I am inclined to look back, always have been.... An astrologer once warned me that I had perhaps a troublesome tendency to dwell in the nostalgia of the past, and when I heard this, I agreed immediately. That was many years ago, and I'm still doing it. In fact, I recently spent two years writing a memoir, trying to dig through layers of memory in order to make sense out of my life's trajectory -- to answer the question: just what has this life been about really? What kind of story does my life look like?
But what has been interesting about this year 2015 that is now passing is that certain life events have forced me to plant myself squarely in present time and pay attention. It has been a difficult year as years go, but I believe insight has occurred and with that some sense of ease. On February 22, I passed the 70 year mark, sometime in the late spring my right leg and ankle showed signs of inflammation, and fatigue, in the fall I quit a job I had dearly loved after a ten year stint, and at some point a little later I fell into an insidious pattern of sleeplessness.
Instead of celebrating seventy years of life, I had chosen a darker view, one where I looked behind me at the very long succession of happenings, many of which I couldn't remember clearly, and at the same time saw the path ahead becoming shorter and shorter. I went about my normal daily life with this somber weather inside my head. And then, the body spoke to me, its injury forcing me to pay attention. It would appear that it was time finally for me to attend to this body that has been carrying me around all these years with some respect and compassion. And so I embarked on a journey of doctors and tests and physical therapy, struggling to summon lovingkindness for myself. Leaving my ten year job of tending the dying was a big and painful step, and a necessary one. The gifts of those ten years of witnessing were huge -- the equanimity, patience, love, and spaciousness of mind -- but I knewI had to move away from death and put my attentions elsewhere. It was in the end like leaving home... And then came all those nights in the dark when I couldn't sleep, as time slowed down to a painful crawl while I tossed and turned, wavering between meditative acceptance and outright anger. My Buddhist practice couldn't stop me from feeling really angry at both body and brain that were denying me the rest I needed. And rather than be irritated that I was a bad Buddhist, I returned again to lovingkindness, and patience, as I tried to find medicinal help.
The circuits in my brain seemed to be permanently set to fire, with the "on" switch refusing to be turned off. And so, problem solver that I have always been, I pondered and reflected about just why my brain was locked into perpetual vigilance. What was it trying to protect me against? I am not sure I've found an answer, but I am pretty sure a clue lies in the past - yes, the past, my old stomping grounds. As a neglected solitary child I was always watching the comings and goings in the world around me in order to feel safe. They now call this hyper vigilance. And all the recent excavating of my young story just might have opened the door to some very old fear. Fear of what? Running out of time? A failure to create one last meaningful thing? Inability to attain real love? The unspeakable mystery (challenge) of dying alone? Whatever face this vigilance takes, it is all about fear. And fear is about what's ahead of us. The future. Which of course doesn't really exist ... it is forever just ahead of us.
As I look ahead to 2016, I'm happy to report that my body has found rest, my mind is clearer, while the melancholy still walks with me. And as I look more closely at melancholy, I realize it is rooted in a deep love of my life ... a love so big and beautiful I can't bear that it all will end. My authentic self is fairly young, really; she didn't show up until I could carve out work and practice for myself that would allow me to express my deepest (truest) feelings and thoughts. I was probably in my fifties when the real Mag emerged, having endured growing up with a difficult mother, trying out motherhood and marriage herself, finally landing in academia, a place which gave her great comfort and knowledge. How many more years she has to express herself in the world is of course unknown. But the good news is that right NOW she is here, paying attention to messages from her body and brain, breathing in and out, and looking for beauty wherever she can find it: in friendships and family, cats, music, traveling, or watching the stunning little hummingbirds that whiz by for a little nectar in the late afternoons...
I wish all who read this ease and peace and love in the "new year," as we navigate a complicated, painful, and beautiful world.
My Elephant Friends
Amboseli elephants
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Generations
I have a box of crinkly black and white photographs in my closet that tell bits and pieces of my mother's and my far distant past, going back to a time before I was born. I've had grandiose plans to turn them into a chronicle of a long lost past, introducing all the characters, and making insightful and clever quips about their characters.
The photo that comes to mind now is of a very portly couple: my great grandparents, the McCarters of New Jersey. They are both dressed in black, and he holds a cane resolutely even though he is sitting, and both their mouths are set in a grimace-like expression. They were certainly not the relatives whose laps you would leap up into and smile disarmingly. There was a time I went to their house, I must have been about 4 or 5, and I remember lots of dark wood, a musty smell and heavy paintings on the walls. They were formidable each sitting in their respective arm chairs, and I was daunted. I don't recall why we were there, my mother, grandmother and me, but I do remember feeling as though we had no connection and I playacted at being a good little girl as we sipped our afternoon tea. That was the only time I saw them in person. Later as I grew up I remember bragging to my classmates that I actually had great grandparents -- this wasn't all that common then. Also later in my life I realized that my grandmother, who liked to call herself Gigi, was a grand wealthy woman who grew up in a household cold as ice, and who very likely was not cuddled, caressed, or read to. It helped me to forgive her for how she raised my mother, who along with her younger sister grew up under the watchful eye of a series of stern governesses, and had very little maternal tenderness in her life.
So this is what my lineage looked like on my mother's side of the family... the dazzlingly rich yet barren emotional landscape these women in particular traveled through. Though my mother made an attempt to rearrange her identity from rich heiress to bohemian artist, she failed to hone a warm, motherly heart. So lineage matters, you see. It is the baggage we carry as we move through our lives. Somewhere inside my lonely young heart I knew I wanted a different experience when I had children, and I stumbled though the 60's and 70's trying on alternative this and that, baking cookies and bread, and involving myself with my two girls. It often seemed to be an experiment, at times quite imperfect and helter skelter ... And we all survived it, and became close in the end.
A remarkable event occurred in my life this last Friday. A baby was born to my eldest granddaughter in Oregon which magically turns me into ... yes, a great grandmother! I think it's something I will have to practice saying, sort of the way I had to admit to becoming 70 years old earlier this year. In a Portland hospital, there is a cherubic little boy with wisps of reddish brown hair who has a most peaceful demeanor from the images I have seen, and he is now part of my lineage. He gets to take his place in this quirky family drama that is filled with everything from joy to chaos and sadness. His emergence into the world fills me with a sense of possibilities, despite what I feel about the cruelty and violence we are surrounded by these days. Yes, return to the positive ... how can you not, when you look at the innocent countenance of a newborn? Each of us was once a tiny helpless infant with no clue of what the world was or how to survive in it, and because we were shown to use our own best instincts and emotions we found our path. As serious and contemplative as I've become, I know for certain that for a few precious years in my life I had that sense of the possibilities and the wonder.
I have been learning to listen to the 70 year old voice inside me which tells me what I really want to do, as opposed to what other people wish. It certainly seems like it's time to do that in my life! If not now, when? I have been practicing, or certainly trying to, lovingkindness in the face of my own nagging physical limitations (the sleeplessness, the angry tendon), and the failings of others whom I care for. I am going to return to my work as a writer because that is truly something I want for myself. There is a book that is so close to being finished... I am blessed to have given myself the chances for self-expression and creativity that my great grandmother McCarter would never have had available to her. It's no wonder she looked like such a sour puss in many of the old photo! And speaking of those photos, I think I'm going to get cracking on that book of ancient family images, so I can finally honor my complex family lineage. And if I do this, then my new great grandson when he is much older will be able to gaze curiously at all those characters who preceded him, including Great Grandma Mag!
This little guy whom I have not yet touched, has brought a warm ray of light into what has felt like a very unsettling year, and I'm grateful...
The photo that comes to mind now is of a very portly couple: my great grandparents, the McCarters of New Jersey. They are both dressed in black, and he holds a cane resolutely even though he is sitting, and both their mouths are set in a grimace-like expression. They were certainly not the relatives whose laps you would leap up into and smile disarmingly. There was a time I went to their house, I must have been about 4 or 5, and I remember lots of dark wood, a musty smell and heavy paintings on the walls. They were formidable each sitting in their respective arm chairs, and I was daunted. I don't recall why we were there, my mother, grandmother and me, but I do remember feeling as though we had no connection and I playacted at being a good little girl as we sipped our afternoon tea. That was the only time I saw them in person. Later as I grew up I remember bragging to my classmates that I actually had great grandparents -- this wasn't all that common then. Also later in my life I realized that my grandmother, who liked to call herself Gigi, was a grand wealthy woman who grew up in a household cold as ice, and who very likely was not cuddled, caressed, or read to. It helped me to forgive her for how she raised my mother, who along with her younger sister grew up under the watchful eye of a series of stern governesses, and had very little maternal tenderness in her life.
So this is what my lineage looked like on my mother's side of the family... the dazzlingly rich yet barren emotional landscape these women in particular traveled through. Though my mother made an attempt to rearrange her identity from rich heiress to bohemian artist, she failed to hone a warm, motherly heart. So lineage matters, you see. It is the baggage we carry as we move through our lives. Somewhere inside my lonely young heart I knew I wanted a different experience when I had children, and I stumbled though the 60's and 70's trying on alternative this and that, baking cookies and bread, and involving myself with my two girls. It often seemed to be an experiment, at times quite imperfect and helter skelter ... And we all survived it, and became close in the end.
A remarkable event occurred in my life this last Friday. A baby was born to my eldest granddaughter in Oregon which magically turns me into ... yes, a great grandmother! I think it's something I will have to practice saying, sort of the way I had to admit to becoming 70 years old earlier this year. In a Portland hospital, there is a cherubic little boy with wisps of reddish brown hair who has a most peaceful demeanor from the images I have seen, and he is now part of my lineage. He gets to take his place in this quirky family drama that is filled with everything from joy to chaos and sadness. His emergence into the world fills me with a sense of possibilities, despite what I feel about the cruelty and violence we are surrounded by these days. Yes, return to the positive ... how can you not, when you look at the innocent countenance of a newborn? Each of us was once a tiny helpless infant with no clue of what the world was or how to survive in it, and because we were shown to use our own best instincts and emotions we found our path. As serious and contemplative as I've become, I know for certain that for a few precious years in my life I had that sense of the possibilities and the wonder.
I have been learning to listen to the 70 year old voice inside me which tells me what I really want to do, as opposed to what other people wish. It certainly seems like it's time to do that in my life! If not now, when? I have been practicing, or certainly trying to, lovingkindness in the face of my own nagging physical limitations (the sleeplessness, the angry tendon), and the failings of others whom I care for. I am going to return to my work as a writer because that is truly something I want for myself. There is a book that is so close to being finished... I am blessed to have given myself the chances for self-expression and creativity that my great grandmother McCarter would never have had available to her. It's no wonder she looked like such a sour puss in many of the old photo! And speaking of those photos, I think I'm going to get cracking on that book of ancient family images, so I can finally honor my complex family lineage. And if I do this, then my new great grandson when he is much older will be able to gaze curiously at all those characters who preceded him, including Great Grandma Mag!
This little guy whom I have not yet touched, has brought a warm ray of light into what has felt like a very unsettling year, and I'm grateful...
Monday, November 9, 2015
The Way Out is the Way In
I have a card on my desk that says "The Way Out is the Way In," a beautiful little printed woodcut showing a soulful face with a bird swooping over it. The eyes of this face are somewhat hollowed and heavy lidded, a little weary looking, which is the way I've been feeling lately. Chogyam Trumpa Rinpoche wrote this, and it's these words I want to explore.
In all the years I have been meditating on retreat I have heard different iterations of this saying, and it wasn't until the last week in October when I sat the Fall retreat at Spirit Rock that I allowed myself to accept this necessary and painful inward journey. I understood that no matter how many remedies I tried to cook up for my loneliness, restlessness, confusion, and fear, I still had to look inside myself to make myself better, to care for myself. What I discovered inside amidst the confusion and fog from lack of sleep was a deep sadness, an aching of loss for my grandmother and mother whom I've loved and lost, and a relentless cruel self critic that I'll call Hortense. Alongside this unlikely mix I could feel a heart beating that made my body feel warm when I touched my chest, and helped me to say words like, "May I be Happy and Peaceful" to myself like a prayer in the dark of night.
When I couldn't sleep at night, I pulled the blankets up around me and breathed deeply through my whole body in the darkness, when I felt the pinching in my leg and ankle from my injury while walking to the dining hall, I tried to send kindness and compassion to my body, instead of spite and resentment, and when my body twitched in restlessness on the cushion, I simply saw it as restlessness in the body, not anything inherently wrong with me. One of our teachers said one night, "You are not your own fault," and the more I replay that in my mind, the more wisdom I find. We inhabit bodies we didn't choose, and these bodies do a wide variety of things that we have no control over, and then they age, and then they die. The bodies are NOT who we care. They are our temporary home... We need to tend them, care for them the way we the resting place we call home. And we need to locate within this bodily home the compassionate heart that says, "I forgive you for harm caused, for your inherent imperfection..." This is part of that inward journey, along with the part where we allow the pieces of ourselves that have caused us shame and sadness. It turns out that it is all of a piece, like they say. One complex mosaic of the dark and the light, the throbbing of love and the aching of despair.
This last month has been a time more of darkness than light for me, but now I am trying to reach inside and find the warmth. The numbers of hours I haven't slept, the confusion and anger and fear that has come as I begin to feel cognitively impaired, the different remedies I have tried that have not done their magic, and the sense of floating through a surreal dream that has resulted from all of it -- these have colored my time and dampened my spirits. But there have been a couple of little gifts along the way which have given me hope and energy: my visit to the dignified old temple-like Columbarium here in San Francisco where I will have a niche for my ashes behind a lovely little glass door in a room where sunlight pours through stained glass windows, and then a visit to Oregon to celebrate the impending arrival of a great grandson, a gathering where I was surrounded by daughters, granddaughters, other relations and friendly souls hugging one another and laughing, while a gentle cool rain fell outside. It had been so long since I had seen rain, and I remember putting my face up to it and smiling, feeling the cobwebs being washed away. Within the space of just a couple of days I witnessed my own final resting place and the prospect of a brand new child in my family whom I will get to know only briefly. Death and life all felt, and deeply.
I am softened by all of this and there seems to be more space in my heart. I can go here when sleep refuses to come. It is my real home.
In all the years I have been meditating on retreat I have heard different iterations of this saying, and it wasn't until the last week in October when I sat the Fall retreat at Spirit Rock that I allowed myself to accept this necessary and painful inward journey. I understood that no matter how many remedies I tried to cook up for my loneliness, restlessness, confusion, and fear, I still had to look inside myself to make myself better, to care for myself. What I discovered inside amidst the confusion and fog from lack of sleep was a deep sadness, an aching of loss for my grandmother and mother whom I've loved and lost, and a relentless cruel self critic that I'll call Hortense. Alongside this unlikely mix I could feel a heart beating that made my body feel warm when I touched my chest, and helped me to say words like, "May I be Happy and Peaceful" to myself like a prayer in the dark of night.
When I couldn't sleep at night, I pulled the blankets up around me and breathed deeply through my whole body in the darkness, when I felt the pinching in my leg and ankle from my injury while walking to the dining hall, I tried to send kindness and compassion to my body, instead of spite and resentment, and when my body twitched in restlessness on the cushion, I simply saw it as restlessness in the body, not anything inherently wrong with me. One of our teachers said one night, "You are not your own fault," and the more I replay that in my mind, the more wisdom I find. We inhabit bodies we didn't choose, and these bodies do a wide variety of things that we have no control over, and then they age, and then they die. The bodies are NOT who we care. They are our temporary home... We need to tend them, care for them the way we the resting place we call home. And we need to locate within this bodily home the compassionate heart that says, "I forgive you for harm caused, for your inherent imperfection..." This is part of that inward journey, along with the part where we allow the pieces of ourselves that have caused us shame and sadness. It turns out that it is all of a piece, like they say. One complex mosaic of the dark and the light, the throbbing of love and the aching of despair.
This last month has been a time more of darkness than light for me, but now I am trying to reach inside and find the warmth. The numbers of hours I haven't slept, the confusion and anger and fear that has come as I begin to feel cognitively impaired, the different remedies I have tried that have not done their magic, and the sense of floating through a surreal dream that has resulted from all of it -- these have colored my time and dampened my spirits. But there have been a couple of little gifts along the way which have given me hope and energy: my visit to the dignified old temple-like Columbarium here in San Francisco where I will have a niche for my ashes behind a lovely little glass door in a room where sunlight pours through stained glass windows, and then a visit to Oregon to celebrate the impending arrival of a great grandson, a gathering where I was surrounded by daughters, granddaughters, other relations and friendly souls hugging one another and laughing, while a gentle cool rain fell outside. It had been so long since I had seen rain, and I remember putting my face up to it and smiling, feeling the cobwebs being washed away. Within the space of just a couple of days I witnessed my own final resting place and the prospect of a brand new child in my family whom I will get to know only briefly. Death and life all felt, and deeply.
I am softened by all of this and there seems to be more space in my heart. I can go here when sleep refuses to come. It is my real home.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
In the Midst of Confusion and Suffering ...
Well, it hasn't been a very "examined life" lately, I must say ... These last two weeks I have been wandering in a surreal landscape of sleeplessness and confusion, and have been performing only the most rudimentary of tasks in order to get through the days. Sitting down and writing often felt like it was beyond the scope of my abilities, and I knew this, and it was o.k. For the time being. Because everything is just "for the time being."
In a darkened room late at night I lie on my couch - now turned into a bed - and I breathe deeply, wishing to spread calm through my nervous system. And I think about so-called pleasant thoughts so as not to agitate my brain: thoughts like the beautiful video I saw of the orphaned elephants in Kenya being lovingly tended by their keepers, or the pleasures of the novel I'm reading, or imagining getting together soon with my family ... Benign and comfortable thoughts. Following what I've learned about sleep disorder, I have turned off the television and engaged in less stimulating activities like reading before I turn out the light. Medications sit at the bedside as well as a cup of what I call "sleepy tea"... I am not doing well on the couple of meds I've taken for reasons unknown, and I keep searching for another way to help myself sleep ... Perhaps a pot-laced piece of chocolate will help... Yes, as a matter of fact it did help last night.
But there are more nights to come, and life is uncertain... What does this insomnia suggest? Am I anxious or worried? Am I stressed or angry? Is my body's chemistry changing in some mysterious way that causes this hyper vigilance ? Does knowing the answer to any of these questions really help? What does help?
I do know there is too much bad news inside my head, and I am considering going on a news fast. This will be hard, because I'm addicted to the Evening News Hour on PBS, and the NY Times online. The school murders, the hospital bombings, drowning cities like Charleston, the mean spirited energy on the political front ... these and much more. The vibrations from these horrors are swirling in my brain every day, with only the occasional respite of good news, like the real and compassionate Pope Francis in Washington DC and New York, or our Governor Brown signing the Assisted Dying law in California, or the beautiful soulful face of President Obama as he declares he will make gun control political, because that's the only place where we can negotiate a change. Yes, there's a lot to think about and hold.
There's also the young bright eyed high school students who come to 826 Valencia to be tutored in writing on a Monday evening -- energetic, and shy, precocious, and sometimes awkward, these kids are committed to working on their writing. They have stories to tell and a willingness to learn how to go down that writer's road, a hard one for sure. There's also the tender loving respect in a room of hospice volunteers past and present whose hearts are breaking because their community seems to be seriously eroded and the zen in the Project is clearly fading away. And of course there are the random acts of kindness that come to us as we go through our days, small and sweet, sometimes just a random smile, or something so small we barely see it.. We don't have to think of the world as a terrifying place really because on the other side of the terror sits the beauty of people's feelings and actions. The old "10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows" that the Buddha talked about...
BUT, when you haven't had enough rest and sleep, a lot about the world does feel scary: the speed of every moving vehicle in the city, the noises both sudden and ongoing, surrounding you as you navigate your way through the day. I feel like an old lady these days, mincing along slowly, watching my every step. You could say I'm becoming increasingly mindful, I guess, and that's a good thing, but there is also a lurking feeling of overwhelm from everything around me. So, I must stop and simply see this as "overwhelm," and not let it define me or my experience. That's what a "good Buddhist" would do. I do know this, but will I practice it, will I be able to dis-own this difficulty? I want this very much ... not so I can call myself a good Buddhist, but so I can open my heart again to my life, and work and think more spaciously.
Maybe tomorrow, after I spend an hour really waking up (for that is what it is like on medications), I will sit on my cushion for a while and breathe. Yes. I think that's a good plan. And see what shows up. And if my granddaughter's face comes to me I will smile, or if I see a slaughtered elephant or drowning person, I will just breathe deeply and send out love to the world ... and to myself. It appears that this is what I must do.
In a darkened room late at night I lie on my couch - now turned into a bed - and I breathe deeply, wishing to spread calm through my nervous system. And I think about so-called pleasant thoughts so as not to agitate my brain: thoughts like the beautiful video I saw of the orphaned elephants in Kenya being lovingly tended by their keepers, or the pleasures of the novel I'm reading, or imagining getting together soon with my family ... Benign and comfortable thoughts. Following what I've learned about sleep disorder, I have turned off the television and engaged in less stimulating activities like reading before I turn out the light. Medications sit at the bedside as well as a cup of what I call "sleepy tea"... I am not doing well on the couple of meds I've taken for reasons unknown, and I keep searching for another way to help myself sleep ... Perhaps a pot-laced piece of chocolate will help... Yes, as a matter of fact it did help last night.
But there are more nights to come, and life is uncertain... What does this insomnia suggest? Am I anxious or worried? Am I stressed or angry? Is my body's chemistry changing in some mysterious way that causes this hyper vigilance ? Does knowing the answer to any of these questions really help? What does help?
I do know there is too much bad news inside my head, and I am considering going on a news fast. This will be hard, because I'm addicted to the Evening News Hour on PBS, and the NY Times online. The school murders, the hospital bombings, drowning cities like Charleston, the mean spirited energy on the political front ... these and much more. The vibrations from these horrors are swirling in my brain every day, with only the occasional respite of good news, like the real and compassionate Pope Francis in Washington DC and New York, or our Governor Brown signing the Assisted Dying law in California, or the beautiful soulful face of President Obama as he declares he will make gun control political, because that's the only place where we can negotiate a change. Yes, there's a lot to think about and hold.
There's also the young bright eyed high school students who come to 826 Valencia to be tutored in writing on a Monday evening -- energetic, and shy, precocious, and sometimes awkward, these kids are committed to working on their writing. They have stories to tell and a willingness to learn how to go down that writer's road, a hard one for sure. There's also the tender loving respect in a room of hospice volunteers past and present whose hearts are breaking because their community seems to be seriously eroded and the zen in the Project is clearly fading away. And of course there are the random acts of kindness that come to us as we go through our days, small and sweet, sometimes just a random smile, or something so small we barely see it.. We don't have to think of the world as a terrifying place really because on the other side of the terror sits the beauty of people's feelings and actions. The old "10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows" that the Buddha talked about...
BUT, when you haven't had enough rest and sleep, a lot about the world does feel scary: the speed of every moving vehicle in the city, the noises both sudden and ongoing, surrounding you as you navigate your way through the day. I feel like an old lady these days, mincing along slowly, watching my every step. You could say I'm becoming increasingly mindful, I guess, and that's a good thing, but there is also a lurking feeling of overwhelm from everything around me. So, I must stop and simply see this as "overwhelm," and not let it define me or my experience. That's what a "good Buddhist" would do. I do know this, but will I practice it, will I be able to dis-own this difficulty? I want this very much ... not so I can call myself a good Buddhist, but so I can open my heart again to my life, and work and think more spaciously.
Maybe tomorrow, after I spend an hour really waking up (for that is what it is like on medications), I will sit on my cushion for a while and breathe. Yes. I think that's a good plan. And see what shows up. And if my granddaughter's face comes to me I will smile, or if I see a slaughtered elephant or drowning person, I will just breathe deeply and send out love to the world ... and to myself. It appears that this is what I must do.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
A Siesta for the Ego
My body has been delivering a few truths to me lately, and since I do NOT want to contemplate the circus of the political right wing, the desecration of Planned Parenthood, the tragic journey of migrants across Europe, or my deep seated ambivalence about Hilary Clinton, I thought I'd take a look at what I've been seeing lately and how it has made me feel.
I wrote last time about letting go, definitely a recurring theme in my blogs posts, but I have a feeling now that I haven't quite mastered it. I seem to be doing this only intermittently, when my ankle hurts and asks for compassion, or my granddaughter writes me a letter that opens a previously closed door so we both can begin again, or when I let go of a work relationship that has ceased to nurture me. New challenges now lurk.... I have been exhausted lately, way more than normal, and have had a couple of health practitioners tell me that my 70 year old adrenal system is depleted and needs for me to find new and different ways to rest. I have in fact been fleeing disaster and seeking safety since I was a lonely little girl in an adult world... At the same time, I have been having a terrible time not being able to sleep. So, fatigue and wakefulness present themselves side by side. An odd, irrational couple, I must say. Insomnia is new to me, and I am experiencing serious resistance to this unwelcome sleeplessness in the quiet and the dark of night. It all feels too abnormal ... after all, night is the time your body is naturally inclined to sleep, right? What happens when you get only four hours a night, as any insomniac will tell you, is that your brain starts to feel impaired, and you move in slow, repetitive motion as though carrying your exhausted body through dense fog. You often feel unsafe, and even just a bit demented. And as soon as I think of dementia, the brain takes me to death and dying. And the unpleasant dark cycle is perpetuated...
None of the above is in the end cause for worry, really. There is no mortal illness in the picture. There are plenty of people out there suffering much worse physical and emotional conditions -- you have only to read the newspaper or click into Facebook to find this out. There is simply a dysfunction in my body's efforts to carry on that is crying out for attention. And this doesn't mean to planning my next distraction, like a trip to Mexico or New York city, or a lovely dinner out at some special restaurant. No, the answer would seem to be much simpler, really. But it is as well a new challenge. It involves stopping. Resting. Giving up on the obsessive striving. This last becomes such a familiar pattern for us humans, I think, this nagging message that we are here on earth to accomplish great things, perform well, get ahead, be recognized. It is part of today's climate where so much is valued in terms of how quickly it will get you the desired results... As we get older, we begin to sense significant limitations to our energy and the shortening of our journey, and so an urgency creeps in, reminding us that we never know how much time there is, and we'd better get cracking if we want our lives to mean something. But, but ... this is mind chatter, really. This is the hard working super ego that insists it tells the truth.
I doubt very much whether human beings like the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis swim ceaselessly in their thoughts about doing and not doing, or the unkind admonitions about performing perfectly ... they are too busy leading their purposeful lives, speaking their truths and opening their hearts to those they encounter. These gentlemen - and it is true they are infinitely gentle beings - are driven by love and compassion to remind their fellow humans of the possibility of freedom. They are thoughtful teachers much like Jesus who saw no divisions amongst humans but rather their goodness, potential, and ability to find the way out of suffering. I believe it is a fact that teachers must teach, just the way we all must breathe, and eat, and sleep, in order to live. This work is always needed in the world, this opening of doors and minds, and it requires a surrendering of oneself and an absence of doubt and self-judgment.
I have spent about 15 years teaching young people to write creative works and good expository papers, and as I look back on that now I don't recall a lot of time spent spinning in my mind about the how of it all. I just showed up and did the work and felt more alive and present for myself than ever before. And the more I showed up, the closer I became to my students, and the better I got. It was never about following a game plan, really, but more about just being present for the work. I have an opportunity now to return to the teaching world as a volunteer tutor, and the prospect of this new relationship makes me happy inside. I must trust this. And I must take my rest deliberately and creatively when I can so I have the energy to make a difference in the days ahead. That is what is true: just these days ahead, day by day.
I wrote last time about letting go, definitely a recurring theme in my blogs posts, but I have a feeling now that I haven't quite mastered it. I seem to be doing this only intermittently, when my ankle hurts and asks for compassion, or my granddaughter writes me a letter that opens a previously closed door so we both can begin again, or when I let go of a work relationship that has ceased to nurture me. New challenges now lurk.... I have been exhausted lately, way more than normal, and have had a couple of health practitioners tell me that my 70 year old adrenal system is depleted and needs for me to find new and different ways to rest. I have in fact been fleeing disaster and seeking safety since I was a lonely little girl in an adult world... At the same time, I have been having a terrible time not being able to sleep. So, fatigue and wakefulness present themselves side by side. An odd, irrational couple, I must say. Insomnia is new to me, and I am experiencing serious resistance to this unwelcome sleeplessness in the quiet and the dark of night. It all feels too abnormal ... after all, night is the time your body is naturally inclined to sleep, right? What happens when you get only four hours a night, as any insomniac will tell you, is that your brain starts to feel impaired, and you move in slow, repetitive motion as though carrying your exhausted body through dense fog. You often feel unsafe, and even just a bit demented. And as soon as I think of dementia, the brain takes me to death and dying. And the unpleasant dark cycle is perpetuated...
None of the above is in the end cause for worry, really. There is no mortal illness in the picture. There are plenty of people out there suffering much worse physical and emotional conditions -- you have only to read the newspaper or click into Facebook to find this out. There is simply a dysfunction in my body's efforts to carry on that is crying out for attention. And this doesn't mean to planning my next distraction, like a trip to Mexico or New York city, or a lovely dinner out at some special restaurant. No, the answer would seem to be much simpler, really. But it is as well a new challenge. It involves stopping. Resting. Giving up on the obsessive striving. This last becomes such a familiar pattern for us humans, I think, this nagging message that we are here on earth to accomplish great things, perform well, get ahead, be recognized. It is part of today's climate where so much is valued in terms of how quickly it will get you the desired results... As we get older, we begin to sense significant limitations to our energy and the shortening of our journey, and so an urgency creeps in, reminding us that we never know how much time there is, and we'd better get cracking if we want our lives to mean something. But, but ... this is mind chatter, really. This is the hard working super ego that insists it tells the truth.
I doubt very much whether human beings like the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis swim ceaselessly in their thoughts about doing and not doing, or the unkind admonitions about performing perfectly ... they are too busy leading their purposeful lives, speaking their truths and opening their hearts to those they encounter. These gentlemen - and it is true they are infinitely gentle beings - are driven by love and compassion to remind their fellow humans of the possibility of freedom. They are thoughtful teachers much like Jesus who saw no divisions amongst humans but rather their goodness, potential, and ability to find the way out of suffering. I believe it is a fact that teachers must teach, just the way we all must breathe, and eat, and sleep, in order to live. This work is always needed in the world, this opening of doors and minds, and it requires a surrendering of oneself and an absence of doubt and self-judgment.
I have spent about 15 years teaching young people to write creative works and good expository papers, and as I look back on that now I don't recall a lot of time spent spinning in my mind about the how of it all. I just showed up and did the work and felt more alive and present for myself than ever before. And the more I showed up, the closer I became to my students, and the better I got. It was never about following a game plan, really, but more about just being present for the work. I have an opportunity now to return to the teaching world as a volunteer tutor, and the prospect of this new relationship makes me happy inside. I must trust this. And I must take my rest deliberately and creatively when I can so I have the energy to make a difference in the days ahead. That is what is true: just these days ahead, day by day.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Letting Go and Moving On ...
I have taken to being out in the world more these days, feeling the almost soporific effects of hanging out in my beautiful cave-like little house on White Street, and wanting to find a change. This journey into being seventy this year feels fraught with self-reflection, hunkering down alone with my cats and my books and my addiction to NPR, and pondering, always pondering, the slowing down of my routine. A weird and claustrophobic life, I've been thinking. And so I sit now in one of my favorite lunch joints, at the bar looking out the open windows onto bustling Chestnut street where San Franciscans march through the 85 degree heat with apparent ease. I don't enjoy the heat, especially in this city known for the cool sea air, the fog, the eternally unchanging temperate climate. Yesterday I felt the city gasping under this heat, and the baking warmth coming off all the stone buildings and the sidewalk, and it seemed I was walking in a surreal universe. I prefer this sitting iindoors at the pretty wooden bar with my IPad and recording my reflections, and finding amazing focus in all the hubbub.
About a week ago I quit a job I had been doing for over ten years, and my system - that is my mind AND my heart - is still getting used to it. I have been a volunteer caregiver for the dying here in San Francisco at a remarkable organization called Zen Hospice Project, and it has been a journey of learning, expansion of heart, tears and laughter, more learning, and the giving and receiving of love. Working amongst about 60 other volunteers, I have become witness to the greatest mystery of our human lives, watching people traverse the border between the living and the dead, and breathing with them as they go. It was hard at first as I got used to the strange sounds of death rattles and sights of strange fluids and the chilling reality of the shutting down of a person's body. And pretty soon the world of the dying became a natural and normal one, and there was no more pulling back, and I saw I was being given an incalculable gift: intimacy with other human beings at the most momentous, and most undefinable moment of their life. And so I showed up every Thursday to spend 5 hours in mindfulness and service. It colored the rest of my life, for sure, and I believe helped me become a better listener, a better witness to life's strangeness, and it gave me a community that felt like home, a place where clear speaking and authentic listening prevailed, and where we were (are) guided by our understanding that we are not in control in this life.
Relationships emerged and then faded as fellow volunteers came and went, as we continued to watch the dance of impermanence. I worked at Laguna Honda hospital, a somewhat bedraggled skilled nursing facility that a local writer has called "God's Hotel," and then moved on to serving at our small facility in an elegant old Victorian house on Page Street where we welcome only six patients at a time, and are able to help them create new homes in their rooms, and prepared homemade organic meals for them. A rarified world this was/is. Our days were always punctuated by 10 minute meditations followed by thoughtful sharing of personal and hospice experiences. Needless to say, we all got to know each other very well over time, which you can't always say for our relationships to the residents who came and went with an ephemral rhythm, some staying for a few months, some for only a few days...
Somewhere along the journey of this work of mine, I began to feel overwhelmed, or just worn out, by this living with the finiteness of mortality and impermanence at every turn, and as I saw the organization begin to define itself in a new way, I thought that my part as a player was coming to an end. Change was coming, and I saw that I couldn't allow myself to feel a part of that. AND, my personal life was shrinking and narrowing, which made me feel less sanguine in some ways. Everything seemed to be pointing to the importance of a change of routine. A little voice was murmuring at me: get out in the world more, move away from the cave of contemplatioin and reflection... which translates to leave the introspective world of hospice care and get out of the meditative nest of your home, and see what it's like to be a seventy year old lady in the city, complete with bum ankle and creaky joints.
So here I am on a very hot San Francisco afternoon sitting on a barstool and beginning to look outward just a bit ... consider the intoxicating world of men and women and cats and dogs and streets and rolling hills and goldfinches and hummingbirds, and ...........There is a lot to this being alive thing, I've found, and as I exit the womblike enclosure of house and hospice service, I am inspired and hopeful. The gifts of contemplative pratice and mindful service will always be with me no matter where I land, and I will forever treasure the voices and spirits of those I helped get to the end of their lives.... We (I am) are a part of all that we have experienced, and there something beautiful in the aging process ... sort of like the deep, velvety bouquet of an old wine.
With deep gratitude to Zen Hospice Project ...
About a week ago I quit a job I had been doing for over ten years, and my system - that is my mind AND my heart - is still getting used to it. I have been a volunteer caregiver for the dying here in San Francisco at a remarkable organization called Zen Hospice Project, and it has been a journey of learning, expansion of heart, tears and laughter, more learning, and the giving and receiving of love. Working amongst about 60 other volunteers, I have become witness to the greatest mystery of our human lives, watching people traverse the border between the living and the dead, and breathing with them as they go. It was hard at first as I got used to the strange sounds of death rattles and sights of strange fluids and the chilling reality of the shutting down of a person's body. And pretty soon the world of the dying became a natural and normal one, and there was no more pulling back, and I saw I was being given an incalculable gift: intimacy with other human beings at the most momentous, and most undefinable moment of their life. And so I showed up every Thursday to spend 5 hours in mindfulness and service. It colored the rest of my life, for sure, and I believe helped me become a better listener, a better witness to life's strangeness, and it gave me a community that felt like home, a place where clear speaking and authentic listening prevailed, and where we were (are) guided by our understanding that we are not in control in this life.
Relationships emerged and then faded as fellow volunteers came and went, as we continued to watch the dance of impermanence. I worked at Laguna Honda hospital, a somewhat bedraggled skilled nursing facility that a local writer has called "God's Hotel," and then moved on to serving at our small facility in an elegant old Victorian house on Page Street where we welcome only six patients at a time, and are able to help them create new homes in their rooms, and prepared homemade organic meals for them. A rarified world this was/is. Our days were always punctuated by 10 minute meditations followed by thoughtful sharing of personal and hospice experiences. Needless to say, we all got to know each other very well over time, which you can't always say for our relationships to the residents who came and went with an ephemral rhythm, some staying for a few months, some for only a few days...
Somewhere along the journey of this work of mine, I began to feel overwhelmed, or just worn out, by this living with the finiteness of mortality and impermanence at every turn, and as I saw the organization begin to define itself in a new way, I thought that my part as a player was coming to an end. Change was coming, and I saw that I couldn't allow myself to feel a part of that. AND, my personal life was shrinking and narrowing, which made me feel less sanguine in some ways. Everything seemed to be pointing to the importance of a change of routine. A little voice was murmuring at me: get out in the world more, move away from the cave of contemplatioin and reflection... which translates to leave the introspective world of hospice care and get out of the meditative nest of your home, and see what it's like to be a seventy year old lady in the city, complete with bum ankle and creaky joints.
So here I am on a very hot San Francisco afternoon sitting on a barstool and beginning to look outward just a bit ... consider the intoxicating world of men and women and cats and dogs and streets and rolling hills and goldfinches and hummingbirds, and ...........There is a lot to this being alive thing, I've found, and as I exit the womblike enclosure of house and hospice service, I am inspired and hopeful. The gifts of contemplative pratice and mindful service will always be with me no matter where I land, and I will forever treasure the voices and spirits of those I helped get to the end of their lives.... We (I am) are a part of all that we have experienced, and there something beautiful in the aging process ... sort of like the deep, velvety bouquet of an old wine.
With deep gratitude to Zen Hospice Project ...
Saturday, August 29, 2015
I Love the Fog
I woke up this morning in my little beach house by Salmon Creek and everything was bathed in pale gray fog. There was a hush in the air and yet I heard the ocean roar in the distance ... maybe not roar, but rather gently rumble. All the green plants close by were covered in dew as the fog shed its moisture, and the outside wooden deck felt cool and wet on my bare feet. I can barely see the ducks in the estuary and can locate the snowy egret only because he is dramatically white amidst all the gray. There is a little convention of wild birds on my deck pecking away at the the food I left them, the red wing blackbirds looking particularly elegant and dramatic in the mist. This is just another Saturday morning at the beach.
When I was five or six I trudged to school in the fog, holding on to my Winnie the Pooh lunchbox, and I loved the feeling of camouflage that I experienced. Ever the loner, I felt safe in this cloaked state. I fell asleep at night at my Grandmother's listening to the song of the fog horns, which always seemed to be in a minor key. I remember feeling that the moan of those horns was meant especially for me. When I was older and living in North Beach on the eastern end of the city, I recall watching with excitement as rolling pillows of fog poured over Russian Hill to the west, coming toward us like the ocean in slow motion.
Though fog generally evokes the many years of my life in San Francisco, I've experienced it in England and Ireland, those beautiful rolling green landscapes bathed in moisture and reeking of the earth and placid sheep, and out on the water in Vietnam as we cruised Halong Bay in a junk exploring ancient islands, and obviously in places not clear in my memory at the moment. This beautiful blanket of moisture has always conjured comfort and safety for me, a sense of being held in a benign cocoon. And then there is the mystery of fog. Think of a Sherlock Holmes film where the undaunted detective strides through the foggy wet London streets as the street lamps cast their eerie light here and there and remind us of danger. Yes, comfort and mystery all in one ... The shades of gray in our lives.
I've always believed in the shades of gray, I think, perhaps because the confusion I was raised in offered no clear and safe points of reference. And so I lived through days, months, and years of the gray, no anchor. Eventually I got used to it because I had to. A certain trust in the gray mystery came to influence my intellect, and became part of what I saw as true. I remember numerous conversations with daughter number one when she was little, and later when she became a young adult, heated words about right and wrong and the great mystery in between. She wanted to settle the questions of her world in black and white, and I kept telling her no, that was not the way the world worked. The world was filled with mystery (which I continued to see as a benign fog), and that was o.k. We could still find our way because we had reason and a determination to seek our own truth. But of course she didn't come to wisdom because her mother pronounced it to her ... the path is more complicated than that.
The older we get the more we see the ambiguities and confusions underneath the big picture. As I grow old and struggle with loss of vitality, connection, self assurance perhaps, the more my mind tilts inward, examining and weighing the quirkiness and complexity of my life. I see how many detours were taken, promises abandoned, and points of view shifted. At age twenty it is much easier to feel certainty and conviction about right and wrong because the world is narrower, less life has been lived; by the time you get to sixty or seventy you see just how many different rights and wrongs are possible. I think this has something to do with relativity, but I'm not going to journey there.
The blackbirds are still doing their dance outside around the food dish, crimson red paint strokes flashing through their black wings as they flutter and argue. The sun is beginning to push through the gray mist. Pretty soon the ocean will be visible again and the water on the creek will be sparkling in bright light. The soft fog blanket will eventually disappear and become a memory. This makes most people smile and rejoice. They want into the light. And it's not that I don't want to see the sun, or feel its warm hand on my back. It's all of a piece, really ... I (we) need it all: inky dark night for our rest, fog shrouded morning where we hunker down with the thought anything is possible, and the sparkling day arriving, offering its unknown gifts .... Just another Saturday at the beach.
When I was five or six I trudged to school in the fog, holding on to my Winnie the Pooh lunchbox, and I loved the feeling of camouflage that I experienced. Ever the loner, I felt safe in this cloaked state. I fell asleep at night at my Grandmother's listening to the song of the fog horns, which always seemed to be in a minor key. I remember feeling that the moan of those horns was meant especially for me. When I was older and living in North Beach on the eastern end of the city, I recall watching with excitement as rolling pillows of fog poured over Russian Hill to the west, coming toward us like the ocean in slow motion.
Though fog generally evokes the many years of my life in San Francisco, I've experienced it in England and Ireland, those beautiful rolling green landscapes bathed in moisture and reeking of the earth and placid sheep, and out on the water in Vietnam as we cruised Halong Bay in a junk exploring ancient islands, and obviously in places not clear in my memory at the moment. This beautiful blanket of moisture has always conjured comfort and safety for me, a sense of being held in a benign cocoon. And then there is the mystery of fog. Think of a Sherlock Holmes film where the undaunted detective strides through the foggy wet London streets as the street lamps cast their eerie light here and there and remind us of danger. Yes, comfort and mystery all in one ... The shades of gray in our lives.
I've always believed in the shades of gray, I think, perhaps because the confusion I was raised in offered no clear and safe points of reference. And so I lived through days, months, and years of the gray, no anchor. Eventually I got used to it because I had to. A certain trust in the gray mystery came to influence my intellect, and became part of what I saw as true. I remember numerous conversations with daughter number one when she was little, and later when she became a young adult, heated words about right and wrong and the great mystery in between. She wanted to settle the questions of her world in black and white, and I kept telling her no, that was not the way the world worked. The world was filled with mystery (which I continued to see as a benign fog), and that was o.k. We could still find our way because we had reason and a determination to seek our own truth. But of course she didn't come to wisdom because her mother pronounced it to her ... the path is more complicated than that.
The older we get the more we see the ambiguities and confusions underneath the big picture. As I grow old and struggle with loss of vitality, connection, self assurance perhaps, the more my mind tilts inward, examining and weighing the quirkiness and complexity of my life. I see how many detours were taken, promises abandoned, and points of view shifted. At age twenty it is much easier to feel certainty and conviction about right and wrong because the world is narrower, less life has been lived; by the time you get to sixty or seventy you see just how many different rights and wrongs are possible. I think this has something to do with relativity, but I'm not going to journey there.
The blackbirds are still doing their dance outside around the food dish, crimson red paint strokes flashing through their black wings as they flutter and argue. The sun is beginning to push through the gray mist. Pretty soon the ocean will be visible again and the water on the creek will be sparkling in bright light. The soft fog blanket will eventually disappear and become a memory. This makes most people smile and rejoice. They want into the light. And it's not that I don't want to see the sun, or feel its warm hand on my back. It's all of a piece, really ... I (we) need it all: inky dark night for our rest, fog shrouded morning where we hunker down with the thought anything is possible, and the sparkling day arriving, offering its unknown gifts .... Just another Saturday at the beach.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
A Heart that Closes and Opens
We expect a lot of ourselves we humans, especially in times of ostensible defeat or difficulty. When we stumble, are knocked down and fall on the ground, we tend to expect the universe to be normal and safe when we get up and move on. When our hearts are broken, we often brush ourselves off, and will ourselves to return to normal as soon as humanly possible so we may find love again. When we fall into disagreement with someone we often grit our teeth and summon our determination to prove ourselves right. Our mind works so hard trying to run the show, driving us forward to be normal and good, to prevail, do the right thing, and be in control. But when someone we love dies, our brains don't find it that easy to cloak the heart so we can simply soldier on. Death - one of the few unavoidable truths of human life - does this to us, helping us crack open in the face of what is real. It shows us, I think, that the heart and not the brain is our essence.
I recently learned of a degenerative condition in my right ankle that has been brewing for some time and will change the way I move out into the world in the future. It appears there will be no long hikes in Africa, or exploration of Tibet, or squash playing, or just plain marching up and down the hills of San Francisco... Arthritis is a disease (I first called it a beast) that usually affects those "of a certain age" and is in a way symbolic of the aging process. Here it is in front of me now, and I can feel my heart and mind contracting in response, as though to forbid its presence. No such luck, of course. It is alive and present in the body and cannot be cut away or made to disappear. So, what is one to do? Can I welcome it as an another "guest," as Rumi wrote in his classic poem? And just how is it possible to welcome something that makes you wince when you take some simple steps? I am not sure. What I know is that my problem solving brain is working overtime to try to figure out how to walk and move about in a different way, and what supplements or aids might be effective in diminishing the pain, and whether the great bug-a-boo of surgery is actually an option for someone in my position. I do know that a few glasses of wine soften the body in a strange way and momentarily blur out the physical stress, but so does a good movie, talk with a dear friend, or a nice meal lovingly prepared. And still ... there it is... While my mind is working away with the laundry list of solutions, I feel my heart shrinking around this new assault on my person. The heart withers and the brain goes on to imagine a dark and dingy trajectory of disability and limitation. It dares to tell me the story about becoming seriously disabled. Yes, it is a story, and it lives in the future which of course is not known. And instead of comforting my vulnerable body and forgiving myself for getting older, I get caught in a whirlwind of doubt and anxiety.
I experienced loss of another kind this last week. A dear friend of mine who lives in my old home town of Taos, New Mexico, has died after a valiant battle against late stage ovarian cancer. When I received the news I remember feeling a warmth and a softening in my chest, an ah-ha moment that reminded me of the preciousness of human life. I have no idea where my mind was - perhaps taking a well deserved rest - and that was a good thing! I recalled my last evening with this beautiful woman and the radiance I felt coming from her as she bravely offered her heart and mind through a long evening with close friends, wine, and conversation. She was very clear about where she was on her journey and didn't need to talk about it. Candles flickered and glasses were raised and life was all around us. Now she is gone. This is what happens to all of us. And the mystery of it all defies the powers of mind ... When I think about this lovely lady who was a shooting star in the sky, I realize that we all are just that: shooting stars or comets or great soaring birds winging our way across the heavens. We are fragile, we humans, and life is uncertain, whether we are seventy, thirty, or sixteen.
If I could see myself as a magnificent shooting star making its way through the air, then perhaps I could hold my physical difficulties with compassion and love. And why not? This body has done a great job getting me this far and it is unclear how long we'll be doing this together ... it's only fitting to show it some respect. Show it my open heart, not the twisted cruel one that resents my mortality. I am now taking refuge in my house that overlooks the grand and mysterious Pacific Ocean and there are snowy egrets in the creek foraging for fish, deer in the meadow beyond prancing through the brush, and as I look out at that landscape I come closer to seeing myself as a very small piece of the grand puzzle, one little player who searches for grounding, acceptance, and peace of mind. And none of this has anything to do with the power of the mind. I am grateful. I thank the universe.
I recently learned of a degenerative condition in my right ankle that has been brewing for some time and will change the way I move out into the world in the future. It appears there will be no long hikes in Africa, or exploration of Tibet, or squash playing, or just plain marching up and down the hills of San Francisco... Arthritis is a disease (I first called it a beast) that usually affects those "of a certain age" and is in a way symbolic of the aging process. Here it is in front of me now, and I can feel my heart and mind contracting in response, as though to forbid its presence. No such luck, of course. It is alive and present in the body and cannot be cut away or made to disappear. So, what is one to do? Can I welcome it as an another "guest," as Rumi wrote in his classic poem? And just how is it possible to welcome something that makes you wince when you take some simple steps? I am not sure. What I know is that my problem solving brain is working overtime to try to figure out how to walk and move about in a different way, and what supplements or aids might be effective in diminishing the pain, and whether the great bug-a-boo of surgery is actually an option for someone in my position. I do know that a few glasses of wine soften the body in a strange way and momentarily blur out the physical stress, but so does a good movie, talk with a dear friend, or a nice meal lovingly prepared. And still ... there it is... While my mind is working away with the laundry list of solutions, I feel my heart shrinking around this new assault on my person. The heart withers and the brain goes on to imagine a dark and dingy trajectory of disability and limitation. It dares to tell me the story about becoming seriously disabled. Yes, it is a story, and it lives in the future which of course is not known. And instead of comforting my vulnerable body and forgiving myself for getting older, I get caught in a whirlwind of doubt and anxiety.
I experienced loss of another kind this last week. A dear friend of mine who lives in my old home town of Taos, New Mexico, has died after a valiant battle against late stage ovarian cancer. When I received the news I remember feeling a warmth and a softening in my chest, an ah-ha moment that reminded me of the preciousness of human life. I have no idea where my mind was - perhaps taking a well deserved rest - and that was a good thing! I recalled my last evening with this beautiful woman and the radiance I felt coming from her as she bravely offered her heart and mind through a long evening with close friends, wine, and conversation. She was very clear about where she was on her journey and didn't need to talk about it. Candles flickered and glasses were raised and life was all around us. Now she is gone. This is what happens to all of us. And the mystery of it all defies the powers of mind ... When I think about this lovely lady who was a shooting star in the sky, I realize that we all are just that: shooting stars or comets or great soaring birds winging our way across the heavens. We are fragile, we humans, and life is uncertain, whether we are seventy, thirty, or sixteen.
If I could see myself as a magnificent shooting star making its way through the air, then perhaps I could hold my physical difficulties with compassion and love. And why not? This body has done a great job getting me this far and it is unclear how long we'll be doing this together ... it's only fitting to show it some respect. Show it my open heart, not the twisted cruel one that resents my mortality. I am now taking refuge in my house that overlooks the grand and mysterious Pacific Ocean and there are snowy egrets in the creek foraging for fish, deer in the meadow beyond prancing through the brush, and as I look out at that landscape I come closer to seeing myself as a very small piece of the grand puzzle, one little player who searches for grounding, acceptance, and peace of mind. And none of this has anything to do with the power of the mind. I am grateful. I thank the universe.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
The Body Speaks to Us
- Yesterday I had an adventure in awareness. This woman who is a healer held my feet gently and then asked me to allow my mind to travel inside my feet, to feel what it was like inside that complicated mechanism of bone, muscle, and tendon. I did my belly breathing and shrunk myself sufficiently so I could actually fit myself inside my foot, and when I had landed, I was amazed at how crowded and busy it all was. I did this for quite some time, just breathing and feeling the busy universe of the foot, and gradually I sensed a strong pressure at the top of my left foot, a dully aching sensation that persisted and brought to mind the late afternoon four years ago when a lady in her car ran over my foot, knocking me to the ground and breaking various foot and leg bones. Oddly enough, I had thought I was "over" this trauma which sent me into emergency surgery for a badly broken elbow, but the truth of the matter is that our body holds everything we have experienced, and in some cases holds the experience with a remarkable persistence. I lay on the table and remembered my day going from light to dark, my memory of subsequent events blotted out by the sheer pain of the broken bones and the terror I felt through my whole being. There were tears that rested in my eye sockets that soon dribbled down my face. Yes, pain and fear had returned ... And yet I was safe and whole on this bright sunny afternoon in August, though my heart held layers of sadness for people I love whom I cannot help, for myself who yearns for more self-compassion.
Our bodies hold everything. There's a scar on my left index finger that calls up the morning I was with my grandparents in their country cottage and whittling on a stick with a cute little pocket knife. I was careless and I cut my finger badly. I cried, but not for long, because I was with two very stoic people and I needed to show I could rally quickly. The story is still there in my finger: the little girl who was hesitant to really feel her pain. A scar on my knee recalls the summer in Yellow Springs Ohio when I helped my husband bottle his home brew, as I lost balance and fell over on a broken bottle and then saw blood gushing from a deep wound. Looking through layers of flesh made me queasy, I can still remember. I was a young mother of twenty one, and I soldiered on ... of course. There are two vertical scar lines on my left and right cheeks where I had taken a razor blade to my face at nineteen in order to punish the man I lived with for not loving me enough. A stupid, frightening move... Happily, I don't notice these lines much anymore, though I can trace the old wounds anytime with my fingers. That story of suffering is something I still have a hard time revisiting. I don't think I want to "breathe into" that experience, though my healer friend would tell me that by doing that I can let it go.
My lungs hold fear and anxiety. When I walk the streets of the city and feel the steps of someone close behind me, I become immediately fearful. My heart starts to race, I pick up my pace, and feel my breathing speed up. There is a memory here which takes me back to being a five year old whose stuffed animals were taken away because I was asthmatic and couldn't breathe very well, and also to the time when I had to outrace an large old man who chased me up Green Street when I was nine. I hauled myself up the hill and breathed heavily, and finally reached my house safely, and now have no memory of why this character was after me. Strange and surreal, and yet this fear that came forward is terribly real. I simply don't want anyone moving in on me from behind ... I have this strange feeling that the lungs that I breathe through in my seventies are those of my uncertain childhood.
There are other stories that come from outside our own bodies. I am thinking of our domestic accoutrements like refrigerators, cars, record collections, and the pets we have as roommates. How many times have we named and boxed up another person because we noted their refrigerator filled with pure organics, their glossy BMW, or their French Bull Dog? Clearly these are NOT who we are, but rather examples of our quirky choices in the moment. The scars we carry from trauma, such as knife wounds to the finger or broken glass to the knee or slices across the face, are also NOT who we are, but again mindless and sometimes cruel detours from the path. And the way to let them go and see who we really are is to see them clearly and hold ourselves in compassion. We must breathe into our bodies and see that we are really and truly o.k. Beautiful as well...
From Dogen: "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be one with with all beings. When one with all beings, body and mind and bodies and minds of others drop away." Forget the self. Yes. Great idea.
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Fifty Years a Mother ...
On August 5, 1965, just fifty years ago, I entered St. Elizabeth's hospital in Dayton, Ohio, and gave birth to a beautiful dark haired little baby girl. I was only twenty years old. I had been waiting a long time for her arrival, walking about my life in the middle of a sticky humid summer feeling a bit like a miniature elephant, and on that very day I found myself helping my husband and some friends move our furniture from one apartment to another closer to the center of town. Certainly an odd thing to do when you're about to give birth, but then my life up to then had been anything but normal or by the book! That evening my husband and I went to the Little Arts movie theater on Main Street and watched one of Ingmar Bergman's impossibly esoteric films, called "Wild Strawberries," I think. And then, miraculously in mid film, I felt my body talk to me, and I said to the man next to me, "it's time."
The birth ended up not being natural as I had wished, simply because I didn't have it in me to do the breathing properly, I was suddenly terrified, and in dire pain. She popped into the world looking perfect. And I remember thinking, "well that makes sense .... she took her time getting here!" In a surreal gesture of maternal love, my mother had arrived from New York to be in attendance, and I remember her staring out the hospital window and laughing at the nuns romping about playing tennis the day following the birth. I was so hot and so exhausted during those few days that everything felt like a slow blur. The next thing that stands out in my memory is standing over my daughter's bassinet and staring at her late at night, night after night, watching her breathe. I had a first mother's anxiety about her survival, I expect, and I kept up this vigilance for what seemed like a long time. She always breathed perfectly, and so I adjusted to diaper routine, sore breasts, and a killing fatigue. This was the beginning of my journey into motherhood and as I write this it strangely doesn't seem so terribly far away... On that day my entire life changed dramatically, and I now often struggle to picture who I was before this amazing event.
I am interested in reflecting on just how bringing a baby into the world changes us. I suspect there are all variety of transformations, since women are all different and come to this in varied states of mind and heart. Some women prepare diligently, reading Dr. Spock and books on child development, and some spend decades just waiting for the right time in their lives, some must work extra hard to make it happen, and some bravely choose to go it alone. For some it happens to them. That was what my life looked like. I had not put motherhood on my to do list at age eighteen or nineteen, and thus when I found myself facing it, I plunged headlong into it without any map to help me. I was scared mostly, and unsure of myself and my marriage. But I possessed a will that was formidable, and I put my head down and eventually figured out a way to respond to the helpless little being before me. She was a delightful baby, not too much fussing or crying or illness, and that was her first gift to me. It all felt rather magical and surreal, and I learned how to cherish her; my earlier aspirations to become an educated woman with a career in international diplomacy went "poof" and vanished in the steamy midwestern air. All of a sudden I was a mother. When a child arrives, all else becomes secondary. And that meant my marriage too, I guess. Friction and frustration arose in those first years between my husband and me because neither one of us had the energy to tend to one another, and we were too young to see that everything was terribly out of balance.
I think the first thing I was taught was self sacrifice, and then came love ... oozing from her cherubic face with the dark dark eyes. I felt it and I felt sure I could give it. For a while anyway. And then some three years later, in a different place entirely - my hometown of San Francisco - I brought another little girl into the world. She was very much on time, she came quickly, though her actual birthing involved some physical trauma and difficulty, which caused her little infant head to appear banana shaped, a fact she frequently mentioned with regret. Of course that didn't affect her stunning good looks as she evolved from chubby roll-poly little thing into a wiry and feisty little blond haired girl. It was the late sixties in San Francisco and the hippie movement was in full swing with all the flowered Indian dresses, patchouli oil, marijuana, and the devil may care attitude about life. I didn't every choose to be a hippie - it just happened to me. Like becoming a mother for the first time... And so my daughters had to navigate a sometimes murky landscape of too many adults, drugs, strobe lights, and loud music. Far from the "Leave it to Beaver" or "Ozzie and Harriet" families that had inhabited our television sets in the early days. She became sick right after birth, but recovered quickly and grew into a strong and willful little person. Clearly she was not destined to be the "good one" in the family! She didn't care, and neither did I. Her first gift to me, beyond her strong spirit and beauty, was the challenge of meeting difficulty with compassion and patience. She was my teacher in this, as her sister had been a teacher about love and cherishing. These lessons, like most important ones in life, took a very long time for me to learn!
My adult daughters have taught me a few wonderful things in this life: the profound place that family occupies in our lives (I had never known this, growing up in a fragmented unattended family of my own), the importance of holding our differences with love and understanding, the need to live in the moment, the importance of really listening, and the joys of being playful while eating mouthfuls of whipped cream. These are things I didn't have in my tool bag at the age of nineteen when I married their father. But growing up with these beautiful little beings took me on that journey of learning. I went on their camping trips, I created sprawling and celebratory birthday parties, soothed fears in the night, learned how to sew halloween costumes, became involved in their elementary school, and I tried my best to witness and understand their individual struggles. I didn't always succeed, and after about fourteen years of marriage my sights started to expand outward and I knew I needed to return to school and the possibility of finding my way in the larger world, as both my girls were involved in high school and social lives and I thought the time was right. Eventually our family dissolved and pain and suffering came, and we struggled for too many years to understand why people cease loving each other, or run away and do confusing things. The good thing was that none of us gave up on each other really...
The motherhood path was not always a smooth one for myself and my daughters .... Perhaps most mothers could say this as they looked back at their families. We have what is most important, though, and that is a willingness to look each other in the face with love and understanding. I think we have been teaching each other this for all these fifty years.
The birth ended up not being natural as I had wished, simply because I didn't have it in me to do the breathing properly, I was suddenly terrified, and in dire pain. She popped into the world looking perfect. And I remember thinking, "well that makes sense .... she took her time getting here!" In a surreal gesture of maternal love, my mother had arrived from New York to be in attendance, and I remember her staring out the hospital window and laughing at the nuns romping about playing tennis the day following the birth. I was so hot and so exhausted during those few days that everything felt like a slow blur. The next thing that stands out in my memory is standing over my daughter's bassinet and staring at her late at night, night after night, watching her breathe. I had a first mother's anxiety about her survival, I expect, and I kept up this vigilance for what seemed like a long time. She always breathed perfectly, and so I adjusted to diaper routine, sore breasts, and a killing fatigue. This was the beginning of my journey into motherhood and as I write this it strangely doesn't seem so terribly far away... On that day my entire life changed dramatically, and I now often struggle to picture who I was before this amazing event.
I am interested in reflecting on just how bringing a baby into the world changes us. I suspect there are all variety of transformations, since women are all different and come to this in varied states of mind and heart. Some women prepare diligently, reading Dr. Spock and books on child development, and some spend decades just waiting for the right time in their lives, some must work extra hard to make it happen, and some bravely choose to go it alone. For some it happens to them. That was what my life looked like. I had not put motherhood on my to do list at age eighteen or nineteen, and thus when I found myself facing it, I plunged headlong into it without any map to help me. I was scared mostly, and unsure of myself and my marriage. But I possessed a will that was formidable, and I put my head down and eventually figured out a way to respond to the helpless little being before me. She was a delightful baby, not too much fussing or crying or illness, and that was her first gift to me. It all felt rather magical and surreal, and I learned how to cherish her; my earlier aspirations to become an educated woman with a career in international diplomacy went "poof" and vanished in the steamy midwestern air. All of a sudden I was a mother. When a child arrives, all else becomes secondary. And that meant my marriage too, I guess. Friction and frustration arose in those first years between my husband and me because neither one of us had the energy to tend to one another, and we were too young to see that everything was terribly out of balance.
I think the first thing I was taught was self sacrifice, and then came love ... oozing from her cherubic face with the dark dark eyes. I felt it and I felt sure I could give it. For a while anyway. And then some three years later, in a different place entirely - my hometown of San Francisco - I brought another little girl into the world. She was very much on time, she came quickly, though her actual birthing involved some physical trauma and difficulty, which caused her little infant head to appear banana shaped, a fact she frequently mentioned with regret. Of course that didn't affect her stunning good looks as she evolved from chubby roll-poly little thing into a wiry and feisty little blond haired girl. It was the late sixties in San Francisco and the hippie movement was in full swing with all the flowered Indian dresses, patchouli oil, marijuana, and the devil may care attitude about life. I didn't every choose to be a hippie - it just happened to me. Like becoming a mother for the first time... And so my daughters had to navigate a sometimes murky landscape of too many adults, drugs, strobe lights, and loud music. Far from the "Leave it to Beaver" or "Ozzie and Harriet" families that had inhabited our television sets in the early days. She became sick right after birth, but recovered quickly and grew into a strong and willful little person. Clearly she was not destined to be the "good one" in the family! She didn't care, and neither did I. Her first gift to me, beyond her strong spirit and beauty, was the challenge of meeting difficulty with compassion and patience. She was my teacher in this, as her sister had been a teacher about love and cherishing. These lessons, like most important ones in life, took a very long time for me to learn!
My adult daughters have taught me a few wonderful things in this life: the profound place that family occupies in our lives (I had never known this, growing up in a fragmented unattended family of my own), the importance of holding our differences with love and understanding, the need to live in the moment, the importance of really listening, and the joys of being playful while eating mouthfuls of whipped cream. These are things I didn't have in my tool bag at the age of nineteen when I married their father. But growing up with these beautiful little beings took me on that journey of learning. I went on their camping trips, I created sprawling and celebratory birthday parties, soothed fears in the night, learned how to sew halloween costumes, became involved in their elementary school, and I tried my best to witness and understand their individual struggles. I didn't always succeed, and after about fourteen years of marriage my sights started to expand outward and I knew I needed to return to school and the possibility of finding my way in the larger world, as both my girls were involved in high school and social lives and I thought the time was right. Eventually our family dissolved and pain and suffering came, and we struggled for too many years to understand why people cease loving each other, or run away and do confusing things. The good thing was that none of us gave up on each other really...
The motherhood path was not always a smooth one for myself and my daughters .... Perhaps most mothers could say this as they looked back at their families. We have what is most important, though, and that is a willingness to look each other in the face with love and understanding. I think we have been teaching each other this for all these fifty years.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Loss
I am thinking a lot about loss these days ... a good friend in New Mexico failing in her battle with cancer, another friend suffering brain damage as a result of chemo, the intimacy I hunger for with another like-minded being, a lion hunted down in Zimbabwe and decapitated, the massacre of the magnificent elephants in obscene numbers, the loss of flexibility and reliability in my body, even the loss of my mother, and all the old stories of my past that I can't tap into now because they are like dust.
How do I hold loss? How do I ride out the journey of continuing to lose what I love? This is a hard one because it demands that I stay steady and willing inside the lightening speed momentum of this life, not looking behind me or in front of me. I've been reminded time and time again that there really is no past and no future, and much of the time I agree, but I am still likely to float into these realms out of habit. So, what do we (I) do? I guess we (I) try to understand what it feels like to lose.
I haven't lost a good friend recently so it's hard to know how to talk about it. I have been lucky in this, as most of my contemporaries are still kicking. We all know that losing one another is around the corner, but we don't often talk about it... and we go on our way trying like hell to live in present time. So, I'm faced with the "idea" of losing, I guess, that projection of an experience that will undoubtedly come, one that will feel sad, empty, achy and bleak. And once I cross that landscape of grief, I'll be left with nostalgia, looking back at the good old times when none of us ever gave a thought to mortality. I remember my grandmother in her late eighties talking about losing all her friends, about feeling terribly alone in the world and less hopeful about what lay ahead. In some way she was telling me she was ready to move on. Our friends provide a sacred community of people whom we have chosen and with whom we have rich and interesting things to share. Now that I'm seventy, I understand as I never did before what she was saying about the void left in life with the departure of old friends.
When I gave up my last "romantic" relationship that had soured quickly and yet drove me to endure, I knew that I would probably live out my days without a partner. When I set out on my own, I didn't give it a thought, but now I do. Now I watch couples in restaurants and on the street and I feel a tugging in my heart. I want what they have. Closeness, laughter, understanding, a life together. The more I look back on my story the more I realize I am ill equipped for intimacy, that what my mother modeled and what I embraced in my twenties and thirties and beyond, had led me to a very distinct place of renunciation. I was sure I wasn't good at intimacy and speaking about love, and therefore I needed to content myself with the solitary journey of an elder woman. There is loss here, yes, and sometimes there's acceptance, as well as deep sadness. But there is also the pleasure of old age wisdom!
The wiping out of wildlife in Africa has been breaking my heart lately. Like a sponge, I tend to absorb all the news, and I speak to others about it when it makes sense, and yet it remains one of the deeply troubling pieces of being alive in this world at this time. Animals have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I think I have always felt as though I was related to them, part of their family, whether they were cats, dogs, birds, or even the epic elephant roaming East Africa. So when I read about the murder of elephants and lions, I feel as though someone in my family has been ripped away. There's heaviness in my chest, a weepy feeling inside. And a whirling sense of outrage at the injustice of it all. What then? I must hold this, not look away. I need to speak the truth, and try to believe that humankind has the capacity to become more humane. That is all..
I am seventy years old and my body is starting to become unreliable. I've been told it is strong and vital, and that deep down I am healthy. This makes me feel lightheaded for just a while, and then I return to the stinging pain in my ankle as I walk, the clicking and wobbling of my knee, and the occasional feeling that I am standing on a very unsteady surface, and it is then that I understand what I am carrying. The body is speaking its truth, and what is good about all this is that I am finally able to listen to what it is saying. If I'm lucky this paying attention brings good will and compassion, as long as I'm able to stay in the present moment. The past houses the narratives that are blurry and distorted, and the future holds only random dreams and dark fear. So instead of mourning loss, I can attempt to offer love to my aging self.
The loss of my mother still lies heavily on me. You'd think I would have outgrown or moved on or something, especially since she had always been such a shadowy presence in my life. How do you mourn the loss of something that was never really there? There is an idea I hold about her as a mother, and then there is the mysterious relationship that actually unfolded starting in February of 1945. In fact, there's a lot I don't know. There was always hunger and yearning and a sense of being in the shadows, but there had to have been other times of sweetness, or so I tell myself. No way to know now. I do know that I still feel this deep dark relationship to her, and I suspect I'll be stuck with that for the rest of my life... In narrating my own story I have unearthed this intimate connection between the two of us, this complicity in secrecy and self destruction, and in the telling of it I have felt her come alive in a way. But everything that is alive does wither and die, and so there is that path to experience a loss of love, imperfect as it was. I surround myself with her bold paintings, some pretty furniture and decorative pieces, and find myself more times than I can count speaking in her tongue, using her vernacular. "Bob's your uncle!" she used to declare, and I love saying this too. I'm not quite sure why... Am I calling her back, or just making way for her to show up every once in a while in present time? I don't know. This is a heavy loss still, and I am still trying to figure out how to live with it.
Memory has given me problems for some time now. I can't see the texture and substance of much of my young life: living in North Beach when I was in 6th grade, going to the mountains for my 10th birthday, what I did with my friends at Miss Barrie's in Florence, or those beautiful sunny afternoons I went horseback riding in the Sonoma countryside with my great friend Sue when we were self-conscious teenagers; there are so many other little scenes that don't come in clearly, and all I see is the sweep of an experience, much like the floating smoke from my mother's cigarette ... When I decided to write a memoir, I wanted to be able to flesh out some of these small chapters of my childhood and tell vivid, detail-filled stories, complete with lots of interesting dialogue. As I cast my mind back, I rarely saw the particulars, nor did I hear the conversations. I became frustrated, I worried about memory loss, and then finally decided to fabricate here and there in order to offer a story, and this usually worked. Aside from the challenges the book offered me, there is a much larger conundrum, that of ultimately losing the bulk of memory and becoming unhinged and confused. Yes, I'm thinking of that elephant in the room called dementia. A total loss of personhood. The ultimate nightmare, even worse in my imagination than losing my eyesight, which I used to believe was the worst possible deprivation I'd have to face. I used to play different word games in order to sharpen my brain power, and I persevered with piano study because I've learned somewhere that playing a musical instrument may be an antidote to Alzheimers. No, in truth I play the piano because I love the sound of Bach on the keyboard of my grandmother's piano, and feel proud to offer it up ... But now I do take solace in the notion that the discipline of piano practice might be therapeutic for my overworked mind. I think I know how to live with this loss: just stay in my life fully, attending to what comes and holding all the difficulties with love. No other way...
What is going to happen to me will happen no matter what decisions I make, and today has its share of wonder and beauty that must be seen and felt. Because we are very lucky to be alive in this strange and complicated time, adding our own portion of goodness.
How do I hold loss? How do I ride out the journey of continuing to lose what I love? This is a hard one because it demands that I stay steady and willing inside the lightening speed momentum of this life, not looking behind me or in front of me. I've been reminded time and time again that there really is no past and no future, and much of the time I agree, but I am still likely to float into these realms out of habit. So, what do we (I) do? I guess we (I) try to understand what it feels like to lose.
I haven't lost a good friend recently so it's hard to know how to talk about it. I have been lucky in this, as most of my contemporaries are still kicking. We all know that losing one another is around the corner, but we don't often talk about it... and we go on our way trying like hell to live in present time. So, I'm faced with the "idea" of losing, I guess, that projection of an experience that will undoubtedly come, one that will feel sad, empty, achy and bleak. And once I cross that landscape of grief, I'll be left with nostalgia, looking back at the good old times when none of us ever gave a thought to mortality. I remember my grandmother in her late eighties talking about losing all her friends, about feeling terribly alone in the world and less hopeful about what lay ahead. In some way she was telling me she was ready to move on. Our friends provide a sacred community of people whom we have chosen and with whom we have rich and interesting things to share. Now that I'm seventy, I understand as I never did before what she was saying about the void left in life with the departure of old friends.
When I gave up my last "romantic" relationship that had soured quickly and yet drove me to endure, I knew that I would probably live out my days without a partner. When I set out on my own, I didn't give it a thought, but now I do. Now I watch couples in restaurants and on the street and I feel a tugging in my heart. I want what they have. Closeness, laughter, understanding, a life together. The more I look back on my story the more I realize I am ill equipped for intimacy, that what my mother modeled and what I embraced in my twenties and thirties and beyond, had led me to a very distinct place of renunciation. I was sure I wasn't good at intimacy and speaking about love, and therefore I needed to content myself with the solitary journey of an elder woman. There is loss here, yes, and sometimes there's acceptance, as well as deep sadness. But there is also the pleasure of old age wisdom!
The wiping out of wildlife in Africa has been breaking my heart lately. Like a sponge, I tend to absorb all the news, and I speak to others about it when it makes sense, and yet it remains one of the deeply troubling pieces of being alive in this world at this time. Animals have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I think I have always felt as though I was related to them, part of their family, whether they were cats, dogs, birds, or even the epic elephant roaming East Africa. So when I read about the murder of elephants and lions, I feel as though someone in my family has been ripped away. There's heaviness in my chest, a weepy feeling inside. And a whirling sense of outrage at the injustice of it all. What then? I must hold this, not look away. I need to speak the truth, and try to believe that humankind has the capacity to become more humane. That is all..
I am seventy years old and my body is starting to become unreliable. I've been told it is strong and vital, and that deep down I am healthy. This makes me feel lightheaded for just a while, and then I return to the stinging pain in my ankle as I walk, the clicking and wobbling of my knee, and the occasional feeling that I am standing on a very unsteady surface, and it is then that I understand what I am carrying. The body is speaking its truth, and what is good about all this is that I am finally able to listen to what it is saying. If I'm lucky this paying attention brings good will and compassion, as long as I'm able to stay in the present moment. The past houses the narratives that are blurry and distorted, and the future holds only random dreams and dark fear. So instead of mourning loss, I can attempt to offer love to my aging self.
The loss of my mother still lies heavily on me. You'd think I would have outgrown or moved on or something, especially since she had always been such a shadowy presence in my life. How do you mourn the loss of something that was never really there? There is an idea I hold about her as a mother, and then there is the mysterious relationship that actually unfolded starting in February of 1945. In fact, there's a lot I don't know. There was always hunger and yearning and a sense of being in the shadows, but there had to have been other times of sweetness, or so I tell myself. No way to know now. I do know that I still feel this deep dark relationship to her, and I suspect I'll be stuck with that for the rest of my life... In narrating my own story I have unearthed this intimate connection between the two of us, this complicity in secrecy and self destruction, and in the telling of it I have felt her come alive in a way. But everything that is alive does wither and die, and so there is that path to experience a loss of love, imperfect as it was. I surround myself with her bold paintings, some pretty furniture and decorative pieces, and find myself more times than I can count speaking in her tongue, using her vernacular. "Bob's your uncle!" she used to declare, and I love saying this too. I'm not quite sure why... Am I calling her back, or just making way for her to show up every once in a while in present time? I don't know. This is a heavy loss still, and I am still trying to figure out how to live with it.
Memory has given me problems for some time now. I can't see the texture and substance of much of my young life: living in North Beach when I was in 6th grade, going to the mountains for my 10th birthday, what I did with my friends at Miss Barrie's in Florence, or those beautiful sunny afternoons I went horseback riding in the Sonoma countryside with my great friend Sue when we were self-conscious teenagers; there are so many other little scenes that don't come in clearly, and all I see is the sweep of an experience, much like the floating smoke from my mother's cigarette ... When I decided to write a memoir, I wanted to be able to flesh out some of these small chapters of my childhood and tell vivid, detail-filled stories, complete with lots of interesting dialogue. As I cast my mind back, I rarely saw the particulars, nor did I hear the conversations. I became frustrated, I worried about memory loss, and then finally decided to fabricate here and there in order to offer a story, and this usually worked. Aside from the challenges the book offered me, there is a much larger conundrum, that of ultimately losing the bulk of memory and becoming unhinged and confused. Yes, I'm thinking of that elephant in the room called dementia. A total loss of personhood. The ultimate nightmare, even worse in my imagination than losing my eyesight, which I used to believe was the worst possible deprivation I'd have to face. I used to play different word games in order to sharpen my brain power, and I persevered with piano study because I've learned somewhere that playing a musical instrument may be an antidote to Alzheimers. No, in truth I play the piano because I love the sound of Bach on the keyboard of my grandmother's piano, and feel proud to offer it up ... But now I do take solace in the notion that the discipline of piano practice might be therapeutic for my overworked mind. I think I know how to live with this loss: just stay in my life fully, attending to what comes and holding all the difficulties with love. No other way...
What is going to happen to me will happen no matter what decisions I make, and today has its share of wonder and beauty that must be seen and felt. Because we are very lucky to be alive in this strange and complicated time, adding our own portion of goodness.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Life as a Fugue ... Musings from the Carmel Bach Festival
I gave myself a break for a week and didn't prop myself up in the chair and order myself to work on this blog... Thought more time passing would help me see some ideas things more clearly, like whether it matters or not if a lot of people read this, and whether I could resist beating myself up for not performing my weekly task. Did pretty well with the not beating myself up, and as far as the other goes, I'm not sure how I feel.
This has been a complicated time for me and a number of people I know and love, and because I am in some ways an emotional sponge, I end up carrying around other people's weighty stories, which often gets me confused. Let's see what was going on before things got complicated ... I was motoring through a second draft of my memoir so I could send it to another wise writer to read and give me feedback. Crunching through those 220 pages was tough at times but I plugged away and completed it. Done for now with version 2. I meditated regularly and learned a new kind of diaphragmatic breathing that creates more space in the body and brings calm, I kept up regular piano practice and had a thoughtful lesson with my wise young teacher last Friday. I visited a few doctors to talk about a painful tendonitis in my ankle, hoping I'd get reassurance that the affliction would eventually pass (like everything else). Ah, the non-stop tending we must do when we are aging... I repeat this to people and try to act as though I find it curious and amusing, but deep down I find I'm out of sorts and discouraged. I so want to be brave and accept adversity, and often feel I lack the tools. And I wonder a lot if it's like that for everyone else... I am still spending more time alone than I'd like, but when my ankle was acting up and I really needed to stay off my feet, that of course provided a good excuse to sink back on the couch at home with some yummy delivered food and a good few episodes of MASH on Netflix. It's pretty easy for me to retreat like this.
When I'm not watching something on the tube, I'm often thinking about my oldest daughter who is going through a very tough time with estrangement from her daughter and an old friend, and my old friend from the 70's who is facing a big move and the giving up of an old and beloved home in order to find a simpler way to live. These two women - one 50 and the other 80 - are suffering these days and I see myself wanting to make a difference while I know my power to do so is limited. I let go of daughter #1 a very long time ago, or at least I thought I did, and she has been hugely resourceful and forged a rewarding purposeful life; she has kept me at a distance often so that she can work out her problems on her own because that has been her nature. But now it's becoming harder for her. My friend is a highly intelligent and stoic woman who rarely asks for help, and yet I see fatigue and worry in her face each time we get together and talk about our lives. The themes repeat themselves over and over ... our families, the books we're reading, maybe the news and politics ... with the unspoken thoughts lurking under the surface.
For the last few days I've been listening to Bach here at the Carmel Bach Festival, closing my eyes and following the notes of the cellos, violins, the harpsichord, the basses, and lutes, and feeling at home again. JS Bach brought the world an unusual new musical form called the fugue, and this morning when I sat in the beautiful old Carmel Mission listening to a series of preludes and fugues for the organ, I had this dreamy notion that the fugue form is a lot like our life. The different voices from the organ were dancing in counterpoint, and I tried to follow them in the cool dark church. It was like trying to track the images in a kaleidoscope in a way. I am currently learning one of his simpler fugues for the piano, and what I keep coming back to is that this is a tough job for someone like myself who never could juggle or multi-task. It is hard, and I am going to learn it (hear the intellectual imperative here?). In the fugue, a "subject" is introduced in the beginning, and repeated in a mind-tingling counterpoint by a number of different voices as the piece moves forward. A response to the subject follows and is woven into the composition, also in more than one voice. What makes Bach a genius is his ability to build this composition so seamlessly that you hear BOTH the totality of the voices and each individual voice clearly and at the same time. Interestingly, I have learned that there is a whole other kind of "fugue" that signifies a psychological disorder in which a person loses awareness of his or her identity when fleeing from a familiar environment. In a strange and perhaps obscure way, this definition relates to the musical form (you have to give up first subject to take on the next or offer the response ... identity has to be relinquished ... you cannot hold on).
Both of the above definitions make me think of our journeys through life. As a child, we are on the receiving end of a "subject" (or subjects) handed to us by parents and relations, those multiple voices, and of course there is our response to the subject that follows. As we go through life a multitude of subjects arise, and we carry them with us in our bodies and minds as we grow up. We respond and we voice our own subjects. While I worked at fathoming and responding to the subjects handed down to me, such as "be seen and not heard," or "be a good girl," the themes that I gave voice to as a girl, such as "I need to know the truth," "I need to be heard," "I want to be loved" often met with no response, and so the piece of music lacked harmony and solidity. Later in life, I believe we modify the themes and create our own, and cast the music in a different "key," perhaps. I think this happens when we have a clearer sense of self, and we cease reacting so much to those around us. We carry the profound old subjects like: love and connection, doing no harm, and being of value in the world, but we come to understand those in new and interesting ways. Many of us have also had times in our lives when we run away from home and temporarily forget who we are, where the only way to see ourselves more clearly is to leave the familiar behind and perceive ourselves in a foreign context. My memoir was born from that understanding.
This book has shown me the "subjects" or themes of my life more clearly, and allowed me to get closer to my life, into the dark corners and forgotten spaces so I can see them. I used to think it looked like a mosaic or kaleidoscope, but now it appears to me more as a tapestry, with the different strands of "through line," or "subject" creating an interesting colorful piece of fabric. I'd also like to think now of the journey being played out as a multi-voiced fugue with its varying voices speaking their own truths and answering each other and sometimes coming together in stunning harmony.
Both of the above definitions make me think of our journeys through life. As a child, we are on the receiving end of a "subject" (or subjects) handed to us by parents and relations, those multiple voices, and of course there is our response to the subject that follows. As we go through life a multitude of subjects arise, and we carry them with us in our bodies and minds as we grow up. We respond and we voice our own subjects. While I worked at fathoming and responding to the subjects handed down to me, such as "be seen and not heard," or "be a good girl," the themes that I gave voice to as a girl, such as "I need to know the truth," "I need to be heard," "I want to be loved" often met with no response, and so the piece of music lacked harmony and solidity. Later in life, I believe we modify the themes and create our own, and cast the music in a different "key," perhaps. I think this happens when we have a clearer sense of self, and we cease reacting so much to those around us. We carry the profound old subjects like: love and connection, doing no harm, and being of value in the world, but we come to understand those in new and interesting ways. Many of us have also had times in our lives when we run away from home and temporarily forget who we are, where the only way to see ourselves more clearly is to leave the familiar behind and perceive ourselves in a foreign context. My memoir was born from that understanding.
This book has shown me the "subjects" or themes of my life more clearly, and allowed me to get closer to my life, into the dark corners and forgotten spaces so I can see them. I used to think it looked like a mosaic or kaleidoscope, but now it appears to me more as a tapestry, with the different strands of "through line," or "subject" creating an interesting colorful piece of fabric. I'd also like to think now of the journey being played out as a multi-voiced fugue with its varying voices speaking their own truths and answering each other and sometimes coming together in stunning harmony.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Random Thoughts on Healing
When I had my nighttime panic attack on retreat recently, my brain tried to convince me I was a bad Buddhist. After all, it said, you've been meditating over 17 years, can't you get it right every once in a while?
Here are some other weird and perverse stories that I have carried:
When I got ulcers about 8 years ago, I was convinced it was because of all the hard drinking I had done in high school when I was trying to numb out and pretend I wasn't angry at my mother. I had effectively worn away my insides from being irresponsible.
When I had a month's siege of headaches four or five years ago, I was convinced I had a brain tumor and my mind fixed on the fear factor and kept me spinning. Working in hospice and seeing people with brain cancer brought this into focus and feeling I had inherited my mother's innate frailty with life, I was convinced.
When I couldn't remember elements of my childhood while working away on the memoir during the last couple of years, I was sure that it was because I had done drugs and alcohol in my youth and destroyed most of my brain cells responsible for childhood memories.
When I heard from two orthopedic doctors that I might need knee replacement, I immediately thought it had to do with carrying too much weight around for too long, which of course led me to proclaim that I didn't know how to live a healthy life.
When I sit in the midst of feeling lonely and sad, which has been happening a bunch lately, I begin to question my innate ability to love others, to be lovable, to know how to be in relationships, thinking frequently that I"m too aloof and know-it-all for my own good. Since that was a childhood defense for me, it's logical it would continue. Mostly I think I"m pretty good with family, but as to the rest of it -- the friendship and lovers, I'm not so sure...
There are many more instances of my judging mind than the ones mentioned above, because my brain has been busy for a very long time monitoring my behavior, ever ready to give me failing grade for not being good enough. Being mindful and seeing this as I do, my job is clearly to head this off at the pass, to close the door to the judgment and stories, say "no thank you," and get on with the adventure of living, as opposed to evaluating. A conversation I had yesterday with a gentle healer went a long way to opening up the concept of trauma to me, and I want to bring this to bear on all of this. Trauma takes many forms in our life -- it can look like child beating, or just plain neglect and contempt. It can be wartime blood and death, or it can be getting clobbered by a car while crossing a city street in my neighborhood. It can be rape and incest, or a continual negation of one's character. Our body is an amazing vessel that carries all our life experiences, storing away the more painful into a deeper place often, and as we age, get a little more tired, we slow down and become quieter, and this body begins to reveal the truth. There is pain, and it has a history. We can respond in a couple of ways: we can continue doing what we're used to, telling stories and making judgments, or we can approach the difficulty with love and compassion. If we choose this, we can heal ourselves and begin to feel normal.
It turns out that the primary faculty that leads to healing the heart (and by association the body) is love and affection. I enjoy saying that because it reminds me of the Dalai Lama who said that his religion is kindness, and this feels profoundly true to me. So, despite whatever suffering (trauma) we (I) have endured, we (I) need to summon kindness and compassion so we can continue with the adventure of being alive. I have come to this wisdom late in life, but no matter, because I see the fruits of this kind of attention. I have discovered my own ability to stop and rub my fingers when they ache as I practice the piano for hours, and say to myself gently, "there, there, it's just stiffness." I've found my vital breath in the midst of a storm of mindLESSness and been able to return to balance. I've looked back at the trajectory of my life and seen all the beautiful humans and animals I have loved and been loved by. Or ... just recently I've looked at my swollen knee and just seen a creaky sore joint that is now 70 years old, then touched it with care.
The road ahead for all of us is getting shorter each day we are alive, and it only seems reasonable to apply love, which is the root of being a human, not stories and judgment which lack form and truth. I write and I tell stories because I must, it is part of inhabiting my life, but those stories are part of a much larger trajectory which is, in fact, about telling the truth and creating beauty. I think that's why I'm here.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Last Week Rainbows, This Week Uncertainty ...
Last week a rainbow arced over San Francisco as we saw happiness arise in our hearts and minds when the Supreme Court made legal affirmation of equal rights to marriage throughout the country. For some it was the formalizing of what had always felt to be a normal and natural right, and for so many others there was the huge cathartic experience that at last equality under the law pertained to them. I felt tears rise to the surface as I imagined people's relief and joy at attaining this "inalienable" right, and I felt proud of the country for just a little while, this place so weighed down by the cruel legacy of racism, prejudice, and excessive reliance on firearms. I was so relieved to feel this happiness for my fellow human beings.
Lately it has been hard for me to feel any pride in being an American, though my brain tries to assure me that we live in a land of great opportunity. I do my practice, I sit in meditation, and send lovingkindness to all beings, and yet there are times when I feel I'm caught in a web of unkindness and ignorance, and I can't see the way out of it. When our fellow humans are shot down in churches, when black churches are burned to the ground in the South, when black males are targeted by law enforcement, when gays and lesbians are subjected to hate crimes and humiliation, I see a landscape, indeed a whole world that is hostile and hateful, with little courage manifested in the face of this darkness.
The Supreme Court ruling stated last week that those who are of any sexual orientation have the right to be married because they belong to our American society that was born out of principles of equality. And yet many more fights for gender equality will be necessary before gays and lesbians can count themselves on equal footing with the white establishment. As a result of Martin Luther King's tireless work in the late sixties, various laws were passed assuring basic civil rights to the African American population long shunned and denigrated. But we have come to see that despite the good intentions of such legislation, we live in a racist culture where various members of the population whose skin is dark are considered inferior and expendable. And lately we have see an inordinate amount of hatred unleashed on African American men, not to mention the continuing campaign of the conservative Republicans in Washington to defeat and humiliate our black President. A veil of deception has fallen over much of this agenda. There is no ownership of the hatred, and because there is no ownership it can metastasize and continue to spread ill will. And all this in a country that was founded on the individual person's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
How do we hold all this with equanimity? How do we hold the pain of the world, whether it be elephants being slaughtered in massive numbers in Africa, women kidnapped and raped in Nigeria, the homeless dying on our city streets, and the be-heading of regular people by terrorists. Is it enough to meditate and try to spread lovingkindness, to write your own dark truths as best you can, to practice gratitude and generosity in all ways, to feed wild birds, practice speaking a foreign language, or be a model of righteousness for our grandchildren? I would like to think so. The Dalai Lama said that all change starts with the individual, and that the creation of peace starts with finding it in yourself. I believe him. And yet … I feel so small sometimes, so separated from the community of civil, kind, hardworking human beings. The disconnection is scary, sort of like the darkness I wrote about last time. In the darkness we can't see or feel our relatedness and we float fee, and sometimes we're scared. A good friend shared this insight with me last evening over dinner: this primal fear of the dark is in fact our fear of death. This is normal, she reminded me. Most of us want to hold on to our precious lives for some time to come, to not "go gently into that dark night," even though it looks way better when you say you are prepared to die. There's something so tenacious about this human life, and I think we all share a deep wish to be in communion with this imperfect process of being human, knowing as we do that the journey into death is a solitary one.
When I'm going with this, I don't exactly know. I do know these things: everything shifts and changes and we are called upon to be with that, that we are social creatures who want to be in community with one another, to be supported and attended to, that as mortals we are beset with occasional fears that our journey will soon end, that we possess hearts capable of great love and even joy for our fellow humans, and that this joy is infinitely precious… I see these truths and know that our way isn't easy. But, here we are, after all, and it does make sense to show up for our lives.
And for the burning and the mayhem … and for rainbows of justice that occasionally spread across the sky...
Lately it has been hard for me to feel any pride in being an American, though my brain tries to assure me that we live in a land of great opportunity. I do my practice, I sit in meditation, and send lovingkindness to all beings, and yet there are times when I feel I'm caught in a web of unkindness and ignorance, and I can't see the way out of it. When our fellow humans are shot down in churches, when black churches are burned to the ground in the South, when black males are targeted by law enforcement, when gays and lesbians are subjected to hate crimes and humiliation, I see a landscape, indeed a whole world that is hostile and hateful, with little courage manifested in the face of this darkness.
The Supreme Court ruling stated last week that those who are of any sexual orientation have the right to be married because they belong to our American society that was born out of principles of equality. And yet many more fights for gender equality will be necessary before gays and lesbians can count themselves on equal footing with the white establishment. As a result of Martin Luther King's tireless work in the late sixties, various laws were passed assuring basic civil rights to the African American population long shunned and denigrated. But we have come to see that despite the good intentions of such legislation, we live in a racist culture where various members of the population whose skin is dark are considered inferior and expendable. And lately we have see an inordinate amount of hatred unleashed on African American men, not to mention the continuing campaign of the conservative Republicans in Washington to defeat and humiliate our black President. A veil of deception has fallen over much of this agenda. There is no ownership of the hatred, and because there is no ownership it can metastasize and continue to spread ill will. And all this in a country that was founded on the individual person's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
How do we hold all this with equanimity? How do we hold the pain of the world, whether it be elephants being slaughtered in massive numbers in Africa, women kidnapped and raped in Nigeria, the homeless dying on our city streets, and the be-heading of regular people by terrorists. Is it enough to meditate and try to spread lovingkindness, to write your own dark truths as best you can, to practice gratitude and generosity in all ways, to feed wild birds, practice speaking a foreign language, or be a model of righteousness for our grandchildren? I would like to think so. The Dalai Lama said that all change starts with the individual, and that the creation of peace starts with finding it in yourself. I believe him. And yet … I feel so small sometimes, so separated from the community of civil, kind, hardworking human beings. The disconnection is scary, sort of like the darkness I wrote about last time. In the darkness we can't see or feel our relatedness and we float fee, and sometimes we're scared. A good friend shared this insight with me last evening over dinner: this primal fear of the dark is in fact our fear of death. This is normal, she reminded me. Most of us want to hold on to our precious lives for some time to come, to not "go gently into that dark night," even though it looks way better when you say you are prepared to die. There's something so tenacious about this human life, and I think we all share a deep wish to be in communion with this imperfect process of being human, knowing as we do that the journey into death is a solitary one.
When I'm going with this, I don't exactly know. I do know these things: everything shifts and changes and we are called upon to be with that, that we are social creatures who want to be in community with one another, to be supported and attended to, that as mortals we are beset with occasional fears that our journey will soon end, that we possess hearts capable of great love and even joy for our fellow humans, and that this joy is infinitely precious… I see these truths and know that our way isn't easy. But, here we are, after all, and it does make sense to show up for our lives.
And for the burning and the mayhem … and for rainbows of justice that occasionally spread across the sky...
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Fear and Loathing in the Dark of Night
As a child I was scared of the dark. In some of the bedrooms that I inhabited growing up, I had a night light on the wall that glowed in the darkness so I could get my bearings, and when that wasn't possible, I would always open the door a crack to let light from the rooms beyond reach me. There have been times when I have had to adjust to lying there in total darkness, and believe me, it has been very difficult. There was a time in Bhutan when the village we were staying over in lost all its power just as we were eating our dinner. Makeshift flashlights were produced and I soon navigated my way to my room, but I remember feeling a sense of dread that soon I would lie down in bed and disappear in the darkness. It was blacker than black outside in Punakha, tucked away in the towering Himalayas, and I suddenly felt fear where it had not existed before. There is also isolation that comes in the dark... I felt farther away from my homeland and my people than I had ever felt, and I lay in bed and longed for night to pass quickly. Recently on retreat at Spirit Rock, I lay in my little bed in my very quiet room in the darkness and unfortunately recalled a time long ago where terror, a fear of dying in my sleep, took me over. This old memory began to possess me, for no clear reason. I tried deep breathing and "noting" the fear, I used all that I had in my toolkit then for coping with fear, and it didn't work. My body seemed to vibrate with anxiety. I even imagined staying awake until it became light, when I was sure the fear would drift away...
I have been thinking a lot since then about fear and where it comes from. Is this debilitating fear of mine rooted in childhood trauma, perhaps? And if so, must I find that, understand it, see it for what it is in order to become free of it? This is entirely possible. Like so many others, I had a childhood of instability and essential loneliness. Ignored by my alcoholic mother most of the time, I created a cocoon of other-ness in self defense. My opinions, my feelings were rarely attended to, and so I pulled into myself. And became used to loneliness, and the weird irrational feelings that come with it.
There is another possible root to this irrational fear that visits. It is part of my response to the darkness of the world we live in. I confess I spend a great deal of time reading the news and thinking about what is going on, and in the last several years my heart has felt more and more beat up, and there has been more and more anger at the greed, hatred, and ignorance of those who take guns into their hands and murder others. Along with the hurt and the anger comes the horrible feeling of helplessness. A classroom of children assaulted and young lives snuffed out, people in a movie theater, just living their lives, gunned down by a madman, so many black men attacked in many of our cities because they are black, and now a congregation of black people in an historic sanctuary in Charleston shot down by a frightening young man with racist intentions.... The fabric of our country's high moral, egalitarian values is now shredded to bits, as lawmakers in Washington sit in trepidation of the NRA and our supposed right to bear arms. There aren't words to describe this state of helplessness and anger and deep despair. So, I (we) sit with this horrible, sick feeling that our world doesn't work anymore, that we are all lost without anchors because no one seems to have the guts to stand up for victims of terrorism and violence here at home. And it is a dark place we sit in. And it is scarier than any of my nighttime dances with fear.
Where are we going as a country? How are those who are disadvantaged, poor, hurt, sick and dying, invisible ... how are those people going to be cared for? When will the system recover its conscience and courage, and fulfill the vision of this being a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"?
I worry for my precious grandchildren and the world they are becoming adults in, but then I guess that's the prerogative of all elders. I remember my own grandmother expressing her distress at the way our world was becoming more violent and chaotic and cruel, and that was over thirty years ago. So the wheel of my life is turning, and it is my turn to stand at the edge and look out into the great sprawling, uncertainty that death offers, and feel fear in my heart for the landscape my beloved family have to travel.
The Buddhist teachings tell us fear is just a feeling that comes and then passes, like all sensations, thoughts, and phenomena. Yes, I understand. I saw that when night ended and it became light, and the fear of being dead moved on. My job apparently is to hold this fear as best I can when it appears, and to try to love my fragile self in the process. We are all vulnerable, and we also know there are those who are exceedingly more vulnerable than we are. We humans have a shared frailty and uncertainty and we must feel it and speak about it, and somehow we must endure through the dark times. Gandhi once said of India's relationship to the British something like, "we will not fight, but we will wear them down with our capacity to suffer." I'm thinking that we must suffer through this inexplicable and violent time without giving up, even as we are visited by the dark fears, the sleepless nights, and outburst of rage and tears.
I guess I will continue my practice of making sure there is some light shining in the darkness when I am trying to sleep...
I have been thinking a lot since then about fear and where it comes from. Is this debilitating fear of mine rooted in childhood trauma, perhaps? And if so, must I find that, understand it, see it for what it is in order to become free of it? This is entirely possible. Like so many others, I had a childhood of instability and essential loneliness. Ignored by my alcoholic mother most of the time, I created a cocoon of other-ness in self defense. My opinions, my feelings were rarely attended to, and so I pulled into myself. And became used to loneliness, and the weird irrational feelings that come with it.
There is another possible root to this irrational fear that visits. It is part of my response to the darkness of the world we live in. I confess I spend a great deal of time reading the news and thinking about what is going on, and in the last several years my heart has felt more and more beat up, and there has been more and more anger at the greed, hatred, and ignorance of those who take guns into their hands and murder others. Along with the hurt and the anger comes the horrible feeling of helplessness. A classroom of children assaulted and young lives snuffed out, people in a movie theater, just living their lives, gunned down by a madman, so many black men attacked in many of our cities because they are black, and now a congregation of black people in an historic sanctuary in Charleston shot down by a frightening young man with racist intentions.... The fabric of our country's high moral, egalitarian values is now shredded to bits, as lawmakers in Washington sit in trepidation of the NRA and our supposed right to bear arms. There aren't words to describe this state of helplessness and anger and deep despair. So, I (we) sit with this horrible, sick feeling that our world doesn't work anymore, that we are all lost without anchors because no one seems to have the guts to stand up for victims of terrorism and violence here at home. And it is a dark place we sit in. And it is scarier than any of my nighttime dances with fear.
Where are we going as a country? How are those who are disadvantaged, poor, hurt, sick and dying, invisible ... how are those people going to be cared for? When will the system recover its conscience and courage, and fulfill the vision of this being a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"?
I worry for my precious grandchildren and the world they are becoming adults in, but then I guess that's the prerogative of all elders. I remember my own grandmother expressing her distress at the way our world was becoming more violent and chaotic and cruel, and that was over thirty years ago. So the wheel of my life is turning, and it is my turn to stand at the edge and look out into the great sprawling, uncertainty that death offers, and feel fear in my heart for the landscape my beloved family have to travel.
The Buddhist teachings tell us fear is just a feeling that comes and then passes, like all sensations, thoughts, and phenomena. Yes, I understand. I saw that when night ended and it became light, and the fear of being dead moved on. My job apparently is to hold this fear as best I can when it appears, and to try to love my fragile self in the process. We are all vulnerable, and we also know there are those who are exceedingly more vulnerable than we are. We humans have a shared frailty and uncertainty and we must feel it and speak about it, and somehow we must endure through the dark times. Gandhi once said of India's relationship to the British something like, "we will not fight, but we will wear them down with our capacity to suffer." I'm thinking that we must suffer through this inexplicable and violent time without giving up, even as we are visited by the dark fears, the sleepless nights, and outburst of rage and tears.
I guess I will continue my practice of making sure there is some light shining in the darkness when I am trying to sleep...
Monday, June 15, 2015
What Matters
I have just returned from a week at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in the dry golden hills of Marin where I sat in silence with 50 fellow meditators, all "elders," as we considered aging, dying and awakening. For some a daunting topic, yes, but for those of us who have slipped past the half century mark, not at all irrelevant. During these days of retreat there were expansive moments of stillness with only the wild turkeys in the distance cheering us on (or so it felt), an ever changing climate from grey and foggy to bright and steamy, the turbulent workings of our hardworking brains, thoughtful inquiry into what is real in our lives now that we're old, and ultimately a lot of love and compassion born out of the community, our shared experience of both diminishing capacities and accumulated wisdom, as well as the need to participate fully in our lives.
What matters to me now? We talked about this together last week quite mindfully of course, closing our eyes occasionally to dig deeper. The road ahead of us is shortening day by day, and we take that to heart. Each day carries weight now because we see more clearly that our journey could end at any moment. So ... what does matter? How will we give ourselves to this life from here on?
Beyond the obvious - which for me is family, my sweet community of human beings that I've seen grow from the beginning and who feel like bedrock for me - there is an array of things that matter, spreading out in front of me like a colorful mosaic. I'm going to let these things tumble out now and see what I want to say about them: Music - the making of it on my grandmother's piano from the age of eight and the listening to it in concert halls, churches, and in the privacy of my living room, Art - the creative expressions I have worked at ever since I was a child making objects out of clay, followed by the years I poured out words on paper in endless journals trying to make sense of my life, and later when I pieced unusual beads together into necklaces in order to tell a story and finally called myself an artist, and finally the return in this final chapter to my first love: words, and the promise of a completed book. Service, working for the benefit of others - now there's something that matters; this attraction took different forms and finally brought me to Zen Hospice Project and the great learning at the bedside of those were were dying... and there is Generosity, driven by my grandmother's words to me as a child about the moral responsibility of the well-to-do in life that always lived in my mind, taught me to give whenever possible to those who were in need ... And of course, there is Speaking the truth, born out of a young life surrounded by those who cloaked reality and buried dark secrets, that speaking of the truth leading me ultimately to landing on the Buddhist path where I could feel at home seeing what is real and true, understanding suffering and freedom from suffering. Animals matter to me: those four legged furry beings and winged creatures who witness us, who display their beauty, humor, and intelligence, and remind us that we are all brothers and sisters. The pages of the Books I have read matter a great deal to me, from the time I was a young girl and escaped into literature to find my place, to understand other worlds and be thrilled by the beauty of language; for an only child who grew up before television and electronics, books fed my mind and heart. Friendship and community come to mind as well... the sharing of our loves and our ideas, telling our stories again and again, laughing when we're on the verge of crying, and crying when we need to, safely ... inhabiting that safe place of like minded human beings. Contemplation and practice ... that spacious landscape where I have been able to find real peace, self love, the truth, and the preciousness of life itself.
These things that "matter" have been with me for a long time, they have helped form my character. I first experienced beauty (art, music) when I was a child of six or seven, which was about the same time I began learning about how we were connected (and responsible) to those around us because I listened carefully to my grandmother. I don't know exactly when I saw that telling the truth was exciting beyond measure ... I was too busy trying to get people to listen most of the time! I do know I always felt related to all the cats that we had, that they were highly intelligent animals with a distinct need to be witnessed. And when I first saw the elephants in Africa I felt in an instant that we had a connection, human to animal... In my seventy years there have been a few friends who have felt like partners in this life adventure (one of them from the age of three!), women who witness, speak the truth, and are capable of holding love in their hearts throughout this perilous ride ... It seems to me that it isn't until we get to be "of a certain age" that we allow ourselves to pause to appreciate the things that matter. Once we affirm it, we can do no less than continue living our lives according to these values, paying careful attention each day to what we love. There is only now, of course - no past and no future. No time to waste.
I love this subject, and invite anyone reading this to join in the conversation with me. It is a way we can remember who we are. What matters to you?
What matters to me now? We talked about this together last week quite mindfully of course, closing our eyes occasionally to dig deeper. The road ahead of us is shortening day by day, and we take that to heart. Each day carries weight now because we see more clearly that our journey could end at any moment. So ... what does matter? How will we give ourselves to this life from here on?
Beyond the obvious - which for me is family, my sweet community of human beings that I've seen grow from the beginning and who feel like bedrock for me - there is an array of things that matter, spreading out in front of me like a colorful mosaic. I'm going to let these things tumble out now and see what I want to say about them: Music - the making of it on my grandmother's piano from the age of eight and the listening to it in concert halls, churches, and in the privacy of my living room, Art - the creative expressions I have worked at ever since I was a child making objects out of clay, followed by the years I poured out words on paper in endless journals trying to make sense of my life, and later when I pieced unusual beads together into necklaces in order to tell a story and finally called myself an artist, and finally the return in this final chapter to my first love: words, and the promise of a completed book. Service, working for the benefit of others - now there's something that matters; this attraction took different forms and finally brought me to Zen Hospice Project and the great learning at the bedside of those were were dying... and there is Generosity, driven by my grandmother's words to me as a child about the moral responsibility of the well-to-do in life that always lived in my mind, taught me to give whenever possible to those who were in need ... And of course, there is Speaking the truth, born out of a young life surrounded by those who cloaked reality and buried dark secrets, that speaking of the truth leading me ultimately to landing on the Buddhist path where I could feel at home seeing what is real and true, understanding suffering and freedom from suffering. Animals matter to me: those four legged furry beings and winged creatures who witness us, who display their beauty, humor, and intelligence, and remind us that we are all brothers and sisters. The pages of the Books I have read matter a great deal to me, from the time I was a young girl and escaped into literature to find my place, to understand other worlds and be thrilled by the beauty of language; for an only child who grew up before television and electronics, books fed my mind and heart. Friendship and community come to mind as well... the sharing of our loves and our ideas, telling our stories again and again, laughing when we're on the verge of crying, and crying when we need to, safely ... inhabiting that safe place of like minded human beings. Contemplation and practice ... that spacious landscape where I have been able to find real peace, self love, the truth, and the preciousness of life itself.
These things that "matter" have been with me for a long time, they have helped form my character. I first experienced beauty (art, music) when I was a child of six or seven, which was about the same time I began learning about how we were connected (and responsible) to those around us because I listened carefully to my grandmother. I don't know exactly when I saw that telling the truth was exciting beyond measure ... I was too busy trying to get people to listen most of the time! I do know I always felt related to all the cats that we had, that they were highly intelligent animals with a distinct need to be witnessed. And when I first saw the elephants in Africa I felt in an instant that we had a connection, human to animal... In my seventy years there have been a few friends who have felt like partners in this life adventure (one of them from the age of three!), women who witness, speak the truth, and are capable of holding love in their hearts throughout this perilous ride ... It seems to me that it isn't until we get to be "of a certain age" that we allow ourselves to pause to appreciate the things that matter. Once we affirm it, we can do no less than continue living our lives according to these values, paying careful attention each day to what we love. There is only now, of course - no past and no future. No time to waste.
I love this subject, and invite anyone reading this to join in the conversation with me. It is a way we can remember who we are. What matters to you?
Sunday, June 7, 2015
A Beautiful Horse Race and some Tears
Yesterday at my granddaughter's birthday party I watched the Belmont Stakes along with every other member of the family eager to be witness to racing history. Oddly enough, no one in our family pays much attention to racing during the "season,' and it is only when the push comes to shove that we all sit there breathlessly waiting to see if this one mortal animal called American Pharaoh could capture the first Triple Crown since 1978. Well, this sleek mellow looking brown horse did the job as he pulled away effortlessly from the pack of contenders in the home stretch. Glasses were raised, there were rounds of cheering, and adrenaline flowed through ... and then tears came to my eyes.
Why the tears? First off, I am a sucker for happy story endings when it comes to animals. My eyes dribbled tears when I watched the movie "Seabiscuit," and back in the olden days when we all watched Lassie, of course we teared up, our hearts warming and settling because once again Lassie was going to be o.k. Many of us turn animals into heroes, it seems, investing them with romantic stories that we make up because of course they can't speak their own experience; these tales show us that overcoming hardship, bad luck, and even cruelty is possible. And when the animals rise up and prevail they carry us with them to a place where the world feels like a kind and good place... We need that, of course. When we have pets, we weave narratives in our heads about what they're thinking, imagining, and feeling, and then we behave accordingly -- or at least I do! Cats are hard to do this with because they are so bloody inscrutable; they don't really wish to be understood. Dogs are pretty transparent and available, but still ... still I don't think we really know what they're feeling.
Horses are a different deal, I think. The horse is a mythical and elegant animal who parades, then streaks across our landscape as if he (or she) was destined for greatness. When we saw American Pharaoh race to the finish yesterday it was as though he was fulfilling his entire purpose in life in that very moment. It was a giant and grand moment, never to be experienced again... even more magnificent than the orgasmic finale of the best Beethoven symphony. And when you find yourself in that split second of vibrating joy, why wouldn't you cry just a little?
I cried also because I thought of my mother yesterday. She would have raised her glass and shrieked with pleasure along with everyone else at the young horse's victory. She loved horse racing, and used to host Kentucky Derby parties in her grand apartment in Pacific Heights. In her inner fantasy world where she became an F. Scott Fitzgerald flapper, a famous bohemian artist, or just an exquisite grand dame sipping her Scotch and telling funny stories, she was also perhaps the well heeled owner of a few stunning thoroughbreds whom she adored. She grew up in Long Island around people who made money from horses and became prideful in the process; she knew that life well and was attracted to it. Was it the excitement of possessing a beautiful animal who performed superhuman feats and made you lots of money? Was it the adoration that could come with glory? I am not sure. It may just have been that it was a world where everyone dressed well, was surrounded by beauty, and always had plenty to drink...
Tomorrow I head off for a silent meditation retreat where the topic for reflection will be aging and death, and my mother is already lodged in my mind in readiness. She seems to show up when I need to learn more about impermanence and compassion, such as the time in Cambodia after a long day of visiting the Killing Fields when I had a dream that brought us together. She died in 1991, but in many ways she still rests in my heart in present time, waiting for the right time to show up again. All those thoughts I used to have about her death "freeing" me from our fractious and painful relationship are like so many stormy bad weather clouds that toss us this way and that and then move on. I'm glad for this impermanence of feeling, because really and truly I don't think I ever wanted to get rid of her... I have this funny feeling that our conversation is far from finished.
Why the tears? First off, I am a sucker for happy story endings when it comes to animals. My eyes dribbled tears when I watched the movie "Seabiscuit," and back in the olden days when we all watched Lassie, of course we teared up, our hearts warming and settling because once again Lassie was going to be o.k. Many of us turn animals into heroes, it seems, investing them with romantic stories that we make up because of course they can't speak their own experience; these tales show us that overcoming hardship, bad luck, and even cruelty is possible. And when the animals rise up and prevail they carry us with them to a place where the world feels like a kind and good place... We need that, of course. When we have pets, we weave narratives in our heads about what they're thinking, imagining, and feeling, and then we behave accordingly -- or at least I do! Cats are hard to do this with because they are so bloody inscrutable; they don't really wish to be understood. Dogs are pretty transparent and available, but still ... still I don't think we really know what they're feeling.
Horses are a different deal, I think. The horse is a mythical and elegant animal who parades, then streaks across our landscape as if he (or she) was destined for greatness. When we saw American Pharaoh race to the finish yesterday it was as though he was fulfilling his entire purpose in life in that very moment. It was a giant and grand moment, never to be experienced again... even more magnificent than the orgasmic finale of the best Beethoven symphony. And when you find yourself in that split second of vibrating joy, why wouldn't you cry just a little?
I cried also because I thought of my mother yesterday. She would have raised her glass and shrieked with pleasure along with everyone else at the young horse's victory. She loved horse racing, and used to host Kentucky Derby parties in her grand apartment in Pacific Heights. In her inner fantasy world where she became an F. Scott Fitzgerald flapper, a famous bohemian artist, or just an exquisite grand dame sipping her Scotch and telling funny stories, she was also perhaps the well heeled owner of a few stunning thoroughbreds whom she adored. She grew up in Long Island around people who made money from horses and became prideful in the process; she knew that life well and was attracted to it. Was it the excitement of possessing a beautiful animal who performed superhuman feats and made you lots of money? Was it the adoration that could come with glory? I am not sure. It may just have been that it was a world where everyone dressed well, was surrounded by beauty, and always had plenty to drink...
Tomorrow I head off for a silent meditation retreat where the topic for reflection will be aging and death, and my mother is already lodged in my mind in readiness. She seems to show up when I need to learn more about impermanence and compassion, such as the time in Cambodia after a long day of visiting the Killing Fields when I had a dream that brought us together. She died in 1991, but in many ways she still rests in my heart in present time, waiting for the right time to show up again. All those thoughts I used to have about her death "freeing" me from our fractious and painful relationship are like so many stormy bad weather clouds that toss us this way and that and then move on. I'm glad for this impermanence of feeling, because really and truly I don't think I ever wanted to get rid of her... I have this funny feeling that our conversation is far from finished.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Conversations about What is Real
My head is filled with a refreshing new sense of Mag, as I remember a rich conversation with a friend yesterday about the choices we make in our lives and how and why we make them. I found myself saying things like, "Even though a voice inside tells me to go out and walk on the beach, I really find I don't want to," which is followed by the voice that says, "but, oh, you know it's good for you, my dear." And there we have it. The fascist train of thought that has been lashing me about all my life, instructing and driving me to do the right thing. As though someone up there was keeping score! So, I said to my friend, "what my body is telling me is that it does NOT want to walk the beach today … too many aches in the hips and knees … and let's face it, walking on soft sand is a real challenge even if you aren't facing deteriorating knees at age 70." And we laughed together, thank God, that we can finally get to the truth of things, and not be so hardwired to perform. We can just be. The truth of things yesterday was that I preferred sitting in my living room gazing at the ocean, listening to Bach, reading, and talking with a true old friend. No harm done, right?
The roots of this strange habit are deep indeed. As my mother pursued a career as a painter, and my father put on his gray flannel suit and went into the city to work, I tried like crazy to figure out the right path to get people, MY people, to recognize me, to see me as good and smart and worthy. I was about six or seven at the time. Shored up by my grandmother, I studied hard in school, took piano lessons earnestly, and figured out my table manners. This became my career. Develop my brain that lived inside a head that my mother had pronounced "too big for your body." When I became an adolescent and then more acceptable in my mother's society of hard drinking intellectuals, I remember feeling grown up and proud. I felt I had worth and that I was seen through the haze of cigarette smoke. I think by then I had given up on being hugged and kissed and cherished. And when I met a similarly brainy young man in college whose brown eyes reached out and who loved getting lost in conversation with me, I thought I was in love. My innocent shipboard romance five years before was now a dim memory, and I plunged recklessly into loving and being loved by this man. I had no clue. All I knew was that I needed someone to listen to me, to see me.
Many years have passed since that time, years in which I have continued to drive myself to improve my mind, and my life in general. Relationships did come and go, and it appears I wasn't very good at them, and only with a great deal of patience and determination was I able to find closeness with my two beautiful daughters, as I kept reminding them that I came by my maternal deficiencies honestly, raised by a woman with no clue how to give love. Deficient -- such a cruel word, really. And I held that close for a very long time…. My brain was always just fine, and I fine-tuned it by reading James Joyce and Tolstoy, and training to be an English teacher, but my heart didn't seem to know how to navigate the complicated relationships I had entered into. The Buddha teaches us that we are all complete and good just the way we are -- that we are NOT deficient. But I didn't learn that until I passed the half century mark in my life, and even then it proved to be a tough lesson for me.
Last night at my local tavern in the Old Valley Ford Hotel I was drinking a margarita and reading Being Mortal on my Kindle as people around me noisily delighted in each other's company. A man sitting next to me at the bar with a worn and friendly face commented that he thought I was reading grim stuff. "That's kind of a downer, it seems to me, " he said. "Oh, no, not dark and grim … really inspiring," I said as I read about muscle and bone deterioration, and the shrinking of the brain, and withering of eye muscle in the aging human. "I work with dying people," I told him, "and I find this interesting… we need to see what is going on, not pretend that we're not aging and falling apart. And besides, this guy who is a doctor is advocating for honest realistic care of the old, sick, and dying." And my rancher friend with the leathery face drank his rum and coke and nodded, his face softening. He got it. He then went on to tell me about the passion of his life: raising cattle. He talked with pride about how well he cared for his cows, and when pressed by me, he admitted that yes, he raised them not just for the milk. And as he began to speak the truth about his work, he also became more interested in learning about why I gave my time to work in hospice. And even though I could never imagine killing animals to make a living, in that moment I saw his respect for the cows he was tending, and I trusted him. We were telling each other real stories about ourselves. We were people "of a certain age" sitting around on a Saturday night drinking and doing something else we both seemed to enjoy: telling what was real for us and being witnessed.
I went to bear witness to a dead whale on a nearby beach the night before last. This was the eighth whale to be washed ashore since April. I got close to the 27 foot creature in the early evening light to take some pictures, and my heart went out to this young wild animal who had died before her time and lay there decaying before me as the sea gulls started to do their job. And I thought about the seven others who had mysteriously shown up on our shores in recent months, and I wanted to know WHY. Of course I did. That was my brain trying to do its job. All sentient beings -- human or animal -- are born, grow up, age and die, we know this to be true. But some, like this poor beast, don't get to grow up all the way… My rancher friend and I had done some growing up, we were around the same age it seemed, and I'm sure we both felt the age in our bodies as we talked last night, and I wanted to imagine each of us offering gratitude now and then for our physical selves that have carried us this far.
When I left the beach and the dead whale, I walked slowly up a steep hill of shifting sand, and my knees hurt and my ankles hurt, and yet that felt secondary; I had been a part of something magnificent. Life's enormity, and its darkness. And it was all good. That was one walk on the beach that I would take again.
The roots of this strange habit are deep indeed. As my mother pursued a career as a painter, and my father put on his gray flannel suit and went into the city to work, I tried like crazy to figure out the right path to get people, MY people, to recognize me, to see me as good and smart and worthy. I was about six or seven at the time. Shored up by my grandmother, I studied hard in school, took piano lessons earnestly, and figured out my table manners. This became my career. Develop my brain that lived inside a head that my mother had pronounced "too big for your body." When I became an adolescent and then more acceptable in my mother's society of hard drinking intellectuals, I remember feeling grown up and proud. I felt I had worth and that I was seen through the haze of cigarette smoke. I think by then I had given up on being hugged and kissed and cherished. And when I met a similarly brainy young man in college whose brown eyes reached out and who loved getting lost in conversation with me, I thought I was in love. My innocent shipboard romance five years before was now a dim memory, and I plunged recklessly into loving and being loved by this man. I had no clue. All I knew was that I needed someone to listen to me, to see me.
Many years have passed since that time, years in which I have continued to drive myself to improve my mind, and my life in general. Relationships did come and go, and it appears I wasn't very good at them, and only with a great deal of patience and determination was I able to find closeness with my two beautiful daughters, as I kept reminding them that I came by my maternal deficiencies honestly, raised by a woman with no clue how to give love. Deficient -- such a cruel word, really. And I held that close for a very long time…. My brain was always just fine, and I fine-tuned it by reading James Joyce and Tolstoy, and training to be an English teacher, but my heart didn't seem to know how to navigate the complicated relationships I had entered into. The Buddha teaches us that we are all complete and good just the way we are -- that we are NOT deficient. But I didn't learn that until I passed the half century mark in my life, and even then it proved to be a tough lesson for me.
Last night at my local tavern in the Old Valley Ford Hotel I was drinking a margarita and reading Being Mortal on my Kindle as people around me noisily delighted in each other's company. A man sitting next to me at the bar with a worn and friendly face commented that he thought I was reading grim stuff. "That's kind of a downer, it seems to me, " he said. "Oh, no, not dark and grim … really inspiring," I said as I read about muscle and bone deterioration, and the shrinking of the brain, and withering of eye muscle in the aging human. "I work with dying people," I told him, "and I find this interesting… we need to see what is going on, not pretend that we're not aging and falling apart. And besides, this guy who is a doctor is advocating for honest realistic care of the old, sick, and dying." And my rancher friend with the leathery face drank his rum and coke and nodded, his face softening. He got it. He then went on to tell me about the passion of his life: raising cattle. He talked with pride about how well he cared for his cows, and when pressed by me, he admitted that yes, he raised them not just for the milk. And as he began to speak the truth about his work, he also became more interested in learning about why I gave my time to work in hospice. And even though I could never imagine killing animals to make a living, in that moment I saw his respect for the cows he was tending, and I trusted him. We were telling each other real stories about ourselves. We were people "of a certain age" sitting around on a Saturday night drinking and doing something else we both seemed to enjoy: telling what was real for us and being witnessed.
I went to bear witness to a dead whale on a nearby beach the night before last. This was the eighth whale to be washed ashore since April. I got close to the 27 foot creature in the early evening light to take some pictures, and my heart went out to this young wild animal who had died before her time and lay there decaying before me as the sea gulls started to do their job. And I thought about the seven others who had mysteriously shown up on our shores in recent months, and I wanted to know WHY. Of course I did. That was my brain trying to do its job. All sentient beings -- human or animal -- are born, grow up, age and die, we know this to be true. But some, like this poor beast, don't get to grow up all the way… My rancher friend and I had done some growing up, we were around the same age it seemed, and I'm sure we both felt the age in our bodies as we talked last night, and I wanted to imagine each of us offering gratitude now and then for our physical selves that have carried us this far.
When I left the beach and the dead whale, I walked slowly up a steep hill of shifting sand, and my knees hurt and my ankles hurt, and yet that felt secondary; I had been a part of something magnificent. Life's enormity, and its darkness. And it was all good. That was one walk on the beach that I would take again.
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