplished next, and ignoring my own fatigue. This year, for the first time, I'm putting on the brakes. My psolodrama over the weekend was all about propping my stockinged feet up in front of the fire and reading a good book, and ignoring the whip-cracking alter egos who want me to push harder and can't comprehend my snail's pace. I'm reveling in my reined-in lifestyle.

It's good to take care of myself, but there's more to it than that. There was something frantic about the running around -- it was more, somehow, running away. Quiet time has allowed me to embrace sadness about what's happened this year rather than evade it. Consequently, the sadness is no longer monstrous or big, it's just part of who I am, along with many other things. What was a dark vacuum in my psyche has turned into a tender column of light extending from my solar plexus.

That's what this time of year, what the holidays, are all about. Venturing into the darkness, and finding the light.

reframe

2006-11-29T15:18:00.000-08:00

In the midst of a loving-kindness meditation today, with my hands over my heart and my heart feeling like a sponge sopping up a run of good wishes, I suddenly noticed what my head was doing.

It was framing everything in struggle and wear. I'd usher my heart a wish to be well and happy, and my head would list all the things I needed to conquer to achieve that. I'd offer up a wish for ease of body and mind, and my head would check out all the tiny constrictions and reservations and resistances in my muscles and in my soul.

I thought, wow, I really do carp.

So I conjured up another blessing: May I frame my life with gratitude.

There is much to be grateful for.

I visited my ailing stepmother three weeks ago, and despite my own catalogue of resistances, felt love for her and from her when I sat beside her bed. I'm grateful, too, for the delicacy and soufulness with which her son is tending to her.

I often spend time with the children in my family. They're aged seven and below; they don't yet judge, dismiss, or shut out a kookie aunt. They are funny, delightful, bright and engaged. They engage with me, and every time it is a gift. This makes me think of the time my three-year-old niece took me aside last summer and said "Listen to my words: I love you!" Take it in, auntie, take it in.

Those are a good start. More, perhaps, to come.

holidaze

2006-11-27T13:55:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I made a confession to a co-worker. "I'm not always Suzy Sunshine, you know," I told her.

She gazed at me dolefully. "Yes, I know," she said. "It's vividly clear."

Ah, me. I used to think I was pretty good at concealing my emotions. That was back when I thought nobody really noticed me. Turns out, no matter how well hidden I think I am, there are people who specialize in noticing. It also turns out I'm not so hard to suss out.

So here it is, Thanksgiving has past, Christmas is upon us, and I'm no Suzy Sunshine. This has been the case since puberty hit, with the possible exception of the holiday season in 1999, when I was deliriously in love, and so hopped up on endorphins I wasn't tuned into the long, dark nights or the artificially enforced merriment.

This year, the holidays are merely an overlay. A little over a week ago, I woke up to my grief about Jim's death. I'd had a dream that he'd called, but I hadn't picked up the phone -- he was dead, didn't he know that? I didn't want to be the one to tell him. So I just didn't pick up. He left a message.

Then, in a psolodrama, I looked up and there he was. "Hey, Sister Cate, why didn't you pick up the phone when I called?" he asked.

I'd been avoiding him, of course.

I covered my face in my hands. I couldn't speak to him directly. "It's Jim," I said instead, and started sobbing.

Well. Guess I haven't got past that one. And it's true that I gave myself about a month or six weeks after he died, and then I launched into dealing with other things in my life. Dating. Work issues. Jim ... well, he was just background noise, and I was getting pretty good at ignoring that.

And besides. Shouldn't I be over it by now?

Anyone who has contended with the death of a loved one knows better than that, but we all still think it. Come on, girl, pull yourself together!

Trying to pull myself together, though, was like herding cats. It was making me crazy. Irritable. Snappish. Finally, I recognized I was trying to keep a wave of grief at bay -- it rose up and bowled me over; that's how I recognized it. Only then was I able to let myself be. To stop arguing with the sadness and the tears. To offer myself some tenderness about it.

Now I'm not snappish anymore. Just sad, and that's a lot easier. If I'd been snappish over Thanksgiving, I would have snapped. Instead, I spent a lot of time with my nephew and nieces, which is wonderful nourishment, just open-hearted fun.

I'm moving slowly. I cherish my sleep, I cherish being cozy, cuddling with my cats, and the good, long novel I have to read. It's the time of year to hunker down, especially after some losses. I lose someone, or something, and I try frantically to manage the loss. Actually feeling it, integrating it, and accepting it is a much more organic and unpredictable process than any degree of management can handle.

No Suzy Sunshine, I. But that's OK. It may be dark and rainy out, but at least I'm not in denial about it. Sometimes smiles don't work as umbrellas. Sometimes you've just got to let it rain.

manna

2006-11-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend with friends in Hershey, Pennsylvania, inhaling.

I haven't been to Hershey since I was a kid, but my memory of its aroma is negligible. I knew that it smelled like chocolate. I anticipated I'd enjoy that.

I had no clue.

The fragrance that wrapped around us like a sleek fur as we stepped out of the car in the parking lot at Chocolate World was that of brownies fresh out of the oven, only huge and pervasive. It wafted through the city on soft breezes.

We couldn't get enough. The scent was like crack, with none of the negative side effects. It beckoned and massaged, it comforted and gladdened. It had a primal, almost erotic power. Our knees nearly buckled at the first sniff, and we were lost to it.

Driving up Cocoa Avenue, we opened our windows and breathed deep. A man in an SUV in the next lane did the same thing. "Isn't the smell amazing?" I called out to him at a red light.

There was no need to eat the chocolate. The aroma was intoxicating enough.

We were in Hershey less than 48 hours. The amusement park was closed; it didn't matter. At Chocolate World we rode through an exhibition about the history of Hershey and how chocolate is made. We were wildly giddy throughout; I don't remember a single piece of information.

We left the next morning. The only thing we wanted to do before leaving town was snatch another whiff. It was raining, and the rain seemed to wash the chocolate right out of the air. We rode around like dogs, with the windows open and our noses up. Finally, in the parking lot outside of Friendly's, mixing a bit oddly with the smell of bacon and eggs, we found it, rich and pungent, hanging like a curtain in the wet air.

Then we drove out of town, not sated -- never sated! -- but content.

men!

2006-10-31T14:21:00.000-08:00

I learned a long time ago that however I classified men as a group probably said more about me than it does about them. It's much better to take each one as he comes along, as an individual. And it's better to feel that we're on the same team, rather than on opposing ones.

I have one friend who still has a habit of decrying men as an opaque, vexing and perplexing class of people. She's just digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole of loneliness.

I, of course, am above all that.

No, really. I am. Or at least generally. Yet I do have this old system of thinking carved into the recesses of my brain. It hibernates most of the time, but sometimes it groans to life. In it, men do mean something to me as a class. They're different from women. They nourish me in other ways.

In the past two years, my relationship of five years ended -- there goes one important man in my life. Then my first and best male friend died last spring -- Jim, who taught me how stale and rigid all my fearful assumptions about his gender had been. Just around the corner: My therapist, a man, who has been a constant and deep source of support, warmth and personal revelation in my life for the last four years, is leaving town. Not just town. The country. He's moving to Thailand.

The little bedrock of positive male support that I'd built up for myself -- and it took me years; I didn't start to build it until well into my 30s -- feels like it's crumbling. I think that's why I felt so defeated when the guy I had the wonderful date with two weeks ago never called. I am, usually, pretty good at shrugging stuff like that off. Instead, my response has been more ragged. As if all the men are going.

"All the men are going!" That sounds epic, and when any voice in my head sounds epic, it's time to check back to my childhood, when everything really was epic. There, of course, I find this tinny emptiness that characterized my relationship with my dad. The men aren't just going. They were never here to begin with. Boo hoo hoo!

Do I really want to go down that road? The road is there, well trodden. I know it like the back of my hand, and I have to acknowledge it. At the same time, I want to honor my dad, who he was, what he was able to do, how he did try.

I did a psychodrama a couple of weeks ago. This is a different form than psolodrama; in psychodrama, other people actually play the roles. In this one, I was on a wonderful, romantic date, and my dad, off in the distance with a can of Bud, kept calling my name. I ignored him, but he came closer and closer, and finally draped himself around my shoulders. Next thing you know, my date's mother was wrapped around him like a fox stoll.

Fast forward into the future. My date and I are in bed together. With our respective parents clinging to us. How icky is that?! I couldn't ignore Dad, I couldn't appease him, I couldn't kick him out of bed, no matter how dearly I wanted to. He was driving me crazy. Finally, I took him by the hand and led him away to a place I made especially for him.

"I'll come visit you here," I said. "We can talk, or play. I want to honor you Dad, but I need my own space." This felt good, like a real solution. I was amazed that I was moved to say that to him. That I no longer wanted to push him away, deride him, belittle him or rail at him. Instead, I wanted to make room for him. I felt some tenderness toward him. I wanted to do right by him.

For that, I have the men in my life to thank. Despite the crumbling bedrock, there are still a few stalwarts who don't appear to be on the verge of leaving or dying. No doubt there will be more.

Even so, they can't replace these men who have been dear and strong and loving toward me. Loss hurts. And it baffles. Every time I lose someone, I'm baffled. Then I try to make sense of it. Which is what I'm doing here. But it never really works.

but you can try, sometimes...

2006-10-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

My ego can, in times of stress, squeal with resentment and injured pride. Sad to say, if it had a voice in moments like that, it would sound like an outraged Casper the Friendly Ghost. Like my three-year-old niece when she doesn't get something she wants: "But I really, really, really, really, really, really wanted to watch that video!" she pleads and carps in her tiny, occasionally piercing voice.

Poor kid. And my poor little ego. It can only take so much of not getting what it wants.

I've had a tough week. It started with a weekend workshop during which I overextended myself. Or maybe it started last week, with just too much work. At any rate, I was in overdrive, and when you're in overdrive, everything has to happen exactly according to plan, or you skid off the road.

I was already off the road and in a ravine by Monday. Then I suffered a series of small indignities. First, I never heard from a guy I had a fabulous date with two weeks ago. We'd made tentative plans for this weekend. He'd e-mailed how eager he was to get to know me better. He e-mailed again asking when would be a good time to call. Then he didn't call. The eager, floaty balloon of my heart fizzles. As the air escapes, it makes a farting sound.

Second, I encountered -- not, thank you God, in person -- someone I'd had an antagonistic relationship with 20 years ago. I won't name names, but he brought to mind Uriah Heep. He spoke with his jaw locked; his handshake was clammy and limp. He wore the same green sweater and brown corduroy trousers every single day. And he was a stickler about how to type information on index cards. All those descriptions are irrelevant, though. The real problem is that he was supposed to teach me, and he didn't. Instead, he treated me (and others) like his serfs. And, like Uriah Heep, he kow-towed to people in power. He had pretty much subsided from my consciousness, but this week I discovered that he is alive and well, married (married?! Who would marry him?) and running a young nonprofit organization. It was jarring to come across him again -- like digging up someone I'd thought was long dead and buried, and better off for it.

Third, a student interviewed me about my job. This happens about once a year, and usually my ego feels fluffed as a result. Not this time. In her questions, the student touched on all my self-doubts and feelings of inadequacy about what I do, ranging from my lack of knowledge to my relationships on the job. She skinned me and filleted me.

Yowp! But I really, really, really, really, really want to feel appreciated!

Poor kid. You can't always get what you want.

crying in cars

2006-10-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

There's actually a lot to look at during a traffic jam.

I glanced in the rearview mirror as I inched my way out of a tunnel and into the light. The woman driving the car behind me was just getting off her cell phone. Her face crumpled. Her mouth opened. Tears flooded down her cheeks. Thank God we were barely moving, because she was in no shape to drive.

I thought, OK, this will pass. She's behind the wheel of a car. She's surrounded by other people who can see her.

But it didn't pass. Traffic crawled up onto the bridge. The woman did not pull herself together, but threw herself into her grief with gusto. She got back on the phone briefly, still teary, and when she finished the call she abandoned herself to heartbreak, weeping and sobbing and sniffling.

I guessed her boyfriend was breaking up with her. I don't know if that was pure projection or logic. It was something about the phone call. If she'd been dealing with a death or an illness in her family, she would have straightened up on the phone, if only to get her facts straight. Or she would have been in shock. Instead, she'd clearly been completely undermined by something, something she was still making her case about on the phone, still trying to understand. Either a lover had called it quits, or she'd been fired.

I try not to drive when I'm weeping uncontrollably. Once, when I felt convinced that my then-boyfriend was about to call it quits and I had to get to an afternoon tea 40 miles away, I was in a similar state. Close to tears in the driver's seat. In an epic, end-of-the-world sort of way. But I knew I had to drive (I was not in a traffic jam), so I said the serenity prayer to myself over and over again, and got to tea safely, without dissolution or accident. And tea was, of course, tea. Nobody cries at afternoon tea. Sometimes I thank God for the demands of social situations. They can function as that slap in the face of hysteria: Pull yourself together, girl!

We feel safe, alone and enclosed in our cars. We forget that things are not so private. Or maybe some people don't care. Stopped at a traffic light once, I looked in my mirror and saw another woman in another car crying her eyes out. It's a riveting sight.

And I could barely keep my eyes off the woman in the traffic jam, who seemed stuck in every way. She cried and she cried. I grew more and more concerned. As traffic eased out, I passed a state trooper and considered flagging him down, in part to get help for the woman, in part to keep her off the road. But I couldn't really do that on a highway over a bridge. All the drivers were in quickening lockstep until the next exit.

I drove off and left her behind. I hope that she, too, was able to move on.

traffic ii

2006-10-11T07:21:00.000-07:00

Tooling up Rte 91 from Massachusetts into Vermont is the last place I'd expect to hit a traffic jam, but I've never tried it before on Columbus Day weekend, amid legions of leaf peepers.

The problem wasn't just the volume. One lane of this two-lane northbound side of 91 had been closed for repairs. Being the good doobie that I am (or I can be at times), I obediently got into the right-hand lane early, and ended up inching along there for 45 minutes. As we neared the merge, I noticed that uppity drivers weren't zooming up the left lane to its very end, causing a snag. Beside me, the lane was empty. In my rear view mirror, I saw a pickup truck well behind me, moving even more slowly than the rest of us, holding back behind him a snorting herd of automobiles that threatened to stampede.

I felt orderly, appropriate, and unfettered all at the same time. I wouldn't be slowed further by the merge ahead. I silently thanked the man in the pickup.

Then a fellow in a white sedan pulled onto the grass and passed the pickup. The driver in the car behind me saw it too; he pointed scoldingly at the car, well before it got close to us. Another driver from our obedient and orderly lane pulled into the left, attempting to put the white sedan in his place. The sedan again swerved onto the grass. I looked at him as he passed me: He was probably 60, and utterly placid, seemingly unaware of having violated what was quickly becoming an unwritten code of commuter courtesy on that stretch of road.

The floodgates had opened, and cars poured passed me, rushing toward the merge. I knew we all hated them. We considerate drivers, fighting for a highway ruled by manners, respect and sanity, loathed those arrogant, self-involved road jockeys.

We drive along, most of the time, sealed up in our little (or sizeable) pods, listening to music, chatting on the phone, or just musing. We're encased in small worlds that can sustain us for brief periods of time. We feel safe. We feel alone. We may pass another car, but who is in that car has no meaning to us. Yet even sealed within the privacy of our cars, we get drawn into the drama around us, take sides, become part of a community. We don't look each other in the eye. But we do ally with one another, or cheer each other on, or curse each other out. We are not alone at all.

I drove ahead, at 5 mph, and the flood to my left slowed, then stopped. Behind me a few cars back, an 18-wheeler had pulled halfway into the left lane, once again blocking the scourge. The driver behind me pumped a big thumbs up out his window and waved gleefully at the trucker. I smiled. Sure, the road jockeys undoubtedly considered him a joyless bully and a control freak. To me, he was a hero.

traffic

2006-10-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

A lane was closed ahead. The orange cones crept right into it. Downtown traffic clogged. The car ahead of me merged. I let another car pass -- they were moving at about 10 miles per hour -- put on my turn single, and started to merge as well.

I turned to make sure the driver to my left would let me in. She did. She also, with exclamatory emphasis, flipped me the bird.

I know that woman stuck in traffic. She's me (or I, to be grammatically correct). I have a policy about not sharing my volcanic rage with other drivers. I don't give anyone the finger, I don't open my window and holler obscenities. That just courts trouble. I do, however, mutter, swear, and quietly gesticulate my outrage at being cut off, sped past and otherwise taken advantage of by egotistical, self-important and arrogant drivers. Naturally, I am not the least bit egotistical, self-important or arrogant.

In our cars we're nearly anonymous, so we're given free license to be our worst selves. There, the glare of a bad day shines bright. We can commandeer the highway as if it was a video game and the gearshift like a joy stick. We can feel utterly crappy, taken advantage of and generally victimized. If that's what's going on somewhere in our lives, it only gets heightened in the dog-eat-dog environment of a crowded highway. And although we might feel walked all over at work, we probably don't give the finger to our bosses. Instead, let that bitch merging ahead of you have it.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron has a meditation she recommends for when you feel like curling up under a rock with the slugs: If you can't muster any good will for yourself, think of all the people who are feeling the same way you do, or suffering under similar circumstances, and breathe in compassion for them. I love this meditation. I can be stewing in self-hatred, and remembering the other folks in the same stew opens just a niche of kindness toward myself.

When the woman on the highway flipped me the bird, that's how I felt. I took a deep breath, recognized the constriction in my heart, and the fear and helplessness, the rage at that helplessness. My heart softened a little.

I pulled into the lane ahead of her, waving my thanks.

spinning plates

2006-09-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

I've been on a jag of anxiety, vigilant attention, and a frantic pursuit of self-knowledge. It's what I do when I get thrown by some event in my life -- in this case, not getting the job I wanted.

It's like spinning plates. I've got the work plate -- three deadlines in one week, visits to galleries, interviews with artists, meeting with my editor. I set that spinning and it's swift and shimmery, barely touching the top of the stick. Then there's the personal transformation plate: I commit myself to changing an old behavior, an old flaw in my thinking that has long made me shrink and cower. I'm a gonna get that sucka! So I throw myself into psolodramas. I sift through dreams for meaty passages. I grab moments of insight and hold them to my bosom like long lost friends. That plate has a more wobbly spin. There's also a plate for my social life, which sometimes doesn't even make it into the air.

I dash, breathless, from stick to stick, twirling them, desperate to keep all the plates up and spinning.

Then something happens. The other day at dinner my mom got some food stuck in her throat. She didn't need the Heimlich Maneuver. She recovered herself pretty quickly. It was a non-event, but it scared me. It was as if from nowhere, Mom hurled a banana (or maybe a banana cream pie!) at my fancy trick, and all the plates came clattering down around my ears. They now lie in shards at my feet.

That may be melodramatic. I am, after all, still meeting my deadlines at work. But after the initial fright passed and Mom was clearly just fine, I had the distinct feeling of throwing my hands up in the air in desperation. Or surrender. And the thought: I cannot handle another thing. Not one small iota of stress. Not only can I not handle it; I give up trying to handle all the rest. I'm done. To hell with these plates. I'm going to go home, have a mug of tea, and sit with a placid cat in my lap.

I find, of course, that it isn't so easy to just stop. In the car, I still rage at people who cut in front of me, I still rush here and there. It turns out I have to downshift. I've made it out of overdrive, but it will take a bit of time to get me to park in a sunny glade and take a nap.

I'm looking forward to that nap.

fairy tale, con't.

2006-09-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

The wall is massive, constructed of weathered wood and iron. I run my hand over it, feeling its seams and splinters, the cold pebbly rust on the iron. The latch on the wall's giant gate is at the height of my shoulder. I push at the gate; it's immobile. There's a wooden beam locking it in place. I get my shoulder under the beam and push. I strain and grunt and break into a sweat, but manage to get the beam out of its slot. I rest it against the wall and lift the gate's latch. That's stuck, rusted shut. I push it up with the palm of my hand, getting my whole body under it, struggling. It creaks open.

I'm inclined to rest. I'm not even sure why I'm doing this. What's the point? I don't particularly want to go inside. But I grab the latch and pull hard, and the gate inches out toward me. When I've got it far enough out, I sneak my hands inside and pull with all my might. It's heavy; it scrapes roughly on the ground. It won't open much, but I get it wide enough for me to pass through. But I stop there. I'm not going in. Instead, I sit in the lush grass outside and lean against the wall, resting.

The wall speaks. "I do not judge. I have compassion," it says. It only whispers; it has such might, it doesn't need to speak loudly. "The people inside are asleep. It's only dawn and they haven't yet awakened. But they don't sleep well. Their sleep is troubled. They are caught up in power struggles and manipulations and games of the ego. They are not content."

No wonder I don't want to go in.

But inside, someone stirs. It is the troll, and his early morning cackle rouses the minions. "I am the one in power here," he shouts, delighted with himself.

He notices the gate has opened. Although I had pulled it out, to him the gate appears shoved in, as if an intruder has broken in. "Close the gate!" he cries to the minions.

The minions regard him balefully. "You need to relax," they observe.

"Close the gate!" he roars again.

"We're not going to close the gate," the minions say. "We can escape now. Before, we were trapped and had to do your bidding, but now we can walk out. Why would we want to close the gate?"

He pushes the gate, but it won't close. "Sandbags!" he cries. "Block the gate with sandbags and sacks of potatoes!"

The minions cross their arms, tap their feet, and observe him quizzically. "Really, you should relax," they tell him. "Get a cup of herbal tea. Wrap yourself up in a blanket on a cozy sofa. Snuggle with a teddy bear."

"AArrgh!" screeches the troll. He withers and thins, holding himself up against the wall. "I can't, I can't," he whimpers. "I need the wall. I need what is inside the wall contained. I need my power. I need to be seen. I just needed a way to be seen," he cries.

The minions regard him with pity. "Relax," they say. "Try to take care of yourself, why don't you, instead of telling everybody else what to do?"

Pandora's box

2006-09-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

I'm in the thick of it. I wake in the middle of the night, my body tense. Or I wake from a nightmare that my friend Jim knows I'm right there, but cannot see me. I wade through layers and layers of story and meaning burbling up from my unconscious and all of it seems vital, all of it pushes toward sense, but the stories have yet to end.

This is my choice. Work is pushing all my buttons. I can react -- I can't help but react! -- but I can also, please God, begin to take responsibility for the buttons, to understand and tend them, rather than just flail out at everyone around me.

Looking at the buttons feels like hell. This happens when you pull the lid off something that's been tightly, conveniently sealed for years. I'm awash in pain and resentment, and then lit up by glittering insights. I sat down to meditate earlier this week, feeling besieged and crappy. It's been a crappy week. The 9/11 anniversary coverage was re-traumatizing. My ex-boyfriend contacted me out of the blue. I was antsy from not having enough work to do and antsy from trying to have faith that my new situation at work would flow smoothly.

I sat down to meditate. I'm improving, when I sit, at not trying to make myself feel better, not trying to resolve anything, but just being with whatever arises. So I sat with the crappy feeling. And sat. And suddenly an awareness shone through. All this crappy feeling -- the feeling vulnerable and ignored and spurned -- was the embodiment of this bad-ass button I'm monitoring. The old resentment. The chip on my shoulder. It had grown to 5'5", and was sitting cross-legged in my guest bedroom.

Excitement and interest suddenly perked me up. I sat there for another 10 or 15 minutes, holding both feelings. The crappiness, stubborn thing, did not go away. But now I was engaged with it in a different way. I found it intriguing.

Nothing resolved. Nothing is even on the verge of resolving. That afternoon I did another psolodrama and the troll reappeared, as vindictive and nasty and delighted with himself and his power as he had ever been. He called himself the puppet master. He refused to talk to any other character because that would detract from his power; he needed to remain invisible and behind the scenes.

I cannot affect change. I can only watch all this play out. Try to attend to it. Try not to drown in it. Hold this space open to be messy and fertile and icky and surprising. At some point down the line, my inner troll will cede control. He'll melt into grief, or he'll change into a princess who has been under a spell, or his anger will become a force of good. Something will happen. I know this. I'm grateful to have a canvas upon which I can watch my troubled psyche play itself out.

I hope to learn to accept that I'm good at what I do and to be able to act on my own behalf. To stop waiting around to be noticed and to start being a steward for my career. That may mean leaving behind a situation in which I am not properly taken care of. Or it may mean making sure that I am properly taken care of there. Either way, it will be different.

In the meantime, I wait and watch, tearing my hair out, but with a weird excitement, a conviction that while I may be hip-deep in manure, some mighty pumpkins are likely to bloom from this ground.

the troll and the wall

2006-09-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

Since probably before I could talk, I've had a chip on my shoulder. It has to do with my perception that my dad loved my brother more than me. I'm sure the reality was a lot more complicated than that. No matter; it was handy to me to see it in the glare of black and white, in which my brother was elevated to princedom and I was relegated to scullery maid.

True or not, it has eaten into my life in many ways. It's interfered with my relationships with my brother and my father. It has also provided a framework for the way I approach my professional life. At work, I position myself as a supporting player. I skulk away from being noticed by my superiors. And then I blame them for not noticing me.

I'd long beem bothered by my tendency to hide at work. More than a year ago, I recognized that I got something out of the hiding: I got to don Harry Potter's invisibility cloak. I could move around and observe all sorts of things without people noticing me. I had a special power.

I decided I needed to stick my neck out and stop hiding.

Then the diva to whom I was the supporting player walked off the job. Thrust into her role in the spotlight, I thrived. I had candid conversations with my bosses. I rose to the challenge of the job and did it well. For more than a year, I prospered doing that work.

Then my bosses hired someone else to fill the position. Not me.

And here I am with this chip on my shoulder. Stung. Blushing, for even having thought they might hire me. Angry, resentful and hurt. Bristling at the idea of meeting the new guy.

But now this occurs to me: What if I'm getting something out of walking around with this chip on my shoulder? What if I could put this mantle down, stop replaying the same tired drama again and again, and get on with my life? What if, instead of sinking back into the shadows, I could be an able advocate for myself? Actually ask for the attention I need rather than wait around for it, sulking?

This is no easy thing to give up, especially since I don't yet understand why I've clung to it so fiercely, why I've needed it as a central part of my identity.

I've been working on it in my performance practice. Yesterday I had an image of myself, spent, outside a castle wall -- as if I'd laid seige and failed to penetrate the thick stone walls. Today, I saw myself resting at the bottom of a grassy hill, upon which the castle sat. I enjoyed the grass, enjoyed the sun, and felt no desire to be in the castle.

I knew that inside were the king, the prince, and an evil troll. Between that trio and me stood a three-foot-thick stone wall.

Inside the castle, the troll was the central figure, cackling and rubbing his hands together and declaring his paramount control over everything.

Why would I want to go in there?

The wall spoke. Turns out walls have dreams. "I dream of being less rigid and thick," said the wall. "I dream of being porous and open. I don't want to be stone. I want to be white porcelain. That's my dream."

The dream came true, as they often do in psolodramas. The wall went from being dark, forbidding stone to being white, gleaming porcelain, catching the sun's rays, inviting me in.

I still saw no reason to enter.

On the other side of the wall, the troll had stopped cackling, and now started to whine. "I don't want you to be porcelain," he said. "Change back to stone!"

"No," said the wall.

Outside, I lolled on the grass and told the wall that I had my own lair not far from there, with a fire in the fireplace, a featherbed, animal companions, and many good books to read. But I didn't feel like going there just yet, either. I stood up, climbed the hill up to the wall, and placed my hand on it. It was sun-warmed and smooth.

"I like the way you feel," I said, sitting down with my back against the wall. "I feel safe with you here. Not pushed away or pushed out."

The wall liked the way it felt to have me leaning against it. Friendly. Walls are good for leaning. The wall was happy to offer that.

I don't fully understand this psolodrama. It surprises me, for instance, that there's a nasty troll inside the castle; I can only imagine he's my contorted, frightened, controlling ego, but I don't know for sure. I love that the wall became the central character -- something we usually take for granted started to dream, then became malleable, and that affected the characters around it.

I've known for years that shining the light of attention on any knotty problem of the soul starts to unloosen the knots. This has been one of my biggest knots, and I've held fast to it, I know not why. But I'm excited now to be attending to it. Anything might happen.

mountain dream

2006-08-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

I've been on a whirlwind trip to Oregon, to take part in the wedding of my friends M. and J. It was an affair both spectacular and humble. They set up an altar in the backyard of a mountain cabin, with Mount Hood's jagged, snow-strewn peak as their backdrop. A forest fire was eating away at the woods between the cabin and the mountain (we saw pillows of smoke drifting like mist among the fir trees as we drove out there), so the ordinarily pristine view of Mount Hood was obscured by the fire's hot haze. It did not detract from the drama.

The bride and groom had orchestrated the wedding down to the berries we cozied into the archway that stood behind them as they took their vows, and they deployed an army of about fifteen of us. Men and women, girls and boys spent Friday and Saturday retrieving undergarments, tying lavender posies with straw, creating rustic table centerpieces with moss, bark, candles and pears, making the bride's bouquet out of what blooms we could gather, and transcribing the lyrics of "Sunshine on my Shoulders" to fold into the programs.

The bride wore green (and something borrowed, something blue, something old, something new): a brilliant, strapless number with a laced and beaded bodice and a flowing skirt, the color of desert grass. It was a hot, dry day, and the wedding took place at sunset, with the sun heightening the reds in the bride's hair and casting the groom's white shirt with a warm sheen.

The ceremony was grounded and joyful. M. and J.'s dog Finn, festooned with a sunflower wreath, broke away from her keeper in the middle, and ran to be included in the festivities.

Knowing what you want and believing you can have it are two separate things. For as long as I have known her -- more than 15 years -- M. has wanted a sunny house in the woods, an adoring husband, a passel of kids running in and out. But she had a habit of finding men who had a certain magnetism that was almost heroic. Smoke and mirrors. All looks and charm, and not much substance.

I wonder if women are attracted to that kind of man because they don't trust their own substance. There's a desire there to be swept off your feet -- who doesn't have that? -- but life is not a fairytale. When we get swept off our feet, sometimes we're in for a crash landing. Better to keep our feet on the ground and let our heart rise to meet someone.

My friend Jim used to advise this when going on a date: Feel your feet on the floor. Feel your butt in the chair. Feel your hand on the table. Ground yourself.

That's what M. did. She de-magnetized herself. She decided if she felt that chemistry again, she'd turn away from it. That decision made her -- and not some idealized prince -- responsible for her self and her happiness. It made her -- and not some maligned, evil jerk -- responsible for her self and her unhappiness.

And that changed everything. Man, oh man, personal accountability makes such a difference. That's when M. began to believe in her vision, rather than just yearn for it from a distance.

J. entered the picture, and M. didn't feel that magnetic pull, but she noticed something else immediately: She felt comfortable.

Comfort? Is that what love is supposed to be about? Not heartache and crises and drama?

And so, as the sun set last Saturday, burnishing the wedding party rose-gold, M. and J. took vows that honored each one's autonomy and their union. The ceremony celebrated the struggle of standing on your own two feet and loving one another. They embarked upon their marriage in a cradle of family and friends, each and every one of us knowing that what lies ahead won't be happily ever after, but a journey -- one with splendid vistas and cozy resting spots and arduous climbs.

When visions materialize, they're always more cumbersome and awkward than we dreamed, and yet often sweeter for it, sweeter than we ever imagined. M. and J.'s wedding had that full-bodied sweetness, the kind that comes from ripening, from knowledge, from surrender, and from taking responsibility. What a cocktail! May we all, at some point in our lives, sip it.

always sunny

2006-08-17T15:47:00.000-07:00

The sunlight in Provincetown is 100 proof, as keen and mellow as single malt scotch. I went last week for work, padding around town in my flip-flops and looking at the art. This is one of several sculptures that have been hanging out next to the DNA Gallery/ Provincetown Tennis Association for years. He's a lot like Ptown: Friendly, gaudy, good at heart, self-consciously colorful.

Provincetown is at the curled, spit-end of Cape Cod. Sun bounces off the water on either side of town, and reflects off the colossal dunes. Hence its triple threat. On a gorgeous day, everything is turned up a notch: The sky is a sharp, intoxicating blue; the breeze off the water soothes and seduces. I went feeling ticked off about my job situation, but as soon as I stepped out of my car into the splendid day, nursing bitterness took some work.

I'm going back tomorrow. I think I must make it a point to return in December, when we're so short on sunlight. The days may be no longer in Provincetown, but the daylight is magnified.

full throb

2006-08-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, I read the cover story in the current Utne Reader: "Trauma? Get Over It. When to Let Go. How to Heal." I started with Nina Utne's editor's note, in which she recounted slamming her finger in a window, and having the smarts to be mindful. She breathed, and attended: Her finger went numb, then smarted like holy hell, then throbbed. Helplessness, anger, and shame flooded in.

The next day, her finger was much better than she'd anticipated.

The point of the cover story was simple. We all hurt. We're all damaged. Individually and collectively. And we hide it, we stuff it, we run from it, we do anything to avoid acknowledging it. But if we can breathe, and let ourselves feel that hurt and rage and confusion, it not only passes on through -- it transforms us. We grow. Our hearts open. It's alchemy: Lead turns to gold.

I read this story having spent the summer feeling scattered and anxious, and filled with guilt about feeling scattered and anxious. By the time I'd finished reading, I felt OK. Whole. Validated. It's like, man oh man, it's all right that when bad things happen, we reel drunkenly for a few months. Not only all right. Human. Good. A path to follow, blind and hazardous as it is.

Wednesday, I felt more put together than I had in a long time.

That afternoon, my boss called to tell me that he was giving the job I've been trying out for for the last year to someone else.

I went numb. Then I smarted like holy hell. Then I throbbed. I'm still throbbing. I feel helpless, angry and ashamed. Bitterness, accusations, judgments and resentments circle my head like vultures.

So here we go again, back on the trauma merry-go-round. All right, let me at least do it with my eyes open and a modicum of patience for myself.

And let me not ignore that little part of me that's still buzzing about the Utne article, the tiny voice that's saying "that's the kind of story I want to tell." If I'd gotten the job, maybe I couldn't. Now, perhaps I can.

something's right

2006-07-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

At lunch, a friend said "consider the possibility that everything's all right."

Ah, but I'm so in the habit of assuming that something's wrong, and that somehow I'm at the root of it. I don't constantly feel that way, but I can fall into a rut with it if my usual ease in the world gets disrupted. That's where I've been lately.

We kept eating, the conversation shifted, and suddenly I was aware again that I felt, somehow, that something was wrong.

I grew up, a therapist's child, rather attached to the idea that there was something wrong. I spent a lot of time in therapy as a young adult. And then in my 30s, it occurred to me that maybe I didn't need therapy, because maybe I was perfectly all right as I was. What a thrilling proposition! I quit therapy, and took acting classes instead.

Another friend has a teacher who has a "joyful" reaction to confusion.

Imagine feeling confused, and then feeling glad about it. After all, confusion can be wonderfully fertile; it suggests change is on the horizon.

Me, I get confused and slap myself silly over it -- at least metaphorically. "What? You don't know what's going on? You don't understand what's unfolding? Pull yourself together, woman! Get on the stick!"

That makes me feel crappy. But just saying out loud, "I feel joyful about my confusion" makes me smile; it makes me laugh. Sure, that's partly because on the surface it seems so ridiculous to feel joyful about not having a grip on my runaway psyche. But also it just feels good to say. I feel validated. And it's good parenting, which I need to practice with myself: modeling that it's OK to not understand everything, to trust that whatever is happening will have a useful outcome. Like trusting that the wave you're bodysurfing in will carry you to shore. Fight the wave and you're in trouble. Ride it, and you'll be taken up in a great, cold swoop and deposited somewhere else.

It's not easy to switch from feeling wrong to trusting that things are right. But I think I can make a practice of it. When I notice the clutching sensation in my gut that suggests something's off, I can note it, and take the opportunity to smile at my angst.

I may be fighting an uphill battle in a world that feels under seige in so many ways. All the more reason to find some gentleness within my soul, rather than carping and recrimination. And maybe if I can believe something's right, I can pass that forward. It seems worth a try.

my least favorite martian

2006-07-26T15:12:00.000-07:00

I had a recurring dream when I was five years old in which I was stuck in the company of a small green martian, having tea at a toddler-sized table. Maybe it wasn't recurring, only indelible: We seemed to sit there for an eternity. The martian was a riff on Fred Flintstone's futuristic foil, the Great Gazoo. I don't remember any Gazoo episodes of "The Flintstones." My martian was prim, proper, and a thorn in my side. I couldn't escape him.

Ah, but he was mine. Yesterday I did a psolodrama in which I returned to that dream. I played the martian and I played a girl, myself at five. The girl sat on the floor moping and complaining.

"You're whining," observed the martian coolly. He had a British accent.

"This is endless!" I groaned.

It felt that way, too. I jumped out of the scene and became the audience. "We already know this story!" the audience hollered at the little girl. "Go out into the world!"

But she couldn't. She just sat there feeling sorry for herself. I stepped back and became her double, who could speak the little girl's truth. "I can't go out in the world," said the double for the girl. "I like being stuck here. I like my burdens and my angst. My pain makes me special! It's all I've got."

Speaking the truth changed things. The martian sat up and, no longer witty and erudite, emitted a low, constant buzz. That was his truth. The girl jumped up, covering her ears. "I can't stand this!" she said. "I'm getting out of here!" She left the room.

Once away from the martian, she became me, a grownup. I leaned against a wall and felt its support. I grew quiet and listened to the birds singing outside. I loved the spacious silence, and the sense that any sound might rise up, and I would meet it. I felt my feet solidly on the floor. It felt good.

In the dream, the buzz was always there, maybe just as a vibration. It's what made it so uncomfortable. So when it finally arose, it was like a siren, and I got out of there.

The idea of the siren grabs me. I was in this martian's thrall, unable to break away. He was a siren in both senses of the word. On the one hand, pulling me magnetically and sickeningly into his nebulous, inert world. On the other, sounding a warning.

How long I stayed! I didn't conceive that I could leave.

That was how I was with my dad. That was how I was with my ex.

More importantly, though, is how I was, how I can be, with myself. I need to tattoo "We already know this story! Go out into the world!" on my palm. That little girl's truth, "my pain is all I've got, it's what makes me special" kept her stuck there, and it is a rut I fall into, particularly with men. If an interesting man approaches me with interest, I fall into it -- as if this bleeding heart is who I truly am, and the thing that I must share first, that must be accepted, that certainly won't be. Alas! Alack!

What if it wasn't like that?

After all, we already know that story. Go out into the world!

Consider having some fun, instead.

cold feet

2006-07-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

Jim's memorial hike

2006-07-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Thunderheads descended upon Jim once when he was making a solo hike up Mount Osceola in the White Mountains. He was up top when they came, and in danger of getting taken out by a bolt of lightning. I'm sure he took whatever necessary safety precautions he could, and rode out the storm, exhilarated by the sharp, wet smell of the air, the drama of the sky, and his ringside seat.

This is where he wanted his ashes scattered.

Thirteen of us converged on the small parking lot at the trailhead at 10 a.m. on Saturday. Some of us, at least, felt trepidation. Susan had called this event "the big one." She must scatter Jim's ashes at four sites, and this was the third. Perhaps it was big because so many of us showed up; perhaps it was because it's the most physically arduous. Or perhaps, in some way, Mount Osceola represents a pure, open-hearted part of Jim more fully than any other. I don't know.

Bethany and Ted were Jim's designated leaders and ash-flingers. Bethany organized the hike, warning us all that it would be steep and arduous, and that those of us doubtful of making the climb should take the low road to Greeley Pond and picnic there while the others did the deed.

Jim would have assured me that I'm capable of the climb. There's something about me, a part he knew well, that loves to climb and scramble upward. The whole group came to the path diverging in the woods, and had to make our choice. I was still groggy from having gotten up early; I was not feeling like a conqueror. I chose to stay with Susan on the low road. So did Charlene. The rest of the group began the ascent.

Before they left, we all placed our sweaty hands on the brown box that held Jim's ashes. Susan blessed them and tearfully sent them on their way. We left our palm prints all over it.

Ted had cannily brought along a pair of walkie talkies, so the two groups could, we hoped, remain in contact.

Susan, Charlene and I made our way toward the pond, and almost immediately we encountered a huge boulder in the middle of the path; it was perhaps eight feet tall and ten feet wide, and it had a tree growing out of it; the boulder was in the embrace of the root system. I felt compelled to climb it.

"This is where we should make our cairn," Susan said. We foraged for rocks, tossed them onto the boulder, and climbed up.

Each rock represented a characteristic of Jim's: His wisdom, his generosity, his talent for listening, his sense of humor, his acceptance of his own shadow. With each, the one holding the rock would speak, then the other two would lay their hands on the rock. After a moment of silence, we'd lift our hands in the air, singing out "Ho!" as if releasing Jim. Then we'd add the rock to the cairn. Many of them brought fresh tears.

The final rock was mine. "This is Jim, himself," I said. "I miss you."

When it was done, we all felt lighter. We climbed down from the boulder, hiked to the pond, and feasted on sandwiches.

The walkie talkie crackled. It was Ted. We told him we were at the pond; the high-road hikers could see the pond, and a little beach on the shore opposite where we were.

"We've built the cairn, and we're ready to scatter the ashes," Ted said.

"Wait until we get over to the beach!" Susan said, and off we went.

A family of four was on the tiny beach. Dad was knee-deep in the pond, fishing, and his eight-year-old son was at his side, making nice casts. Mom and the daughter, who was perhaps 10, were on shore, watching.

"We have friends up on the mountain, about to scatter my husband's ashes," Susan explained. We listened over the walkie talkie as Ted made an invocation about Jim, and about the ashes.

We couldn't see them at all. "Maybe you can hear them if they yell," the boy said.

"Let out a whoop after you've scattered them!" Susan told Ted.

We stood there, staring up at the ridge line, listening, listening. We thought perhaps they were just too far away.

And then, "Whoooeee!" we heard it loud and clear.

"Whoooeee!" we hollered back.

"Whoop again!" Susan said. We wanted to pinpoint where the sound was coming from.

"Whoooeee!" It came from a little rock face to the left of the eastern peak. We echoed back. We thanked the family -- the mother was wiping tears from her cheek -- and plunged back into the underbrush to start the return hike.

Susan took off ahead of Charlene and me. We thought perhaps she wanted some time to herself. We chatted about grief and about relationships and about love. We came upon Susan sitting by a rushing brook, smiling.

"We thought you wanted to be alone," we said.

"No," she said. "I was just feeling so light, I flew."

When Jim would hike with Susan, who didn't hike much, he always followed, just to be sure she was OK. When we started our hike, before the low road split from the high road, Ted took up this position naturally -- at the end of the long line of hikers, with Susan.

I can't help but feel that Jim was there, behind us all, on this particular hike. It wasn't merely that he made this request to Bethany and Ted before he died, or that he was there, palpably, in this community of people he had brought together. Every part of it seemed to have his spirit in the background. When the climbers had finished their cairn and scattered the ashes, a woman came through saying a thunderstorm was due to hit within the hour -- they should get off the mountain. The storm never came. But it was as if Jim was there, saying "remember why I love this place. Remember what this is about."

Me, I still feel his loss acutely. But I felt his presence in the company of his friends and his wife, in the woods that he loved. His practice was always to be present, to see the beauty in a tiny flower hidden in the grass, to appreciate the people you love, to connect with each other and with the beauty of the natural world. We did all those things on Saturday, for Jim, and for ourselves.

simply not appropriate

2006-07-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm angry at Jim. For dying. For going away. I'm angry for the way he suffered. I'm angry at how wrenching and terrible the whole thing was. (Wait -- wasn't it beautiful and filled with love and compassion? Can it be both?). I'm angry that he's just plain gone. I'm angry that it seems impossible to hold fast to anything -- even the people I thought I could rely on. Everybody, everything passes. It sucks.

Angry at a man for dying too young, ravaged by cancer? This reminds me of how wrong it was to be angry at my ex, and all the crap he rained down on me when he suddenly started dealing with a very painful childhood. Compassion, compassion, compassion. I was the soul of understanding. Poor, broken man! It took me more than a year before, hey! I got really pissed about it.

Why does it seem as if anger and compassion cannot exist at the same time? I still love Jim, even though I'm angry at him for leaving and angry about what he went through, what we all went through. I wouldn't be angry if I didn't love him in the first place.

I'm just too damn nice. With luck, I'll get more ornery as I age.

better than stories

2006-07-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

As a kid, my coping mechanism was analyzing my life. My mom was a therapist, so I learned it early.

One woozy summer evening in my late 20s, I was at a party. The company was good. Chicken was on the barbecue on the back porch. Somebody had brought Indian food. I found myself at the center of a circle of people, telling a story about a drunken gynecologist, scion to the Hidden Valley Ranch Salad Dressing fortune, I had met in a bar in Chico, Montana.

My god, I thought. Stories are so much more alive than analysis. I'm not going to analyze anymore, I'm just going to tell stories!

Well, that hasn't exactly worked out. But it did mark a significant shift in the way I frame my life, both to myself and to other people. It's really a relief not to constantly analyze it.

Last night I went into my psolodrama session feeling melancholy, but I could neither analyze nor put a story to the feeling. Maybe it has to do with grief about Jim. Maybe it has to do with something else. I couldn't point to anything. So during the psolodrama, I didn't try to force meaning onto the feeling. I just let myself feel it, and let my body and voice respond.

Halfway in, I found myself blowing bubbles. Huge, voluptuous, undulating bubbles, like at the Fourth of July parade I went to. I'd blow, then I'd become the bubble, wafting grandly and slowly through the air until I popped. Then I would blow again. I had the distinct sense that I was blowing my sadness into each bubble.

After a time, I stopped blowing bubbles. I stood there quietly for awhile. Then I opened my mouth and sang out, letting my voice resonate from the places in my body where the sadness resided -- my chest, my solar plexus. It was as if my emotion was a harp, and I was strumming it with my voice.

At the end, I thought, wow. this is better than stories.

fourth of july

2006-07-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

happy feet, fuzzy head

2006-07-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

And then I went to give blood. A curious choice for someone who had recently fainted, out of the blue. I told the phlebotomists what had happened. They asked if I'd eaten that day, and seemed unconcerned. Then they took a pint of my blood. It flowed quite quickly and freely out of a vein in my left arm.

That afternoon, I went strawberry picking, an activity that entails crouching and standing repeatedly. Every time I stood up, I had a head rush. I did a lot of bending over in mid range, to restore the blood flow to my brain.

And I am still, still, still not operating on all cylinders. I find if I lean my head back to use eye drops, I get a little dizzy.

This reminds me of the fog I was in last March, and into April. I believe that came about after months -- perhaps years! -- of concentrating too hard. Trying to make things happen in my life by sheer will power. Heal the (ex-)boyfriend. Get the job. That will power finally imploded and I was left standing in a fine mist, fairly content to not try to make anything happen ever again.

My energy came back in mid-April, just at the time I was really grappling with Jim's imminent death. It came back with force, in a psolodrama in which I fended off, and then embraced, a dark ball bristling with energy, which had to do with death and rebirth.

The process of Jim's dying, and all that followed his death, commanded an energetic, engaged presence.

And now? Nobody's making that kind of demand on me, and my brain is once again in a fog.

Here's a good thing: I went to the Wilderness House on Commonwealth Avenue. The people who work there know how to fit a shoe. I hadn't been in years, but the last trail shoes I got there had my pronating feet and the body they support in happy, supportive alignment for months. The new pair is just as good, so good that I thought putting them on this morning might clear my thinking. That hasn't happened, but ooh la la!

seeing stars and cigars

2006-06-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

I passed out.

I've been meditating all month, for 30 minutes a day, and as a result have been feeling more stable and centered than I have in a while. First, meditation brought me back to myself; I felt as if I'd been on the run for some time. What I found there was pretty cranky. But that passed. I had one helpful meditation during which I could picture the rumbling of my mind: muscular, sinewy, insistent, occasionally whiny. My ego. Then I conceived of the space around it, and I found some calm there.

So I was weathering this past week, which I could see was a chaotic one for many, sedately. I had a lot of work to do, but it was fun, and felt manageable. On Thursday I set out to go to art galleries. I called one ahead to make an appointment (the others were open). The gallerist, Kathy, offered me food. I declined, saying I'd eat before I got there.

But I didn't. I shopped for new hiking boots, to have time to break them in before the big hike in the White Mountains to scatter Jim's ashes. I went to one really large art exhibit, and time began to run out on me. There was no time for lunch before this 3 p.m. appointment. I got to the gallery late, anyway. The heat and humidity set in; storms were brewing.

Kathy spread some drawings out on the floor to show me. I crouched to look at them. I stood up too fast, and blacked out. I crumpled to the floor. The impact of my face on concrete roused me.

"You fainted," said Kathy. "Did you eat?"

"No," I said, sitting up. "I fainted." I groped on the floor for my glasses. "My glasses are broken."

"You have low blood sugar because you didn't eat," she said. "You have low electrolytes. This has happened to me. I'm going to get you something to eat. You stay there."

She gave me a damp paper towel to press against cuts on my cheek and brow. I sat there on the floor, my head spinning, feeling perplexed at myself. Kathy brought me back a sandwich and we picnicked on the floor, chatting, before I got up and went back to work. My cheek was scraped; I had an egg on my eyebrow. Now I have a black eye.

I have low blood pressure. I always experience that head rush when I stand up from crouching -- it seems to happen a lot in bookstores and libraries, where I'm more prone to crouch. But I've never passed out before. What seems odd to me is that such high drama should occur when my life was finally feeling less dramatic.

Reflexively, I wonder what else was going on, that my body should bring me to an abrupt halt. For instance, I had a dream the other night of being bruised, and ignoring it. Now I have a black eye, which is hard to ignore.

On the other hand, maybe a cigar is just a cigar, and maybe the lesson here is as simple as not skipping any meals.

The next day, I drove three hours west for work and to spend the night with friends. I felt fragile, which I think was more emotional than physiological. Now I'm back and it's pouring outside and I feel spent and foggy.

And so I will be spent and foggy, and grateful that I have a quiet week ahead.

lost key

2006-06-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

I have spent a week moving more slowly. Meditating every day. My dream life suddenly welled up. After a month of dashing around in a frenzy, trying to show up and do what's right, after a month of avoiding really being with myself, here me and I are in the same room.

The air is charged.

There's a lot of discontent and resentment.

"What were you doing, off taking care of everybody else, getting all wrapped up in work, leaving me here in the dark, forgetting that I even exist?" I ask myself. My voice is keyed up, shrill. "Don't you know that I exist? That I matter, too?"

I cross my arms and tap my foot. Pouting, I gaze up at the ceiling.

Myself, I know I should have shown up earlier. I feel guilty. Feeling guilty accomplishes nothing. And besides, it's all been overwhelming. I'm doing the best I can, for God's sake. And this behavior -- the accusations, the pouting. Typical! Manipulative! Is that really the most effective way to step up and ask for attention? At any rate, here I am now.

I soften, a little. "It's just that it's hard," I say. "Like a great roar all around me, or a tornado. Chaos. I can't see and nobody sees me."

There's a Sufi story about Nasruddin, a wise fool. A friend came upon him one evening, on his hands and knees under a street light.

"Nasruddin," his friend said. "What's wrong?"

"I dropped my key," Nasruddin said. "I'm looking for it."

The friend knelt beside him and looked around. The key was clearly nowhere near. "This is where you dropped it?"

"No," Nasruddin said. He pointed out into the darkness. "I dropped it over there."

"Then why are you looking here?" his friend asked.

"Because this is where the light is," said Nasruddin.

Myself, I'm like Nasruddin. I've been out in the dark, and I've finally fumbled my way into a puddle of light. And everything still feels wrong.

But I fumble on, because -- as Nasruddin knows -- looking IS the key.

on and off the treadmill

2006-06-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

I have spent the day slowly, at home, doing ordinary Monday things. I worked productively, but not too much. I went to the bank. I searched for a cord to refill my edger, because my lawn desperately needs edging, and could not find it anywhere.

I did not socialize. I did not drive out of town. This is a kind of bliss, to have nowhere to go and no one to see.

Since Jim died, I've been in overdrive. This has been partly due to work demands -- although usually I manage those at a sane pace. Then, I toppled into a neurotic rut that has had me in a panic about not being good enough at work. I'd been told that the search to fill the position I've been vying for since last summer continues. Tunnel vision closed in. My breathing went shallow. I began to run faster and faster on the little treadmill in my head.

I recognized the neurotic rut yesterday; I'd been through it before, immediately after my job interview. Recognizing it helps. I can begin to imagine that I don't have to be panicked. I begin to remember that I'm good at what I do, no matter who gets hired.

Yet all that is a distraction from Jim's death. I saw my therapist more than a week ago now. I went in there all dammed up, ranting about work. Then I bit my lip. "This isn't what's going on," I said. "I don't need to talk about this."

"What do you need to talk about?" he asked.

I started to tear up. "I don't want to say it," I said. The words came into my head, but I refused to say them aloud: "Jim died."

"Say it," my therapist insisted.

I couldn't, and I couldn't.

Then I did. "Jim died." And the floodgates opened. All the stuff that I hadn't even let myself think about poured out of me. The fear. Jim's rage, which rose up in him in his last, mute days, scared me. I've done pretty well at hearing other people's anger and letting it be. But Jim's fury frightened me, and I had just swallowed it and soldiered on. I didn't want him to leave angry.

My therapist suggested I embody Jim. So I moved across the room and became him. He greeted me warmly.

I could hardly cope. Being in "his" presence like that felt healing, and yet it reiterated the loss. "I'm sorry I went to Oregon," I sobbed. "I'm sorry I was away when you died." I hadn't even realized I felt guilty about that.

"You didn't need to be there," he said to me. "I'm not sure I would have wanted you to be there. To see me like that. I don't want that to be how you think about me."

It was a painful morning. Acceptance is painful. It seeps in and out. I was glad and relieved to have cried, and I've found in the last week that there are moments I embrace sadness, and moments I run from it like a jackrabbit runs from a coyote. Work is a handy way to run from it.

But slowing down enough to live life at a normal pace, to get little errands accomplished (or to endeavor to accomplish them and not flare up when they don't work out right), to just begin to imagine what it is like to relax and be at ease in the world again, that helps. At a normal pace, there's room for sadness and grief, and there's room for happiness and connection. There's room for me.

soul smelting

2006-05-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

You'd think that there'd be a little quiet space, a tiny respite to pull myself together, a mourning period after a friend dies, before life slaps into me like a cold, swollen water balloon.

No such luck. That's pie in the sky, anyway. I was just talking to a friend who wondered why life can't just be perfect and blissful all the time. I can't say that I would want it to be. Then we'd lose out on all the stuff of learning. Life, after all, is the smelting of the soul.

This is what I've arrived at about Jim: I don't really believe he's dead. He wasn't a regular part of my everyday life; here in my house, he's not missing. I realize, in order to feel his absence, I must go somewhere that Jim and I shared. The Blue Hills, I think.

Meanwhile, there's some tiny part of myself desperately sandbagging a brimming levee. The sandbags are my denial and disbelief. The levee...

Oh, we keep pain at bay. And in the end, it's always easier, more true, more humane, to feel the pain than to fend it off. Fending it off takes a ton of energy. Feeling it, surrendering, we find some peace with ourselves.

That's just what's been going on under the surface as everything else rolls along like a high-speed train: an eye infection from my contact lens solution; an empty unit in my three-family house; and stress about a job opening that I can't even begin to explain.

But it's hard to retreat from the clamor of the world when I'm all resistance on the inside, anyway. Something's got to give. And it's going to end up being me.

good grief

2006-05-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

And now, I guess, begins the grief.

I have gone through this before, but previous deaths -- my dad, my friend Pat, my editor -- were quick or sudden, and they sacked me like a 260-pound linebacker. Jim's death I expected. Anticipated. Thought about.

That doesn't mean there's a way to actually prepare for this. There's still a young, concrete-thinking part of me that can't comprehend that Jim was here and now he's not.

I find myself addled and sore and distracted. I wrote a story on Monday, then completely forgot to file it by its deadline at noon, Tuesday. Hours later, and miles away from my computer, I thought, "I suppose I'll hear from my editor this afternoon about that story." Then I backtracked and realized I'd never sent it to her.

My mind feels a bit as if it has imploded, and my little witnessing self is walking around in a landscape of soggy rubble.

The funny thing is, I don't find myself ruminating about Jim. My raggedy emotional state, at first glance, doesn't seem to have anything to do with him. I suppose this is partly because his death was no surprise, and it's partly because there were no loose ends between us, nothing I wish I had said, nothing I wish I hadn't said. And even when I think that he's gone -- I know that he's gone -- he is still very much here in my heart. His wisdom, his kindness, his comedy, his attentiveness. So he doesn't feel gone; he feels present. Even when I'm not thinking about him. Even when I forget that the reason I must be such a basketcase is because Jim died.

At least I have the wits to know that it's OK, right now, to be a basketcase.

eulogy

2006-05-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

There was a time when Jim thought of himself as someone who walled people off. Maybe. We all do, to some extent. But Jim, with his big heart, and his ability to touch people with humor, kindness, and his talent for listening, was at the center of the community here today.

About a month before he died, Jim was awakening early and meditating for two hours with a serenity he had never known before. "I'm aware of my desire to be kind, to be gentle, to be honest," he told me. "To have integrity."

Jim practiced kindness and integrity the way a musician practices the piano. Every day; some days better than others. Each day he meditated. Every night he would send out an email, "Egoless notes from the Quarry Bud-duh?" The notes would report on his day, his practice, his joys, his gratitude, his occasional struggles with anger and resentment.

Jim was a master of resentments. Like any of us, he could bristle at wrongs done to him. But then he would ask himself a question: What is my part in this? If he had done something wrong, he would own that. If there was a flaw in his thinking, he would own that. The more he took responsibility, the less victimized and resentful he felt. The door he had slammed shut in his heart would crack open and warmth would flood back in. Often, finding himself accountable in some way, he would apologize. This was Jim's practice.

It was also his practice to try to stay in the moment. Before he met Susan, he would go out on a date and find himself tongue-tied and anxious. Then he realized he could manage this by returning to the moment: Feel his feet on the floor, his rear in the chair, his hand on the fork. Taste the food. Taste the tea. When he did this, the neuroses faded and the real, funny, gallant Jim rose to the occasion.

Being in the moment was the juice of Jim's creative life. As a photographer, walking in the woods on a gray day, he'd spot the smallest blossom peaking out from a bed of leaves on the forest floor, and frame it with his camera. Theater brought out Jim's puckish playful side. In our acting group, he gave our scenes gothically dark twists. He wrote a one-act play that we performed at a Playwrights Platform festival. It was a sharply satiric take on Dr. Kevorkian's death fetish.

Sound dark? It delighted Jim. He'd love that I'm mentioning Dr. Kevorkian at his funeral. Irreverent and black, that was Jim's sense of humor.

I typed up the plan for this memorial service for Jim. He dictated it to me in March. He had specific topics he wanted each speaker to address. Mine were his creative life and his spiritual life.

Having done that, I want to speak for a moment about something in Jim that was both creative and spiritual. That is his capacity to connect. He was a great friend to me. He told me early on that he had learned to simply listen, and not try to fix things. Over the years he listened to me rage and dither and rejoice. He was always, unfailingly interested, even in the rare moments when I lashed out at him.

About a year ago, my therapist suggested I come up with two people I've had in my life whom I felt were friends of my heart -- whom I felt really seen by, appreciated by, loved by. I came up with Pat, my mom's best friend, who died when I was 23. And I came up with Jim. I remember after Pat died, dissolving into tears, able to say just one thing: "She loved me."

Jim loved me too. And I love him. And I would be remiss, talking about love and Jim, not to speak of the core of his life these last few years, his wife Susan. It's true: Jim did wall people out, particularly potential partners. But then there was Susan, and Jim, astonished, was ready. He tried to fend love off, at first. He tried to find fault. But for each small niggling detail about Susan that tripped him up -- for instance, it concerned him at first that she prayed before meals -- he would then marvel, "but I still love her."

The love only grew. Each alone for so long, they were surprised by the strength and warmth they found together.

Jim didn't talk much about dying. He told me, the day I typed up the memorial service, that he was "accepting." And he had told me last summer, after his cancer metastasized to his brain, "I think I have enough adventure in me to want to see what comes next."

Jim faced his fears. His courage, especially these last two years as he's battled his cancer, has humbled us.

I'll leave you with the last Egoless note from the Quarry Bud-duh? Jim wrote it on March 16.

Meditation and Compassion: Dear fellow travelers:
Due to general weakness and unsteady fingers, I will be unable to continue writing the notes for the time being. Today's practice was wonderment. I hope I have been of some service to you all.
--?

Jim, indeed you have.

Jim's death

2006-05-12T14:32:00.002-07:00

I was in Oregon the night Jim died. I got in Thursday evening, headachy and tense from an 11-hour trip. I had trouble sleeping. I started awake at midnight, pacific time, when I dreamed that a big black snake shot out of the closet beside the bed.

Jim died at 2 a.m., eastern time. Susan was there with him, and so was their friend Bethany. Ted had been there much of the day, but went home at 9 p.m. It was clear Jim was going that night. He was in a lot of pain. Hospice had provided pain pills, and a syringe with which Susan could shoot meds into his mouth, but it was not enough. She says it was like a war zone. She held him and told him how wonderful he was, how much she loved him. Close to the end, he opened his eyes wide and looked right at her.

When he died, peace filled the room.

At 3:30, she sent out an e-mail. It began:

"Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest" -Hamlet

Susan spent the rest of the night curled beside him on that miserable inflatable hospital bed.

Bethany spent it on the love seat next to the bed.

Ted, who had not slept a wink, got up at 4 and checked his e-mail. He woke his wife. They went to Jim's.

At 10 that morning, they called the crematorium and the hospice. By noon, Jim's body, the bed and the wheelchair were all gone. Ted called me. It was 7 a.m. in Oregon; I was still asleep, with my phone off.

My friend Madeleine, whom I was visiting, got Susan's e-mail. She told me Jim had died. This was no surprise. I expected him to die while I was gone; I couldn't see how he would last much longer. But I was stunned. I checked my messages and called Susan. Bethany answered. I spoke to Bethany, Susan and Ted.

Susan sounded as if she had just attended a birth, not a death. She was filled with love and with gratitude. What a tone she sets!

I got off the phone. I still had the plane-ride headache. I felt pressurized, from the news and from the traveling. I took Mad's dog, a lithe, muscular, frantically friendly dog named Finn, and went outside. Mad lives in a cabin in the woods; it overlooks a creek. Finn and I went up a trail.

I have spent more time in the woods with Jim than with any other person. It felt right to be in the woods, with a companionable dog. It felt good to move my stiff body. We went down to the creek, where I hollered and nobody could hear. It felt good to vocalize. Finn and I then sprinted back and forth across the bridge that crosses the creek, passing each other at top speed. It felt good to be alive.

Mad had gone to run an errand, and when she returned, words started to burble out of me. About Jim, and his dying, and his pain, and his anger, and his grace. About Susan, and her gratitude. About Ted and Bethany, and what they had all been through, and how I had not been through it, and how I was glad, glad, glad to be in Oregon. About my own fears. About my own rejoicing. I talked and talked, and noticed that my headache was gone.

This happened after my father died: After the initial shock passed, I was euphoric. For weeks.

With Jim, it's simpler. He was not my father. There was a lot of darkness in the relationship I had with Dad. With Jim, it was almost all light. Also, Dad had a stroke and died six days later. Jim had lung cancer for more than two years, which gave us plenty of time to process and anticipate his death.

For two days, I felt every moment, and many of them were spiked with joy. I hiked. I took yoga. I sat in a hot tub on the back porch. I savored the company. On my third morning in Oregon, I woke up in the coziest of guest beds, luxuriating, and slowly recognized that something had seized me, and was twisting me as if I was a rag doll.

Ah, I thought. Grief.

I sat with it for two hours, meditating. Then I went about my business, and by afternoon I felt loose and open again, and very sad.

The following morning, I felt the same constriction.

And so it goes. I am back home. I saw Susan yesterday. She reports that she is good; she continues to live each day with an open heart, rolling with the emotions as they arise, weeping, loving, appreciating. It was hard to go into Jim's room and see his absence. I am addled, resistant, sad. Finding my way, I suppose.

Tomorrow is the funeral. I am one of the speakers. I'll post my eulogy here. I look forward to the funeral, to the community, to all the warmth for Jim that will be expressed.

He is gone, but somehow still here.

obituary

2006-05-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

This from Debra:

Here is the text of the obituary Susan placed in the Boston Globe

James F. Moran
62, May 5, 2006. A marathon runner, avid hiker, writer, meditator, cook par excellence, long-time friend of Bill Wilson, artist/photographer with a strong love of nature and a good man. He is survived by his wife Susan, his brother Tom, a sister-in-law and 2 nieces. A memorial service will be held at First Parish of Watertown, 35 Church St, May 13th 1:30-3:30 PM. In lieu of flowers, please donate in his memory to The Wellness Center, 1039 Chestnut St, Newton Upper Falls, MA 02464 or 12-Step Members may give in his name to your local fellowship.

The morning this apt obituary ran, Susan had a thought: she should have included among his survivors his loving dog, Miss Ivy.

Jim update

2006-05-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

James F. Moran
Dec. 31, 1943 - May 5, 2006

Jim update

2006-05-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

Man, this is tough to watch.

And at the same time, so filled with moments of grace.

Jim is now confined to a hospital bed. If he talks, it's monosyllabic and in a whisper. Last Friday, he had a great day, with many visitors. He was sitting up and joking around. Sunday was a terrible, raw, ragged-ends day, with a lot of pain and confusion. Things get rough, and then they soften. I was there Tuesday, and he slept much of the time, but when he was awake he knew me, he understood what I said to him.

Yet that day he'd gotten furious when a home health aide walked in on him in the bathroom. The hospice worker observed that his anger could keep him going for some time. Apparently, it's hard to die when your mad as hell. And dying would make a person like Jim mad as hell.

Every time I visit, I have to buck myself up to go inside. But usually once I'm in, I'm so happy to be there. I get confused about how best to be with Jim -- whether to try to communicate, or to just sit quietly with him. And to witness his decline is terribly sad. But the love continues to flow in that household, with good friends stopping by and Susan walking through all this as consciously and with as much love and tenderness as she can.

The other day, when a pack of people was in the kitchen, one fellow noticed that we'd come from far and near, and wondered how many states we represented. Susan raised her hand. "I'm from the state of psychosis!" she volunteered.

She soldiers on. We all do. We pull into each other for support, face what comes, and soldier on.

Jim update

2006-04-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

Jim hangs on. He fell on Wednesday night, so now he has a wheelchair, and a hospital bed has been set up in the living room. He's taking some kind of morphine orally, which knocks him out for hours at a stretch and makes him foggy and occasionally delirious. But when I was there in the late afternoon yesterday, along with various other friends who passed through, he was present and accounted for. He came into the kitchen from a nap, and sat at the kitchen table, listening to the conversation and occasionally adding to it.

Our friend Ted was there, and Jim had told me he wanted to show Ted the program we'd typed up for the memorial service. I asked Ted if he'd seen it, and he said he had. Jim piped up, "how much do you think it's going to cost us?"

Another friend came through whom we hadn't seen in years. After he left, I remarked that it had been good to see him, that he was more portly and middle-aged, and that his situation sounded good.

"His portly, middle-aged situation," Jim said.

Having been with my dad as he was dying in the hospital after a stroke, I'm struck by how different it is with Jim. For one, he gets to maintain his dignity, with minimal poking and prodding at odd hours by medical personnel. Yesterday, with Susan there and four friends coming and going and the two dogs being their friendly selves, the house was filled with love, humor, gratitude and gentleness. I feel a pull to go back and bask in that company again. Going to sit with my dad in the hospital, I had to grit my teeth and drag myself there.

The message for a couple of weeks now has been that the decline will be fast, and that death is imminent. Certainly, Jim's decline has been dramatic, and at moments frightening. Then he seems to bounce back, as he did yesterday. There's really no telling when he'll go. He's always been tenacious. He was a marathon runner and a mountain climber. After he shredded his rotator cuff and had surgery, he took to his physical therapy with fearless dedication. He knows how to persist.

But he has already persisted for a long time.

Whenever he goes, as terrible as it is to see him suffer and to let him go, Jim's dying has been a gift, just as his living has been.

Jim update

2006-04-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

Watching someone just fade away is a terrible marvel.

I visited Jim yesterday. He'd had a bad night and was sleeping when I got there. Susan, not wanting to leave him alone, asked me to stay there with him until our friend Ted arrived, who would wait until Susan got home.

So I sat and read "Calvin and Hobbes" while Jim snoozed in his recliner. After a half hour, he awoke and I sat down in the living room with him. He was not up for conversation. He couldn't follow my threads and I couldn't follow his. He would doze off, then say something, some part of his inner monologue would pop out. He did say at one point that I shouldn't mind his daydreaming, and at another point, after he suggested going upstairs and I asked why, he said "we'll have to wait for the fog to clear from my brain to find out."

I had made a little book, "My Friend Jim," out of construction paper, photocopied snapshots, and snippings from magazines. I gave it to him, but he had no focus to read or look at it, so I put it aside. It may be that making it was more necessary for me than seeing it is for him.

It was strange to be with him and have no conversation. He's such a quick, verbal man. It was strange, but not uncomfortable. Ted came, and I had to go off to work. I told Jim, "I love you. Goodbye. I'll see you soon." And he gave me such a hug! Long, fragile, but certain.

I don't know if he was saying "I love you. Goodbye. I won't see you again." I do know that although his mind was wandering, his heart was full and present.

Susan e-mailed me that Jim was in a near stupor when she got home. I understand her frustration and fear, not to be able to engage him, not to be met. It is so hard to have a loved one go off on a journey without us.

She saw the little construction paper book, and asked him if he wanted her to read it to him. So they sat on the couch, and she read it through to him, and then asked if he wanted her to read it again. Yes, he said, and so she did.

I'm glad of that. Whether he took in the details of the book I don't know, but I'll bet he basked in its spirit. And Susan did, too.

This is so hard. All we can do is be there for it.

the dark sphere

2006-04-15T06:41:00.000-07:00

The weight of the news about Jim has been like an infusion. It's everywhere in and around me. I've been a teabag, steeping in sadness and disbelief.

Yes, and.

The other day, during my weekly performance/meditation practice, I started first with just moving. Lying on the floor, I stretched, I flexed. My body moved as it wanted. I felt the energy in my arms, my hands, my back and legs. And I thought, I marveled -- I'm alive. Alive! It was brilliant, amazing, sheer luck! I could wiggle my finger or waggle my hips. It thrilled me.

I moved into my psolodrama. First, I pranced around, glorying in my flesh and bone. Then I had the sense that I was holding a large, heavy sphere in front of me. It was dark, like iron or lead, but polished so the surface glinted with light and reflection. I held it away from me; I was somehow fending it off and holding it at the same time. This is death, I thought.

In psolodrama, you switch roles. So I became the ball. It rose up like a pouncing beast, hissing. I felt fire in it, and a terrible chill. What struck me most was the dense, bristling vitality it had. Logic left me. "This can't be death," I said. "It's so alive."

I became myself again, carrying the ball in front of me, and it was clear I had a choice: I could continue to fend it off, or I could take it inside me. It was obvious what I had to do. I embraced the dark sphere, pulling it by osmosis right into my belly. I felt its power roil and rush inside me; it was like lava in a volcano. I bounced and roared around the room, energized.

Then, suddenly, I quieted. At my feet I saw dark soil. I got down on my knees and dug my hands into it: It was nearly black, rich, fertile, filled with worms and billion-year-old worm shit. I stretched out on it, my arms spread. My eyes were closed, and I watched the play of light and dark against my eyelids. I listened to the silence around me, the sound of the air. I felt acutely all of my senses.

I sensed eternity in the moment. I could see myself lying in the soil as if it was a grave, but a grave -- with all the worms, bugs, seeds and microbes -- brimming with life.

And I thought of Jim.

"How can this be?" I said. "How can it just stop?"

I lay still. I listened and watched, comforted by the enormity I sensed, and yet puzzled.

"I don't understand," I observed, without angst or judgment.

Not understanding was part of the enormity, too.

The gong rang, and my meditation ended.

Jim update

2006-04-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Jim and his wife, Susan, went to the oncologist yesterday, and they all have concluded that the Tarceva is not working. Jim got the rash that suggested it was helping, but he continues to get weaker.

And so the fight is yielded. The next step is hospice care.

This is no surprise. Every time I see Jim, he seems more battered and eaten away. His clothes hang off his body. It's an effort for him to move very far. His voice is faint. Even in conversation, while he engages, it's clear that it takes energy.

No surprise, but still a shock. I suppose, even with the evidence of his struggle right in front of me, there's still a part of me that denies the inevitable. This cannot be happening. Not to Jim. Yet here it is: hospice care. Palliative care. The mission changes: not to beat the cancer, but to make him as comfortable, and to love him, through to the end.

It is wrenching.

My prayer for myself would be: Please help me to be with whatever arises. Let it all rise and wash over me and pass, then rise again, without me getting in the way with my fears and constrictions and judgments. Sometimes I will freeze up rather than feel, or express what I'm feeling. I pray to remain fluid.

This is what I see Jim doing. He has let go of worry, let go of trying to control what's happening. That just gets in the way of being present. It gets in the way of gratitude and love. He and Susan are swaddled in gratitude and love in the face of what's next.

It's all they have left.

It's plenty.

down time

2006-03-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

Get out the fog lamp. I've been in a daze for close to three weeks. I can't blame Jim's health (which, perhaps, is improving -- his appetite has picked up, and he's got the tell-tale rash that suggests he's actually responding to his medication, which would mean he's beating the odds). My fog settled before the latest turn of events in his life.

In his book "Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart," Mark Epstein remembers his freshman-year roommate at Harvard, who pushed himself so hard to be a good student, he forgot to eat and bathe. This kind of dedication is not unheard of in Harvard freshmen, who have a lot of expectations to live up to. Finally, the poor guy took a header down a flight of stairs and knocked himself out. When he awoke, he couldn't remember anything that happened that semester. He never recovered it, either.

I understand. There are times I've pressed so hard to measure up that I've lost all sight of the more tender, more vital parts of myself. Whatever I was trying to achieve took on more importance than tending to those fragile little sprouts of ideas and emotion that are so crucial to mental health.

I'm afraid that's been the case for much of the past three years. First, I was frantically trying to hold up a man in crisis and a sinking relationship. Then, once that was over and done, I launched into a campaign to prove myself professionally. On the side, I was glad-handing single men in search of a partner. Oh, and in between, I bought a house and moved.

There hasn't really been a down time.

I understand that this is life. Most people don't get down time.

But sometime in the beginning of March, I had the sense that I'd been holding a complicated structure above my head for much too long. And I dropped it. I gave up. I'm not sure what I gave up, exactly -- trying to prove what a good person/ partner/ professional I am? All I know is that it toppled, and now there's rubble and dust everywhere, and I'm dazed.

This does not feel like a disaster. It's more a relief. I've been enjoying my daze. As long as I go slow and spend a reasonable amount of time quietly, I'm managing fine. I just show up, rather than appear in my superhero garb, and that seems to be enough. The quality of my work hasn't changed, nor has my enjoyment of it. All that has changed is my own degree of intensity, my outward focus.

I suppose we don't get down time unless we consciously make it. Or, as in my case, make it without too much consciousness. As Mary Oliver wrote, "You do not have to be good./ You do not have to walk on your knees/ for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting./ You only have to let the soft animal of your body/ love what it loves."

The soft animal of my body has taken over. Purrrr.

line drying

2006-03-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

May I let go and be free.

That's the last line of the loving-kindness meditation I practice. I find the whole meditation comforting -- may I be filled with loving kindness, may I be happy, may I be peaceful and at ease, may I be well. May I let go and be free. Following the latest news about Jim, I find that last line resonates.

Jim says he is "accepting." I am not. I spent the weekend tensed up. When I sat to meditate, I had the vision of myself in a defensive crouch, preparing for a blow. And I thought of Jim, no longer defensive, stepping into the river of his life and death and letting it take him. He is a model for me.

The defensive crouch is familiar enough. I hunker down, grit my teeth, and shoulder my way through things. I tell myself that I am being present. I sat through my father's death at his bedside this way, compelled to not turn away, to be there for him. I grit my teeth again, faithful and present through my ex-boyfriend's crisis, which precipitated the end of our relationship.

I grit my teeth a lot. My dentist tells me I've worn the tops of my molars smooth.

I believe it is important to be present with a loved one when he or she is going through difficulties. But I wonder if I am sooo present to difficulty, that I am no longer present with myself. And that sounds more like absence.

"May I let go and be free" urges me out of that defensive posture, back into my life -- which includes Jim and what he's going through, but is not subsumed by it. He is able to live in the moment, glorying at what his life holds. I would like to be there with him, appreciating and accepting, rather than tensed up in a little ball of panic and denial. I have this image of us as fresh linens on the line, soaking in the sunlight, fluttering and riffling in the wind -- fluid, but tethered. At some point Jim will come untethered, and drift off on a breeze. I pray my jaw will not clench, and that I will stay open and continue to ride the wind. Let go, and be free.

Jim update

2006-03-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

I saw Jim yesterday. Things are not well. The spots on his liver are definitely cancer. He found out yesterday that he is not eligible for one drug trial, because he had had brain mets, although his brain is all clear now. He was, however, immediately put on another drug, Tarceva, which has a 10 percent success rate at shrinking tumors. And 10 percent, while not much, is better than zero.

He has lost a lot of weight since I last saw him a couple of weeks ago. He's in some pain, and his appetite is poor. He had purchased an 18-pack of Ensure, and was excited that at the VA he could buy it for $18, versus commercially, where it's $48. He says he is sleeping better. Even so, he gets up at 3 or 4 a.m. everyday.

Jim has practiced daily meditation for several years, but in the last month or so, he's spending more and more time in meditation, and finding it nourishing and wondrous. So when he gets up before dawn, he meditates for two hours beside a window that overlooks a birdfeeder. At 6 a.m., he returns to bed in order to snuggle with Susan. He is a fount of gratitude for these very simple things.

Until the weekend, Jim sent out daily meditation updates, but now his fingers are unsteady on the keyboard. He asked me to type as he dictated and sent out the last one, "for the time being." As Jim's e-mails dropped off, Susan has sent off the occasional update. She is a remarkable woman. She's cut down on her hours at work to spend more time at home with Jim. They are both so loving and grateful for one another, and living for the moment, now.

I asked Jim how he feels about what's going on, and he said, "accepting." I've heard about people who, as they approach death, seem to at once fade and grow more luminous. This is true for Jim.

the shy girl

2006-03-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

A friend recently showed me a painting he'd had done from a snapshot of his father and grandfather. Granddad sits back in a lawn chair, a little blurry. Dad, a robust man then in his mid 50s, squats in the grass nearby and looks directly out. His eyes meet the viewer's. He smiles. He's vivid with welcome.

There are many pictures of my own father gesticulating into the distance, a pose that suggests he knows what's out there and he's either going to lead us there or point the way. But it was a pose, a comical wink at the posture's self-importance. The subtext might be that he didn't know where he was, and couldn't offer guidance to anyone else.

Then there's the image I have framed on a bookcase. In contrast to the warm and direct gaze of my friend's father, my dad, smiling just a bit with bright blue eyes, looks coy. He does meet your eyes, but you get the sense that it's just for a moment -- like a shy girl in a bar, who wants to be noticed by some handsome fella, and is terrified of it.

Just looking at that painting of my friend's father made me feel safe. He knew who he was and from that solid platform reached out. Someone who doesn't know himself, or have confidence in who he is, does not reach out in welcome. My dad was quick-witted and sweet, but he was nebulous.

I once did an exercise in which I played each of my parents, then stepped out of the scene and gave each advice. To my father I said, "Get angry, for God's sake. You have every right to be angry! Why don't you just express it?" Then I stepped back into character and played it out. The energy of the scene went from sludge to fire; everything lit up and crackled open.

I can be nebulous, too. Then, little barbs and curses leak out along the sides of my life. That's a lot like Dad. Slowly, slowly, I begin to wake up to my own anger. Like him, I'm afraid of it.

I've spent a lot of energy for the last few years diverting and subverting anger at my ex; I preferred to be above it all by taking pity on him. Like Dad, he was weak, broken, deserving of compassion.

But I'm not above anger. I'm not above being hurt. These men don't deserve my pity. Better I should be clear, and direct, and come from a place of conviction in myself. Better I should let myself be angry, and move on.

Jim update

2006-03-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

My friend Jim, who has been battling lung cancer for two years and was told last July that he had four months to live, is still present and accounted for. The four-month prognosis followed the discovery that his cancer had metastasized to his brain. But heavy rounds of chemo and radiation pretty much zapped the brain mets; only one small lesion was left. He had an MRI two weeks ago that gave him a further all clear -- even the small lesion had shrunk.

The radiation and chemo did a real number on Jim's energy and his appetite, and for the last few months he has been contending with exhaustion and weight loss. This week, concerned about his lack of appetite, he had a CT scan done.

Tiny spots have shown up on his liver. They are so tiny that they cannot be biopsied. There's a chance that they indicate some kind of infection (rather than cancer), so a blood culture was taken. If it's an infection, Jim will be given antibiotics and the spots will clear up.

Even if the spots are cancerous, there is hope. Jim is eligible for a trial that's testing Avastin and Terceva, two cancer drugs that target tumors by going for the proteins that create them. Apparently these drugs have a very good track record so far.

So the news, as it has been throughout this process, is dark, but limned with hope and possibility.

God, what an ordeal.

moderately moderate

2006-02-25T10:58:00.000-08:00

I try to practice equanimity. It's a good practice. If I'm seething, I try to step back, not react to quickly. If I'm bloated with self-pity, I notice it, and let up. I want to approach life with interest and a tempered optimism. In the past, I've been known to ratchet up my angst in order to get some attention. Now, I'm more likely to bide with it, to remember that the best way to get attention is to attend to myself.

It's all very grownup. Yet I wonder.

A couple of years ago, as my relationship was headed down the trash chute, my boyfriend went camping for the weekend and I finally had time to sit with myself and my reaction to what was going on. I felt crappy. I tried to observe myself feeling crappy. I tried to invoke compassion for myself. It did no good. I was walking around with my psyche in a metaphorical vise.

I took myself out to see "Sea Biscuit." As I settled into the comfy bucket seat at the multiplex, clutching a fistful of peppermint patties, the lights went down, and I thought: "I'm tired of trying to be upbeat and not feel bad. I'm going to feel as bad as I damn well please!" The music welled up. The plucky jockey lost his sight in one eye. Then he rode the plucky little horse to victory!

I was close to bawling -- for the jockey, for the horse, for my own beleaguered pluck.

Noticing when you feel sorry for yourself, and pulling away from it, may be a good practice. But aren't there times when you ought to feel sorry for yourself? When you're in bad straits, and deserve that compassion from yourself -- to shed a few tears, to feel the grief of whatever has happened? Or rage? Or fear? Equanimity can be a tactic of denial. Perhaps it's best to apply it ... with equanimity.

seeing my predator in the mirror

2006-02-15T09:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes life circumstances swoop down on me like a panther pouncing on a rabbit, grab me by the scruff of the neck and shake me. I can get so paralyzed by fear, adrenaline, and the slosh of my brain within my skull cavity that you might as well just snap my spine and feast on my vitals to put me out of my misery.

Tiny things, things that I'd like to consider myself above, do this to me. Like Valentine's Day. I know a young man whose girlfriend bagged out on him to have dinner with another guy that day. He had a much worse Valentine's Day than I did. I actually had a lovely meal with my family. Even so. I hate Valentine's Day.

Then there's the limbo I'm living with at work. The position I've applied for has been open for seven months, now. I'm filling in. I feel good about the work I've been doing. I've been interviewed; others have been interviewed. Nobody has been offered the job.

I watch how I manage the situation. About half the time, I'm on top of it, relishing the work, grateful for the opportunity. The rest of the time, I'm that prey, caught up in the mouth of a predator.

The truth is, this is not a new experience. This fear, the feeling of failing to measure up, the feeling of being invisible and unappreciated -- all very old stuff. I can let it whack and flail at me until I'm limp and silly, or I can step in and stop it. Right now, I'm cramped into a tight little box of my own making, one in which I live without air or love or respect. Panicked within its confines, I chafe and sweat and scream and make myself only more uncomfortable, obsessing about everything wrong.

The Buddhist writer Jack Kornfield tells a story about when he was training as a monk in Thailand. Through long silent meditation, he found himself obsessed with sexual fantasy. He couldn't put it down. Finally, he confessed the problem to his teacher and asked for help. The teacher didn't chide him; he told Kornfield to observe his longing.

He did, with less judgment and more interest. In time, the fantasy gave way to loneliness. He continued to observe. A thought arose: "There is something wrong with me and I will always be rejected." Hearing that clearly, he recognized its roots in his childhood, and saw that it was a belief that had no objective truth. A judgment. Bringing compassion and interest to his process, he watched the judgment shift and open into spacious lightness in his heart.

I love this story. Who has not believed "there is something wrong with me and I will always be rejected"? This is where I am now. Anticipating rejection at work. Bristling like a porcupine with Valentine's Day "rejection." Hating, blaming, fearing, resenting. Jeez! Poor kid! Who needs to go through that? Isn't the real world perilous enough without me piling even more crap on myself?

Yes it is.

honor and pride

2006-02-08T10:54:00.000-08:00

An old friend called soon after New Year's -- the darkest, weariest time in my calendar -- and said "I want to hear about you."

I groaned. What was there to say? I was glad the holidays were over. There had been no resolution on the job front. I had been finding myself mulling over what had gone wrong in my relationship. Feeling like a failure.

She urged me to reframe. "Look at what you did in that relationship," she said. "How much love you brought to a very difficult situation. How hard you worked to keep it going. What a good job you did! I think you should honor that."

Tears rose to my eyes. It's not so much that I'd forgotten my hard work, but a dark cloud had settled over it. I couldn't see any light.

Weeks later, after I'd heard my ex has found a new love, I was lying on the floor of my therapist's studio letting myself feel bad. Before that, I'd put a stopper in the grief, thinking I should be over it. But stopping it up only slows the process; it's a backwards way of holding on to the past.

Lying there, teary, I thought of the animus figure I'd imagined. I call him Edgar. His predominant characteristics are patience and compassion, developed after years of being short with himself and demanding. I knew that there was compassion in giving the moment over to sadness.

My therapist suggested I get up and embody Edgar, and dialogue with myself on the floor.

Edgar perched on some pillows and looked out the window. "It's a beautiful day," he said. Then he turned to me. "You did really well in that relationship," he said. "You did your best, and that's a lot. I'm proud of you. I want you to be proud of yourself."

I sniffled. "I don't know how to be proud of myself," I said. My voice was in the high, tiny register of a little child. But I felt Edgar's pride, and I heard the echo of my friend's voice, "What a good job you did! I think you should honor that."

My therapist practices a Buddhist loving-kindness meditation, called metta. He has passed it onto me. In it, you focus first on yourself, sending and trying to receive this message:

May I be well and happy.
May I be at ease in my body and in my mind.
May my heart be filled with lovingkindness—with love and kindness.
May I let go and be free.
May I live in peace.

Over time, you progress to sending this message to a loved one, then to someone you feel neutral about, and then to someone you find difficult. Ultimately, you send it to all the sentient beings in the world.

I've been practicing just focusing on myself. I know when I've done this meditation in the past, it's gone out as kind of a plea: Please, God, let me be happy. It comes from an empty place, one of unhappiness. Now as I practice metta, it's more like I am offering these good wishes with warmth to myself. It's lovely. I woke up the morning feeling nudgy and stressed, and I immediately gravitated toward metta as an antidote.

A week or two ago, my old friend called again, at wit's end as she was trying to balance some difficult transitions in her family life.

"You know what?" I said. "You have worked so hard at this. You are putting so much love and effort into a difficult situation. I know it's confusing, but for just a minute, can you see all you've poured into it, and honor that?"

It tripped up her litany of everything going wrong. She choked up.

Isn't it funny how self-recrimination rushes over us like a mad river, but pride in our endeavors stops us in our tracks? Or maybe it's just the shift from shame to pride that stops us. Either way, there's something tender and sweet as a new blossom in the feeling of "I did well," especially if the big story is easy to tell as a failure.

"Thank you," my friend said, her voice strengthening.

We are taught that pride is a sin. I take exception. Pride's dark side -- arrogance, egotism -- these are messy and dangerous. But knowing when you have done your best, and patting yourself on the back for it -- that is a blessing.

breaking up is hard to do

2006-01-31T13:13:00.000-08:00

I marvel at the guys I come across on the dating sites who are a month or two out of their previous relationships. And they're ready to date again? So soon? Granted, everybody's different, and the heart is unpredictable.

I tried to date two months after my breakup. It was important to stick my toe in the water. But it was clear that I was really not ready for a new relationship, or even truly out of my old one. So I didn't go out again for another four or five months.

My ex and I broke up in December of 2004, after a months-long separation. It was hardly abrupt or unexpected. Even so, I had been in that relationship up past my earlobes, and it takes a while to resurface. For three months after the official breakup, I secretly imagined that it still might work out. By March, I had to reckon with the cold truth that it would not. Ever. In June, I took part in a workshop that really helped me shake out some of my grief. That's when I began to feel free.

Each of these clarifications brought a flood of tears, followed by a spur to action in my social life. By the summer, I felt I was finally done with it, and began dating in earnest.

Then we came around again to December, and the holidays, and I found myself brooding over how it had all fallen apart.

Last week, I found out in the most random way -- through someone who works for my financial advisor -- that my ex is in a new relationship.

I staggered. I couldn't believe it. He'd been so broken, so incapable of being in a relationship. How could it be? Who was she? Was he crazy? Was she?

I spun into anger, resentment, a conviction of my own failure, and deep confusion. The next day, I saw my drama therapist. I railed at him for a good while, and then quieted and began to move. Paying attention to my body's impulses, I lay on my back, and covered my face with both my arms. In the next few minutes, my arms opened up. I had the sense of holding a giant, invisible ball of sadness. I recognized that with all the carping and blaming and self-recrimination, I was frantically trying to make sense of something I will simply never understand.

Never.

I could see all the ruminating was keeping me in my head, and away from feeling and accepting that I was hurt. Hurting, I saw, can't be made sense of. Isn't it better, then, more clear and compassionate and even productive, just to feel the hurt? I lay there on the floor in the sun, gazing up at a lace curtain over my head, with tears streaming down the sides of my face.

This will fade, I know. It faded after similar epiphanies in March and in June. Indeed, by the next night, a friend and I were laughing with black humor about the whole thing. But I also recognize that it will always be a tender spot -- one of love, and of heartache -- and that even years from now, I might shed an occasional tear about it.

Then, two days later, I went on a date. And had a lovely time.

Onward.