I am here/now with your heart;
I hold your hands in here/now.
-Dainin Katagiri Roshi
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
are you my mother?
i looked over at the woman to the mat on my right and thought i was looking at my mother. it had been a long time. she had the short, curly hair. the feminine, true woman look. she had the physique. she had the smile, the face. but she could not have been my mother. i needed her today.
my posture toward her, for less than an hour, became that of a daughter. she was less practiced than me, and i wanted to show her respect. she was a woman. she looked like my mother. i wanted her to take me out to coffee and model a life for me. i wanted her to model a perspective. but this woman, truly not my mother, would have no perspective on my situation. she may have hers. but who could she possibly be besides someone with an eerily similar appearance? my mom would be 61. but she didn't make it to 35.
i remember going to aerobics with my mom. i don't know that she ever made it to yoga. she would do her work-out, and i would do ballet and tap. it was mother/daughter time of some sort. that and going to the pool. we had four years of some of this stuff. of course i will never forget her. of course i still look for her, but it has been so long since the likes of her has caught my attention.
taking the bus from bellevue to omaha every day to go to my christian elementary school, i would look out the window into the windows of cars to see if my mom was out there. i wanted her to be out there. i dreamed about her and what i imagined could be her new husband. sometimes they lived in a castle. sometimes they lived in the pacific northwest. i wondered if she would ever send for me. later, i wanted to see the pictures of her, when they found her dead, but my dad begged me to never see those. he hadn't. he wanted us to remember her the way she was.
but it was so hard for me to remember anything besides a prickly leg, a stick of orange trident gum. i remember her encouraging me to eat plums not sugary cereal, wash my face like it was the most important thing i would ever do. i kept asking how many more years until i can drive?
my dad used to always tell me how my mom could do back-bends. "she could do the bridge and reach over to the floor with her mouth and pick up a hankerchief." he was clearly thrilled by her flexibility.
growing up, i would look at pictures of her and think she was so beautiful. how could she have been my mother? who was this woman? i was jealous of her perfect body, thinking maybe i had that in me somewhere, wondering when i would have the stamina to stick to a diet and exercise routine that would get me there.
when i started yoga again in lincoln, i began to remember that i had always been flexible. i remembered my brother kyle telling me not to sit with my legs bent backwards, that it was bad for my knees. but it didn't hurt. why would it be bad for me?
the first time i ever did yoga was in berkeley. it brought me great happiness. i would come home and get stoned with amy and monique, and all i would want to do was those poses. there was something amazing about seeing my body like that, my self like that, not just sitting behind some desk but engaged in something that seemed true to me.
at five willows, i began to see my body re-form in the mirror and saw my mom's body. it was the one thing i had of hers. i don't have her face, though we may share some characteristics. i don't have her voice, though sometimes it might be similar. i am not her in any way i can identify except my body. the fitter i get, the more i see her.
today, sitting beside the woman i revered as my mother, i wished i could go back and tell my mother she was beautiful. influenced by barbies, i wished she had long hair when i was little. i didn't get her short, curly hairstyle. when my dad started dating again (right away), i thought i'd put in my request: date someone with long hair. it was shallow. i was four.
roxana, the yoga teacher, came by today and suddenly wanted me to do the bridge. i was in shoulderstand, one of my specialties, and she wanted me to try some new moves she just learned in spain. there i was thinking of my mom, and roxana is asking me to do the bridge. only me. i did. it was easy. i was confident. i was my mother's daughter.
in shivasana, roxana had us imagine a color that would bring us safety. i needed it. i visualized myself in purple, my favorite color since i knew what colors were. my mom's favorite color was yellow. i hated yellow growing up. everything was yellow. our carpet, our wallpaper, our house. a psychiatrist came over to our house once and said yellow is the favorite color of the depressed. it's kind of like false hope. i've thought about this numerous times re-reading charlotte perkins gilman's "yellow wallpaper." on the only acid trip i ever took at 16, i started to tear down the yellow wallpaper in my room. i'd always wanted it down. i would rather have torn wallpaper, beige walls, than have to keep looking at this stuff i'd hated, that had no relationship to my own aesthetic.
when i came home from visiting my aunt jan in arizona when i was 7, my dad had a new bed for me. i had been begging for a canopy bed with a purple ruffle and a purple bedspread for years. every time i saw the sears catalog at my grandma's house, i would rip out the purple bedding and show my dad i wanted it. i came home to a canopy. he had ordered a white canopy, a white bedspread. i couldn't understand it. he thought it looked best. he was having a party at our house for people from the museum. it had inspired him to shop.
when i woke up from shivasana, body filled in purple, i was slow to move to my side, to raise again into lotus position. when i looked to my right, the woman who was not my mother was gone. she is always gone.
i wondered why it was my destiny to always have her gone. to always be alone. to always wonder why. to never have her. to always want her. to never have that feeling of someone older to look up to. to never feel like i was walking in some kind of shadow i could re-shape or understand.
the only shadow i walk in is suicide. it is not life. that is something i keep creating for myself. there have been a few periods where it felt easy. where it felt like i was in the right place with the right people at the right time. recently it felt more right than ever. my spirit was happy. my spirit could reach through walls.
i wonder where my mom is. if there is some part of her inside me. pulling back my purple bedspread at night, i have recently been more thankful for the sacrifices and the pain that brought me to be.
if my mom truly loved my dad, she must have suffered so much when he went back to his wife. once, when i told my dad i can't handle my situation, he said my mom said that to him, too. he was reminiscing. he was still in those moments. 26 years since she is gone, he still lives in those moments so often. they had 12 years.
this morning at 6am, when i hadn't slept because of the partying neighbors once again and had gone online to find other apartments, my dad promised to help me move anywhere i needed to move. he doesn't want me to feel unsafe. he doesn't want me up all night. he said start shopping. he has never broken a promise to me. i really haven't realized before how, aside from replaying his tape over and over and over again about law school, he wants what is best for me. there is a love that reaches across the telephone. sometimes his canopy has been white when i needed purple.
and what about getting what we need? is there a place for that? what about getting life's one due? my mom broke the promise she made to me that she wouldn't die after my grandpa did. she found herself obsessed by empty garages. i wondered today why she didn't just drive through a stoplight? wouldn't it have been quicker? but then she could have hurt someone in the other car.
i guess a kindness of hers is that she didn't take me with her. my dad told me inappropriately as i was growing up that she had threatened to do that. i guess that's how he made it as as single parent. he was glad she didn't take me with her.
the garage that she ended up choosing belonged to a jerk. his name is phil godawa. he lived in a fancy fontenelle hills apartment with his wife joanne. years later, they moved in down the street from me, across from the artist, sue, and joanne told me that my mom had been parked in phil's garage. phil was not a very nice man. though i think he did feel sorry for me. i'm not sure if he found my mom. i wouldn't want to ask him. all i remember is a police officer named russell.
she died in a grey buick riviera. while we were in corpse pose today, roxana told us that some yogis can get their heartbeat so slow in corpse pose that if you hooked them up to life-detecting machines, they would technically be declared dead.
i wondered if my mom had a chance to move and then to die just a little bit every day, like i do in yoga, if she would have made it. could yoga have saved her?
i used to wonder if she had been more academically successful in high school, if she hadn't had a reading disability, could she have made it? but her body, like mine, would have thrived in yoga. she could have taught it. she would have had something to teach me, although she believed she never did.
i don't know where to end this or how. that is the big question during times like this.
i moved to lincoln because brad was here. because i needed to be near my best friend. we never hung out here. he had moved on. i ran into him one time in andrews hall, and he was shocked that i had cut off all my hair. he visited me once a couple years later in lincoln, when i was married to clint. he came to our house, saw our dog, we went to the mill.
everything in life, mine anyway, though, changes. not my love for people. never that. yesterday kelly and i were talking about how we didn't expect these places in our paths. she is 9 weeks pregnant. we started talking about if we would ever be pregnant 7 years ago, before either of us were married. four years later, three months apart, we were both married, at each others' weddings. my marriage did not last. her love with christophe, beautiful, did. i always thought they should have a baby. they were too good together, too beautiful and similar, not to. i cried when i read on email that she was pregnant. she's not there yet. her body is growing.
on our last walk a couple months ago, she told me about the benefits of the rhythm method. she had read a book. she knew the secrets. she told me not to get on the pill. i joked about this yesterday on our walk. kelly has always been saddened by the way that women she knows seemed to be reduced only to mothers, only talking about diapers, bottles. she wants to keep talking about art and culture. she wants to work full-time. keep working on her phd. she will create with christophe what she needs. she believes in that.
i look forward to small things right now. i look forward to seeing my dad again. going to see "happy-go-lucky" with kelly. i try to look forward to christmas eve. people at yoga are saying hi to me, speaking to me. i keep being surprised when this happens. i feel gone. i am looking for myself, for the deeper part of me, for the wholeness, out the window on the bus. i am looking through windows to find myself, to find my happiness, to find that stirring again.
i don't know if when i wake up, where she will be? i drink a latte with a shot of mint from meadowlark. i wait for my soon-to-be wusband (new term i heard on the radio) to help me figure out cable. i look for viewing content, reading content, that will soothe my soul. i remind myself i don't have to do much. i lower my expectations. i wait.
i
my posture toward her, for less than an hour, became that of a daughter. she was less practiced than me, and i wanted to show her respect. she was a woman. she looked like my mother. i wanted her to take me out to coffee and model a life for me. i wanted her to model a perspective. but this woman, truly not my mother, would have no perspective on my situation. she may have hers. but who could she possibly be besides someone with an eerily similar appearance? my mom would be 61. but she didn't make it to 35.
i remember going to aerobics with my mom. i don't know that she ever made it to yoga. she would do her work-out, and i would do ballet and tap. it was mother/daughter time of some sort. that and going to the pool. we had four years of some of this stuff. of course i will never forget her. of course i still look for her, but it has been so long since the likes of her has caught my attention.
taking the bus from bellevue to omaha every day to go to my christian elementary school, i would look out the window into the windows of cars to see if my mom was out there. i wanted her to be out there. i dreamed about her and what i imagined could be her new husband. sometimes they lived in a castle. sometimes they lived in the pacific northwest. i wondered if she would ever send for me. later, i wanted to see the pictures of her, when they found her dead, but my dad begged me to never see those. he hadn't. he wanted us to remember her the way she was.
but it was so hard for me to remember anything besides a prickly leg, a stick of orange trident gum. i remember her encouraging me to eat plums not sugary cereal, wash my face like it was the most important thing i would ever do. i kept asking how many more years until i can drive?
my dad used to always tell me how my mom could do back-bends. "she could do the bridge and reach over to the floor with her mouth and pick up a hankerchief." he was clearly thrilled by her flexibility.
growing up, i would look at pictures of her and think she was so beautiful. how could she have been my mother? who was this woman? i was jealous of her perfect body, thinking maybe i had that in me somewhere, wondering when i would have the stamina to stick to a diet and exercise routine that would get me there.
when i started yoga again in lincoln, i began to remember that i had always been flexible. i remembered my brother kyle telling me not to sit with my legs bent backwards, that it was bad for my knees. but it didn't hurt. why would it be bad for me?
the first time i ever did yoga was in berkeley. it brought me great happiness. i would come home and get stoned with amy and monique, and all i would want to do was those poses. there was something amazing about seeing my body like that, my self like that, not just sitting behind some desk but engaged in something that seemed true to me.
at five willows, i began to see my body re-form in the mirror and saw my mom's body. it was the one thing i had of hers. i don't have her face, though we may share some characteristics. i don't have her voice, though sometimes it might be similar. i am not her in any way i can identify except my body. the fitter i get, the more i see her.
today, sitting beside the woman i revered as my mother, i wished i could go back and tell my mother she was beautiful. influenced by barbies, i wished she had long hair when i was little. i didn't get her short, curly hairstyle. when my dad started dating again (right away), i thought i'd put in my request: date someone with long hair. it was shallow. i was four.
roxana, the yoga teacher, came by today and suddenly wanted me to do the bridge. i was in shoulderstand, one of my specialties, and she wanted me to try some new moves she just learned in spain. there i was thinking of my mom, and roxana is asking me to do the bridge. only me. i did. it was easy. i was confident. i was my mother's daughter.
in shivasana, roxana had us imagine a color that would bring us safety. i needed it. i visualized myself in purple, my favorite color since i knew what colors were. my mom's favorite color was yellow. i hated yellow growing up. everything was yellow. our carpet, our wallpaper, our house. a psychiatrist came over to our house once and said yellow is the favorite color of the depressed. it's kind of like false hope. i've thought about this numerous times re-reading charlotte perkins gilman's "yellow wallpaper." on the only acid trip i ever took at 16, i started to tear down the yellow wallpaper in my room. i'd always wanted it down. i would rather have torn wallpaper, beige walls, than have to keep looking at this stuff i'd hated, that had no relationship to my own aesthetic.
when i came home from visiting my aunt jan in arizona when i was 7, my dad had a new bed for me. i had been begging for a canopy bed with a purple ruffle and a purple bedspread for years. every time i saw the sears catalog at my grandma's house, i would rip out the purple bedding and show my dad i wanted it. i came home to a canopy. he had ordered a white canopy, a white bedspread. i couldn't understand it. he thought it looked best. he was having a party at our house for people from the museum. it had inspired him to shop.
when i woke up from shivasana, body filled in purple, i was slow to move to my side, to raise again into lotus position. when i looked to my right, the woman who was not my mother was gone. she is always gone.
i wondered why it was my destiny to always have her gone. to always be alone. to always wonder why. to never have her. to always want her. to never have that feeling of someone older to look up to. to never feel like i was walking in some kind of shadow i could re-shape or understand.
the only shadow i walk in is suicide. it is not life. that is something i keep creating for myself. there have been a few periods where it felt easy. where it felt like i was in the right place with the right people at the right time. recently it felt more right than ever. my spirit was happy. my spirit could reach through walls.
i wonder where my mom is. if there is some part of her inside me. pulling back my purple bedspread at night, i have recently been more thankful for the sacrifices and the pain that brought me to be.
if my mom truly loved my dad, she must have suffered so much when he went back to his wife. once, when i told my dad i can't handle my situation, he said my mom said that to him, too. he was reminiscing. he was still in those moments. 26 years since she is gone, he still lives in those moments so often. they had 12 years.
this morning at 6am, when i hadn't slept because of the partying neighbors once again and had gone online to find other apartments, my dad promised to help me move anywhere i needed to move. he doesn't want me to feel unsafe. he doesn't want me up all night. he said start shopping. he has never broken a promise to me. i really haven't realized before how, aside from replaying his tape over and over and over again about law school, he wants what is best for me. there is a love that reaches across the telephone. sometimes his canopy has been white when i needed purple.
and what about getting what we need? is there a place for that? what about getting life's one due? my mom broke the promise she made to me that she wouldn't die after my grandpa did. she found herself obsessed by empty garages. i wondered today why she didn't just drive through a stoplight? wouldn't it have been quicker? but then she could have hurt someone in the other car.
i guess a kindness of hers is that she didn't take me with her. my dad told me inappropriately as i was growing up that she had threatened to do that. i guess that's how he made it as as single parent. he was glad she didn't take me with her.
the garage that she ended up choosing belonged to a jerk. his name is phil godawa. he lived in a fancy fontenelle hills apartment with his wife joanne. years later, they moved in down the street from me, across from the artist, sue, and joanne told me that my mom had been parked in phil's garage. phil was not a very nice man. though i think he did feel sorry for me. i'm not sure if he found my mom. i wouldn't want to ask him. all i remember is a police officer named russell.
she died in a grey buick riviera. while we were in corpse pose today, roxana told us that some yogis can get their heartbeat so slow in corpse pose that if you hooked them up to life-detecting machines, they would technically be declared dead.
i wondered if my mom had a chance to move and then to die just a little bit every day, like i do in yoga, if she would have made it. could yoga have saved her?
i used to wonder if she had been more academically successful in high school, if she hadn't had a reading disability, could she have made it? but her body, like mine, would have thrived in yoga. she could have taught it. she would have had something to teach me, although she believed she never did.
i don't know where to end this or how. that is the big question during times like this.
i moved to lincoln because brad was here. because i needed to be near my best friend. we never hung out here. he had moved on. i ran into him one time in andrews hall, and he was shocked that i had cut off all my hair. he visited me once a couple years later in lincoln, when i was married to clint. he came to our house, saw our dog, we went to the mill.
everything in life, mine anyway, though, changes. not my love for people. never that. yesterday kelly and i were talking about how we didn't expect these places in our paths. she is 9 weeks pregnant. we started talking about if we would ever be pregnant 7 years ago, before either of us were married. four years later, three months apart, we were both married, at each others' weddings. my marriage did not last. her love with christophe, beautiful, did. i always thought they should have a baby. they were too good together, too beautiful and similar, not to. i cried when i read on email that she was pregnant. she's not there yet. her body is growing.
on our last walk a couple months ago, she told me about the benefits of the rhythm method. she had read a book. she knew the secrets. she told me not to get on the pill. i joked about this yesterday on our walk. kelly has always been saddened by the way that women she knows seemed to be reduced only to mothers, only talking about diapers, bottles. she wants to keep talking about art and culture. she wants to work full-time. keep working on her phd. she will create with christophe what she needs. she believes in that.
i look forward to small things right now. i look forward to seeing my dad again. going to see "happy-go-lucky" with kelly. i try to look forward to christmas eve. people at yoga are saying hi to me, speaking to me. i keep being surprised when this happens. i feel gone. i am looking for myself, for the deeper part of me, for the wholeness, out the window on the bus. i am looking through windows to find myself, to find my happiness, to find that stirring again.
i don't know if when i wake up, where she will be? i drink a latte with a shot of mint from meadowlark. i wait for my soon-to-be wusband (new term i heard on the radio) to help me figure out cable. i look for viewing content, reading content, that will soothe my soul. i remind myself i don't have to do much. i lower my expectations. i wait.
i
Friday, December 12, 2008
passionate honesty of the midwest
i just saw this description of a lincoln band and liked it:
There’s a passionate honesty to middle America - it’s deep-rooted and straightforward...
(I've never heard of this band before but may go see them next saturday night)...
Few places embody that better than Lincoln, Nebraska, home to Word/Warner Bros. newest rock outfit, Remedy Drive. A four-piece, four-brother band (David, Philip, Paul and Dan Zach), Remedy Drive has been cranking out their own brand of music as a full time indie for the past 5 years. The band’s debut release, “Daylight Is Coming” was produced by Ian Eskelin (All Star United) and will be nationally available August 26, 2008.
With a message of hope for the searching and a desire to reach beyond a static life for something bigger, Remedy Drive combines a heart-on-a-sleeve sensibilities with their one-of-a-kind live show - the Midwest has never felt like this before!
There’s a passionate honesty to middle America - it’s deep-rooted and straightforward...
(I've never heard of this band before but may go see them next saturday night)...
Few places embody that better than Lincoln, Nebraska, home to Word/Warner Bros. newest rock outfit, Remedy Drive. A four-piece, four-brother band (David, Philip, Paul and Dan Zach), Remedy Drive has been cranking out their own brand of music as a full time indie for the past 5 years. The band’s debut release, “Daylight Is Coming” was produced by Ian Eskelin (All Star United) and will be nationally available August 26, 2008.
With a message of hope for the searching and a desire to reach beyond a static life for something bigger, Remedy Drive combines a heart-on-a-sleeve sensibilities with their one-of-a-kind live show - the Midwest has never felt like this before!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
the monarch
terri's wisdom during shivasana was really cool today... i won't be able to capture it all. first, a major concept in yoga is that the breath is the spirit. the spirit is what generates our abilities to experience love and bliss.
when we learn to control the breath, we have more connection with the spirit. the diaphragm is the site of our intuition, and the heart is the site of compassion... the stronger our diaphragm, the more intuition we have, and intuition increases compassion... runners probably get a lot of this stuff...
then she was talking about the guidance that we get from the earth, from the universe... she was saying that monarch butterflies have no gps system (though i know a lot of scientists study how birds know how to migrate)... she was saying that the monarchs get guidance from the earth, and after they leave mexico, they are different butterflies than they were before they left on the journey. when they go home, they are changed butterflies.
terri was talking about how our intuition will awaken us to our needs which will lead us home.
she also talked about elephants and the love they have for their families takes them from water and food to water and food. their love guides them...
interesting metaphors she was mixing, that love is equivalent to guidance from the universe, from the earth. that the guidance and the love that we get changes us. and leads us home, wherever that might be, where our needs are met.
when we learn to control the breath, we have more connection with the spirit. the diaphragm is the site of our intuition, and the heart is the site of compassion... the stronger our diaphragm, the more intuition we have, and intuition increases compassion... runners probably get a lot of this stuff...
then she was talking about the guidance that we get from the earth, from the universe... she was saying that monarch butterflies have no gps system (though i know a lot of scientists study how birds know how to migrate)... she was saying that the monarchs get guidance from the earth, and after they leave mexico, they are different butterflies than they were before they left on the journey. when they go home, they are changed butterflies.
terri was talking about how our intuition will awaken us to our needs which will lead us home.
she also talked about elephants and the love they have for their families takes them from water and food to water and food. their love guides them...
interesting metaphors she was mixing, that love is equivalent to guidance from the universe, from the earth. that the guidance and the love that we get changes us. and leads us home, wherever that might be, where our needs are met.
Monday, December 8, 2008
i used to be desperate for readership
hmmm... she says. it is 12:24, she has been to the grocery store. there is too much creepiness in her neighborhood to attempt to do laundry now, to go next door. she should sleep, but she's afraid of the feeling of not being able to do it again. of that desperation. of being here and not knowing where there is. the whole coming or going thing. she wishes she had christmas lights up but feels wrong to make such a commitment. she appreciates that others have. but wonders about their commitment anyway.
an old friend of her sister and brother's has facebooked her "it looks like something's up. take a look at pictures of my pets. they never fail to make me happy."
that friend doesn't know that she had pets of her own. she had six cats and a dog and a house and a husband who cared about her. maybe he didn't get her fully. should anybody expect that? someone could get you and then not be there for you. so what is the importance of all that?
were the pets important? appreciating and loving another being feels important. it can be entertaining. with pets, the worst shit you deal with is that very thing. there isn't much else to confuse. the whole loyalty thing. a pet may run away, but if they do, you know it's their nature. you know it's not likely to be a rejection. though that would hurt, too. i miss kyla or at least the idea of her. i wonder if i will ever get my dog back. i will not get my life back as it was. but i left it because i thought there was something more. was i wrong?
life can be anything you make it. you just have to have the energy for it. supposedly, the body has the energy for what it wants. it's interesting, though, how the body can be pulled in different and opposing directions. as i write this, i have no idea what i'm going to say next, and yet here it goes, it flows.
i was walking in the grocery store thinking that i did not know if i would ever write again. i could find the paper towels but not the toilet paper. i was doing something practical. i was considering cookies. i didn't really feel like buying them, but i thought how cookies seem like the best thing in the world to a kid. and maybe they are. that's as far as the meaning resides. i also had the smurfs. fruit roll-ups. my dog. walks in the snow. i liked that stuff.
i know there will be more meaning again. the fact that i don't know my current meaning, or at least i don't know what it means, well, maybe it's beautiful. maybe it's just tired. maybe the right side of me isn't another person, it's me. it's my frustration. it's the part of me that isn't free. no one can bind me. only i can do that by choice. only i can do that by feeling. but i think i get to choose which feelings i want to have on some level. i think that's what monique's saying.
my right sides feels in many ways paralyzed. i want to implicate another person. i want to implicate myself, but i don't know how to do it. i feel like there's nothing left for me to do but wait, move, or sleep. they are so basic. there is a job search. there is therapy. there is laundry. there is the nefarious moving on. there is the pain. there is the love. there is the constriction. there is the freedom. the freedom to drive around and around and around waiting for the hours to pass, wondering if the goal of my sight would see me.
it is something missing sharing a bed with someone. it something having had that and losing that. it is something getting a brief taste of that and then being alone all over again. it is some kind of pain. the noise my neighbor makes becomes less bearable. the sarcasm of know-nothing 7th graders becomes too much. the incessant squeaking of the door to the portable as the kids think of nothing but going to the bathroom, throwing wads of paper makes me know why people say migraine. i have not had one, i don't think. i never want to have one. i never want to need sleeping pills. i never know what comes next. every day is a different call from an automated system. i write no lesson plans. i write emails. i try to write something that captures my life, that creates it, and yet as soon as you've invited another participant, as soon as you've opened, you've re-invited the uncertainty.
i was not happy with the security i had. it did not feel right after a time. it did not feel right after exposure to what seemed something more. my decisions made sense. they did. do they now?
i see myself and think i like who i see. i think that the person i see reflects just fine whoever this decision-maker is inside. i think we can be friends. there's more to work out. but i think she is going to be alright. we've just got to do something about that right side, that paralysis. we've got to sleep. we've got to do more than powerade and the occasional morning.
an old friend of her sister and brother's has facebooked her "it looks like something's up. take a look at pictures of my pets. they never fail to make me happy."
that friend doesn't know that she had pets of her own. she had six cats and a dog and a house and a husband who cared about her. maybe he didn't get her fully. should anybody expect that? someone could get you and then not be there for you. so what is the importance of all that?
were the pets important? appreciating and loving another being feels important. it can be entertaining. with pets, the worst shit you deal with is that very thing. there isn't much else to confuse. the whole loyalty thing. a pet may run away, but if they do, you know it's their nature. you know it's not likely to be a rejection. though that would hurt, too. i miss kyla or at least the idea of her. i wonder if i will ever get my dog back. i will not get my life back as it was. but i left it because i thought there was something more. was i wrong?
life can be anything you make it. you just have to have the energy for it. supposedly, the body has the energy for what it wants. it's interesting, though, how the body can be pulled in different and opposing directions. as i write this, i have no idea what i'm going to say next, and yet here it goes, it flows.
i was walking in the grocery store thinking that i did not know if i would ever write again. i could find the paper towels but not the toilet paper. i was doing something practical. i was considering cookies. i didn't really feel like buying them, but i thought how cookies seem like the best thing in the world to a kid. and maybe they are. that's as far as the meaning resides. i also had the smurfs. fruit roll-ups. my dog. walks in the snow. i liked that stuff.
i know there will be more meaning again. the fact that i don't know my current meaning, or at least i don't know what it means, well, maybe it's beautiful. maybe it's just tired. maybe the right side of me isn't another person, it's me. it's my frustration. it's the part of me that isn't free. no one can bind me. only i can do that by choice. only i can do that by feeling. but i think i get to choose which feelings i want to have on some level. i think that's what monique's saying.
my right sides feels in many ways paralyzed. i want to implicate another person. i want to implicate myself, but i don't know how to do it. i feel like there's nothing left for me to do but wait, move, or sleep. they are so basic. there is a job search. there is therapy. there is laundry. there is the nefarious moving on. there is the pain. there is the love. there is the constriction. there is the freedom. the freedom to drive around and around and around waiting for the hours to pass, wondering if the goal of my sight would see me.
it is something missing sharing a bed with someone. it something having had that and losing that. it is something getting a brief taste of that and then being alone all over again. it is some kind of pain. the noise my neighbor makes becomes less bearable. the sarcasm of know-nothing 7th graders becomes too much. the incessant squeaking of the door to the portable as the kids think of nothing but going to the bathroom, throwing wads of paper makes me know why people say migraine. i have not had one, i don't think. i never want to have one. i never want to need sleeping pills. i never know what comes next. every day is a different call from an automated system. i write no lesson plans. i write emails. i try to write something that captures my life, that creates it, and yet as soon as you've invited another participant, as soon as you've opened, you've re-invited the uncertainty.
i was not happy with the security i had. it did not feel right after a time. it did not feel right after exposure to what seemed something more. my decisions made sense. they did. do they now?
i see myself and think i like who i see. i think that the person i see reflects just fine whoever this decision-maker is inside. i think we can be friends. there's more to work out. but i think she is going to be alright. we've just got to do something about that right side, that paralysis. we've got to sleep. we've got to do more than powerade and the occasional morning.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
quest for sincerity
"The quest for sincerity is like the quest for a perfect lawn." write the editors of Action Yes.
another little interesting bit stolen from tyler
i just liked this connection between the collective unconsciousness, pop culture, and current events...
earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.
earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.
a little piece on waking up
stolen from tc...
An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by your mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.
An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by your mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.
a time for endings/new beginnings
terri the yogi talked about how we are three weeks away from a new season. it is a time of endings and new beginnings, a time to empty the mind of emotional attachments that are no longer serving us and become a vase. our minds are no good to us when they're full. so we have to decide what to let go of in order to have peace.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
interesting words from pete, the therapist
we are all magnets. we draw people to us, probably depending upon how well we're taking care of ourselves.
when people focus on another person who they can't help, they are in a rut. a very narrow rut.
when people focus on another person who they can't help, they are in a rut. a very narrow rut.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
passages on time from darren main's "yoga: path of the urban mystic"
As you may recall, one of the essential aspects of Atman is its timeless nature. Like God, each of us is an eternal being, yet we've been deluded into believing that we are finite. Each of us has bought a piece of real estate in the world of time, and it has been a very bad investment.
We live our lives as if there were a beginning and an end to who we are, and we live as if death were the only thing certain in this world. Indeed, from a bodily point of view, we live very much in time...
In many ways, time is the bedrock on which the rest of maya is built...
This is why it's exceedingly difficult to transcend time. Time is so much a part of our psyche that we may wonder why we would even want to transcend it. But time, when used by ego, is a weapon that keeps us in fear...
As a matter of fact, time was a key part of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. He was once asked to explain this complex theory in terms that the common person could understand. He said, "One minute with your hand on a hot stove would seem like an hour, whereas one hour kissing the woman you love will seem like one minute. That's relativity."
Because our true nature is eternal, the ego needs to keep the mind separate from eternity in order to keep us searching for peace without possibility of success. In order for a person to be separate, he or she must have a beginning and an end. Likewise, in order for us to be limited, time is a prerequisite. In this sense, time is the glue that holds the illusion together.
Just as in every other aspect of yoga, we cannot transcend time by our denial. People try to escape the effects of time by using cosmetics and buying fast cars. Of course, none of this works. In effect, when we try to deny the seeming reality of time, we simply make it appear more real.
To a yogi, time is not bad. Actually, time is very useful while we are here in this illusion. Time creates a space for evolution to take place, and offers each of us the opportunity to keep trying things until we finally choose the peace of our true nature over the insanity of the ego. Again, time is not bad; it's simply not real.
Rather than make time good or bad, yoga helps us to let go of the need for time. This can only be done in the present moment. Just as sensation was the door that led from the external world to our inner world, the practice of dharana (focus... being in the moment) leads us through the door of the present moment into the realm of eternity.
The ego seeks to have us live in the past or in the future because we will never find eternity there. That's why every mystical tradition places such strong emphasis on staying present. The present moment is the only time when we can enter into eternal bliss. Englightenment is not something that comes after many lifetimes; it's a decision we make now.
Choosing Reality
"Reshape yourself through the power of the will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self."
In the movie Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Quigon, a Jedi knight, reminds his young student, Anakin, "Your focus determines your reality." ... His advice might well have come from a yogi, because it's a fundamental aspect of yogic philosophy that one's mental focus affects reality.
Because the practice of dharana helps us to live more and more in the present moment, we are able to determine the reality in which we find ourselves... The deeper benefits of concentrating your mind in the present moment involve a conscious choice of your reality.
Each of us has created our own reality... Until a person starts on the spiritual path, life seems to happen by accident or by fate, but as we become more and more present to life, we see that life is a series of choices that are made in the present moment. For just that reason it's important to bring focus to the present moment. Changing your mind, and consequently changing your reality, can only happen in the present moment. We can spend a lot of time regretting or feeling nostalgic about the past. We can fantasize about the future or live in fear of it. But both the past and the future are illusions. The past is gone and the future is nonexistent. Therefore, the only time that exists is now. Because the eternal now is the only time there is, it's the only place where we can change our minds, and the practice of dharana bring us to this present state of mind.
...
At a family reunion, my cousin told me about each of her husbands, and I noticed a pattern. Each of her husbands had left her for another woman. This series of negative experiences had left her with the opinion that "men are all jerks." Rather than be insulted by being lumped into the 'jerk' category because of my gender, I decided to explore this belief with her...
As she continued to tell me about all her bad relationship luck, I could see her dipping deeper and deeper into an ego drama that had a bad tailspin. Since self-pity is like nails on a chalkboard for me, I decided to confront her...
"If you believe that all men are jerks and pigs, you're going to see that everywhere. But if you start to change your mind, I think you'll find that the men you meet in the future will be quite well adjusted and respectful. The key is to change your mind now, rather than wait for some future prince charming to do it for you."
Like my mother's cousin, we're all directing our focus out into the world and seeing the results. If we focus on cheating husbands or negative experiences, that's what we'll unconsciously create in our lives. But if we learn to focus our attention on things that support us and cultivate a spiritual base on which to stand, we'll find more positive experiences.
There's more than just wishful thinking here. How we focus the mind determines how our reality will unfold. This is such an important facet of our spiritual path. Until we learn to focus the mind on the present moment and make conscious choices, we will always be waiting for the better hand to be dealt us, and even if we get a good hand, we'll live in fear of the next round, because luck has a funny way of running out at the worst possible time. That's why it's so important to see that life is not about luck or fate, but rather about choice.
We live our lives as if there were a beginning and an end to who we are, and we live as if death were the only thing certain in this world. Indeed, from a bodily point of view, we live very much in time...
In many ways, time is the bedrock on which the rest of maya is built...
This is why it's exceedingly difficult to transcend time. Time is so much a part of our psyche that we may wonder why we would even want to transcend it. But time, when used by ego, is a weapon that keeps us in fear...
As a matter of fact, time was a key part of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. He was once asked to explain this complex theory in terms that the common person could understand. He said, "One minute with your hand on a hot stove would seem like an hour, whereas one hour kissing the woman you love will seem like one minute. That's relativity."
Because our true nature is eternal, the ego needs to keep the mind separate from eternity in order to keep us searching for peace without possibility of success. In order for a person to be separate, he or she must have a beginning and an end. Likewise, in order for us to be limited, time is a prerequisite. In this sense, time is the glue that holds the illusion together.
Just as in every other aspect of yoga, we cannot transcend time by our denial. People try to escape the effects of time by using cosmetics and buying fast cars. Of course, none of this works. In effect, when we try to deny the seeming reality of time, we simply make it appear more real.
To a yogi, time is not bad. Actually, time is very useful while we are here in this illusion. Time creates a space for evolution to take place, and offers each of us the opportunity to keep trying things until we finally choose the peace of our true nature over the insanity of the ego. Again, time is not bad; it's simply not real.
Rather than make time good or bad, yoga helps us to let go of the need for time. This can only be done in the present moment. Just as sensation was the door that led from the external world to our inner world, the practice of dharana (focus... being in the moment) leads us through the door of the present moment into the realm of eternity.
The ego seeks to have us live in the past or in the future because we will never find eternity there. That's why every mystical tradition places such strong emphasis on staying present. The present moment is the only time when we can enter into eternal bliss. Englightenment is not something that comes after many lifetimes; it's a decision we make now.
Choosing Reality
"Reshape yourself through the power of the will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self."
In the movie Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Quigon, a Jedi knight, reminds his young student, Anakin, "Your focus determines your reality." ... His advice might well have come from a yogi, because it's a fundamental aspect of yogic philosophy that one's mental focus affects reality.
Because the practice of dharana helps us to live more and more in the present moment, we are able to determine the reality in which we find ourselves... The deeper benefits of concentrating your mind in the present moment involve a conscious choice of your reality.
Each of us has created our own reality... Until a person starts on the spiritual path, life seems to happen by accident or by fate, but as we become more and more present to life, we see that life is a series of choices that are made in the present moment. For just that reason it's important to bring focus to the present moment. Changing your mind, and consequently changing your reality, can only happen in the present moment. We can spend a lot of time regretting or feeling nostalgic about the past. We can fantasize about the future or live in fear of it. But both the past and the future are illusions. The past is gone and the future is nonexistent. Therefore, the only time that exists is now. Because the eternal now is the only time there is, it's the only place where we can change our minds, and the practice of dharana bring us to this present state of mind.
...
At a family reunion, my cousin told me about each of her husbands, and I noticed a pattern. Each of her husbands had left her for another woman. This series of negative experiences had left her with the opinion that "men are all jerks." Rather than be insulted by being lumped into the 'jerk' category because of my gender, I decided to explore this belief with her...
As she continued to tell me about all her bad relationship luck, I could see her dipping deeper and deeper into an ego drama that had a bad tailspin. Since self-pity is like nails on a chalkboard for me, I decided to confront her...
"If you believe that all men are jerks and pigs, you're going to see that everywhere. But if you start to change your mind, I think you'll find that the men you meet in the future will be quite well adjusted and respectful. The key is to change your mind now, rather than wait for some future prince charming to do it for you."
Like my mother's cousin, we're all directing our focus out into the world and seeing the results. If we focus on cheating husbands or negative experiences, that's what we'll unconsciously create in our lives. But if we learn to focus our attention on things that support us and cultivate a spiritual base on which to stand, we'll find more positive experiences.
There's more than just wishful thinking here. How we focus the mind determines how our reality will unfold. This is such an important facet of our spiritual path. Until we learn to focus the mind on the present moment and make conscious choices, we will always be waiting for the better hand to be dealt us, and even if we get a good hand, we'll live in fear of the next round, because luck has a funny way of running out at the worst possible time. That's why it's so important to see that life is not about luck or fate, but rather about choice.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
disappearances
"How can I disappear?" she wondered. She was 30 years old, and there appeared to be no invisibility cloaks. This was a material world, and here she was. A spirit trapped in a state of being in love.
There had been no true anger, no dislike, no unattraction, no misfired chemistry, no incompatibilities whatsoever.
He said about his relationship with his wife, who he hadn't shared a bed with for 20 years, "Nothing's perfect."
But they were. She was 30. He was 57. And it was perfect. There didn't need to be any words for her to be full of delight just looking at him and his expressions. Her spirit just loved him. More than any other spirit on the planet. And if she couldn't love him, what was she supposed to do on the planet?
There was another spirit who loved him, and she was his wife. But it was a very different love. It was about taking care of each other in ways that didn't seem mutual. It was about working, sleeping in separate beds, watching TV.
These weren't bad things, but the 30-year-old spirit loved him more. She knew she couldn't stop. It was only a truth. It was only herself that she knew.
(But maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was an idiot. Maybe her love meant nothing at all. Maybe it was only love. Not a contract. Not years of work experience. Not... not what made him miserable. Again, he thought he should... what?)
She couldn't tell him what to do or to think. He thought he needed to take care of his wife, listen to the stories that bored him, listen to the voice that bored him as he drank Powerade, ate popcorn, looked off before remembering to put his head in his hands.
These were not bad things. But he was also in love with the 30-year-old spirit.
When he discovered her spying, he told her just for tonight. He needed to make sure his wife was okay tonight.
But they were so happy together. Or at least she was so happy with him, when he wasn't being firm, when he wasn't saying he couldn't have two relationships. He loved two people. But they were different kinds of love. One was an obligation. He was not responsible for his passion.
The 30-year-old had no choice but to love him. Even when he told her to leave. She still needed to be in his presence, even when he turned cold. For moments, she could still see him inside. But he tried to show her the cold role, the bouncer outside the doors of his heart.
He said his wife was his job. He said he wanted to do that job. He didn't want to love and play. He was too old. It didn't matter that she needed him. He wanted her to move on.
Where does a spirit in love move? It moves from hope to love to desire. It tries to move to despair, but it can't stay there.
It can cry, it can miss. But it cannot despair. It has to fight for for its own survival. It can only despair to be alive when it can't be with its beloved. The point of the earth vanishes.
The love grows while it stays fixed alone. It is limerance. It is a place where no other will do. It thinks about what it can do alone, how it can move while thinking of him. All movement involves him. She could be hospitalized, but for what? For failing to take the trip to the library for the book "Women Who Love Too Much?"
He tells her to be free, to move on, but she was already free.
The wife watches them happy in the driveway. Her spirit kind toward the needs of others this time, she tells them it's too cold outside, to come inside.
Now is the first moment he does not seem to want her around. She can't process it. It is spaghetti in a disk drive. She can't read it. She can only read love. She is disabled. There is no reason, she believes. For all the time she has known him, he has only told her reasons not to be with his wife. Now he is operating backwards. He is unhappy. He calls it surreal while acting like it's so real. She leaves in disbelief.
It started at 4 in the morning when she accidentally got locked out of her apartment. She had gone upstairs to ask the neighbor to turn down his music. She had no way into the apartment she had believed was there to be shared with him. He wasn't there. He said maybe he would move in the day before, the night before, but he hadn't been able to tell his wife. She had to call him back home, now, for the keys.
He loved her. He did. But he didn't want to hurt his wife. He didn't want to hurt anyone so he hurt the 30-year-old. He knew she would still love him, even though he told her she would move on. He told her she would forget in 10 years. She said I may be with you in 10 years. She knew she would love him for 10 years, for 20.
He said he was taking it hour by hour. His wife was in pain (that was all she knew how to express to him... that or false joy... stuffed animals... their relationship was so broken.)
He said he wanted to do this job. He was her nurse. She was only 52. He almost chased the 30-year-old away.
He even condescended. He patted her. After so many recent days of making love. He would not make love. He would make do.
He told her she would move on, but on this planet, she had no place to move. She needed him. But a girl can be alone, she can be celibate if he won't have her. She can be a yogi. She can be some kind of teacher. She, like her teacher who loved the Yogananada for 14 days, could renounce earthly love if she could not have him. If he would not grow. She would not have babies. She would not have pets.
The wife's spirit was beautiful when she saw them. There was beauty with an inability to connect beyond its own clutching to its dreams, to its work, to its own lack of intimacy. She told the same old stories. She was not looking for growth but she professed its deep belief. She needed new influences. But he could not leave unless she set him free. He was a Taurus, devoted to his Pisces.
He told the 30-year-old he couldn't meet her needs. But he already did. By existing. By sitting in the chair with the magazine. He tried to ignore her. He didn't open his gmail account. For the first time, he did not act happy to see her. But that guy was inside. That guy was always inside. The young man released in the throes of passion. The softening face no more the stern school-teacher.
He was not a stern school-teacher. But he was one now. Yesterday he made love to her. Today it was leave the premises. Listen to break-up songs. They exist for a reason. This is life.
He thought he was making both women happy. He was living a lie. Or at least two truths. But if the first truth were true, would he be part of a new story? Were there any mistakes?
He told the 30-year-old their love was more fulfilling. He told her he'd offer her a spare bedroom, but she said that's not where she'd like to sleep. Her bed in the apartment still smelled like him from yesterday. She didn't want to wash him away. She couldn't. He was imprinted. He had colored over all the love in her soul. It grew bigger, beyond her control.
But in him he contained two women--one passion, one obligation.
Obligation first told Passion herself the sexual connection should be continued. She could not give that to him. Out of love (avoidance), he tried to think of what he couldn't give his passion. He said he could not give her youth. But she had youth. She wanted him for his age. (He tried to think of himself at her age. But he was not her.) She wanted him for his brand of beauty she could find nowhere else. No one else would do.
Not a salsa dancer. Not a dog trainer. Not an artist, nor a musician. She loved films but had no need for a film-maker.
She only had the need for a life with him. For their connection.
He said it's over, it ends right here. He had said that before and come back and come back. He had made new promises. Now he said it again. His brain said practical. His brain said kill the feelings. His brain said so many things "We'll be friends." She could not. Could she change her brain? She could be alone, but she could not just be his friend. She could not take the pats, the questions about her plans, the prods toward moving on, the thing she could not do.
It was like a father, telling her she must move. She must change. She must not be who she is.
Did someone have to change? He didn't expect it of his wife. He never had. So he expected it of his Passion. Obligation wins. Passion must sizzle. But she burned. It was burn or extinguish, and there was no place to go out. They would put her in a hospital if she spoke the option too loudly. Instead, she burned. And he tried to burn her out of his life, call her something different.
But her being had to be.
It was true she did not really know his wife. His wife said she did not know herself. She knew herself through her duties, through her vision of the life she shared.
He had to participate. He couldn't, it pained him, he thought of his passion. But he sat across from his Obligation with his Powerade and popcorn.
And this story gets repetitive. Maybe someone hopes she will write it out. In time she will write it all out, and it will be gone, time for a new story.
But her heart did not work like that. She didn't forget. She didn't forget her mother, 26 years gone, and she would never forget him. She thought of places. She wondered about North Carolina, but she knew it wasn't hers.
The only thing she could make her mind up about was him. But it wasn't even her mind. It was her spirit, which had grown so much more powerful. It was gentle, but it only listened to her heart.
Her heart had grown too strong. So she sat in her bathtub and wrote with clear eyes.
Her soon-to-be ex-husband mocked her and her stupid love. He mocked her impracticality, her stupid decisions. He said he did not like her until she would leave.
Two men she had loved pushed her out two doors in one night. She called her beloved's sister. They chatted like best friends, dreamed of meeting. Even the sister-in-law thought the would have such fun together.
But he was not on board. He was obligated. He wanted the job. He'd taken it on a rebound, and despite its indifferences, its denial of his human needs, he worked the factory. He didn't need to feel.
The ex-husband made fun of feelings altogether. Dogs can feel. Animals can feel. Humans are to think, take in the whole situation.
So she lived alone in the tub, in the romance. It did not matter that she'd loved his sweaty body there. Someone else had done his laundry for 27 years. She won. Tradition, obligation. Passion was supposed to fold, not unfold. She bled on him the day before. Now she was to bleed alone. To stop it up. Find a cotton plug.
There had been no true anger, no dislike, no unattraction, no misfired chemistry, no incompatibilities whatsoever.
He said about his relationship with his wife, who he hadn't shared a bed with for 20 years, "Nothing's perfect."
But they were. She was 30. He was 57. And it was perfect. There didn't need to be any words for her to be full of delight just looking at him and his expressions. Her spirit just loved him. More than any other spirit on the planet. And if she couldn't love him, what was she supposed to do on the planet?
There was another spirit who loved him, and she was his wife. But it was a very different love. It was about taking care of each other in ways that didn't seem mutual. It was about working, sleeping in separate beds, watching TV.
These weren't bad things, but the 30-year-old spirit loved him more. She knew she couldn't stop. It was only a truth. It was only herself that she knew.
(But maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was an idiot. Maybe her love meant nothing at all. Maybe it was only love. Not a contract. Not years of work experience. Not... not what made him miserable. Again, he thought he should... what?)
She couldn't tell him what to do or to think. He thought he needed to take care of his wife, listen to the stories that bored him, listen to the voice that bored him as he drank Powerade, ate popcorn, looked off before remembering to put his head in his hands.
These were not bad things. But he was also in love with the 30-year-old spirit.
When he discovered her spying, he told her just for tonight. He needed to make sure his wife was okay tonight.
But they were so happy together. Or at least she was so happy with him, when he wasn't being firm, when he wasn't saying he couldn't have two relationships. He loved two people. But they were different kinds of love. One was an obligation. He was not responsible for his passion.
The 30-year-old had no choice but to love him. Even when he told her to leave. She still needed to be in his presence, even when he turned cold. For moments, she could still see him inside. But he tried to show her the cold role, the bouncer outside the doors of his heart.
He said his wife was his job. He said he wanted to do that job. He didn't want to love and play. He was too old. It didn't matter that she needed him. He wanted her to move on.
Where does a spirit in love move? It moves from hope to love to desire. It tries to move to despair, but it can't stay there.
It can cry, it can miss. But it cannot despair. It has to fight for for its own survival. It can only despair to be alive when it can't be with its beloved. The point of the earth vanishes.
The love grows while it stays fixed alone. It is limerance. It is a place where no other will do. It thinks about what it can do alone, how it can move while thinking of him. All movement involves him. She could be hospitalized, but for what? For failing to take the trip to the library for the book "Women Who Love Too Much?"
He tells her to be free, to move on, but she was already free.
The wife watches them happy in the driveway. Her spirit kind toward the needs of others this time, she tells them it's too cold outside, to come inside.
Now is the first moment he does not seem to want her around. She can't process it. It is spaghetti in a disk drive. She can't read it. She can only read love. She is disabled. There is no reason, she believes. For all the time she has known him, he has only told her reasons not to be with his wife. Now he is operating backwards. He is unhappy. He calls it surreal while acting like it's so real. She leaves in disbelief.
It started at 4 in the morning when she accidentally got locked out of her apartment. She had gone upstairs to ask the neighbor to turn down his music. She had no way into the apartment she had believed was there to be shared with him. He wasn't there. He said maybe he would move in the day before, the night before, but he hadn't been able to tell his wife. She had to call him back home, now, for the keys.
He loved her. He did. But he didn't want to hurt his wife. He didn't want to hurt anyone so he hurt the 30-year-old. He knew she would still love him, even though he told her she would move on. He told her she would forget in 10 years. She said I may be with you in 10 years. She knew she would love him for 10 years, for 20.
He said he was taking it hour by hour. His wife was in pain (that was all she knew how to express to him... that or false joy... stuffed animals... their relationship was so broken.)
He said he wanted to do this job. He was her nurse. She was only 52. He almost chased the 30-year-old away.
He even condescended. He patted her. After so many recent days of making love. He would not make love. He would make do.
He told her she would move on, but on this planet, she had no place to move. She needed him. But a girl can be alone, she can be celibate if he won't have her. She can be a yogi. She can be some kind of teacher. She, like her teacher who loved the Yogananada for 14 days, could renounce earthly love if she could not have him. If he would not grow. She would not have babies. She would not have pets.
The wife's spirit was beautiful when she saw them. There was beauty with an inability to connect beyond its own clutching to its dreams, to its work, to its own lack of intimacy. She told the same old stories. She was not looking for growth but she professed its deep belief. She needed new influences. But he could not leave unless she set him free. He was a Taurus, devoted to his Pisces.
He told the 30-year-old he couldn't meet her needs. But he already did. By existing. By sitting in the chair with the magazine. He tried to ignore her. He didn't open his gmail account. For the first time, he did not act happy to see her. But that guy was inside. That guy was always inside. The young man released in the throes of passion. The softening face no more the stern school-teacher.
He was not a stern school-teacher. But he was one now. Yesterday he made love to her. Today it was leave the premises. Listen to break-up songs. They exist for a reason. This is life.
He thought he was making both women happy. He was living a lie. Or at least two truths. But if the first truth were true, would he be part of a new story? Were there any mistakes?
He told the 30-year-old their love was more fulfilling. He told her he'd offer her a spare bedroom, but she said that's not where she'd like to sleep. Her bed in the apartment still smelled like him from yesterday. She didn't want to wash him away. She couldn't. He was imprinted. He had colored over all the love in her soul. It grew bigger, beyond her control.
But in him he contained two women--one passion, one obligation.
Obligation first told Passion herself the sexual connection should be continued. She could not give that to him. Out of love (avoidance), he tried to think of what he couldn't give his passion. He said he could not give her youth. But she had youth. She wanted him for his age. (He tried to think of himself at her age. But he was not her.) She wanted him for his brand of beauty she could find nowhere else. No one else would do.
Not a salsa dancer. Not a dog trainer. Not an artist, nor a musician. She loved films but had no need for a film-maker.
She only had the need for a life with him. For their connection.
He said it's over, it ends right here. He had said that before and come back and come back. He had made new promises. Now he said it again. His brain said practical. His brain said kill the feelings. His brain said so many things "We'll be friends." She could not. Could she change her brain? She could be alone, but she could not just be his friend. She could not take the pats, the questions about her plans, the prods toward moving on, the thing she could not do.
It was like a father, telling her she must move. She must change. She must not be who she is.
Did someone have to change? He didn't expect it of his wife. He never had. So he expected it of his Passion. Obligation wins. Passion must sizzle. But she burned. It was burn or extinguish, and there was no place to go out. They would put her in a hospital if she spoke the option too loudly. Instead, she burned. And he tried to burn her out of his life, call her something different.
But her being had to be.
It was true she did not really know his wife. His wife said she did not know herself. She knew herself through her duties, through her vision of the life she shared.
He had to participate. He couldn't, it pained him, he thought of his passion. But he sat across from his Obligation with his Powerade and popcorn.
And this story gets repetitive. Maybe someone hopes she will write it out. In time she will write it all out, and it will be gone, time for a new story.
But her heart did not work like that. She didn't forget. She didn't forget her mother, 26 years gone, and she would never forget him. She thought of places. She wondered about North Carolina, but she knew it wasn't hers.
The only thing she could make her mind up about was him. But it wasn't even her mind. It was her spirit, which had grown so much more powerful. It was gentle, but it only listened to her heart.
Her heart had grown too strong. So she sat in her bathtub and wrote with clear eyes.
Her soon-to-be ex-husband mocked her and her stupid love. He mocked her impracticality, her stupid decisions. He said he did not like her until she would leave.
Two men she had loved pushed her out two doors in one night. She called her beloved's sister. They chatted like best friends, dreamed of meeting. Even the sister-in-law thought the would have such fun together.
But he was not on board. He was obligated. He wanted the job. He'd taken it on a rebound, and despite its indifferences, its denial of his human needs, he worked the factory. He didn't need to feel.
The ex-husband made fun of feelings altogether. Dogs can feel. Animals can feel. Humans are to think, take in the whole situation.
So she lived alone in the tub, in the romance. It did not matter that she'd loved his sweaty body there. Someone else had done his laundry for 27 years. She won. Tradition, obligation. Passion was supposed to fold, not unfold. She bled on him the day before. Now she was to bleed alone. To stop it up. Find a cotton plug.
Friday, November 21, 2008
i'm learning
that life is not just about how you feel about yourself. it is also about how you feel about the people in your life. that determines your existence.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
achy breaky grapefruit
skipped the reading... too tired to sit there. needed to walk. walked to store. had $1.26. bought a grapefruit. too tired to type more. off to watch black robe. it's like for school. can't wait to kitten-sit. by which i do not mean sit on a kitten. i love kittens.
around campus
i've been craving chicken. you have to feed your cravings, i guess. eating some chicken parmesagna from sbarro in the union, i realized i'm feeling pretty comfortable alone. i ate that chicken alone just as comfortably as i've ever eaten with another person. and i wasn't really "alone." with my brain still functioning and all, i had myself to talk to. women friends of mine have been saying forever it's not bad being alone, you've got to get comfortable that way, and increasingly i'm seeing the wisdom of their ways.
as i wake up from whatever protective devices i constructed to enable me to get through this transition, i am noticing a lot of cats. yesterday it was a kitten. today it was what seemed like a big mancoon cat. on campus, they don't want to be touched. but i see them everywhere. this led me to think maybe i need one of the six cats we accumulated during our 7 years together... i went to get miso today, but clint told me there would no returns (unlike the dog who i'm free to take intermittently). i held miso and loved him. but, still not in the habit of doing my own dishes, i thought "am i really ready for kitty litter every day?" i decided no.
but, then serendipity happened. chris, a woman i enjoy in class, came back today after being gone for a week. i struck up conversation during break and learned that she'd going to alabama next week to see her husband's family but doesn't know what she'll do with her kitten. yay. i offered to kitten-sit. i feel like one week of a kitten is all i need. it seemed the perfect exchange. we'll see if her husband will go for it. i swear, i need just one week of kitten. then i'll see what comes next.
biding my time before a reading by mimi schwartz, whose memoir "notes from a queen-sized bed" i read a few years ago and enjoyed, despite wondering about the fact that she wrote about affairs she had but is till married... i guess she has a new memoir out... how many books can one write about their life? i guess i'm in admiration. i live in some cross between "another book" and "really, you think i should write one?" i guess that's my perogative... went to the sheldon after my chicken to check out latino art. if i taught spanish at an arts school, i would think that would be a great field trip. they had too much free food there. totally made me regret the chicken i paid for.
i had some dessert... a little lime bar wedge, some pineapple and strawberries dipped in a pineapple sauce with tapioca consistency... then the juice they had was a orange/pineapple cross.. i didn't even try the chips with various wonderful dips... i decided this free food that would otherwise be so appetizing is kind of like how a person feels when they're in love but surrounded by young men... oh, you look great, and i can appreciate that, but i am full. in this case, at least a little dessert didn't hurt much.
anyways, off to the reading soon. doesn't start for 45 minutes, and i'll see lesley there. not sure exactly why i'm blogging... old habits die hard... talked to my dad... he was fun. we seem very in sync right now. it's fun. back to walk and cat-hunt until the lady talks about her book...
as i wake up from whatever protective devices i constructed to enable me to get through this transition, i am noticing a lot of cats. yesterday it was a kitten. today it was what seemed like a big mancoon cat. on campus, they don't want to be touched. but i see them everywhere. this led me to think maybe i need one of the six cats we accumulated during our 7 years together... i went to get miso today, but clint told me there would no returns (unlike the dog who i'm free to take intermittently). i held miso and loved him. but, still not in the habit of doing my own dishes, i thought "am i really ready for kitty litter every day?" i decided no.
but, then serendipity happened. chris, a woman i enjoy in class, came back today after being gone for a week. i struck up conversation during break and learned that she'd going to alabama next week to see her husband's family but doesn't know what she'll do with her kitten. yay. i offered to kitten-sit. i feel like one week of a kitten is all i need. it seemed the perfect exchange. we'll see if her husband will go for it. i swear, i need just one week of kitten. then i'll see what comes next.
biding my time before a reading by mimi schwartz, whose memoir "notes from a queen-sized bed" i read a few years ago and enjoyed, despite wondering about the fact that she wrote about affairs she had but is till married... i guess she has a new memoir out... how many books can one write about their life? i guess i'm in admiration. i live in some cross between "another book" and "really, you think i should write one?" i guess that's my perogative... went to the sheldon after my chicken to check out latino art. if i taught spanish at an arts school, i would think that would be a great field trip. they had too much free food there. totally made me regret the chicken i paid for.
i had some dessert... a little lime bar wedge, some pineapple and strawberries dipped in a pineapple sauce with tapioca consistency... then the juice they had was a orange/pineapple cross.. i didn't even try the chips with various wonderful dips... i decided this free food that would otherwise be so appetizing is kind of like how a person feels when they're in love but surrounded by young men... oh, you look great, and i can appreciate that, but i am full. in this case, at least a little dessert didn't hurt much.
anyways, off to the reading soon. doesn't start for 45 minutes, and i'll see lesley there. not sure exactly why i'm blogging... old habits die hard... talked to my dad... he was fun. we seem very in sync right now. it's fun. back to walk and cat-hunt until the lady talks about her book...
tuesday afternoon w/ kyla
roxana, another good yoga teacher (and pscyh prof friend of mine at scc) comes back from a long stay in europe today. the poor lady was stuck in some kind of yoga retreat in spain.
liz predicts roxana will return to declare: "i've been a prisoner in a yoga camp."
this made me laugh and laugh and laugh.
liz predicts roxana will return to declare: "i've been a prisoner in a yoga camp."
this made me laugh and laugh and laugh.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
better note
just to not have my last blog entry be a sad note, it was a song from a group i discovered or was made known to me when i was a junior in high school.
things are better, though. my dear friends cindy and zulaika in san francisco were saying they'd like to live vicariously through me upon hearing that my professor, joy, asked me if i was going to apply for the phd in creative writing and encouraged me to do so.
i got a lot of support in class tonight and am proud of the revisions i made on my essay. people were very kind. most people read my 33+ essay and enjoyed it. it was really good to be able to share my experiences... people wanted to read more, and it appears i have a lot of material to work with in further creative writing studies... i'm proud of the work i did and the relationships that are developing in that class...
off to help other people with their essays as a reader...
the weather in nebraska just doesn't matter when your soul is being fed.
things are better, though. my dear friends cindy and zulaika in san francisco were saying they'd like to live vicariously through me upon hearing that my professor, joy, asked me if i was going to apply for the phd in creative writing and encouraged me to do so.
i got a lot of support in class tonight and am proud of the revisions i made on my essay. people were very kind. most people read my 33+ essay and enjoyed it. it was really good to be able to share my experiences... people wanted to read more, and it appears i have a lot of material to work with in further creative writing studies... i'm proud of the work i did and the relationships that are developing in that class...
off to help other people with their essays as a reader...
the weather in nebraska just doesn't matter when your soul is being fed.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
blue moon ghetto, "shine all the time"
there was a string of pearls
and i gave them to the sky
and i honestly, honestly tried
to play the games that you designed.
emotional swings leave us left
leave us left with only desire
and we swing around alive
and it's only alive
if love stays alive.
oh, you know you're not really alive
you're just a shadow falling behind
oh, no matter how much you try
you can't make the sun shine all the time
and i turned away
oh, you started to say
what a dream, what a dream, a dream it could be
and i shifted my eyes
oh, and i tried to be kind
when there's no one, and there's no hope
and there's nothing new, there's nothing new to believe.
**** (bridge)
so where, where are you now?
where are you now?
we are wondering wondering how
how to fall down on your knees
and finally admit all the things you believe
and oh you know you're not really alive
you're just a shadow falling behind
you know no matter how much you try, try, try, try
you can't make the sunshine all the time
and i turn away
oh, you started to say, what a dream, what a dream, a dream it could be
and i shifted my eyes
oh, and i tried to be kind
when there's no one, and there's no hope
and there's nothing left, nothing left to believe.
and i gave them to the sky
and i honestly, honestly tried
to play the games that you designed.
emotional swings leave us left
leave us left with only desire
and we swing around alive
and it's only alive
if love stays alive.
oh, you know you're not really alive
you're just a shadow falling behind
oh, no matter how much you try
you can't make the sun shine all the time
and i turned away
oh, you started to say
what a dream, what a dream, a dream it could be
and i shifted my eyes
oh, and i tried to be kind
when there's no one, and there's no hope
and there's nothing new, there's nothing new to believe.
**** (bridge)
so where, where are you now?
where are you now?
we are wondering wondering how
how to fall down on your knees
and finally admit all the things you believe
and oh you know you're not really alive
you're just a shadow falling behind
you know no matter how much you try, try, try, try
you can't make the sunshine all the time
and i turn away
oh, you started to say, what a dream, what a dream, a dream it could be
and i shifted my eyes
oh, and i tried to be kind
when there's no one, and there's no hope
and there's nothing left, nothing left to believe.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
a new place
i am not sure what is going to happen. i am completely unsure. but i am starting to accept the fact that every day life changes. and we never know what's going to happen next. if we can get to a place where we're calm and balanced about being in the world, that's a very lucky thing. i recently fell deeply in love. what should i say about that?
that kind of feeling gives you a lot of hope. but the deeper the love gets, so does one's need to be with their beloved. and sometimes there are seeming complications that say, hey, are you crazy, this love won't work? what are you doing?
in my case, that voice doesn't tell me to stop. sometimes it tells me to hide. sometimes it hides me without my knowing it. sometimes it tells me to be scared. it tells me to be angry when i'm not getting the attention i think i deserve. but when you love somebody you really want to be with, you wait for the voice to get calmer. it can still be pretty insistent about what it wants. but i hope mine gets calmer.
either way, i hope i can get to a calmer place. i think i might drop that travel writing class by monday because it doesn't help me get to the calm place. but it also does challenge me. but i think it's too much. i think i need to drop that class. which would mean that i'm not applying for the phd right now. see, that would be upsetting to me, so i guess i have to keep trying.
the message right now in general is that i have to keep trying. i have to try to get back to the good place where i was before i met this person, but now they are so deep in my heart that it is hard to be in the good place without this person. that is what is so hard. that person caused me to be in the happiest place ever, where happiest was dripping off me like i was a teacake. and now it is really a struggle. and so some people say if this guy isn't going to be with you, if he is telling you that, which it seems that he is, you have to get out of there.
this means that i have to move to san francisco. i don't think that's just a week away. i think that's not enough time. i can't imagine being ready to do it. i wonder if this guy really does want to be with me, and when he will know if he can make it happen. i mean, i don't understand how he couldn't. that's the part that is so difficult. and does he want to be with me? i mean when you love someone, well, you want their love for you to be of the kind where they would do anything to be with you. i would do anything to be with this person. i mean that's just what love is, isn't it? is it always looking for something more? is that how it has to be? that's not how i'm experiencing it. i mean, i could definitely paint for you an ideal life. but the life doesn't have to have all of those ingredients for it to be the life i want to live, the life i'm willing to make sacrifices to live.
anyways, blog, i don't know if anyone reads this anymore, so i should almost call you diary because i guess this is getting private. i want to be thankful for the bank of memories that are so precious to me. i do not want to leave them behind. but that may be what i'm being asked to do, and i guess they are the past anyway, and i guess this person doesn't like me when i'm sad because they are not around. i will try not to be sad. i will try to prepare for whatever happens, even a move to 2,000 miles away, which will probably mean never moving back to nebraska again. even if that is what i'm preparing for, i'll admit i'm doing it with a heart that says hell no, i won't go. a heart that says i will not give this up. i do not want to give this up. if this person really needs to let me down, they probably shouldn't do it nicely. because if it's my heart they ultimately have to break and keep breaking, it shouldn't be a slow tear with me either. it should be decisive. you want to give a person time when you know the goal is to get to you. but, when they don't know, when they give you inklings that it's over but still tell you they love you and will see you tomorrow and want to be with you, well, then you're just living in a pretty impossibly painful situation. i will do my best to try to stay calm. namaste.
that kind of feeling gives you a lot of hope. but the deeper the love gets, so does one's need to be with their beloved. and sometimes there are seeming complications that say, hey, are you crazy, this love won't work? what are you doing?
in my case, that voice doesn't tell me to stop. sometimes it tells me to hide. sometimes it hides me without my knowing it. sometimes it tells me to be scared. it tells me to be angry when i'm not getting the attention i think i deserve. but when you love somebody you really want to be with, you wait for the voice to get calmer. it can still be pretty insistent about what it wants. but i hope mine gets calmer.
either way, i hope i can get to a calmer place. i think i might drop that travel writing class by monday because it doesn't help me get to the calm place. but it also does challenge me. but i think it's too much. i think i need to drop that class. which would mean that i'm not applying for the phd right now. see, that would be upsetting to me, so i guess i have to keep trying.
the message right now in general is that i have to keep trying. i have to try to get back to the good place where i was before i met this person, but now they are so deep in my heart that it is hard to be in the good place without this person. that is what is so hard. that person caused me to be in the happiest place ever, where happiest was dripping off me like i was a teacake. and now it is really a struggle. and so some people say if this guy isn't going to be with you, if he is telling you that, which it seems that he is, you have to get out of there.
this means that i have to move to san francisco. i don't think that's just a week away. i think that's not enough time. i can't imagine being ready to do it. i wonder if this guy really does want to be with me, and when he will know if he can make it happen. i mean, i don't understand how he couldn't. that's the part that is so difficult. and does he want to be with me? i mean when you love someone, well, you want their love for you to be of the kind where they would do anything to be with you. i would do anything to be with this person. i mean that's just what love is, isn't it? is it always looking for something more? is that how it has to be? that's not how i'm experiencing it. i mean, i could definitely paint for you an ideal life. but the life doesn't have to have all of those ingredients for it to be the life i want to live, the life i'm willing to make sacrifices to live.
anyways, blog, i don't know if anyone reads this anymore, so i should almost call you diary because i guess this is getting private. i want to be thankful for the bank of memories that are so precious to me. i do not want to leave them behind. but that may be what i'm being asked to do, and i guess they are the past anyway, and i guess this person doesn't like me when i'm sad because they are not around. i will try not to be sad. i will try to prepare for whatever happens, even a move to 2,000 miles away, which will probably mean never moving back to nebraska again. even if that is what i'm preparing for, i'll admit i'm doing it with a heart that says hell no, i won't go. a heart that says i will not give this up. i do not want to give this up. if this person really needs to let me down, they probably shouldn't do it nicely. because if it's my heart they ultimately have to break and keep breaking, it shouldn't be a slow tear with me either. it should be decisive. you want to give a person time when you know the goal is to get to you. but, when they don't know, when they give you inklings that it's over but still tell you they love you and will see you tomorrow and want to be with you, well, then you're just living in a pretty impossibly painful situation. i will do my best to try to stay calm. namaste.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
DEAR BLOG
I HAVE MISSED YOU BLOG. SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED WHERE I NO LONGER CAN MAKE THIS TEXT ANY BIGGER NOR CAN I COLOR IT NOR CAN I COLOR THE BACKGROUND. I ACCEPT MY LIMITATIONS IN THIS MATTER.
WHAT I WAS INSPIRED TO GET ON THIS SITE AND SAY AS I EAT SALTY POPCORN WHICH IS STREWN OVER MY FAIRLY CLEAN DESK IS THIS:
THE GREAT THING ABOUT LIFE IS THAT IT IS OURS TO MESS UP AS COMPLETELY AS WE CAN WITH WHATEVER WE THINK WILL ENRICH US. SOME PEOPLE END UP IN TREATMENT CENTERS AFTER FOLLOWING THE BLISS OF ALCOHOL. SOME PEOPLE END UP WITH BROKEN HEARTS. SOME PEOPLE END UP HAPPY. I KNOW. I'VE MET THEM. I THINK YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW YOUR HEART/YOUR BLISS. HOW CAN THERE BE ANY OTHER WAY TO LIVE LIFE? IN DOING SO, IT MAY SEEM LIKE WE'RE MAKING SACRIFICES. BUT AS LONG AS WE'RE FOLLOWING/LISTENING TO THE DEEPEST SOURCE OF OUR OWN GRAVITY, HOW CAN WE GO WRONG? REALLY? WHEN YOU FOLLOW YOUR OWN GRAVITY, YOU ALSO FIND LEVITY. GROUNDED IN WHAT YOU'VE DETERMINED THROUGH A LOT OF THOUGHT AND REFLECTION/ TRIAL AND ERROR AS WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU, YOU GET TO ALSO BE FREE. YOU GET TO HAVE LIGHTNESS. THE FREEDOM COMES FROM DOING THE HARD WORK OF DOING WHAT YOU NEEDED TO DO. THIS I BELIEVE VERY STRONGLY. IT'S REALLY NICE TO SAY YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING VERY STRONGLY. I BELIEVE IT'S GOOD BARACK WAS ELECTED. SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE, AND BEYOND THAT, DUDE, BARACK OBAMA IS OUR PRESIDENT. HE IS LIKE ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST DUDES, AND HE'S RATHER CUTE, AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN, AND HE HAS A GREAT FAMILY, AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT? WHAT ISN'T THIS WORLD COMING TO?
THERE IS GOODNESS IN THIS WORLD. I AM GIVING A HEATHER MINI-LECTURE RIGHT NOW, AND IF YOU ARE LISTENING, YOU DESERVE A PULTIZER. I'M JUST KIDDING, I NEITHER GIVE THOSE OUT NOR EXPECT TO RECEIVE ONE, BUT THIS COMMUNICATION IS GRATIFYING FOR ME, AND IF IT GRATIFIES ANY PART OF YOU, HOW LUCKY DID WE JUST GET??? :)
I HAVE BEEN HAVING SO MANY PARTS OF ME GRATIFIED, REALLY ALL OF ME GRATIFIED IF WE WANT TO GET DOWN TO IT. AND THERE IS STILL SILLINESS IN THIS WORLD TO LAUGH AT, TOO. FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN I CALLED MY DAD TO CONGRATULATE HIM AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FOR COMING IN SECOND PLACE, HE SAID "YOU KNOW, I WAS THINKING BACK TO MY COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE DAYS, AND IT IS VERY HARD TO GET A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE, AND I DON'T THINK BARACK OBAMA COULD HAVE GOTTEN A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE." THEN I PROCEEDED TO ASK HIM WHY. I DIDN'T JUMP DOWN HIS THROAT AT ALL ABOUT FOX NEWS, AND I PERCEIVE THIS AS GROWTH. MY FATHER AND I HAVE HAD GROWTH IN OUR RELATIONSHIP, AND THIS IS GOOD. HE WENT ON TO SAY "WELL, YOU KNOW, HE KNOWS TERRORISTS." I DIDN'T KNOW THIS BIT OF NEWS, BUT ME AND THE MEDIA ARE REALLY OUT OF TOUCH THESE DAYS, I ADMIT IT. I CAN BARELY BRING MYSELF TO READ THE STUFF ABOUT THE 15TH CENTURY LET ALONE THE 21ST, BUT I'LL GET TO THAT SOON, I BELIEVE. ANYWAYS, HE WAS SAYING THAT BARACK OBAMA HAS "ASSOCIATED" WITH TERRORISTS. I WANTED TO GET INTO THE BUSH FAMILY AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH CERTAIN SAUDIS, AND I DID MENTION IT, BUT I THINK MY DAD WAS SO, WELL, FOX-INFORMED THAT I THINK WHAT'S THE POINT? I MEAN, WHEN I WAS UPSET THAT THE REPUBLICANS WON, HE DIDN'T REALLY RUB IT MY FACE, SO I WON'T EITHER. BARACK IS PREZ. MAYBE ONLY FOR THE NEXT 4-8 YEARS. WHO CAN PREDICT A GOOD THING LET ALONE A BAD THING, BUT HEY, IT'S TRUE. OVER HALF THE COUNTRY DID THIS. I AM STILL IN A HAPPY PLACE OF SHOCK AND ALMOST DISBELIEF, BUT IT HAPPENED. SARAH PALIN DID NOT PREVAIL EVEN THOUGH PEOPLE LIKE MY DAD WOULD LIKE TO ELEVATE THAT CUTE FACE ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP FOR THE GOOD IT WOULD DO... WHO KNEW?
SO, WHAT WILL WE DO NOW THAT WE DON'T HAVE BUSH TO COMPLAIN ABOUT? WELL, I PERSONALLY THINK HE DOESN'T REALLY EXIST. I THINK HE IS A PHANTOM, AND I HOPE HE PLAYS A LOT OF WHAT, BASEBALL? I HOPE HE HITS HOME RUNS OR AT LEAST WATCHES THEM EVERY DAY FOREVER.
AS FOR ME, IT'S THE SIMPLE THINGS. MAYBE LIKE W. THE POPCORN WAS REALLY GOOD. I FINISHED A FINE DRAFT OF AN ESSAY. I'VE MADE IT THROUGH THIS WEEK STRONGER, I THINK. SUSAN MILLER PREDICTS A GOOD MONTH? WHAT MORE CAN A GIRL ASK FOR? I'VE HAD SOME INCREDIBLE LOVE, HOPE TO HAVE SOME MORE. YOU KNOW MY BANK ACCOUNT COULD BE GREEDIER, BUT I BELIEVE MY LIFE TO BE RATHER GREAT. THERE IS SO MUCH SWEETNESS, EVEN WHEN THINGS ARE HARDER THAN EVER. ARE THEY REALLY EVER HARDER THAN EVER? WELL, MAYBE FOR A LITTLE BIT. BUT WE MADE IT THROUGH 8 YEARS OF THE DUMBEST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. GRANTED, WE PROBABLY ALL FELT A LOT SMARTER THAN WE WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE BECAUSE OF IT. BUT, WE WAITED IT OUT, AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED, WE GOT A LEADER.
I THINK GOOD THINGS HAPPEN. I AM GRATEFUL FOR WHERE I'VE BEEN AND WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING. ALL OF IT. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU (ANY OTHER PERSON OR OTTER READING THIS) WHO HAVE SHARED ANY MOMENTS OF IT. YOU HAVE MADE IT ALL MORE THAN WORTH IT.
WHAT I WAS INSPIRED TO GET ON THIS SITE AND SAY AS I EAT SALTY POPCORN WHICH IS STREWN OVER MY FAIRLY CLEAN DESK IS THIS:
THE GREAT THING ABOUT LIFE IS THAT IT IS OURS TO MESS UP AS COMPLETELY AS WE CAN WITH WHATEVER WE THINK WILL ENRICH US. SOME PEOPLE END UP IN TREATMENT CENTERS AFTER FOLLOWING THE BLISS OF ALCOHOL. SOME PEOPLE END UP WITH BROKEN HEARTS. SOME PEOPLE END UP HAPPY. I KNOW. I'VE MET THEM. I THINK YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW YOUR HEART/YOUR BLISS. HOW CAN THERE BE ANY OTHER WAY TO LIVE LIFE? IN DOING SO, IT MAY SEEM LIKE WE'RE MAKING SACRIFICES. BUT AS LONG AS WE'RE FOLLOWING/LISTENING TO THE DEEPEST SOURCE OF OUR OWN GRAVITY, HOW CAN WE GO WRONG? REALLY? WHEN YOU FOLLOW YOUR OWN GRAVITY, YOU ALSO FIND LEVITY. GROUNDED IN WHAT YOU'VE DETERMINED THROUGH A LOT OF THOUGHT AND REFLECTION/ TRIAL AND ERROR AS WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU, YOU GET TO ALSO BE FREE. YOU GET TO HAVE LIGHTNESS. THE FREEDOM COMES FROM DOING THE HARD WORK OF DOING WHAT YOU NEEDED TO DO. THIS I BELIEVE VERY STRONGLY. IT'S REALLY NICE TO SAY YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING VERY STRONGLY. I BELIEVE IT'S GOOD BARACK WAS ELECTED. SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE, AND BEYOND THAT, DUDE, BARACK OBAMA IS OUR PRESIDENT. HE IS LIKE ONE OF AMERICA'S BEST DUDES, AND HE'S RATHER CUTE, AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN, AND HE HAS A GREAT FAMILY, AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT? WHAT ISN'T THIS WORLD COMING TO?
THERE IS GOODNESS IN THIS WORLD. I AM GIVING A HEATHER MINI-LECTURE RIGHT NOW, AND IF YOU ARE LISTENING, YOU DESERVE A PULTIZER. I'M JUST KIDDING, I NEITHER GIVE THOSE OUT NOR EXPECT TO RECEIVE ONE, BUT THIS COMMUNICATION IS GRATIFYING FOR ME, AND IF IT GRATIFIES ANY PART OF YOU, HOW LUCKY DID WE JUST GET??? :)
I HAVE BEEN HAVING SO MANY PARTS OF ME GRATIFIED, REALLY ALL OF ME GRATIFIED IF WE WANT TO GET DOWN TO IT. AND THERE IS STILL SILLINESS IN THIS WORLD TO LAUGH AT, TOO. FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN I CALLED MY DAD TO CONGRATULATE HIM AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FOR COMING IN SECOND PLACE, HE SAID "YOU KNOW, I WAS THINKING BACK TO MY COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE DAYS, AND IT IS VERY HARD TO GET A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE, AND I DON'T THINK BARACK OBAMA COULD HAVE GOTTEN A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE." THEN I PROCEEDED TO ASK HIM WHY. I DIDN'T JUMP DOWN HIS THROAT AT ALL ABOUT FOX NEWS, AND I PERCEIVE THIS AS GROWTH. MY FATHER AND I HAVE HAD GROWTH IN OUR RELATIONSHIP, AND THIS IS GOOD. HE WENT ON TO SAY "WELL, YOU KNOW, HE KNOWS TERRORISTS." I DIDN'T KNOW THIS BIT OF NEWS, BUT ME AND THE MEDIA ARE REALLY OUT OF TOUCH THESE DAYS, I ADMIT IT. I CAN BARELY BRING MYSELF TO READ THE STUFF ABOUT THE 15TH CENTURY LET ALONE THE 21ST, BUT I'LL GET TO THAT SOON, I BELIEVE. ANYWAYS, HE WAS SAYING THAT BARACK OBAMA HAS "ASSOCIATED" WITH TERRORISTS. I WANTED TO GET INTO THE BUSH FAMILY AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH CERTAIN SAUDIS, AND I DID MENTION IT, BUT I THINK MY DAD WAS SO, WELL, FOX-INFORMED THAT I THINK WHAT'S THE POINT? I MEAN, WHEN I WAS UPSET THAT THE REPUBLICANS WON, HE DIDN'T REALLY RUB IT MY FACE, SO I WON'T EITHER. BARACK IS PREZ. MAYBE ONLY FOR THE NEXT 4-8 YEARS. WHO CAN PREDICT A GOOD THING LET ALONE A BAD THING, BUT HEY, IT'S TRUE. OVER HALF THE COUNTRY DID THIS. I AM STILL IN A HAPPY PLACE OF SHOCK AND ALMOST DISBELIEF, BUT IT HAPPENED. SARAH PALIN DID NOT PREVAIL EVEN THOUGH PEOPLE LIKE MY DAD WOULD LIKE TO ELEVATE THAT CUTE FACE ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP FOR THE GOOD IT WOULD DO... WHO KNEW?
SO, WHAT WILL WE DO NOW THAT WE DON'T HAVE BUSH TO COMPLAIN ABOUT? WELL, I PERSONALLY THINK HE DOESN'T REALLY EXIST. I THINK HE IS A PHANTOM, AND I HOPE HE PLAYS A LOT OF WHAT, BASEBALL? I HOPE HE HITS HOME RUNS OR AT LEAST WATCHES THEM EVERY DAY FOREVER.
AS FOR ME, IT'S THE SIMPLE THINGS. MAYBE LIKE W. THE POPCORN WAS REALLY GOOD. I FINISHED A FINE DRAFT OF AN ESSAY. I'VE MADE IT THROUGH THIS WEEK STRONGER, I THINK. SUSAN MILLER PREDICTS A GOOD MONTH? WHAT MORE CAN A GIRL ASK FOR? I'VE HAD SOME INCREDIBLE LOVE, HOPE TO HAVE SOME MORE. YOU KNOW MY BANK ACCOUNT COULD BE GREEDIER, BUT I BELIEVE MY LIFE TO BE RATHER GREAT. THERE IS SO MUCH SWEETNESS, EVEN WHEN THINGS ARE HARDER THAN EVER. ARE THEY REALLY EVER HARDER THAN EVER? WELL, MAYBE FOR A LITTLE BIT. BUT WE MADE IT THROUGH 8 YEARS OF THE DUMBEST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. GRANTED, WE PROBABLY ALL FELT A LOT SMARTER THAN WE WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE BECAUSE OF IT. BUT, WE WAITED IT OUT, AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED, WE GOT A LEADER.
I THINK GOOD THINGS HAPPEN. I AM GRATEFUL FOR WHERE I'VE BEEN AND WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING. ALL OF IT. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU (ANY OTHER PERSON OR OTTER READING THIS) WHO HAVE SHARED ANY MOMENTS OF IT. YOU HAVE MADE IT ALL MORE THAN WORTH IT.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
first draft of the beginning of a new essay
"Until You Walk in Their Shoes"
Stephanie had her name legally changed from Margaret when she got a boyfriend who was a lawyer. Margaret had been her name with her first husband, Jeff, who she’d married when she was 16; it was what her parents had called her. She was named after her grandmother, but she never really liked the name or its abbreviations.
Despite being raised Catholic, and despite having witnessed her mother’s suffering when her father had an ongoing affair, Stephanie took the risk of loving a married man when she was 23. She was a single mother of a 5-year-old, and the effervescent brunette had gone to see a girlfriend working in a law office. The lawyer running the show there, Ron, accidentally directed his gaze first to her chest, rather than her chocolate brown eyes or her slightly bouffanted pixie cut hairstyle. “Do you wear contacts?” he asked, when she caught him looking.
Ron had been married for 20 years and had five teenagers, four boys and a girl, when he turned 40 and suddenly opened his eyes. He was bored in his marriage, and he didn’t want his life to be over. He’d had success. But he hadn’t lived yet the way he wanted to. He tried taking some trips with his wife to cure his restlessness. They went to Asia, to South America. And he came back just as randy as when he’d left.
He met the 23-year-old in his office, and soon she called him and told him she needed a rock. According to the zodiac, they were a good match. Maybe Stephanie knew that. She was a Scorpio, a sexy, fun, yet unstable sign. He was a Capricorn, successful at his career and supportive and adoring of Scorpios. They were a dynamic match, and within three weeks, he left his wife for the first time. He just told her he was leaving and got a hotel room and then an apartment.
Five years after they met, Ron and Stephanie got married, which her father laid out as a prerequisite before he would visit them in their new house. There had been years of back and forth. Ron learned he had heart trouble and went back to his family until he was so deeply depressed he left again, rented an apartment in Stephanie’s building, and re-entered her life. During the month when he didn’t see her, he thought he was going to die.
Despite the fact that Stephanie had been dating men her age while Ron was back home, she took him back. They had too much fun together not to. They bought a house being built in a new development with a golf course running through it. It was tucked into the edges of Fontenelle Forest, in Nebraska’s oldest city of Bellevue, named by the French for the beautiful view from a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. Bellevue was just far enough from Omaha not to run into Ron’s first wife, and within three years of being married, they had a child together. Four years later, my mom committed suicide.
A big believer in being honest and having no boundaries, my dad never hid the truth that my mom had committed suicide. Every year of life added on to being four, I refined my understanding of the meaning that my mom had actually killed herself.
I knew that death meant you didn’t come back because my mom told me that Grandpa went to heaven and would not be coming to our house anymore. Her father died months before she did, and the best explanation anyone could give for why she committed suicide was because she was grieving his death. I remember his body’s narrowing as he shed weight from the cancer, and his ears seemed to stick out further and further from his bald head. The Christmas before he died, my Grandpa Hammond went all over Omaha to find me a rocking horse that whinnied when I rode it. My Grandma added to the mass of presents two Barbie horses, a yellow one named Dallas and a black one named Midnight, a cowgirl outfit worn for my Grandpa’s delight, and a stuffed pig with piglets that velcroed to its nipples.
* * *
In early January, 2001, I was three months away from my 23rd birthday. Mounds of snow piled high against the sliding glass doors of my Dad’s house, the kitchen lit orange by the light from the Mission-style fixture hanging above our table. It was not the house where I grew up but still bordered Fontenelle Forest. I had just moved back to Nebraska after living in Oakland, California, with my girlfriends since graduating in May from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. I had tried making it beyond the Midwest in California. But after six months working as the Bilingual Crisis Line Coordinator at a law center for abused women, I was burned out. I had asked too times, in Spanish and in English “What weapon did he use? Has he threatened your life before? Do you have an escape plan?”
I had not met a single man to like the whole time I was in California, and the longer I stayed, the more I realized that any guy I met there probably wouldn’t want to move back to Nebraska. Every time I called my dad for some support he would say, “What the hell are you doing? Why don’t you go to law school?” In spite of my annoyance at his unhelpfulness refrain, I gave up and came home. I’d sat and cried in the hammock chair on the little porch of our apartment, overlooking palm trees and downtown Oakland, long enough while my girlfriends got good advice and support from their California-based moms over the phone. I thought at least back in Nebraska I could try to make more peace with the loss of my mom.
I needed some anti-depressants and the fastest way to get them was to explain that my mom had committed suicide. My dad signed the paperwork, and the next thing I knew, I had my mom’s voice before she died, as transcribed by her psychiatrist, in my hands.
“Want to look at this together, Dad?” I asked.
Somewhat stooped at 71, my dad got up the courage to come sit at the table. He had never seen these records before.
The Authorization for Release of Confidential Information states that the purpose of this release as “Other: wife’s records for consideration in daughter’s case.”
My mom listed herself as self-employed, a beauty consultant, for Mary Kay Cosmetics. She was taking Mnocin, an anti-depressant before the series of new ones that are known to have really worked. I can remember row upon row of orange bottles in the cupboard over the toilet in the bathroom that adjoined my room to my parents’. I often looked at the box of tampons in there and wondered if she’d left them for when I would need them.
Stephanie had her name legally changed from Margaret when she got a boyfriend who was a lawyer. Margaret had been her name with her first husband, Jeff, who she’d married when she was 16; it was what her parents had called her. She was named after her grandmother, but she never really liked the name or its abbreviations.
Despite being raised Catholic, and despite having witnessed her mother’s suffering when her father had an ongoing affair, Stephanie took the risk of loving a married man when she was 23. She was a single mother of a 5-year-old, and the effervescent brunette had gone to see a girlfriend working in a law office. The lawyer running the show there, Ron, accidentally directed his gaze first to her chest, rather than her chocolate brown eyes or her slightly bouffanted pixie cut hairstyle. “Do you wear contacts?” he asked, when she caught him looking.
Ron had been married for 20 years and had five teenagers, four boys and a girl, when he turned 40 and suddenly opened his eyes. He was bored in his marriage, and he didn’t want his life to be over. He’d had success. But he hadn’t lived yet the way he wanted to. He tried taking some trips with his wife to cure his restlessness. They went to Asia, to South America. And he came back just as randy as when he’d left.
He met the 23-year-old in his office, and soon she called him and told him she needed a rock. According to the zodiac, they were a good match. Maybe Stephanie knew that. She was a Scorpio, a sexy, fun, yet unstable sign. He was a Capricorn, successful at his career and supportive and adoring of Scorpios. They were a dynamic match, and within three weeks, he left his wife for the first time. He just told her he was leaving and got a hotel room and then an apartment.
Five years after they met, Ron and Stephanie got married, which her father laid out as a prerequisite before he would visit them in their new house. There had been years of back and forth. Ron learned he had heart trouble and went back to his family until he was so deeply depressed he left again, rented an apartment in Stephanie’s building, and re-entered her life. During the month when he didn’t see her, he thought he was going to die.
Despite the fact that Stephanie had been dating men her age while Ron was back home, she took him back. They had too much fun together not to. They bought a house being built in a new development with a golf course running through it. It was tucked into the edges of Fontenelle Forest, in Nebraska’s oldest city of Bellevue, named by the French for the beautiful view from a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. Bellevue was just far enough from Omaha not to run into Ron’s first wife, and within three years of being married, they had a child together. Four years later, my mom committed suicide.
A big believer in being honest and having no boundaries, my dad never hid the truth that my mom had committed suicide. Every year of life added on to being four, I refined my understanding of the meaning that my mom had actually killed herself.
I knew that death meant you didn’t come back because my mom told me that Grandpa went to heaven and would not be coming to our house anymore. Her father died months before she did, and the best explanation anyone could give for why she committed suicide was because she was grieving his death. I remember his body’s narrowing as he shed weight from the cancer, and his ears seemed to stick out further and further from his bald head. The Christmas before he died, my Grandpa Hammond went all over Omaha to find me a rocking horse that whinnied when I rode it. My Grandma added to the mass of presents two Barbie horses, a yellow one named Dallas and a black one named Midnight, a cowgirl outfit worn for my Grandpa’s delight, and a stuffed pig with piglets that velcroed to its nipples.
* * *
In early January, 2001, I was three months away from my 23rd birthday. Mounds of snow piled high against the sliding glass doors of my Dad’s house, the kitchen lit orange by the light from the Mission-style fixture hanging above our table. It was not the house where I grew up but still bordered Fontenelle Forest. I had just moved back to Nebraska after living in Oakland, California, with my girlfriends since graduating in May from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. I had tried making it beyond the Midwest in California. But after six months working as the Bilingual Crisis Line Coordinator at a law center for abused women, I was burned out. I had asked too times, in Spanish and in English “What weapon did he use? Has he threatened your life before? Do you have an escape plan?”
I had not met a single man to like the whole time I was in California, and the longer I stayed, the more I realized that any guy I met there probably wouldn’t want to move back to Nebraska. Every time I called my dad for some support he would say, “What the hell are you doing? Why don’t you go to law school?” In spite of my annoyance at his unhelpfulness refrain, I gave up and came home. I’d sat and cried in the hammock chair on the little porch of our apartment, overlooking palm trees and downtown Oakland, long enough while my girlfriends got good advice and support from their California-based moms over the phone. I thought at least back in Nebraska I could try to make more peace with the loss of my mom.
I needed some anti-depressants and the fastest way to get them was to explain that my mom had committed suicide. My dad signed the paperwork, and the next thing I knew, I had my mom’s voice before she died, as transcribed by her psychiatrist, in my hands.
“Want to look at this together, Dad?” I asked.
Somewhat stooped at 71, my dad got up the courage to come sit at the table. He had never seen these records before.
The Authorization for Release of Confidential Information states that the purpose of this release as “Other: wife’s records for consideration in daughter’s case.”
My mom listed herself as self-employed, a beauty consultant, for Mary Kay Cosmetics. She was taking Mnocin, an anti-depressant before the series of new ones that are known to have really worked. I can remember row upon row of orange bottles in the cupboard over the toilet in the bathroom that adjoined my room to my parents’. I often looked at the box of tampons in there and wondered if she’d left them for when I would need them.
liz is back
yoga, she says, is about accepting all of the possibilities within ourselves.
we worked on not responding from the ego today. not saying i.
everything that is going to happen, has already happened, she says. now we just watch it happen.
contrary to positive psychology, she says we're not supposed to have boundaries. we're supposed to be open to experiences and what they have to give to us.
we are constantly learning yoga.
we worked on not responding from the ego today. not saying i.
everything that is going to happen, has already happened, she says. now we just watch it happen.
contrary to positive psychology, she says we're not supposed to have boundaries. we're supposed to be open to experiences and what they have to give to us.
we are constantly learning yoga.
how much does doubt linger?
beneath the beautiful face, the contact, the connection
there is pain and doubt
which way does the doubt see
and does the doubt doubt me?
looking out from my own eyes
i wonder within
which parts are most me.
the confidence, the humor, the wit,
the smiles and laughter?
the one who was wholesome
but still wanting in pure devotion?
she wanted to be devoted to herself
and to be only in union
with what grew her.
the me who drives away crumpled
is deflated by your pain and doubt
realizes again that maybe,
however good anything may be,
there is no sure thing.
but i still want to believe
there can be a space of good,
stimulation, mutual growth,
and truth.
yet no union of two beings
is ultimately up to me.
there is pain and doubt
which way does the doubt see
and does the doubt doubt me?
looking out from my own eyes
i wonder within
which parts are most me.
the confidence, the humor, the wit,
the smiles and laughter?
the one who was wholesome
but still wanting in pure devotion?
she wanted to be devoted to herself
and to be only in union
with what grew her.
the me who drives away crumpled
is deflated by your pain and doubt
realizes again that maybe,
however good anything may be,
there is no sure thing.
but i still want to believe
there can be a space of good,
stimulation, mutual growth,
and truth.
yet no union of two beings
is ultimately up to me.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
seasons change, a free show
sitting in my car on the other side of the street from my apartment building, i looked up through the windshield and saw masses of plain old birds. to my eyes, they were too plain to even have a type. but they were birds. listening to classical music as i idled with hint of lime tostitos and seven-layer dip, i could see that the birds seemed to have a general idea of migration today, and some flew with the big dance number while others chose to idle for awhile, too. high altitude rest spots varied from the old telephone pole to a few trees just in the process of changing their colors.
if there was a plan for today, not everyone was in it. some birds were taking their time, and some were just flying. some were flying away.
if there was a plan for today, not everyone was in it. some birds were taking their time, and some were just flying. some were flying away.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
breaking up
breaking up is what happens when people shouldn't be together anymore. you know even the beatles broke up.
an annotation i wrote in october
Heather Hunter
Annotation
The Use of Metaphor to Ground Consciousness
In Naomi Shihab Nye’s “The Rattle of Wheels”
In Naomi Nye’s short essay “The Rattle of Wheels” in Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places, the narrator uses metaphor to both expand and ground the narrator’s consciousness as she undertakes the most primal and transformative human act: bringing new life into the world. The narrator describes the scene of the hospital delivery room while linking that scene through metaphor from herself to her new child to others in the maternity ward, the human lineage of mothers, and to the cosmos beyond.
This essay serves as a good example, for me, of the way in which metaphor can be used to link individual consciousness through the use of objects to the grander scope of life, to a collective and universal consciousness. By grounding her experience of childbirth in metaphor, Nye is able to universalize, memorialize, and contextualize the experience of adding one new life to the universe.
In the first paragraph, Nye uses imagery from the sea to create a sense of urgency and expansiveness to mirror the outpouring of childbirth and its effects on the changing and expanding consciousness of the mother. Nye likens the maternity ward to almost a Coast Guard emergency when she sounds the “rolling alert” of the rush of nurses down a maternity ward hallway toward the “islands” where expectant mothers lie in hospital beds. In this opening paragraph, Nye uses images harkening submarines and sea monsters for a woman’s body. The high hospital beds have “special buttons for raising, lowering”; the body is an “island on which the tailbone ached and the startled breasts grew and grew.” In a relief effort for the emergency, a rattling comes “as a boat coming to save us, the answer to our unshaped cries” (101). Through the metaphor of the sea, in the opening paragraph, the narrator’s consciousness reaches beyond the island of the hospital bed.
Next Nye moves from the mother’s body to the child and her earthly agreements. The child becomes a “compact swaddled bundle” which she must “negotiate.” It is the mother’s responsibility, a new duty, to negotiate a life-giving transaction. She must connect “rosebud lips” with “raw and blossoming nipple” to “make it hold.” Here Nye grounds the mother’s duty in the earthly metaphor of a negotiation while remaining metaphysical by asking about the relationships between the bodies. What will make this bond hold? She answers: “Something like electricity. Tapping into the source.” Using electricity as the metaphor of connection between mother and child, Nye universalizes and then deconstructs again asking “But who was the source? Was he? Was I?” Grounding the narrative once again, the narrator relates that she has been instructed to hold him “like a football” but does not find the metaphor of that earthly object helpful (101).
After establishing the cosmic nature of the experience, Nye moves on to metaphors of grounded preparation. She attends “a bath demonstration” overhears “anguishing over names.” But again she bursts into metaphor again when the objective label of boy or girl cannot capture what she deems “an Angel, a Miracle.” While embracing metaphor Nye rejects a reduction of life, of consciousness to the labels of “sex and weight” (102).
Nye finds more common terms for her baby inadequate: “petite” and “simply yellowish.” She sees her baby more transcendentally as in the hospital nursery she watches him “soaking in the glow,” and her husband continues the metaphor likening the baby’s “barely flickering an arm or leg” to “some beachcomber.” Nye refuses a reduction once again when she watches him “bask” in the “chamber of incubators” (102).
When a volunteer tries to commercialize the experience of childbirth to a post-rollercoaster picture display, trying to sell her a “portfolio of ugly First Day Photos,” Nye weeps. She needs to see her child and her experience as having a life beyond this first day being under the incubation light. She rejects the idea of taking home only “scrunched-up eyes and closed fists,” of potential of death, of “relics, ancient sad baby stories” poking “their fingers into fitful dreams.” Reconnecting with the outer world to reassure herself, the sky is “booming and blackening repeatedly” creating a metaphor of change and continuation lasting beyond her doubtful moments in a new life. This peculiar June has “endless rain, streets flooded” with not just one baby but “babies pressed to our side.” The weather in June becomes a metaphor for many lives that will change and continue (102).
The next metaphor of the human saga extends to the sad fate of others. When a stricken father collapses against a wall and blurts “My baby didn’t make it and my wife may not either,” the day changes, and so does the role of the nurses. Every woman a potential mother, Nye asks why the nurse did not “take him in her arms too?” (103).
Our potential as endless children, endless grievers, is expressed through the metaphor of the narrator buried in “swaths of clean linen, the stacked towels.” She has buried herself “in a closet, sobbing and sobbing.” This crossroads has propelled her again into larger metaphor, the tears of her eyes now the “abundant wellsprings, like the endless dripping of the stone cave in Syria where I’d prayed for this baby.” Nye creates the metaphor of the abundant potential of life when the craggy nun directs her to “drink, drink from the pool at the bottom, fill my bucket…” No matter the population, “…if a hundred people filled their buckets at once, the level would not go down.” The narrator drinks the water, which she uses as a metaphor to that has nourished her to this sacred moment where babies eyes are “haloed,” their empty hearts “hallowed” (103).
Reaching from the narrator back into the maternity ward she hears the “parade of rattling” far down the halls. The new lives of the babies have become “little bundled worlds on wheels each heading toward a different door.” The wheels rattle to “halts at bedsides” where there is the occasional yelp and cry, and then the baby’s individual consciousness and cry extends and “stitched all our rooms together” (104).
The narrator’s transcendent understanding is halted by her individual panic. She reduces the potential of her transcendent offspring through her sudden worry that he’d gone from “chilly to frozen.” Like a small boat, he could slip away while she was sleeping. Metaphorically back at sea, she pounds her call button “till the drawl flooded my speaker.” In her panic, her baby and the wheels converge. “The wheels are heading back to the nursery already and my baby never arrived!” (104).
The individual mother’s terror is likened to “the gap of centuries,” the “aching pit of longing.” Her terror of loss becomes the “lineage of mothers, bruised and troubled, echoing behind me . . . . rosaried Mexican mothers keeping vigil at Our Sacred Heart, chanting stroking Arab mothers, the mothers of Calcutta stoking dung fires before their tumbled cardboard shacks.” One mother’s pain becomes the ache of human survival everywhere.
Back at sea, the old questions return: “Would faith follow the fear?” The narrator sets us loose into the sea once more as “the intercom bellowed.” The vast turbulence of the sea is replaced by the metaphorically manageable “bottle” and “breast pump” (105). These items serve as containers of nourishment, lifeboats of simplicity and steady continuation.
And yet the metaphor of being adrift does not end with the solution to one day’s worry. The narrator then “tumbled into dreams” where “hugging the fatly anonymous hospital pillow” like a lifeboat, she dreamed of the lips of babies “that sucking pull” which pulls her both into her future, the baby’s future, and into the sea of the unknown. And yet, like a siren, the baby’s “fine-tuned whimper” pulls her back to earth. Despite the panic, her consciousness set adrift, there is the metaphor of the baby as a new lifeboat, a new wave to follow embodied in “unfolding fists around a finger.”
Nye’s final move is to use metaphor to create one last transcendent and yet mundane image. She is “dreaming the earth’s secret rattle as it turned in space on its ancient implacable hinge.” Transforming the commercial properties of a rattle into an item of metaphorically cosmic scope, Nye posits both a secret shape and secret sound for the earth. The earth’s “ancient implacable hinge” is still sounding and shaking in the hand of a baby, in the terror and agonizing longing of a mother, propelling us forward.
Through the use of the sea as a metaphor, Nye has set the reader adrift in the ocean. It is an ocean through which we have all come with no memory and to which some of us return as participants in its universal terror and reward. The lifeboats to the fearful consciousness of mothers and fathers in the maternity ward are nurses and babies. In the world Nye has created, incubators transcend their status as warming machines and become lighthouses, sun-like beacons where babies bask as beachcombers.
From one mothers’ consciousness to the lineage of human history, to its longings and its pitfalls, Nye has connected human beginnings through the rattles of wheels, charging us forward into unknown seas where the cries of babes connect us in our waking hours, where their lips suck, sigh, swallow, and pull us continually back to earth, where their fists continue to unfold around a finger. The sea, the fist, and the cry can all threaten to pull us under. Yet they also contain the promise of keeping us afloat amidst the dream of the earth’s rattle.
Annotation
The Use of Metaphor to Ground Consciousness
In Naomi Shihab Nye’s “The Rattle of Wheels”
In Naomi Nye’s short essay “The Rattle of Wheels” in Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places, the narrator uses metaphor to both expand and ground the narrator’s consciousness as she undertakes the most primal and transformative human act: bringing new life into the world. The narrator describes the scene of the hospital delivery room while linking that scene through metaphor from herself to her new child to others in the maternity ward, the human lineage of mothers, and to the cosmos beyond.
This essay serves as a good example, for me, of the way in which metaphor can be used to link individual consciousness through the use of objects to the grander scope of life, to a collective and universal consciousness. By grounding her experience of childbirth in metaphor, Nye is able to universalize, memorialize, and contextualize the experience of adding one new life to the universe.
In the first paragraph, Nye uses imagery from the sea to create a sense of urgency and expansiveness to mirror the outpouring of childbirth and its effects on the changing and expanding consciousness of the mother. Nye likens the maternity ward to almost a Coast Guard emergency when she sounds the “rolling alert” of the rush of nurses down a maternity ward hallway toward the “islands” where expectant mothers lie in hospital beds. In this opening paragraph, Nye uses images harkening submarines and sea monsters for a woman’s body. The high hospital beds have “special buttons for raising, lowering”; the body is an “island on which the tailbone ached and the startled breasts grew and grew.” In a relief effort for the emergency, a rattling comes “as a boat coming to save us, the answer to our unshaped cries” (101). Through the metaphor of the sea, in the opening paragraph, the narrator’s consciousness reaches beyond the island of the hospital bed.
Next Nye moves from the mother’s body to the child and her earthly agreements. The child becomes a “compact swaddled bundle” which she must “negotiate.” It is the mother’s responsibility, a new duty, to negotiate a life-giving transaction. She must connect “rosebud lips” with “raw and blossoming nipple” to “make it hold.” Here Nye grounds the mother’s duty in the earthly metaphor of a negotiation while remaining metaphysical by asking about the relationships between the bodies. What will make this bond hold? She answers: “Something like electricity. Tapping into the source.” Using electricity as the metaphor of connection between mother and child, Nye universalizes and then deconstructs again asking “But who was the source? Was he? Was I?” Grounding the narrative once again, the narrator relates that she has been instructed to hold him “like a football” but does not find the metaphor of that earthly object helpful (101).
After establishing the cosmic nature of the experience, Nye moves on to metaphors of grounded preparation. She attends “a bath demonstration” overhears “anguishing over names.” But again she bursts into metaphor again when the objective label of boy or girl cannot capture what she deems “an Angel, a Miracle.” While embracing metaphor Nye rejects a reduction of life, of consciousness to the labels of “sex and weight” (102).
Nye finds more common terms for her baby inadequate: “petite” and “simply yellowish.” She sees her baby more transcendentally as in the hospital nursery she watches him “soaking in the glow,” and her husband continues the metaphor likening the baby’s “barely flickering an arm or leg” to “some beachcomber.” Nye refuses a reduction once again when she watches him “bask” in the “chamber of incubators” (102).
When a volunteer tries to commercialize the experience of childbirth to a post-rollercoaster picture display, trying to sell her a “portfolio of ugly First Day Photos,” Nye weeps. She needs to see her child and her experience as having a life beyond this first day being under the incubation light. She rejects the idea of taking home only “scrunched-up eyes and closed fists,” of potential of death, of “relics, ancient sad baby stories” poking “their fingers into fitful dreams.” Reconnecting with the outer world to reassure herself, the sky is “booming and blackening repeatedly” creating a metaphor of change and continuation lasting beyond her doubtful moments in a new life. This peculiar June has “endless rain, streets flooded” with not just one baby but “babies pressed to our side.” The weather in June becomes a metaphor for many lives that will change and continue (102).
The next metaphor of the human saga extends to the sad fate of others. When a stricken father collapses against a wall and blurts “My baby didn’t make it and my wife may not either,” the day changes, and so does the role of the nurses. Every woman a potential mother, Nye asks why the nurse did not “take him in her arms too?” (103).
Our potential as endless children, endless grievers, is expressed through the metaphor of the narrator buried in “swaths of clean linen, the stacked towels.” She has buried herself “in a closet, sobbing and sobbing.” This crossroads has propelled her again into larger metaphor, the tears of her eyes now the “abundant wellsprings, like the endless dripping of the stone cave in Syria where I’d prayed for this baby.” Nye creates the metaphor of the abundant potential of life when the craggy nun directs her to “drink, drink from the pool at the bottom, fill my bucket…” No matter the population, “…if a hundred people filled their buckets at once, the level would not go down.” The narrator drinks the water, which she uses as a metaphor to that has nourished her to this sacred moment where babies eyes are “haloed,” their empty hearts “hallowed” (103).
Reaching from the narrator back into the maternity ward she hears the “parade of rattling” far down the halls. The new lives of the babies have become “little bundled worlds on wheels each heading toward a different door.” The wheels rattle to “halts at bedsides” where there is the occasional yelp and cry, and then the baby’s individual consciousness and cry extends and “stitched all our rooms together” (104).
The narrator’s transcendent understanding is halted by her individual panic. She reduces the potential of her transcendent offspring through her sudden worry that he’d gone from “chilly to frozen.” Like a small boat, he could slip away while she was sleeping. Metaphorically back at sea, she pounds her call button “till the drawl flooded my speaker.” In her panic, her baby and the wheels converge. “The wheels are heading back to the nursery already and my baby never arrived!” (104).
The individual mother’s terror is likened to “the gap of centuries,” the “aching pit of longing.” Her terror of loss becomes the “lineage of mothers, bruised and troubled, echoing behind me . . . . rosaried Mexican mothers keeping vigil at Our Sacred Heart, chanting stroking Arab mothers, the mothers of Calcutta stoking dung fires before their tumbled cardboard shacks.” One mother’s pain becomes the ache of human survival everywhere.
Back at sea, the old questions return: “Would faith follow the fear?” The narrator sets us loose into the sea once more as “the intercom bellowed.” The vast turbulence of the sea is replaced by the metaphorically manageable “bottle” and “breast pump” (105). These items serve as containers of nourishment, lifeboats of simplicity and steady continuation.
And yet the metaphor of being adrift does not end with the solution to one day’s worry. The narrator then “tumbled into dreams” where “hugging the fatly anonymous hospital pillow” like a lifeboat, she dreamed of the lips of babies “that sucking pull” which pulls her both into her future, the baby’s future, and into the sea of the unknown. And yet, like a siren, the baby’s “fine-tuned whimper” pulls her back to earth. Despite the panic, her consciousness set adrift, there is the metaphor of the baby as a new lifeboat, a new wave to follow embodied in “unfolding fists around a finger.”
Nye’s final move is to use metaphor to create one last transcendent and yet mundane image. She is “dreaming the earth’s secret rattle as it turned in space on its ancient implacable hinge.” Transforming the commercial properties of a rattle into an item of metaphorically cosmic scope, Nye posits both a secret shape and secret sound for the earth. The earth’s “ancient implacable hinge” is still sounding and shaking in the hand of a baby, in the terror and agonizing longing of a mother, propelling us forward.
Through the use of the sea as a metaphor, Nye has set the reader adrift in the ocean. It is an ocean through which we have all come with no memory and to which some of us return as participants in its universal terror and reward. The lifeboats to the fearful consciousness of mothers and fathers in the maternity ward are nurses and babies. In the world Nye has created, incubators transcend their status as warming machines and become lighthouses, sun-like beacons where babies bask as beachcombers.
From one mothers’ consciousness to the lineage of human history, to its longings and its pitfalls, Nye has connected human beginnings through the rattles of wheels, charging us forward into unknown seas where the cries of babes connect us in our waking hours, where their lips suck, sigh, swallow, and pull us continually back to earth, where their fists continue to unfold around a finger. The sea, the fist, and the cry can all threaten to pull us under. Yet they also contain the promise of keeping us afloat amidst the dream of the earth’s rattle.
what happened to october?
i will not dare to mention the four-letter word that did away with most of october but saved it in the end.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
yet another week has gone by
but at least i have some ideas...
-for one, i have this concept of marital depression that i want to write an essay about... here i am going to liken two partners to two TV channels... you are one channel, your partner is the other. your compatibility depends upon your ability to be "on the same page" or same channel, so to speak. because what happens in marriage is that in many ways, at least during their time together, people's lives are merged. and when they're apart, ideally they would be doing/thinking things that the other is interested in because often that's what they end up talking about.
so my idea is that with marital depression, you are being pulled in directions you don't want to be pulled in, almost like an internal conflict that could cause "depression," only in this case you have on control over the other person. you try to communicate, hope things can be resolved without screaming and shouting because then you're really in pain.
but there's also the pain of silence, of keeping quiet. imagine, for example, that you have some liberal leanings, but let's say your partner is fox news. when you married fox news, it was the only show it town. maybe you hadn't even developed your liberal leanings yet because you'd only been with your partner, and you'd only watched fox news. but then, for some reason--maybe you read an article, or you talked to some other people, you learned about liberal ideas. maybe you tried to ask your partner to change their format, but they couldn't. you tried to expose them to your influences, but they refused. and then, maybe just briefly you were channel surfing. you weren't intending to land on any other channels, but let's just say that you caught a glimpse of cnn or pbs. before, you didn't know they existed, and now you don't know what you would do without them. you go home, and it's fox, fox, fox praising, praising, praising sarah palin. you wish you could change the situation. you don't want screaming and yelling. you try what you can, and then finally you might just decide to get your own place so you can watch cnn or pbs. makes sense to me. so that's one idea.
the other idea is about how best to run a classroom. when i was teaching spanish, some days i felt really happy, and i thought the only other thing i'd rather do than this is make movies. i mean the great thing about teaching is that it is live. so that's kind of like movies only better (except of course if you were making them, and then you could actually show them to the people, maybe get an award because people watched and appreciated your best work, and maybe there would even be financial rewards. that would be some perks you don't necessarily get teaching). but anyways, as i need money and like working with people and the stuff i teach, i stay teaching instead of making movies right now, but i still feel that i deserve the respect of film-maker because while i don't have film-making experience i have other valuable experience, and anyways, you get the idea.
so the idea is that on my syllabus, course intro, course ethos, whatever, i call my classroom a film studio. i am the director (because i have to decide what our purpose is every day, or at least set the scene, and i do have student loans to pay for the experience that got me the position), and the students are the actors... sometimes the crew. they all have to take part. and they all have speaking roles. no one is necessarily the star, though sometimes people do have leading roles here and there. i don't want to have to fire anyone for not doing their job, as we all have to go home with good news at the end of the day, but of course there is no sleeping on the job, and you can't talk on-set with other people while we're in the midst of making a scene. this is live theatre, after all. if they come with the attitudes that they'll be engaged in my plans, we can have an amazing range of experiences. maybe if they're really good, we'll even get them on film. and if the students learn my ways, i'm all for teaching apprentices anything i know how to do, and i also welcome new ideas.
those are my main ideas for the day. to get a phd in creative writing, you can put together a book of essays. i plan to do that. i've been wanting to write a book or essay or something called "notes from a sub" (as a substitute teacher, not sub-human as some kids would love to pronounce)... so there is some gift in subbing... the different experiences i have in different places do become interesting should i choose to start recording them and shaping them in writing somehow... also, it just really expands my teaching/directorial/acting repertoire to be placed at random in so many scenes.
there was one more idea, but it's hiding, so we'll have to wait.
-for one, i have this concept of marital depression that i want to write an essay about... here i am going to liken two partners to two TV channels... you are one channel, your partner is the other. your compatibility depends upon your ability to be "on the same page" or same channel, so to speak. because what happens in marriage is that in many ways, at least during their time together, people's lives are merged. and when they're apart, ideally they would be doing/thinking things that the other is interested in because often that's what they end up talking about.
so my idea is that with marital depression, you are being pulled in directions you don't want to be pulled in, almost like an internal conflict that could cause "depression," only in this case you have on control over the other person. you try to communicate, hope things can be resolved without screaming and shouting because then you're really in pain.
but there's also the pain of silence, of keeping quiet. imagine, for example, that you have some liberal leanings, but let's say your partner is fox news. when you married fox news, it was the only show it town. maybe you hadn't even developed your liberal leanings yet because you'd only been with your partner, and you'd only watched fox news. but then, for some reason--maybe you read an article, or you talked to some other people, you learned about liberal ideas. maybe you tried to ask your partner to change their format, but they couldn't. you tried to expose them to your influences, but they refused. and then, maybe just briefly you were channel surfing. you weren't intending to land on any other channels, but let's just say that you caught a glimpse of cnn or pbs. before, you didn't know they existed, and now you don't know what you would do without them. you go home, and it's fox, fox, fox praising, praising, praising sarah palin. you wish you could change the situation. you don't want screaming and yelling. you try what you can, and then finally you might just decide to get your own place so you can watch cnn or pbs. makes sense to me. so that's one idea.
the other idea is about how best to run a classroom. when i was teaching spanish, some days i felt really happy, and i thought the only other thing i'd rather do than this is make movies. i mean the great thing about teaching is that it is live. so that's kind of like movies only better (except of course if you were making them, and then you could actually show them to the people, maybe get an award because people watched and appreciated your best work, and maybe there would even be financial rewards. that would be some perks you don't necessarily get teaching). but anyways, as i need money and like working with people and the stuff i teach, i stay teaching instead of making movies right now, but i still feel that i deserve the respect of film-maker because while i don't have film-making experience i have other valuable experience, and anyways, you get the idea.
so the idea is that on my syllabus, course intro, course ethos, whatever, i call my classroom a film studio. i am the director (because i have to decide what our purpose is every day, or at least set the scene, and i do have student loans to pay for the experience that got me the position), and the students are the actors... sometimes the crew. they all have to take part. and they all have speaking roles. no one is necessarily the star, though sometimes people do have leading roles here and there. i don't want to have to fire anyone for not doing their job, as we all have to go home with good news at the end of the day, but of course there is no sleeping on the job, and you can't talk on-set with other people while we're in the midst of making a scene. this is live theatre, after all. if they come with the attitudes that they'll be engaged in my plans, we can have an amazing range of experiences. maybe if they're really good, we'll even get them on film. and if the students learn my ways, i'm all for teaching apprentices anything i know how to do, and i also welcome new ideas.
those are my main ideas for the day. to get a phd in creative writing, you can put together a book of essays. i plan to do that. i've been wanting to write a book or essay or something called "notes from a sub" (as a substitute teacher, not sub-human as some kids would love to pronounce)... so there is some gift in subbing... the different experiences i have in different places do become interesting should i choose to start recording them and shaping them in writing somehow... also, it just really expands my teaching/directorial/acting repertoire to be placed at random in so many scenes.
there was one more idea, but it's hiding, so we'll have to wait.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
interests
this is a film being sponsored by women make movies that i find interesting:
(because I can't get these to format how I want, here is the website:
http://www.wmm.com/filmmakers/sponsored_projects.shtml
(because I can't get these to format how I want, here is the website:
http://www.wmm.com/filmmakers/sponsored_projects.shtml
 |  | MOTHERLAND A film by Kathy Leichter MOTHERLAND is a one-hour documentary that follows my quest to understand how my mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide have influenced me as a mother. An intimate portrait of a family struggling with mental illness, MOTHERLAND is also an adult-daughter’s coming of age story. In this story of discovery I explore how mother-loss reverberates across generations, learn that history does not necessarily repeat itself, and shed the fear that bad things will happen to me and my children. |
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 | | Hecate And Trinlay A film by Melissa Hacker Award winning filmmaker Melissa Hacker explores Tibetan Buddhism in her new film. This is a film about choice, destiny and rise of Tibetan Buddhism in the west as lived by one American woman and her son, who, when he was thirteen months old, was recognized as the reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist lama. |
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 | | HER SIDE OF PARADISE A film by Kathleen Lingo & Diana Odasso We follow three young female artists from Villa - 20, a shantytown outside of Buenos Aires: an eleven year-old filmmaker, a twenty year-old singer and a twenty-four year-old architect. By interweaving their personal tales with their abstract creations, we gain an intimate perspective on life and the history of the neighborhood. For the girls, a singular wish emerges: to create a better life for themselves. But what agency does an individual possess to pursue happiness in the face of abject poverty? |
 | | THE HAND OF FATIMA A film by Augusta Palmer In 1971, NY Times music critic Robert Palmer was adopted by a Moroccan Sufi brotherhood, the Master Musicians of Jajouka. 35 years later, his daughter visits the Master Musicians in their remote village to find out who her father really was and how the music of Jajouka changed his life. Filmmaker Augusta Palmer examines her father's musical, mystical and personal legacy in this extended road trip from the American South to Morrocco's Rif Mountains. |
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 | | GUNS, GRIEF AND GRACE: EMERGING CONVERSATIONS ON GUN VIOLENCE A film by Janet Fitch The Guns, Grief and Grace in America three-part documentary series reframes the gun violence debate in our country from one of Second Amendment rights to that of public health prevention. The two completed films and their accompanying education pieces have made a significant community impact; generating non-polarized, solution-based discussions with diverse audiences. In doing this, we pave the way to reclaim the public sphere for discussion of a complex societal topic relevant to diverse communities across the country. |
| GRINGO TRAILS A film by Pegi Vail and Melvin Estrella This 90-minute documentary explores thetourism industry's pioneering subculture of shoestring budget backpackers-- the 'Lonely Planet generation'--and their impact on the economies and cultures of the developing world. It investigates the relationships that arise when different cultures collide yet need one another: host countries looking for financial security and travelers seeking authentic experiences. Accompanyies a global cast of travelers and locals met en route in Mali, Burkina Faso, Peru, Bolivia, and Thailand. |
| THE GRIEF PROJECT: SPEED GRIEVING A film by Directed by Jessica Daniels; Produced by Alysia Reiner & Katie Rosin While dealing with terminal illness, a young woman participates in a scientific research study entitled, "Speed Grieving" in an attempt to experience the five stages of grief in record time. As she confronts her deepest truths, friends and family help her find an inner strength she never knew she had. Can the pain of terminal illness and the grieving process possibly vanish through a scientific study? One woman attempts to squeeze a lifetime of heartbreak laughter and dance into 15 minutes of Speed Grieving. |
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 | | GRACE PALEY: COLLECTED SHORTS A film by Lilly Rivlin Grace Paley—literary giant, national treasure, activist, teacher, mother and wife. Her short stories have been translated into 92 languages. This documentary will trace the life of this ordinary New York woman with extraordinary talent for poetry and prose through her own voice via her stories and the stories of her family, friends, colleagues and critics. |
| Forget Me Nots A film by Dempsey Rice A one-hour documentary that takes us on a journey to explore our oldest form of communication and personal history - storytelling. From Romania, a world still based in an oral tradition, to festivals across America, we will reach into the future to teach youth how to explore and tell their own stories. A window will be opened onto the growing popularity of storytelling as a penetrating, immediate, and personal alternative to the prepackaged hyper-reality of blockbuster films, sensational television, and multimedia entertainment. |
 | | FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN (i saw this at the ross with zulaika and met her... she and her film were wonderful and inspiring!) A film by Jennifer Fox FLYING: Confession of a Free Woman is about the new female sexuality and the new female crisis. For three years, internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jennifer Fox sets out on a quest no less daunting than to map female life and sexuality in the 21st century. She travels to 17 countries and talks to 100 women, 50 friends and 50 strangers -- all of diverse ages, backgrounds, and cultures. Together they answer the question: what is this modern female life all are living? |
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 | | EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY A film by Theresa Loong Chinese-American filmmaker Theresa Loong creates an intimate portrait of her father, a man fifty years her senior. In this documentary, we explore the bonds of the father-daughter relationship and place themes of growing older, immigration and racism in the context of "living history." Paul Loong talks of his experiences as a POW in Japan and his subsequent quest to become an American. We discover why, despite much suffering, "Every Day Is a Holiday." |
| | ||
 | | DRY MOON A film by Andrea DeGette A southern drama that follows Gracie Lee, a child of the woods, as she is forced to become part of her small town society when she unexpectedly has twins and tries to raise them by her unorthodox means. The film defines a line between nature and civilization, and shows the barriers in between. DRY MOON questions the ethical code in this small town as it exposes the hypocrisy and double standard of its inhabitants. Visit the filmmaker's website. |
| | ||
 | | Eat Industry: One Family's Road Trip Through the American Food System A film by Lilach Dekel One family embarks on an extraordinary journey to reconnect with the food they eat. In five months, husband and wife filmmakers and their two-year old daughter cover fifteen thousand miles in twenty-eight states; interviewing farmers, activists, agribusinessmen and other consumers to better understand what "good" food means and for whom. |
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 | | CRAWLING AT NIGHT A film by Kimi Takesue Inspired by the acclaimed novel by Nani Power, CRAWLING AT NIGHT is a feature film that explores an unexpected love affair between two lonely people, each of whom has experienced devastating loss. Koji, a Japanese master ice sculptor, and Mariane, a waitress and aspiring singer, meet in the shadows of New York City where they struggle to connect and move forward with their lives. |
 | | CHRONICLES OF A PROFESSIONAL EULOGIST A film by Sarah Jane Lapp Why do we strive to create a verbal imprint of a dead soul? How does the individual figure into the collective spiritual mind? How does memory translate the faults of our loved ones? And, why and how does one learn to love a perfect stranger? Our five part hand-drawn animation explores the function of a memory industry and the place of individual humans in producing social nostalgia. The first installment, "Field Report No. 3" (2006) won a Jurors' Choice Award from the 25th Black Maria Film & Video Festival. Official Selection: Seattle International Film Festival, South by Southwest Film Festival. |
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 | | BREAKING IN TWO A film by Sabine Sighicelli To the serious artist, creating art is not a career choice: it is an all-consuming quest. What happens when the artist becomes a mother? In the feature-length documentary BREAKING IN TWO, the filmmaker-mother meets with a cross-generational group of influential women artists who, from the 60’s to today, have faced ever-changing personal and political challenges to keep their art alive, their children healthy, and their heads above water. Together, they create a gallery “happening” in Los Angeles that explores their unique contributions. Visit the filmmaker's website. |
 | | Binka: To Tell A Story About Silence A film by Elka Nikolova A one-hour documentary about the effects of communism, censorship and how the change of a political system affects individual artists by focusing on the work of Binka Zhelyazkova, the first woman film director in Bulgaria. Using her films as a starting point this documentary will explore Zhelyazkova's struggle to maintain her artistic identity during her endless clashes with the communist censorship and will address the legacy of communism on the younger generation of Bulgarian artists. Visit the filmmaker's website. |
| | ||
 | | THE AMERICAN VIRGIN A film by Therese Shechter THE AMERICAN VIRGIN examines the myths, misconceptions and cultural beliefs surrounding virginity. What is virginity? Who gets to define it? Why do we care so much about it? And how do our sexual choices define our identity, especially for women? From abstinence-til-marriage programs to teen sex comedies to hymen reconstruction, THE AMERICAN VIRGIN explores the ways in which anxiety and fascination with the concept of the "virgin" are linked to our cultural attitudes towards female sexuality. Visit the filmmaker's website. |
| | ||
 | | AN INTERVIEW WITH SIMONE WEIL A film by Julia Haslett What if you were convinced the world you lived in was headed for self-destruction? French thinker and political activist Simone Weil (1909-1943) was, and for good reason. Today her life stands as a testament to the idealistic compassion that ultimately killed her. An Interview with Simone Weil is an expressionistic documentary that tells Weil's story through evocative archival footage & photos, sequences, and animation, all culminating in the filmmaker's fantasy come true: an interview with Simone Weil. The result is a thought-provoking meditation on activism, faith, and documentary filmmaking. |
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 | | AGAINST THE GRAIN: AN ARTIST'S SURVIVAL GUIDE TO PERU A film by Ann Kaneko Is freedom of expression a right or a privilege? This film highlights the passion and commitment of pioneering artists who resist censorship to tell the violent and explosive history of Peru. Four artists fight to express themselves under a repressive political regime. Their stirring artwork documents years of terrorism, corruption and the hard-line government of ex-president Alberto Fujimori. By recounting Peru's past, they contribute to a larger collective memory of Latin America and connect the experiences of this country to our own. Visit the filmmaker's website. |
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