Doing the Work: Just One Step

I have a friend with degenerative disk disease.  We fell in friend-love because we have a lot in common: we’re both intelligent, snarky, music-loving folks who adore the sublimely silly.  For a long, long time, we talked every day.  When his pain became too bad, we’d hang up, he’d pop a pill or three, and he’d nap.

It was life as usual.

I didn’t realize how often–or how many–pills he took because his pain, while noticeable, was far higher than he ever led me to believe.  Because he doesn’t live here, I didn’t see him on a daily basis hobbling through what few of his daily activities he could manage. Because he’s prideful, I had no idea how bad it had truly become.

He dropped off the face of the earth for a time–a very, very long time for someone who was concerned for him. He entered a dark phase, and didn’t come up for months. When he resurfaced, we talked about it, in bits and pieces.  The pain had become so unmanageable that he had sunk into a deep depression, and every day he’d have to decide whether it was worth going on for.  He was hopeless–he could not imagine a life better than the one he had.  He felt that he had no value–he was no longer capable of adding value to the world.

He came out of the depression, mostly, but was still burdened by a level of physical pain that I cannot even imagine.  He was not the same.

But then a miracle happened.

This Need Not Be

Four of the most powerful words I’ve ever encountered, shamelessly taken, incidentally, from A Course in Miracles.

I look to the side where it says “What I’m Reading.” I haven’t updated it in, well, forever, since it’s been well over a year since I’ve read Heinlein.  On one hand, I think of the things that have happened since then, how different things are; on the other, I think of how much has stayed the same.

Far too much.

I’m still reading, or rather, just started back reading, ACIM again. I’ve made great progress: I’m just starting chapter 5.

I’m struggling with dropping out of several things right now: a local group, a book group, perhaps even grad school. I’ve been vastly disappointed in the quality of the English program so far and very much doubting if I want to continue.

I could say the same thing about several aspects of my life right now.

The ugly side of silence, in my case, is that it often attempts to cover for or hide from depression.  Growing up, whining was so not cool. So uncool that I have very little tolerance for it now. Emo is not cool. Self-pity is not cool. Whining is so not cool. So, when things are bad, I tend to shut up, turn off, and wait it out.

It’s the thing I talk around, disingenuously, ignore, look away from and generally pretend isn’t the hairy, stinky, yak taking up residence in my living room.

I thought it’d magically disappear. When I left my marriage, it would be gone. When I rid myself of irritatingly needy people, it would be gone. When I finished my Bachelor’s and didn’t have to struggle so hard, it would be gone. When Steve would finally go, it would be  gone. When <insert event here> occurred, it would be finally, finally gone.

I have to laugh, perhaps a bit bitterly, at my naive thought that my life would be less busy when I finished my BA.

When the whir of activity is gone, I am left frozen, though. Buried in apathy as my dishes pile up, my books (with all the magic cures, don’t you know) pile up, unreturned phone calls pile up.

And I’m not just dysfunctional, but bordering on non-functional.

That’s where I am.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, again and again, and expecting different results, then, theoretically, shaking things up just a little bit each day, theoretically, would be anything but insane.

Perhaps “This Need Not Be” is a good beginning.

Perhaps “this need not be” are four little words that, just maybe, might  cause an interrupt in the processing of distress. In the silence of that moment of pause, anything can happen.

Tom Robbins said, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”

Perhaps it’s time to try the yum.

The Things that Change Us

Durga the Protector

It’s been an interesting month; I suppose I should have expected no less from living with a goddess.

We’ve survived ankle biting, running through the house with underwear, ears all a-flapping, hole-digging, and poo-eating.  She’s a Mike Tyson with the grooming brush, and if the brush had an ear, it’d be gone, gone, gone, Vincent Van Gogh and despondent.

Although I move a lot at work, I really hadn’t realized how sedentary I was once I got home. I’d plop and plop and plop, filling my hours with pseud0-homework, which consists of 5 minutes of online article reading for every hour of Facebook gaming.  I’d gotten away from meditation, from reading and from doing things that are good for me, and hadn’t really noticed it.

But now, now that I’m having to struggle to fit things in, it’s amazing how much I can accomplish. In the mornings, we’re polar opposites: me, one eye-half opened, rushing to remember to disarm the alarm system before we go potty, her, all tongue and ears and tail, ready to play, play, play. And maybe, maybe if she feels like it, relieve herself. After work, it’s let her out, let her run some of her energy out in the yard so I can get her settled enough to leash her and take her walking, which she loves.

And we walk. And walk and walk. And sometimes, sometimes for mere seconds, we even run. Me, running. For whole, glorifying seconds, I get glimpses of what my life could be like. Running.  And I like it.

Goddesses, Goodness, and Grace

I have met the goddess, and her name is Durga.

I do things ass-backwards according to everyone else’s standards, I think.  In this case, I named the dog before I even met her, hoping the right one would come to me.  An experiment in faith, I suppose.

I was at wits’ end.  Terrified and terrorized in my own house, the fear bleeding into other areas of my life. I was more snappy, more tearful, and always on edge.

Everyone’s full of advice when you’ve been broken into. “Get a gun,” is the thing people told me the most, followed by “Get an alarm system,” and then, “Get a dog.”

No one tells you to “Get a life,” although it felt like that had been stolen from me.  Months ago, I had been broken into, with stuff stolen. It was just stuff, but the feeling of dirtiness and violation stayed for months.  There’s nothing quite like walking into your house to find your most private stuff pulled out of drawers, all of your drawers empty, and your clothes off the hanger.   Just because.

So I had an alarm system installed.

I had finally caught my breath from that, when I heard people in my back yard early, early one morning, trying to steal, of all things, my outdoor grill.

So I had a fence built.

Turning on the Lights

If I thought 2011 would greet a new me, a new, healthier, happier, more optimistic me, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The break-in, and the subsequent acts of vandalism have left me fearful, afraid. Jumping at noises and silent company.    Friends acting decidedly unfriendly:  the crossing of boundaries in such a way that completely eradicates trust.

I now weigh more than I have since right after graduation in 2008.

I quit smoking, then started again.

For all practical purposes, I’m actually behind the starting point where I was this time last year.

And yet so much has happened in 2010: The year of the Tiger, my year, I was sure it was going to be something amazing.  It was, I think, not just in the way that I’d hoped. I  spent over a quarter of the year trembling in fear regardless of alarm systems and big, wooden fences, and princess kitties on the prowl. On the other hand, I’ve discovered that I love things I had never considered: the joy of cooking, even simple things such as seared tuna, beans, and vegetables; leading projects at work and seeing them through; and, perhaps most surprisingly, the way I feel in high heels.

I insist I am not a masochist, but I found myself reliving my undegrad days while working on my final papers for the past two semesters. The over-caffeinated coffee, the gray patches of hair that seemed to pop out like stars on an obsidian night.  The stress, the procrastination, the writing of things that made no sense whatsoever, and yes, the “Aha moment” when things really connected, followed by the desperation to get it finished in time only to be followed by the total Zen moment of handing it in, done with it, satisfied with whatever grade it earns.

The not caring so much about grades is a graduate thing for me, I think, definitely not an undergrad characteristic.

I’ve managed to work on the processes and let go of the results.  If only I could do that in the rest of my life.

And yet, I’ve discovered this hidden part of me: delighted by pretty and soft-feeling things and my posture when I’m in heels.  I’ve discovered the peace of a perfect, perfect moment, completely internal and utterly mine.

Maybe I’m more optimistic than I gave myself credit for.

It’s a whole new year, and it’s time to get the party started, at any rate.

No One and Nothing is Against Me

“Make your path about proving this truth, and you will discover what wholeness really is.”  I of the Storm by Gary Simmons

The past two, three months have been chaotic. Chaotic is too kind a word, but it’s somewhat fitting.  My first grad school class, a condensed, 5-hour a day class, two days a week in addition to travel time and working. The drop that came afterward.  The house break-in, the phone crises (multiples, multiples), and panic.  Vast amounts of panic.

A year or so ago, I’d read Eat, Pray, Love, and was rather unimpressed by it. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of us could travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia to recover from a marriage which, by Gilbert’s own portrayal, was a product of her own settling.

I picked it up a month or so ago, suffered through her eating in Italy, and managed to find some seeds in her praying in India.  I opened the book to her first description of meditation, and realized why I disliked her so intensely: she had my brain.  In the movie, there’s a scene where she sat down to meditate, her thoughts all over the place, ending with her imagining decorating her meditation room that she’d have once she returned home.  She looked at the clock, and it had been less than a single minute.

I could appreciate that.

A friend asked me to go to a meditation three weeks ago, and I did.  Strange how circles come round again, and I found myself in the exact same pattern of service that I had been to many months ago: a sitting meditation, a lying one, and a walking one, guided by a Vietnamese monk whose broken English is somehow stunningly beautiful.  When he sang, I realized it was the same monk, no longer at the Temple, that I had met previously.

I think I really started paying attention then.

That day, a little drunk on bliss, Jen and I breakfasted, did a little shopping, and unbeknownst to me, while we were having some much needed girlie time, someone was rifling through my stuff and making a getaway with my Harley fund and all of my undergrad research that just so happened to be on two separate laptops.

Words cannot describe the fear I felt after, being in the house. Not being in the house. Discovering that security alarm salesmen could be just as scummy as common thieves. Moreso, perhaps.

But an interesting thing happened over the course of the past few weeks: I kept attending meditation, I began practicing at home, and I realized why I hadn’t been in the first place.

“I can’t meditate!” I’d say, “My mind won’t shut off!”

I’d heard that praying is talking to God while meditating is listening to Him.

When looked at from that perspective, that explains a lot.

Little Firebird

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. — Joseph Campbell

There is a woman I know only peripherally, someone I’ve bumped into over the course of the past three or four months only at parties. We’ve only exchanged a few words total–perhaps 20 minutes of conversation total.

And I’m simply in awe of her.

She has a history I can only guess at from others’ talk–mere background, a setting, and her own obscure references and deep writings.   The talk of others is irrelevant other than as a frame–it’s her presence that has changed significantly over the past few months. It isn’t that she’s changed her hair or lost some weight, although she might very well have done both.  If so, I haven’t noticed.

She’s simply become…something.

When I first met her, she was extremely pleasant though a little shy, I think.  Her hands were together in front of her for the most part–she was prettily dressed, but something was missing. Maybe in her posture, maybe in the way she held her head. When I saw her last weekend, I said little to her. I mulled around, talking mostly with my companion, mixing little with other people.

I’ve shown up for the past few months, but I’m still a bit shy.  One of my usual cohorts was absent, and she was missed keenly.  I feel that I’m in a bubble, expanding slightly each month but oh-so-very-slowly.

She, on the other hand, has bloomed. She’s on fire. She’s noticeable from any point in the room.  A butterfly, she flits, always returning to the same place. And her colors? Glorious. She moves differently, like a cat, a smile as satisfied as a sandy beach below sunset.

I mentioned to her how happy she seemed, and her already wide smile seemed near to bursting. She could barely contain it, I think.  She said something in acknowledgement: Thank you, I know, something of that sort although the specifics I cannot remember.

She seems to confirm my theory that “becoming” isn’t about becoming anything at all, but rather un-becoming and simply being. Unbecoming all that you’re not–being what you truly are.

She’s been on my mind a lot lately–a muse, perhaps–while I’m struggling with obligation and falling into old patterns, I see–I can see–that things can truly fall away.

And I’m inspired.

Back in the Academic Bubble

My first graduate class is almost half over, and I’m both a little sad and a whole lotta grateful.

It’s a concentrated, one month course, and it’s definitely not a traditional English class.  It’s on oral narrative, and we start our interviews today.   I think I know why it took so long to get into grad school now — if this was meant to be my first class, I had to get over a bunch of fear and shyness first.

We’ve met at the Mobile museum and the Archives and, other than my driving all over town because I don’t know where anything is, it’s been an incredible experience.

My brain is zinging again, in class, reading of the  Clotilda, the last known slave ship that landed after international slave trading was made illegal and the subsequent founding of Africa Town, a self-sufficient community founded by ex-slaves of that ship.  The book is Dreams of Africa in Alabama by Sylviane Diouf,  and it’s far from a dry rendering of a shameful part of Southern history.   It’s a story complemented by the stories of the generations that have lived in the town.

It’s simply fascinating.

Lavender Scented Life

Memorial Day weekend is here: a time when the roar of V-twin engines invades the Coast much to my delight.  It’s the party before the silence, the dionysian party before the appollonian remembrance.   Every year, I’d see more leather than Texas produces in a year, more mixing of different kinds of folks, more of … well, everything good, really.

Whiskers was  the gate-keeper for the Memorial Blow Out every year.  This year, there will be a little less good about the Blow Out. He passed away in October of last year, and is missed acutely during this time of year.

I wonder who could take his place.

Memorial Day is a day dedicated to remembering our fallen dead.  While it’s important to remember our losses, I think it’s far more important to remember our gains.  It is through their life and their service that they make their impact: their willingness as opposed to the method of their death.

Officially Official

It’s officially official. I am a grad student, and I begin classes next Tuesday.

I’ve been vacillating between hyperventilating and breathing many sighs of relief.

So things are nearly normal.

I’ve also started working on my resentment list for OA. I’ve noticed strange things happening.

I’ve hemmed and hawed, putting it off and putting it away.  Oddly enough, it made me angry. I’d find myself eating, and I haven’t seemed to be able to get it under control again.   It’s also a lot less fun updating your weight when you’re not losing, I’ve noticed.

But I’m both into my second week of working on the resentment list and exercising. My goal last week was to get 20 minutes 5 days a week. I fell short, only making 4 days.

4 days in a week is much better than, say, April, when I had weeks and weeks of nothing.

As far as the resentment goes: I’ve looked over the old list and noticed that things that used to bother me don’t bother me any more.  I’m having trouble thinking of things I’m afraid of, too: the things that used to petrify me such as being around people I didn’t know and getting up in front of people and speaking , well, the first is merely a blip and the second isn’t even a blip at all.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, or how, but things seem to be changing even if I hiccuped weight and eating wise for the past couple of months.

That’s something, anyway.