Write This On The Blackboard 100 Times

I'm still pretty volatile. Every time I think I've made friends with the beast, I seem to drop a little deeper into my anger, right up to its hard and terrifying edge. It occurs to me as I write this that massage works by the same principal, namely that it takes far more effort (and far more pain on the part of the recipient) to force your way through tension than it does to drop in gently and wait until the topmost layer of muscle lets you in, then drop in deeper and wait again. Yet another reminder that we truly do have all the information we need. The catch is that we can only apply that knowledge to ourselves, and not to anyone else. To force it on someone else renders it useless.

Someday I will not need to write these messages repeatedly on the great cosmic blackboard of experience. I sense that day will be soon, as this particular message comes within range at least once a day lately, and I am catching it sooner and sooner. I am my own guru. I AM my own guru. I am...

The other notion with which the universe is beating me about the head like an old lady with a handbag full of cat food cans, is control. Or my total lack of it. This one I may need to tattoo to my eyelids: control is a fairytale. Like happily ever after and Donald Rumsfeld's heart. I am a slow learner when it comes to surrendering control. My mother taught me well. Once when I was about my daughter's age, in the midst of a heated battle, she said "when I was I kid I thought 'one day I will grow up and be in charge' and I grew up and I'm STILL not in charge!" If there is any question that we learn by example, let us put it to rest now. I live this same drama, 25 years later.

The sense of feeling powerless in a world in which every one but you appears to have power is unquestionably frustrating. When I search for the roots of my rage, it seems to be the taproot. It's like having a computer without a functioning mouse. But, to continue the metaphor, if you get creative, you can navigate perfectly fine without the mouse. Eric Francis over at Planet Waves nailed it in this week's Gemini (my rising sign) scope:

"Creation involves the surrender of control. If I may reduce the world to a one-dimensional model, think of a line where control is at one extreme and creation is at the other. As you move toward one you move away from the other. The perfect balance is necessary to get anything done (and usually the perfect balance moves around quite a bit), but they are basically opposite factors here in the world of opposites. This fact does not thrill some people, who would rather keep a grip than go with the flow, and you had best know those people when you see them..."

Admittedly, I am One Of Those People right now. Except that I'm done being One Of Those People. I want to be one of the Flow People (like, who doesn't?). I am exhausted, both physically and emotionally, from trying to keep a grip. And on what, after all?

The truth is probably closer to the idea that nobody's mouse is really functioning, we just move it around pretending that it is, and we look anxiously, enviously over at everyone else fiercely mousing away, totally missing, as we sneak in an furtive keystroke, everyone else's surreptitious keystroking. If we could all just own up to our vulnerability, we might actually be able to manage collectively the notion of "power with" instead of "power over". We might even teach each other a thing or two.

But I don't guess I can cram that down anyone else's gullet till I've swallowed it myself, huh?

I am creative. I AM creative. I am...

Stuff My Ballot Box

Guess what?! Grist Magazine liked my haiku! They had a contest & I'm a finalist (maybe five years in advertising weren't ALL for naught). I don't get anything for it, other than the joy of having my anonymous words plastered all over a tshirt, but that's good enough for me. So I'm doing what any lowlife subject to a vote count does, I'm trying to
load the ballot box. If you care about me at all, go here:

http://www.gristmagazine.com/about/haiku_vote.asp

Mine is (don't bother reading the others, just pick mine):

One periled planet.
Seven and a half Gristers.
Pollutocrats, run.

Though I have to admit, the frog one is better...

Because someone will invariably ask "what is a pollutocrat?" I will quickly explain: Grist did a contest about a year ago in which readers were to coin a term for policiticians/businessmen/etc whose priorities favor money over environmental concerns. 'Pollutocrat' was the winner. I used it in my haiku because I thought it would further my cause. I am nothing if not manipulative.

Ahh, democracy at work...

Rage Against...Everything

Ugh. Yesterday wound up being a "mental health day." Argued with my daughter for what seems like the 900th morning in a row. She is a budding Rosa Parks - she has passive resistance down pat. "It's time to brush your hair now." "No." "Okay, then you can either brush your teeth or make your lunch." "I don't want to do either." "Okay, then take a time out and get to a place where you feel like doing something." "No." See, it's right about here that the steam begins to pour out of my ears and my head begins spinning. My new solution is that she can go to school with hair like medusa and breath like her snakes, but I'm not going to battle anymore. When it's time to go, it's time to go. But I digress.

The end result of that particular battle was that I started to cry. And I couldn't stop. For hours. I called into work and blathered "I can't come in like this." And all day, the rage I seem to feel at my world just came in great salty swells. Two jobs, full time school, single parenting, paying the ex's bills, hogtied by the ex's random and pointless rules, precancerous cells on my cervix and the cost of a Naturopathic Doctor out of pocket, being (frivolously) sued and the legal bills that go with it, emergency room bills from a weak moment in which my daughter had a very high fever last November, Iraq, Bush. Most of the time it's my life and it's fine and I'm still alive and I laugh and lick and have a great time and no way does any of this begin to even touch the vibrant and succulent core of who I am. But every once in awhile I look at it in a particularly sleep-deprived, time-compressed, junk-fooded, self-pitying angle, and I seen what a total lack of control I have over the world, and I freak the fuck out.

Because the teachers say that anger falls away when you're doing it right. And I'm doing my best and here I am angry, like constantly. And I'm supposed to love that, because it's my reality right now. But instead I feel terribly incompetent in just about all aspects of my life. Which is, when you look at it, sort of ludicrous because here I am handling all of the above. I always get myself into trouble when I lean too heavily on any particular teaching and try to fit myself into a philosophical mold. The truth is, each of us has our own unique philosophy and no one else's is a substitute for that.

My truth is that I never managed to get angry before. I was always too afraid of everyone else's anger, and of losing their approval. And so I've always done the nice thing. Stepped back, let it go. But where did it really go? Nowhere. The same damn psychic bank account that held my fear of being alone for so long. Don't know why I bother avoiding anything, it just waits till I'm ready. But maybe that's fine - when I'm ready I'm ready, and not a minute sooner. So this is a good thing. Even though it feels bad. I want it to be over, but wanting never helped anything. Just like wanting control. That's served me SO well so far...

It's just that I'm not supposed to have boundaries, you know? Not supposed to need them. But when I don't I just feel trampled. So I guess I do need them. Until I don't. I need to stop living like I'm already some kind of master. I so often ignore where I'm really at in favor of where I want to be, and then every time I manage the same wide-eyed surprise when everything comes crashing down. How bout that...

Reminder number 472: if you let yourself be exactly where you are, you don't have to add guilt and resistance to the pile.

Why is the present so damn hard to stay with? Because it is. Until it isn't. I reckon I'll be fine either way.

Burning Desire

I am positively salivating. Only three days between me and two and a half days of strange, vibrant, unruly, juicy communal bliss. It has been too many long years. I thirst so deeply for this sort of event, it's distracting. I'm not even remotely ready, though I found someone on freecycle to come and take away all the crap in storage that separates me from my camping gear. I have a list of stuff to get and very little time to get it. My Kali costume isn't even remotely ready. I have blue latex, I have knee-high stockings, I have pillow stuffing. It's going to take some serious work to get it all together, though. At this rate I may be doing it in the shady, pollen-drenched comfort of my camp chair on Saturday afternoon.

I am going to Playa Del Fuego, the local contingency of the Burning Man phenomenon, a suprisingly diverse group of creative folks from all walks of life. Art. Freaks. Nature. Greased up slip-n'slides. All in one place. If there is a heaven, it would be like this.

Even my daughter is excited. Yes, I am taking her. There will be lots of kids there, all wild and giggly and witnessing life beyond Britney Spears and Bratz and everyone's-is-the-same school art projects. Thank goodness. She was a little uncertain about being around nudity at first, but she's starting to think that maybe this fear of bodies in our society is rather arbitrary (this is a 50 cent word version of exactly what she said). Boundaries are boundaries, with or without clothes. We're all naked all the time. We just hide it. She's pretty sure she prefers to be clothed right now, but she knows what she might see and that we can talk about it. This feels right to me.

I was born on a commune, raised on summertime skinny dipping insetad of a/c. People gardened in the nude because it was hot. I still remember the way this one woman's breasts would hang pendulously in front of her when she bent over her garden, like round rocks in the bottom of tube socks. That's how she was, it never occurred to me that there might be anything "wrong" with it. Because there isn't.

Our culture is more afraid of bodies than violence. More queasy about whole, uncovered flesh than flesh that has bloodied and ripped to a shredded pulp. We will take our teenagers to see any number of shoot-em-up propaganda films starring random monosyllabic hunks of meat, but Janet Jackson shows a nipple ring and the entire world implodes. Our priorities are way out of whack. Duh. This explains so much...

So anyway. I used to attend all sorts of decadently spirit-feeding events back in Missouri. Those people became my family. We attended each other's weddings, parents' funerals, and parties with joy and vitality, always amazed to see how we grow both together and separately, and how much silly, hedonistic, childlike fun we could still have no matter how much we grew, both inside and out. They were my grounding in "life as cosmic theater" as Tom Robbins put it. There truly is nothing worth taking too seriously. As we sat together around the fire, singing songs and laughing and eating and talking, there could be no doubt.

It's been a hard couple of years. My spirit is ready for a good meal. Full report when I get back. Maybe more commentary tomorrow. They have some neat concepts that have had me chewing the psychic cud...

Dream Lover

So last night I dreamed about the perfect man. I'm not one to dream about strangers, nor am I one to meet them at dream Starbucks. But, oddly enough, I did last night. Someone who can keep up with my random philosophies and my sense of humor, who always has something to say that I never would have thought of, who is playful or intense or thoughtful at the appropriate times, knows nature well, etc. etc. I even gave him blond dreadlocks. He's very handsome.

But the realization washed over me almost immediately when I awoke this morning that this is not someone I should look for, some prophesy realized, but someone I have already found. He is me. I've read before that everything I dream represents me. It's just never made so much sense before. Everything I ever wanted in someone else was really only a reflection of the highest expression of myself - I'm the only soul mate I've got. What a load off for everyone else! I get to be the one I want, and they get to be themselves, and not get sent rather messily through the play-doh clonemaker. Makes me wonder whatall I've missed while matching everyone up to little strands of me-N-A. Reality is wild and diverse and unexpected. Prob'ly moreso when I'm not ignoring it...

Not entirely sure what such a dream means. I'm actually learning to love myself? I'm coming into balance somehow? Dunno. Not even sure it really matters because right now I am still me, sitting at this same desk, typing. You know, it never gets less liberating to type those words...

The Infinite Now: Cleans Moods Spotless

I've been a bit irritable this past week. My trigger is set to hair, and just about everyone is driving me nuts. Thank goodness for computers, or I would have cut down my own personal tree to do all the Judge Your Neigbor worksheets I've needed this week. Course that only helps if you're doing them. I've managed one, which isn't gonna help much, since my thoughts are racing with a multitude of stories about everything going on in my world. One measley thought ain't even a dent.

Figured I'd rant here for awhile and see what that frees up. No wonder I've been so quiet this week, I'm just not in the mood to spout love and light and humor. Welcome to the sardonic side of Maya...

Particularly high on my list of forehead slappers this week is our tendency to exalt some sages or master who we perceive as embodying love or enlightenment or Keith Richards, and then we proceed to cut ourselves down. "I'm not there yet," we say, implying that we should all be neat carbon copies of our favorite idol. Well guess what? We are ourselves. Period. If you want to suffer, try to be someone else. You can wax philosophical all you want about ego and illusion and all that crap, but the fact is, you have an ego, and you live in the illusion, until you don't. The fact that any of us use "I" as our pronoun says we're still here, ego and illusion intact. It sets us up to strive. To never be good enough for ourselves until we have attained. Attained what? Instant ascention? Spontaneous combustion?

I think about how utterly miserable I was when I was incessantly, obsessively seeking some sort of cosmic perfection, and how quickly I revert to that misery and anxiety when I forget and start seeking it again. In striving I just manage to put myself further away from it anyway, sort of like when you're in a hurry and all the lights turn red, but if you've got nowhere to go, there's nothin' but green. I'd heard that before, but it never really made sense to me until I finally *GOT* that there's nothing to do but be me, whoever that is right now, even if it's petulant or judgmental. My job is to do what I'm doing because I'm doing it. The cool part is that when I'm totally immersed in being where I'm at, I forget all about being anyone else, like 'enlightened'. So in the end, it doesn't matter whether we attain anything or not. The future becomes irrelevant. So does judgment. And validation.

Well. Didn't THAT just let the wind out of my sails. Here I am, sitting at a desk, typing. The world moves around me - trees, bugs, clouds, people. Just being, in their present whether they know it or not. There is nothing to be righteous about. Nothing going on but the stories in my head that take me away from now-here, where I'm bound to suffer...and be irritable. (damn! I hate blowing my own cover!)

So okay. My game for today: observe. As minutely as possible. I am typing. Right thumb. Right middle, index, left index, ring finger. Inhale. Phone is ringing. I am standing, walking, left foot, right, left. Exhale. I am reaching for the phone. My fingers are curling around the receiver. I am lifting. I am pressing the button. Inhale. I am talking, my mouth is moving, my throat is vibrating, my slow, talking exhale feels warm on my lips. Inhale. A breeze is coming in through the opening door. There is infinite goings on at any given second. How far can I expand my awareness? How many things can I take in at once? While I am practicing it, I am care-free.

I am...

More From The Archives

What a day. Sometimes life makes total sense. Sometimes I feel like someone gave me the manual in Japanese. I'm feeling sort of speechless (thank goodness for archives). The poem below sums it up pretty well (somehow I wrote it 5 years ago; it was one of my first). Tomorrow is another day...thankfully.


FRUSTRATION

If there were somehow a way
To dissolve myself and to become
Part of everything else.
If only I could infiltrate the atoms
Of thoughts and understanding
And become one with knowledge
Instead of trying to run it down
And tie it up like a calf.
My head knows that there is a journey,
But my heart is so anxious to understand.
I want to take a jet,
This country mile is making my legs ache.
You’d think that hunger would be enough
To sustain this insatiable need,
But it seems to me that it would be
So much easier to just sit down and eat.
All this information wraps around me like gauze
And makes it hard to move
So that I am a mummy instead of a bird.
The lines of constellations twist around,
Threading themselves through the eyes of planets
And sewing themselves into knots.

No Market Left Behind

Parenting is not (alas) all trips to the science center and birthday parties and touching bedtime stories. There is an element of parenting that is sheer endurance. Sometimes its sleepless nights, or coitus interruptus, or "no, really, I promise for the 5,972nd time, there is no such thing as monsters/bloody mary/__________, but yes, you can climb into bed with me at 2am again tonight."

But that's a piece of cake compared to Radio Disney.

Radio Disney is, at heart, a cultural venus flytrap for children. They are lured by the saccharine sweetness and trapped by endless contests in which the latest and greatest thing (or trip to Disney) is foisted on them for being the 6th caller. It is nationally syndicated radio, so there is literally nowhere you can go that you can't flip the radio to AM and tune it in. Another casualty in the battle for mutually agreeable music. It is mildly excruciating to hear the crappy pop songs of my youth bubblegummed out yet further for the next generation. What sadistic creep thought it would be cool to have the latest glossed teenage sensation remake "I Want Candy"? God help us all...

And we won't even go into the recent spate of 70's remakes, from Dancing Queen to Superstition, with several bizarre stops in between.

Unfortunately, it is the only thing that gets my daughter to clean her room. When you flip on the Radio Disney kiddie crack, she starts dancing and throwing away paper. So I figure I can deal for an afternoon. And there is something sort of nostalgic about hearing "U Can't Touch This" after all these years. Kinda makes you wonder what MC Hammer is up to these days. For about five seconds, anyway.

But of all the chilling soul-sucking things I've heard on Radio Disney, nothing compares to the bit of propaganda I was just subjected to, in which the No Child Left Behind Act was actually compared to Brown v. Board of Education. Courtesy of the US Department of Education. Education budgets fell short this year, leaving hundreds of thousands of children behind. One can only assume that they needed to take that money from the schools so that we could all be told how monumental this legislation really is. You don't have to sit long with the implications before a sort of dumbfounded ennui takes over.

My only saving grace is having long ago taught my daughter to ask of all commercials, "what are they trying to sell me?" and "do I really need it?" So hopefully at least one person isn't buying it. She knows. Her school doesn't even have a P.E. program. Her teacher worked like crazy to get them ready for their standardized tests; her anxiety over the results was palpable. It must be hard to be a veteran teacher these days. I see now why everyone out east sends their kids to private school if they can possibly afford it.

Sigh.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Prepositions

On Highway 5 in Washington heading south toward Portland, Oregon, there is a billboard that reads, in giant block letters, "believe in the lord and thou shalt be saved," along with some random scripture citation from the book of Acts. As our car whizzed past it in the fading daylight, I sighed and rolled my eyes, as I often do when confronted with unsightly acts of religious zeal, the visual equivalent of a bouncing, yapping chihuahua.

But highways get me thinking, kind of like showers and toilets and other places from whence it is inconvenient to write down one's thoughts. If a waterproof notebook is ever invented, I will be the next DaVinci...Or my brain will do ever increasingly desperate somersaults to avoid being imprisoned on paper. God knows, keeping a microcassette recorder in the car ruined my creative flow there until I finally took it into the house.

So anyway it hit me, rather all at once, that our entire religious culture has completely missed the point of this message. The problem, I think, lies with the word "in" - it takes the whole thing and makes it passive. To believe IN someone, I don't have to do a thing but sit on my ass in my comfy armchair on the sidelines and cheer someone on. But if you remove that one little preposition (which for all we know was inserted by accident by some exhausted medieval monk in an all-night translation binge), then it becomes as simple as trust. Believe his words. To truly believe them is to own one's power, to understand that anything is possible and imminently achievable. Jesus said some truly empowering stuff, like give everybody else as much consideration as you give yourself, and everything I can do you can do better. To believe him, to truly take those thoughts in and follow that path wholeheartedly, would be nothing short of revolutionary.

See, that's the trouble with really great people: we see them as exceptional. We don't get that they could be us, that in a way they ARE us, inasmuch as we create their celebrity with our belief. We have this weird hierarchy in which some of us are deemed better than others based on how much attention we get. No wonder we trample all over each other to reach the top.

But the fact is, if we all just mind our own business and work on ourselves, turn that faith inward, each stinkin' one of us unwashed masses might see that we are messiahs, buddhas, the ones we've been waiting for. I'm not saying anything new here; this is an old, old song. But one worth singing, nonetheless.

You Never Can Tell With Bees

So evidently even exterminators think honeybees are beneficial. They are testing one of them to make sure they are honeybees (visions of tiny paternity tests and maybe a little buzzing Judge Judy), and if so, they will vacuum them up and take them somewhere more appropriate to colonizing. Good news! Both for the bees and my chemical load...

Course this whole saga brings me right back to that preference thread. What if the infestation had been flies? Or something else less well-considered? Even mosquitoes have an important role in the ecosystem. They are actually even more prolific pollenators then bees. Can't imagine I'd bee feeling so poetic about mosquitoes, though. Anybody here have mosquito as your totem animal?

The Buzz Around The Office, or Hive Mentality, or...

We have bees. Not like two, like hundreds. They are flying around the rafters and the light fixtures, which are flourescent stick bulbs suspended from the ceiling and covered with a yellow mesh. Vaguely retro in character. But evidently the warmth and the light of the flourescent bulbs, the mesh (which is like ready-made honeycomb), and the proximity to the roof soffits were just too much temptation for the little guys to take. There is a soft, organic-sounding buzzing noise just barely audible above the roar of the HVAC system. Everyone here is thoroughly creeped out.

Except me. I think it's awesome. Nature inside!! I'd let them live here full time and drip honey on my desk if they wanted to. Of course, I'd roll my entire cubicle outside and work under a tree if I could, too.

According to Animal Speak, Bees are about cooperation and community. They are very gentle and only sting if attacked and unable to escape. Bees understand that for one to prosper, all must prosper, so they work for the common good. In other words, bees are not capitalists...

Bees also do cool things like pollenate flowers. When they find a particulary sweet batch, they will go back to the hive and do a special dance to tell the other bees where the goodies are. Communicating through dancing! How lovely!

They're going to come soon and exterminate. I feel sad for them (and for me, having to breathe the chemicals they spray!). I was kind of looking forward to watching them build up their little community. I know they can't live here, though. My friend Susie has good wisdom on this: "when they're outside, they're God's creatures; in here, they're pests!" Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. I'm glad they showed up & gave me a reason to learn about them.

Preferences Are Like...

I talked through 30 minutes of my lunch hour today. It's a gorgeous day here in Philadelphia & I wanted to get out and walk. I got all the way into my car, started the engine, and released the emergency brake before I realized that driving to the park would cut 10 minutes off my outside time. I turned off my car and decided to walk around the Navy yard here where I work. Instead of seeking out the tree-lined avenues, as usual, this time I decided to go wander around the mothballed ships. This is a departure from my normal preference for trees and birds and nature, as far away from all things trashed, despoiled, rotting and depressing as possible.

Which got me to thinking about preferences.

My preferences ostensibly make up my identity. They say who I am in relation to the world. I prefer nature. I prefer interacting with people, I prefer a healthy lifestyle, I prefer freedom, etc. But out of relation to the world, I am me, even if I am catatonic. I am identified through this body, which seems to be breathing me until it is done (beyond it I assume I am infinite, but that belief is another preference...). Experience shows that the body breathing any given being gives not one hairy rat's ass for karma and political affiliation. And the truth is, none of it really even matters.

Yesterday I sat in a planetarium with my daughter looking at pictures of a nebula that was the dying emission of a star just like our sun. None of it matters because one day our planet and all of its fossils and trash and dioxins and pyramids and mysteries will be a cloud of colorful gas floating in space. All of the energy we put forth to save the planet is more about saving our species, or saving life in general. But the truth is that no one here gets out alive, and the universe will go right on infinitating, whether or not there are whales or politicians or planet Earth. Remind me, what is it I'm taking so seriously again?

Somehow this manages to be simultaneously meaningless and liberating. I will go right ahead on taking my vitamins and doing yoga, because it is my preference to do so. I prefer the way I feel when I do it. But none of it - NONE - is worth fretting over. What is, is what is. I may prefer spring to winter, but it will not make a single flower bloom in January. I may prefer bluebirds, but there is a flock of blackbirds on the ground before me. I found today that simply observing what is there to observe is a source of great wonder. Maybe even greater than the joy of discovering a preference fulfilled for a fleeting moment.

Those old ships rusting across the street there, they were entire worlds to hundreds of young men who floated out to sea on them. They are massive forms, held in place by ropes as big around as my arm, and chains bigger than my thighs. Amazing that we invented these things and that they float. Amazing that they were invented to make war. And that most of our inventions came from a desire to make war or money. They seem to be what fuels our curiosity. I wondered if we would ever invent things for their own sake, or for the benefit of all. But that's another preference, too, another story.

I got lost in all the things I prefer - weeds growing out of cracks instead of smooth pavement, 80 degree days, so on and so forth, ad nauseam. And it hit me that instead of creating more joy in my life, my preferences actually limit joy by creating such a narrow set of circumstances for me to experience it within. And for that matter, joy itself is a preference, and makes any other emotional experience one that I would rather reject. How many times have I felt bad for feeling bad, for chrissakes? And why does fear get such a bum rap? It's like my greatest teacher. Why the hell don't I welcome it?

For now my preferences are still with me. I will want to have honey drizzled on the base of my neck by beautiful and intelligent foreign men in loincloths, until I don't. But it's wildly liberating to see it for what it is, instead of some powerful force whose opposite I waste all my energy on resisting.

Happy Mothers Day

So I just stumbled across this major cultural flaw: we raise our kids to act one way because it’s easier on us as parents, but then the rules of adult life are completely different. So as young adults we go out into the world completely unequipped, then we spend our entire adult lives struggling uphill against the habits that were so carefully ingrained in us as kids.

Like “don’t talk back,” for example. As kids we are taught not to challenge our parents. Then as adults we struggle with passivity and are even chided by friends and coworkers for being spineless. We feel dominated by bosses and spouses and never dare speak up for fear of being yelled at. It takes half a lifetime to learn to say “no,” and maybe the entire rest of our time to do so lovingly.

As kids we’re responsible to nothing, and then suddenly we pass this magic threshold and BANG, we’re irresponsible. We’re told “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” and then we struggle with the pain inflicted by cruel and careless words, and the compounded pain of feeling like we “shouldn’t” be hurt by those words. We learn precious little of conflict resolution as children, or of the concept of everyone’s worth. As children, the bad kids get punished. We’re told stories of villains and victims. And so we grow up believing that victimhood is good, and we learn to fiercely conceal our flaws to avoid being “bad.” It is only way into our adult lives that we come across the concept (if we’re lucky) that no one is ever trying to hurt anyone, that they are simply struggling to be happy just like we are, that we are each both the problem and the solution.

We work so hard to protect our children from pain, and then when they grown up and reality hits it is painful. We have not been taught what to do with pain. So then we avoid it, contorting and compromising our integrity until we all but fail to recognize it anymore – it just becomes an amalgam of all the shoulds that anyone ever threw at us. It is only as grownups that we begin to feebly attempt the concept of staying true to ourselves, and only then after having hit some sort of integrity bottom, at which point we make the miraculous discovery that the only way to love someone else is to love ourselves.

Some of the bizarre inconsistencies of our culture make a tremendous amount of sense when viewed through this filter…

It’s an interesting conundrum as a parent. To start her early on these concepts I get some criticism about making her grow up too fast. But then in my massage classes they drum these concepts into us so that they become habits and we don’t have to break bad ones later on, which makes a lot of sense. So I guess all’s I can do is stay true to my own ideals, and ignore the rest. Nobody’s going to agree with me all the time. My own body tells me well what feels right and what doesn’t. I am happy when I raise my daughter to be a good human. I feel sick when I yell at her or shame her. That’s all the proof I need. I’m glad there are resources out there like Positive Discipline that offer guidelines for getting where I want to go with this. She’s an amazing kid, I’m lucky to be her mom.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.

From the Archives

Found this that I wrote back in June 2002. As Venus heads into Gemini for some big astrology/astronomy, I find this to still be pertinent now, but with some different nuances having experienced the past 2 years of my life. Enjoy!

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So, it being Gemini time and all, I guess it’s appropriate that I am currently grappling with a duality. “Which one,” you ask? The big one, I think. The one that sits below the surface of most of our decisions, like the troll beneath the bridge of our ethics, just waiting, salivating, for an unsuspecting goat to come trip-trapping across. The very same one that hides beneath the forest floor of our inner peace with hair-triggered poison-tipped darts to booby trap us if we become so complacent as to actually believe life is that simple. Except that it probably is. Like I said: duality.

You see, we all have this mental construct of ideals upon which we rest our ethics, like bird eggs in a nest kept safe high in the treetops from the hungry beasts prowling below. Upon ideals like the inherent goodness of humanity and the sacred order of the universe do we incubate the ethics we live by, like “be honest” and “never gain anything to the detriment of someone else” and “love is all there is”. Eggs are funny things, they can handle tremendous amounts of uniform pressure; you can squeeze them like crazy in your fist and they won’t break, but if you tap them gently on one side the shell gives way like a straw dam in a Texas flood. Things that eat eggs rely on this fact and relish the chance to gobble up a nice fresh one, way over easy.

Which is where that circle of life thing comes, in, Disney be damned. Nothing in life seems to be personal, everybody’s just taking care of their own needs. I can’t just stop laying the eggs of my worldview because something might come along and destroy them, and the egg-eater has to eat somewhere. There’s no malice intended, but in it’s actions I am harmed. So now what?

That such diametrically opposed realities exist tells me this whole vacation on Planet Earth must be one big smoke and mirrors show. If it weren’t, we could all agree on the basic stuff quite easily. But there is a different perspective for each head on this planet, which gives us a set of dimensions for reality that is more than a little mind numbing. It’s no wonder there’s war…I can’t even get along with the people I call family all the time. Ultimately it comes down to my word and yours, and if they don’t agree, I can either trust me or trust you. The implications of either choice are hard to swallow. If I trust myself then I could be guilty of narrow-mindedness and could perhaps be fooling myself to hide from a fear and maybe I am not honoring you, but if I trust you then I could be found guilty of codependency and maybe I am not honoring myself. You might as well flip a coin to decide, because it probably won’t be for years down the road that you know for sure.

God knows I was pretty high in philosophy class, but I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning life being this hard. I remember a bunch of dead guys coming up with constructs to support their own judgements. Maybe that’s all any of us ever do. Maybe mentioning it is futile, like the warning label on the side of the cigarette pack. By the time you’re buying, it’s a bit late for things like warnings.

War Is My Teacher

More tragic photos of tortured Iraqis this morning as the hideous slow motion S&M horror movie of our times plays out. As Mark Morford would say, hell readies a room. I keep searching for a punchline, something to lighten the tremendous load of shame of being an American right now. Something like "hey, people pay good money for that sort of treatment here!" But it only serves to highlight the atrocity. These were not consenting adults. Many of them will probably commit suicide rather than face their communities.

Optimist that I am, it's still hard to find my bright side. I find myself using the same mind trick I used for accepting that Bush was president - believing that being shocked out of complacency gets awareness going and gets changes made like nothing else. The only way I can seem to get through this with my peace intact is to wallow in gratitude. Those prisoners gave up their dignity so that we could see what war really means. Those soldiers who tortured them gave up their youth, and probably their freedom and maybe even their lives so that we could see how blinded we become in waging war, how cut off from our vulnerability (and everyone else's) we are in seeking victory. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the rest of them allowed themselves to be born with only black, oozing vortexes where their souls should be so that we can see the value of the human spirit. I can only be grateful to them for their roles as my teachers. A stretch? Perhaps. But in this world where these things should not have happened, but did, all I can do is find gratitude for the growth it brought me. I can't un-make it happen. I can't give anyone back what they have lost due to this travesty; not a single prisoner, not a single grieving parent. We all lie here together in the collective bed of millenia of dominance and submission.

What we can do is decide what this means to us, and how we will respond to it. We can all hunker down and watch the last episode of Friends and pretend like this isn't going on, or we can stand up and say no, this won't be my reality anymore, thank you. Because that really would be all it takes. If every last solder in Iraq stopped following orders, turned around and walked away, would there still be war? If we collectively just refused to participate in the things that suck our souls dry, things would change. They would have to. But that would take a tremendous amount of commitment.

But nothing less is appropriate to what we've done. And make no mistake, we all did this. By blindly buying mountains of crap and raising our children on Mickey Mouse and McDonalds and Manifest Destiny. We are complicit via our choices. The way out - making new choices - seems impossibly simple and eye-crossingly close, and at the same time manages to seem futile because really, what difference can one person make? But ending atrocities in my life is a huge undertaking - a lifetimes worth - and the surest route to ending atrocities worldwide.

I'm an optimist, I'm up for the challenge.

Shell Game

I can see this is going to cut into my...um...productivity. See, you can't see me muffling a grin here, it sort of loses the effect...oh well.

I went to the park at lunch today, full of energy and wanting to experience and notice. Walking from my car, I noticed the locusts will bloom soon, and the oak leaves are getting bigger. The water is up from all the rain. I saw a turtle jump off an old tire, one corner slouching an inch or so out of the lake. I looked to see if turtles leave wake or air bubbles when they jump into the water. They don't.

Partway down the path I decided to walk somewhere different than I normally do, because seeing something for the first time makes it seem so vibrant. So I wandered around, getting a new perspective of the lake and the wetlands restoration, listening to the birds and watching them coast on the blowing wind. And I wondered, what is it about newness that makes something seem better? Why is my sense of wonder so fragile? Why, after a certain amount of time and familiarity do I begin to take things for granted? How can I shift into that heightened awareness all the time (or at least more of the time), instead of walking the familiar without seeing it, lost in thought? Because that's my pattern. Not just walks in the park, but relationships, clothes, whatever. It's a ridiculous little mind trick, really, but I've chained myself to it for a long time. Hmm. Still have to think on that...

I decided to say hello to the guy walking around pushing a shopping cart full of tin cans and a bicycle. He was dirty and scruffy and had a long cut on his nose. He asked if I was married & if I had children. He said his name was George. He made a lot of random associations and some of his responses didn't make sense to me. But it felt good not to ignore him. A lot of times we ignore "people like that", afraid they'll ask us for money or at least inspire guilt. God forbid we ever think of ourselves in that position (whatever it is). I like connecting with random people.

But of course, walking away from George brought me right back to my former musing. Why is it that we cut strangers so much more slack? If someone I knew acted strangely, made no sense, I'd attach a judgement to it, and maybe even reject them. We seem to expect so much more out of people we know, inject all sorts of stories into their motives, etc. But the innocence that we once met in them without all those stories attached is still under there somewhere. Where does it go? How do I return to it?

Another turtle jumped into the water as I passed by on the way to my car, this time from another direction. I wondered if it was the same one.

Hello

So it's time to start writing again. I was afraid to for the past couple years, & my words dried up like an old creek bed & I've just been sitting around examining the cracks. My fear was that SHE would read it (and judge me). It was a convenient setup, that's for sure. She got to be the projection of my harsh inner critic. When that voice is outside of me I'm a victim, when it's coming from within there's nowhere to hide. Most of my reading lately has been about ending that icky cycle of self-abuse. Books I'm reading:

Soul Without Shame by Byron Brown
Loving What Is by Byron Katie (what's with all the Byrons?)
Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen

I think I lived my whole life in fear. I don't imagine I'm alone in that. It's amazing now, when so much of my life is careening out of control (whatever that means - whose life is really in control?), how at peace I feel with life. How totally impervious to judgement I feel sometimes. What an absolute miracle.

Don't take that to mean that I've achieved any kind of perfection, just that I feel better easier than I ever have in my life, and things don't upset me the way they used to. I'll go into it more later, when some sort of example shows up. Actually, here's one: she's suing me, and I feel fine. She used to email me and I'd fall apart for weeks. Now she's suing me and I actually welcome it, because it's what's happening. Amazing how much energy I have now that I'm not RESISTING everything!

It's strange to be writing again. I don't think I realized how Dragnet-ian my words had become - just the facts. Digging my descriptive voice out the storage closet of my life feels strange and awkward and a little exhilarating, like a little girl secretly trying on her mom's necklace and heels. I'm looking forward to the creative writing class I'm taking this fall. I've always been insecure about fiction for some reason. My own life I can articulate fine. My linear imagination seems lacking, though. I suppose you'll be seeing some of those efforts in a few months...

Okay, back to work.