Thursday, November 14, 2019

The New Day



More and more I can let my heart stay soft and open
 even in the face of fear and discomfort
 in the interest of my own well being


The moon was half a week away from full and in Pisces when I arrived at the hospital just after dawn yesterday. Watery, emotional, poetic Pisces. The moon sign of Renoir, one of my favorite painters, and Michelangelo, whose David I stood mesmerized in front of, snapping picture after picture from every angle possible, for what seemed like hours in Florence that day with my youngest daughter. 

I want to take photographs of yesterday. The whole of it, from start to finish, from every perspective possible, just like David. I want to capture the experience, and the details, the essence: The arrival. The wait. The gown. The hideous bright red one-size-fits-all socks that couldn't keep a foot warm if they wanted to. The expansiveness, the curiosity, the wonder. The deep relaxation of Secret Garden playing through my big headphones as I waited for my turn. My head being lowered, being wheeled into the OR, giant bright lights, the competency, the mask, the shocking amnesia. The waking, from the deepest sleep I've ever known, in pain but completely free of fear, devoid of even the tiniest hint of disquiet.

I want to put my new iPhone up to it all, with its wide-angle lens, and snap away. Bold color, clear focus, immaculate depth of field.

But how really do you capture a miracle?

Or for that matter, all that led to it? The childhood hospitalizations and medical traumas that grew into severe complex PTSD. How innate innocence and freedom were swapped out for anxiety and terror, and by five years old, horrifying, heart wrenching intrusive thoughts and images that only after sixty years would be understood as a rare form of OCD. The panic as an adult at the thought of doctors, medical test, hospitals. The awful gallbladder attacks that wouldn't stop no matter, by the end of five years, how little fat and then food I consumed; my life growing smaller and more dependent by their randomness, insidiousness, helplessness; a fateful trip to the ER.

I want to capture the people, kind and compassionate to a person. Pre-op nurse Harita who called me sweetheart and rubbed my shoulder. Wonderful nurse anesthesiologist Lori. Sweet surgeon, Dr. Nyugen, and anesthesiologist Dr. Rahn, whose warm eyes and hands held my own, who had me laughing so unexpectedly out loud, who made me remember in an instant the warm, joyous spirit that I am, right there, in the middle of pre-op, nakedly vulnerable. And Sally, within arms length as I woke, sincere, empathetic, thanking me for my kindness as I dressed, still groggy, to go home.

Two months before the surgery I re-watched a video I had come across a couple of years before of a woman, a doctor, that I knew of from the conscious dance class I attended, dancing in the OR before her cancer surgery. Tears streamed down my own face as Beyonce blared from the small boom box, and this woman, Deborah, began to move her body like smooth liquid; eyes closed, deep peace, glorious serenity, and bliss plastered across her soft features. And then, her entire team joining her, infusing that sterile room with the most heart opening unmitigated joy possible.

How do you capture that which is a process, that which happens invisibly? Like fall, when suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, there are more yellow leaves than green when you walk by the creek though you've walked there nearly every day for the past month in preparation. Then one day, about a week out, you watch as a great white heron takes off from the water, her powerful wings gracefully lifting her, propelling her up the channel, her beautiful light reflected in the blue, before she disappears into the tree cover, and you stop, not quite believing the elegance of what you have just seen, or the joyousness you realize you are feeling, utterly, have been feeling, which you now see has grown with each week and day and step, and nowhere can you find anything that even begins to resemble fear, it's just gone, poof, like a magic trick, like the green of the leaves that are now yellow.

Yesterday morning I woke early, went downstairs, turned on Pandora and danced my own little dance, body moving in its staccato way, then whirling and twirling, arms reaching; this body, my body, oldest companion, vehicle for all experience, then got dressed and waited for my ex-husband to pick me up and we drove to the hospital in relaxed, companionable silence as the sun rose over the hills and the new day quietly began.




Saturday, August 31, 2019

Dark Ramblings

The overwhelm is everywhere, you just have to look around. It's the dishes in the sink. It's the dresser drawers hanging open, bras and socks spilling out. It's the dead roses in the vintage white pitcher. It's the plants dying, the cat box that needs scooping, the trash on the floor that requires too much effort to bend and pick up.

It's the dirty house, the dirty car, the dirty garage, the dirty feet, the dirty secrets.

It's the brain that refuses to work. Except to manufacture terrifying thoughts and images in living color that could win awards.

It's the wrinkled, haggard face that stares back at me from the mirror.

It's surgery; your daughter's illness; family dynamics; trauma. It's a country gone mad, a planet that's dying, so much suffering you have no idea where to put it. It's evil, it's terror, it's despair; it's sobbing in the shower and in the pillow while you lie in the fetal position.

Waiting for my daughter to come out of her appointment with the rheumatologist wondering if it will be lupus, I realize there is no one to reach out to; not one person in the whole world to text and say I'm waiting and I'm scared. I'm scared it will be lupus and I'm scared it won't be lupus. (Lupus would at least explain things.) Can you please keep me company? Can you hear what this last year has been like? Do you know what it's like to watch her walk to the car, how her body almost refuses to move, how long it takes to traverse the short distance to the curb, the strain I see painted all over her beautiful face?

I'm long past the polite posts, the pretty pictures, the hopefully clever prose, the inspiring tales. I don't know how to live with all this brokenness, how to live without someone, anyone, to share it with.

I pick up my phone and find a video of my grand baby, my other daughter's precious little girl, and watch it over and over and over. Tears stream as I watch her climb the play structure, narrating as she does, announce that the first slide is too "liddle" for her, then slide down the big slide, land on her bum on the ground, dust herself off and get back up for more.

My daughter makes it to the car. It's not lupus. Not yet anyway. But the doctor will monitor her because some of the symptoms are there, and because it's true she's lost her life.



Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Just Thoughts

Fantastic arbor with pale pink roses. Carmel By The Sea.


Mornings have gone quiet. The birds are busy now raising their young. Sometimes, mid-day, I hear the babies, and as much as I miss the early morning melodies, my heart does swell at the rambunctious energetic chirping of the fledglings.

The only thing certain is change; or so they say.

Years ago gardening taught me about the seasons of life. Both literal and figurative; how to work with the earth's and life's turnings, how to not only honor, but trust each new season. It especially taught me to trust the dark, the time of cold and barrenness, the time to go inside, and rest. Let go and let life work, let her do what she does, down there in the deep fertile earth. Down here deep inside me.

It's hard to know how to breathe, let alone trust, without my garden; without the day to day reminder, without the sanctuary of my hands in the soil, the sun on my back, the delicate colors, the heady scent of that cherished piece of earth.

I used to write poems in my garden. Bad, ridiculous poems. Over the top maudlin poems. Love poems to the One I Never Got Over. Much to my joy and shame. (The not getting over part and the poems part.) About his eyes, and his lips, and his hands. The flat-out miracle of him. The way he would scoop me to his chest, his taut waist warm against my forearms. How one day over his kitchen table, Christmas lights blazing against the gray bowl of a sky outside, not even a half a day from his rumpled sheets, he ended it. Just like that. Sometimes I would lay naked in my garden. Not a soul knows about that. Even I had forgotten. Talk about shame. (I had a friend once who had a framed photo of herself in her bedroom, lying naked in the forest by a stream ~ right there on the white wall next to the door.)

It's painful to live when you can't find yourself. When you've vacated the premises and are somewhere, god only knows where, else. Dissociation is the clinical term. It's what happens when your world isn't safe. It was a good thing because it helped you to survive, helped you when you were so overwhelmed and so alone you thought you would die; though later it just steals your life.

Some things never change. Some things you never get over losing. Not so far anyway.

Walking under the redwoods, the hot wind whips their perfume right into my body, and suddenly, for a split second, it remembers everything.

That night I would dream I was coming home.




Sunday, July 21, 2019

Rainbows and Kittens, Lessons and Love

Dixie Maru Beach, West End, Moloka'i, where I spent many afternoons,
most of the time, the only one there.


Don't change Moloka'i, let Moloka'i change you.

* * *

You don't choose Moloka'i, Moloka'i chooses you.



I landed on Moloka'i almost ten years ago in the middle of one of the biggest wild fires they had had in decades. The smell of smoke was everywhere, helicopters were taking off and landing, dropping sea water on the flames, firefighters covered in soot crowded the isles in the tiny grocery store. It seemed that I hadn't simply landed on Mars, I had landed on Mars and it was on fire. 

Symbolically it was appropriate, given I was there because my own life had burnt to the ground. But I didn't know that it would be like an alien planet. I did know that there were no signal lights, no buildings taller than a palm tree, that two cars lined up at the four-way stop in town was considered rush hour traffic; that they have a tragic and also moving history marked by the leprosy (properly Hansen's Disease) colony on the remote and beautiful peninsula, Kalapaupa; plus the longest white sand beach in all of the islands, and the highest sea cliffs in the world. All in all the perfect sounding place for a save-your-life sequester. I assumed it would be a lot like Maui, my favorite place on earth, just smaller and calmer. How different could they be, after all, they are sister islands in the same county, separated by a mere seven-and-one-half-mile channel.

When I woke up on my first morning there I wondered how in the world I was going to get out of my three-month contract for the admittedly decent little place that I had arrived at disoriented and deeply disturbed the afternoon before. I couldn't fathom spending even two nights there much less ninety. It was dry and dusty, like an island desert, with red dirt everywhere, rumors of modern day nocturnal Menehune marches to the sea, and deer that barked at night. Plus the owner had not been truthful about its proximity to the ocean or the ability to hear the surf from the condo. As day broke an hour later, I found my way out of the sprawling complex on a small-o-odyssey to find the beach. I ambled down a small, half-paved road littered with dozens of flattened toads, past the shells of abandoned, rotting resort buildings, through a dead-brown golf course, around a drained, neglected swimming pool. When I arrived at the shore and plopped down on the damp sand, I wondered how I was ever going to heal my own grief in a place that was so barren, so broken itself, when suddenly materializing out of seemingly nowhere was a rainbow. And not just any rainbow, but the kind only imaginable in a magical fairytale land, fully saturated, full-on double arches anchored in the lava cliff at the edge of the beach, stretching up, and over, and then cascading like a colorful waterfall into the ocean far out in the middle of the sea.

And that in a nutshell is Moloka'i.

One minute you think you can't stay another second, the next, you know in your every cell that you are there because somehow it's the right place to be; and later, after she has grown on you in ways you could never imagine or see coming, you weep at the prospect of ever having to leave. When she welcomes you, it's a full-on embrace that will mark you forever. Time and again I was told that I didn't choose Moloka'i, that she chose me; she either welcomes you with open arms or she doesn't, and you'll know it. I heard of people getting off the plane and making a one-eighty right back onto it. She is strange and magical, homely and gorgeous, passionate and indifferent, weary and welcoming, acrimonious and loving, and yes, deeply healing. She is a loving but not so patient teacher, with an aloha spirit that will flat-out knock your socks off. She, born of the goddess Hina, is the real deal, and those who call her home will go to any length to protect who they are and what they have, and I heard time and again, in fact, it's memorialized in song: look what they've done to our sister Maui... . Hence, the hand painted signs as you drive from the airport, the toppled trees suddenly blocking certain roads that are being desecrated, their reputation as the island people voted most likely to give you the stink-eye as you drive cavalierly around their sacred home in your rental car.

(Which is why you rent a beat up old clunker, that loses water constantly then overheats and leaves you stranded on the side of the two-lane road at least once a week, waiting for it to cool so you can add the water you carry around in the trunk for that purpose. But that's okay, because first of all, this is serious island time, I mean what's the hurry, and second, never once, no matter what time of day or how remote an area, did a car pass me by without stopping to ask if I needed help, offer me their own drinking water for my radiator, or a ride somewhere~unless of course it was said tourists in a rental flying by.)

When I flew from Oakland to Honolulu and then on to Moloka'i, I was deep in mourning, and when I landed back in Oakland three months later, it enveloped me again as though I had never been away. But in between, for those ninety days (minus the first day of course) she gave me an unbelievable gift, a respite from the long journey of recovery from just too many losses in too short a period of time. She gave me sunshine and warm ocean water, fishes and turtles, a calm sea and a raging one, which I loved with equal passion. She offered exotic flowers and scents and insects and birds, especially the barn owl sitting on the rotting fence post, the only owl I've ever seen in the wild, especially the Lesser White Fronted Goose who appeared as if by magic on the beach one morning, apparently having been blown far off her migration course, especially the zebra dove whose haunting coo woke me each and every dawn without fail. Painted skies at sunrise and sunset, the full moon setting over the ocean as the sun rose on the other side of the small land. Words and images and music, Old Style; feral kitties needing food and water and care, and people. Incredible experiences with incredible, loving people who somehow recognized me, my need, my own aloha spirit, my own love for them and their island, caring for me and embracing me as their o'hana, bringing me so generously into their Moloka'i family.





Tuesday, July 16, 2019

My Daily Bread







Writing is an unfolding of what's going on inside me as I talk 
to myself on a pad of paper or a computer.
~Parker J. Palmer


For the first time in so long creativity is flowing out of me. Even more, many mornings I do indeed~ miraculously~wake up eager to get up and see what wants to be created. (On the other hand, sometimes I lay awake in the middle of the night wondering the same thing!) Even more, I am so in awe as new and completely unexpected things are showing up, taking my photos in fresh, long yearned for directions, and sky rocketing me out of the creative rut I've been in for so long.

It either happened by itself (which a former long-time spiritual teacher insists is true in all happenings, even if it seems as though we made it happen), or, it's a combination of intention, work, and possibly most importantly, stopping my compulsive consumption of hours and hours of political podcasts daily, a habit that developed since Trump became president. The thinking was that when there's a monster in the house, for peace of mind, it's good to know at all times where it is and what's it's up to. But what tracking the monster actually did over time was rob me of my precious time, precious life energy, and keep me every single day on the cusp of hopelessness and despair, many days, especially lately as the news keeps getting more and more dire, falling over into the dark abyss.

But while photo after photo is birthed, I can't seem to write. After a conversation yesterday, I'm seeing that even though I've given up podcasts, to make the art I make, I'm either on my laptop or my phone~and often moving at a fast pace between the two~which means that my device time has actually grown, and by a lot. It's well known that the internet and time on our devices wears new pathways in our brains. We become less able to focus and imagine and dive deep, less willing and able to just be, which is vital for the creative juices to ferment. And, those little red icon notifications on the social media platforms (I'm using Instagram for my photos) have been shown to provide dopamine hits to the brain. It's well calculated and works like a charm, like the lab rats to the sugar, we can't help coming back for more.

If creating photos is my joy, writing is my daily bread. As opposed to taking and editing photos, to write, I need access to deeper parts of myself, the river that runs at the core of my being. The quiet place that is home. The space where the mystery lives. The deep well where I find my most true self and also, what is real, what is most alive.

Right now I am submerged in the healing work of trauma, and some days it feels as though my entire world is shaking itself apart. One thing after another emerges, I never know when or why or what, or whether my four-year-old, my eight-year-old, my twelve-year old, or my adult self will show up longing to be seen and acknowledged and loved. It feels chaotic and I often feel powerless, survival itself feels threatened, and the fight or flight response is activated. All which make it harder than ever to remain present and simply be, near impossible to actually do the things that I know can always help me find true home again, and can help to fill the depleted well.

After a few days when they were quieter than I'm used to, the birds have been singing this morning. Right outside my window one seems most insistently trying to get my attention, and the moment he gets it and I start to write about him, he moves on. Creating again has made the daily despair but a distant memory. I cannot be more excited about all that I am learning and exploring creatively. It all feels gentle and soothing and healing; inspiring, invigorating, jubilant.

And also, I have to take care. I've seen how the compulsiveness in me, the need to distract from the pain and sorrow and uncertainty, can take something like this and run with it into unconsciousness. I feel it as it's happening. I feel the urge to pause mid sentence as I'm writing to check for those inane red icons (does anyone like me?!), to pull out my phone in the middle of a conversation, to mindlessly work on a photo while waiting to be called into the dentist (maybe actually not a bad thing given my anxiety about the dentist). And daily I sit down to write and find emptiness.



Thursday, July 4, 2019

Tell Me...


Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it life?
~Mary Oliver


People who write say that being in the mood to write is a luxury. They say you just can't sit around and wait for the muse, because she/he/it may never~ever~come calling. They say to show up everyday, face the page, and just write. Hemingway said to write one true thing (or something to that effect). When I'm really stuck~which seems often right now~I always come back to that: write one true thing, a challenge I've come to see only if you're writing with someone else in mind.

There are so many true things today, but here's one that's fit for company: I want to write like Mary Oliver (don't we all?). Not simply the way she can convey so much with so few words, her gift for invoking the heart and the soul like she does, her capacity for such mind-blowing intimacy with a stone, a blade of grass, a moth, the whole wide world; how her words can liberate you from your dark cellar in an instant; one fragmented sentence and suddenly you can breathe again and light is spilling, I mean seriously pouring through the cracks.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Those two lines were a beacon that changed my life. From a poem about a grasshopper~seemingly anyway~though of course it's never that simple with Mary, not by a long shot; which is why we love her like we do.

And another~

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.... 
.... it was already late enough, and a wild night 

It's possible those poems actually saved my life. It's possible that those poems are why this morning so many years later I was able to go hiking with my daughter and her daughter, my precious, precious grand baby. Whom I've been wanting to write about for such a long time now but could not even begin to find the words to convey that truth; the truth of her, the truth of watching my daughter become a mother, the truth of my own wild heart journey of becoming her grammy. Letters strung together just so outrageously banal when talking about total mind-bending love, terrifying over the top love. Yes, of course I felt and feel that for my daughters as well. From the moment their beautiful beings slid so miraculously from between my legs: deep, abiding, unconditional love, the kind of love you would throw yourself in front of a bus for, that you are blissfully and wistfully ignorant of before that moment in time. But there is something unique about this, something that utterly defies words.

I think it's a time of life thing. I think it's that it's free from responsibility and laundry and cooking and decisions and the terror of making mistakes which of course, are always, always made. Even with the greatest of intentions. Small ones for sure and sometimes, ones that are not small at all, that even decades later you still cannot forgive yourself for. 

But here's one thing I can say. Being with her, holding her, talking with her, giggling with her, feeling her sweet little fingers wrapped tight around my one finger as we walk together; when we are nose to nose and cheek to cheek; when we are watching the hawk, the baby deer, the turkeys, the horses, the moon; rocking, reading books, blowing bubbles, running with our shadows, smelling peppercorn leaves, hugging trees; no matter what we are doing or not doing~not doing can be the best times with her ever~being with her instantly liberates me from anything and everything that is not the moment; that is not the preciousness of life, right here, right now. 

Being with her I breathe more deeply than I ever have in my life. Each breath bringing more softness, more tenderness, more heart than I ever knew I was capable of. And healing. How ironic and lovely and unexpectedly mystifying is it, that this beloved little one is helping my own little one to heal. And as I heal, I am more and more present, more and more alive, not just for her, but for my daughters, too, and for myself, too. I could never have imagined this, not in my wildest dreams~






Just write one true thing. Apparently the rest will take care of itself.

💗 



Monday, July 1, 2019

The Radiant Deep



Sometimes we lay our heads sideways on the water
to look up at the skies and just gaze. 
We ponder not so much in thought as in
feeling what is stirred within.

~The Dolphins
From Muriel Lindsay's 
"The Dolphin Letters"


Sometimes clouds can be total works of art. Like this one this morning that made me think instantly of an angel wing. Never mind the rest of it, which was this big marvelous swath of ethereal energy propelling itself upward, like a giant hand reaching out from the sun. It was mesmerizing, and I wanted to just keep walking, to get closer and closer to it.

It reminded me of swimming in the gulf stream, one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had. The way the sunlight hit the water and went so deep, rays and rays dancing and melting into each other in the unfathomable and mysterious depths of rich indigo blue. It was hypnotizing, and then, too, I just kept swimming to follow it, though the trick was it was everywhere. It was everywhere and it was just so tantalizingly out of reach. I was constantly hearing my name yelled from far away that I was too far from the boat and needed to turn around.

But the truth was, out there in the middle of the endless blue, nothing but water and sky, I didn't care. I would have followed that light anywhere. Not only was it stunning and completely otherworldly in and of itself, but in that glorious alternate universe there was simply nothing but sublime sensory experience: no monkey mind; no sticky thoughts, no fears or anxiety. No critical self talk or stories about lack or belonging; no heaviness or fogginess or limitations, no trauma in the body or psyche. Just a heart blown wide, and a body, mind, and spirit more at home, more present, more alive and in the fullness of its being than it had ever been before. Feeling, as the dolphins say, all that was stirred within.

That day was bookended by days with hours each in the water with dolphins, incredible experiences that could never quite be believed, moment after moment that leveled me, that melted and undid me, that filled me and everything around me with magic and joy on a trip that nearly imploded before it even got started. Days before the Gulf Stream swim I had walked on the boat exhausted by the journey across the continent and to Bimini, the smallest island in the Bahamas, but filled with excitement to be there again after nine years. Half an hour later I declared to anyone who might want to listen that I could not stay and walked off the boat. I just left. It was outrageous of course. For so many reasons, not the least of which was Bimini herself, tiny island, little ability to get around or communicate, nowhere to go or stay; still, it felt out of my hands, my body moving of its own volition.

It started with learning that my favorite crew member would not be there as promised. Sweet Tita, all smiles and morning hugs and light in her beautiful eyes, who saw me nine years before and understood and held my hand and walked me terrified through the surf; then held it still as we snorkeled back and forth parallel to the beach, as I began to get the rhythm of it; then held it again, the first time in the big, endless ocean; literally held me as I met my wild fear and watched it morph into something utterly unexpected; the greatest pleasure and the greatest freedom I have ever known. Few people have left their mark on me like she did and I could not wait to see her again, having planned my trip completely around when she would be there.

It went down hill from there. An awful, airless, tiny, cramped cabin shared with three other women, and a wall of energy put off by one member of the group that felt so negative I had no choice but to flee, only to wander, my own mini odyssey, until I finally got it that there was simply nowhere to go and I walked back aboard an hour later, sullen and embarrassed and pissed off, straight into the arms of Capt. Geoff, who had arrived while I was gone; big, totally dysfunctional teddy bear who with Tita and the dolphins had rocked my world nine years before, and promised, easily broken I now knew, to make it all okay.

An hour later we all boarded a stifling van for a local beach while Geoff put in supplies and got the boat ready. Totally out of my body, never had I felt less like I belonged anywhere, and I straggled behind the group, and slowly took off my shorts and t-shirt and walked into the warm, clear water, the salty lap of the Great Mother, where I lay on my back, and just like the dolphins, stared up at the endless sky, as She, in her profound wisdom, held, soothed, and prepared me for what would be the most remarkable, otherworldly five days of my life.


(So far ;) ~


* * * * * 


The new title of this blog, The Radiant Deep, came directly from that day swimming in the gulf, as well as the knowing that so far anyway, no matter how deep my dives have been, the light has always been there even if it felt out of reach, shining, waiting, while I gestated in the dark.



Sunday, June 23, 2019

Sometimes a Cold is Just a Cold



Now and then my process painting teacher used to say to us sometimes a cold is just a cold. We were a group of women who loved to find symbolism and/or meaning in everything, which she was into also~especially when it came to things that showed up unexpectedly in our paintings~but she also liked to point out that sometimes, every now and then, something might actually mean nothing, i.e., sometimes a cold is just a cold.

In the past couple of weeks, I've had three close encounters with some sort of wader bird most likely either a heron or a great egret, both belonging to the same bird family. Now in the world of everything has meaning, when something in nature shows up three times in a relatively short period of time, it is very deserving of close attention. My first encounter was a gorgeous pair of large white wader birds that took off and flew low directly over my windshield startling me with their sudden appearance, their grace, and beauty. The next was a few days later when I rounded a curve on a small country road I take to avoid traffic and there, quite unexpectedly was a tall, elegant white wader bird standing all alone on the side of the road. The third one happened a few days ago when I was out for my early morning walk, taking pictures of the beautiful clouds and suddenly this one flew into the frame. It's not that seeing these birds is unusual. I'm accustomed to seeing herons and/or egrets often when I walk by a creek nearby. But these were unusual and unexpected sightings and so that morning I went home and looked up heron/egret medicine and found welcome words like calm, grace, solitude, patience, independence, resourcefulness, self-determination, and self-reliance. 

As I've mentioned before, I'm in the middle of a five week online course about writing your heart's desires into manifestation. Too late I found out that the writing part is journaling. (Hello... What did I think it was going to be?!) And more specifically, a lot, but not all of the writing is morning pages. My dislike of journaling is surpassed only by my disdain for morning pages (so named by creativity maven Julia Cameron, morning pages are three large notebook pages handwritten~a big fat brain dump~first thing every morning).

Unlike my oldest daughter who has compulsively journaled since she was ten years old (I feel sad today... my little ten-year old would write, unbeknownst to me until recently when she came across some old journals and shared with me, oh my aching heart), I've only sustained journaling for one period of my life, the first few years of my first therapy when scribbling all that had been locked up inside for so long felt like the only thing that kept me sane. Since then I've tried countless times to sustain some sort of journaling practice only to fail time and time again.

From Cameron's "morning pages" to Natalie Goldberg's "first thoughts," to Kim Klassen, my current course facilitator's insistence that journaling is what has made the difference in her own dreams manifesting, to my daughter practically yelling at me to just go journal for god's sake, there is insistence out there that stream of consciousness writing is not just a great thing, but the only thing, The one thing that will help you with basically anything you need help with. Everywhere I turn, it's the dogmatic end-all-be-all, it's the bees knees, it's the thing you simply must do no matter what.

So I tried again. Picked one of many mostly empty notebooks from my shelf, opened it, and wrote. Once. It was like pulling teeth.

Then, the day before the third bird sighting, I had a relatively big epiphany: What if it's just not for everyone? What if because it works so well for some people, they mistakenly assume it's the right thing for everyone but it's not? For many this might seem like a no-brainer, but I've become aware lately of how heavily influenced I am by certain people in certain circumstances claiming to know the truth. But what if, I mean really, what if it's just not for me? And, not just that, but I won't come to any irrevocable harm by not making it a part of my daily rituals; and also, my dreams can still come true!

Self-determination. Self-reliance. Thank you, herons/egrets.

Early yesterday morning I was trying to replace a broken glass drawer pull when the power screw driver caused one side of it to spin around forcefully and dig into two of my fingers. Three hours later I left urgent care with three stitches and a big bandage on the index finger of my left hand, my dominant hand, and a second cut on my middle finger that is bandaged but did not need stitches. Now writing by hand (and mostly by computer but I can wing it enough on the computer) isn't even an option, and won't be for another ten days to two weeks, basically the rest of the course.

I can't help but wonder... is it a sign or, is it just an ironically well-timed cut and some stitches?




Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Another Moon

Not last night's moon but a full moon I will never forget.
Setting over Molokai's west side as the sun rose in the east.
One of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.


There are so many things that I could be writing about right now, but for the life of me, no matter how many hours I sit at this computer, not one of them has come to fruition.

I wanted to write that I got a completely unexpected phone call last week about an upcoming 50th high school reunion. That it was really wonderful to talk to the woman on the other end of the phone that I had been friends with in elementary school but whose friendship hadn't followed us to middle school and high school. And that when she wondered aloud why that might have been, the curtains were suddenly pulled back on my life back then; things I've never seen about the disconnect between my home life and my school life; the secret shame and isolation standing there naked in the light.

I wanted to write that a week ago yesterday I spent at least five or six hours happy for no reason. And how it was so patently obvious in its unusual-ness that it astonished me. It was like I was standing outside myself marveling at this oh so rare happening, mouth agape, as though watching a once a century total eclipse. That it didn't even dawn on me until days later that this may have something to do with being in the process of focusing on my heart's desire, which is, as I wrote a couple of posts ago, to wake up each morning with purpose, eager and excited to get up and see what wants to be created that day.

But then by the next day, the confusion settled like thick fog back in around me. And with it the constant loop of hope and hopelessness that springs from the multiple facets that make us who we are: both form and not form, pure light and also physical bodies. From the light springs this heart's desire; the profound yearning to live with excitement and creativity; in essence, to live fully. Then there is this body, my body, that lives so much of the time with pain and exhaustion and limitation. And my brain, with pathways worn in deeply challenging ways by life and experience and trauma, in a tizzy trying to figure out how this all might even be possible; how these twain shall meet; as if it were up to it in the first place.

Then last night's full moon. Big and bold, making me think about the time that I fell in love under another moon. Gigantic and swollen and bright yellow, it was just revealing itself over the hills when I picked a new friend up from the BART station the day after Thanksgiving. It lit the way as we wound through the canyon, parked, and walked onto the property where Amma, India's hugging saint's ashram is. Later, it was high overhead as we sat side by side, shoulders and thighs touching, heady music and chanting and incense wafting out from the temple into the night air as he told me his remarkable, heart wrenching story. But even before that, before that night, before he told me about being gay and HIV positive and isolated and terrified as a young man twenty-some years before that, being told he would be dead within six months, watching friend after friend die, telling no one, not even his mother, in the end not developing AIDS; even before that, from the first time he walked into a class I was taking, bringing with him a cloud of fresh early summer air, and sat down opposite me in the circle, I was a goner. That night, that moon, that story; those shoulders and thighs and startling blue eyes, just cemented it.

A year and two months later~ten years ago this year~I left my marriage. Not for him, obviously, but for me. Because in my marriage I felt as though I was suffocating and all I wanted, even if I couldn't have Matthew, was to breathe again; though mostly, profoundly, what I longed for was to feel fully alive again, to have the dying embers of my heart stirred and burst wildly back into flame~which I then knew, after so many arid years, was possible.

And here we are again.

Except that last week~mysteriously~ I was happy for no reason.



Saturday, June 8, 2019

So Many Doors!

First rays of morning light on these fantastic landscape roses



One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

~Germaine Greer



Looking back over some of what's been written here in the last ten years, I am unpleasantly surprised at how many of the same issues seem to remain; body pain, soul pain, and the perennial unfulfilled dreams.

There's a wise Japanese philosophy about resilience: you fall down seven times, you get up eight. Even if you fall down one thousand times, you still get up. It's safe to say that in these last ten years there has been a lot of falling down and getting back up.

But there's also been a lot of not getting back up. For long periods of time. No choice at all but to let go into what is and let life have her way. There's wisdom here, too. The wisdom of the feminine, of the yin energy; of surrender and laying yourself on the great lap of Whomever it is you name and then just being; resting in the dark and fertile quiet, giving life time and space to create itself anew. The transformative power of the archetypal descent, the inner sojourn, which is quite often a fundamental part of the spiritual journey for women. It's gifts can be plentiful and deep; mystical and soul-filled, heart wrenching and opening.

Oh, the longing this morning. Walking at sunrise, rounding a bend and there, along a great row of landscape roses were two bushes right in the middle set aflame by the light. That started it. Then I pick up Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves looking for a particular quote and I am instantly transported back~I can feel it in my body~to a time when I first met this sacred scripture and through it, the sweet reunion with my own wild and sacred woman self, and how this, too, set my world on fire.

I am tired of the back and forth, the up and down, the wake and then sleep and then wake and then sleep. I am torn between my trust in the intelligence of life to deliver me where I need to be and trying to force it; force my heart's desire, my dreams into being, paying good money for a course that I am now not at all sure is the right thing for me. I do this time and again, forgetting that it's so much more complicated when there is serious trauma that paints everything, when the body aches all over and is exhausted, the spirit just trying to survive; when I can't quite find and then grasp for any length of time the light, the fire.

Oh, but the roses. And the words. I've had to buy a new copy of the Wolves book because my old one is completely worn, a la Velveteen Rabbit style. But the new one doesn't have all of my underlinings and scribblings and love  woven into its pages so I haul the old one off the shelf and I fall into it like I would the arms of a cherished old friend, every cell remembering our precious time together. It takes me half an hour, holding loose pages in, trying not to break it more, but finally I find it.

If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. 
If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. 
If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door. 



Sunday, June 2, 2019

Illness, Wellness, Hawaii, and Birdsong



This is a picture from Kauai's north shore, the view from where I was staying when my oldest daughter became ill last September and I had to leave after only two and a half days.

But this is actually a story about birds-- well, birds and illness and wellness and how deeply touching life in its most raw forms can be.

For weeks after my unplanned whirlwind return home, when I was at the ER, at doctor's offices and labs, taking care of her, I very often didn't know where I was. It was like somewhere over the Pacific on the rushed flight home I had slipped through an invisible crack in space and time; in the middle of the fear and unknown and stress and cold clinical smells, I could still see Hawaii. I could still feel her. I could smell her. Every part of her that I love with my whole heart; her surf, her tropical winds, her flora, her sand beneath my feet, my body held in her deep, warm ocean, all still palpable.

But what I remember most, what I missed the most in those first few weeks, was the birdsong. The absolute cacophony, the riotous near magical symphony that is those island birds beginning at dawn and into the early morning hours. If I close my eyes and am really quiet, I can hear it still, like a jukebox of melodies lodged inside my being.

Fast forward almost nine months. My daughter is still ill, with what is now believed to be chronic Lyme disease, which can be difficult to diagnose but that explains all of her many, weird, random symptoms, and the fact that her life as she knew it has been obliterated. She has been catapulted into her own healing journey and I am awed daily by how she is handling the wholly unknown of it all.

Which brings me back to birds. One morning, driving her to an appointment, tears stream down both of our faces as she reads me a story from a book called Radical Remissions about a man who had a spontaneous remission from "terminal" cancer that had to do with dawn and trees and photosynthesis, and YES, birds. It's a spectacular story where he noticed that birds began to sing at the same time each morning relative to the sunrise, exactly forty-two minutes before, and in researching, he learned that the birds were singing in response to the trees releasing oxygen at the first rays of light. He began to spend those forty-two minutes outside each and every morning, day in and day out, oxygen and birds, birds and oxygen, and months later, when he had a scheduled scan, his cancer was gone.

I am so blown away by this story. Then it hits me. She, my daughter, cannot take a walk. She can barely walk between her bedroom and the kitchen, and then needs to lay down to recover. But I can. Not only that, but I am awake, always, before sunrise. I can walk for both of us. So I begin walking before and as the sun rises. I walk beside the redwoods and the birch, sometimes with the crescent moon peeking between their tops, beneath the oak trees and willows and liquid amber that line and dot the spaces where I live and I listen to the beautiful birdsong. Yes, it does pale in comparison to the absolute host of birds where I was staying on Kauai but what I hear here, while tamer, is sweet and elegant and lovely; to even compare does it all a serious disservice. One bird in particular, the common purple finch, has captured my attention. Small birds, they place themselves at the highest points possible, the tops of all the tall chimneys, the highest little twig on the ornamentals and they sing their hearts out, and because they are oriented in a circle around the large grassy area near my home, it is like a concert in the round and it is enchanting.

Birds and birdsong and trees and how all of nature is such a complex mystery moves me intensely. Recently I learned another part of the story. Yes, the birds begin to sing in response to the oxygen the trees release at the very first light, and also, the frequency of the birdsong creates a vibration in the leaves of the trees which causes its stomata (breathing holes) to open more fully to receive moisture and nutrients. Full miraculous circle.

Wow. Not being at all scientifically minded, I can't say this for certain, but it does strike me that perhaps not only the leaves on trees respond to the vibrations of birdsong, but also, the cells of animals, including us, and that is why being out in the oxygenated air and the vibration of the birdsong is so invigorating. That maybe this was in fact part of what helped heal the man in the story.

Now we come full circle - again - as it reminds me of a wonderful book I once read about our cells (Secrets of Your Cells, Sondra Barret, PhD) and how our cells have strings, like a violin or a cello, and our cells love it when their strings vibrate. It is their destiny. It is what keeps them healthy and thriving. And what makes them vibrate are things like movement and music and dance and singing and chanting; and maybe - most likely even - birdsong.



Thursday, May 30, 2019

Tender & Fierce

This morning I read an article by Dr. Kristin Neff, pioneer in the study of self compassion, in which she writes about two different kinds of self compassion that are essential, especially for women: Yin self compassion is tender, it is loving kindness toward oneself, where Yang self compassion is fierce, it is the empowered, protective, truth-speaking form of self compassion. I love those two words so much, both individually and also how they fit together so gracefully to make a whole.

Earlier, I could feel the raw edges of rage the minute I got out of bed and my feet hit the cool floor. It's a quickening; a sudden red hot feeling of pressure and chaos, a wild animal clawing at my skin from the inside.

I seem able to find compassion for myself in many of the feelings I experience these days, though not rage, which has lately been exploding out of me without so much as the early warning I experienced this morning. It is a horrible thing, and afterwards, leaves me feeling buried in deep layers of intolerable shame and despair. Nora, my trauma-specialist psychologist tells me that not only is the rage appropriate and completely understandable given my traumas, but that it is a positive movement, a sign that the freeze that I have lived most of my life in is thawing, that the fight (of the fight/flight/freeze trauma response) instinct is coming alive. It is a relief to hear that, but there is a humongous gulf between that information and being able to stop feeling like the worst kind of human being possible, and it is in her office that the notion of self compassion keeps coming up, and I do see it there, I see it in her soft brown eyes when she looks at me in her tender way; I do see it, but it is not yet able to enter my being.

Here's the thing: as with so many other things in its vicious cycle, trauma itself affects a person's ability to practice self compassion. Ironic that it is compassion itself that carries within it the capacity to heal the very same trauma.

This morning, somehow, miraculously, I am able to skip the explosion and go straight to what always comes after, waves and waves of incredible grief and sorrow. Usually it's only through the raging that I am finally able to collapse into all that rests below it. But at least this morning, there is that.

And if not compassion itself, I have now these two words, which I will hold tenderly and fiercely to me, carry with me, write about, mull over, and try on for size when I am able.


With Love 🧡


Click here for the Kristen Neff article.

Friday, May 24, 2019

Dreaming

This morning I pick up Mark Nepo’s The Endless Practice and I read this:

Wakefulness is not a destination
but a song the human heart keeps singing

Thank god. There it is, a tiny shaft, the crack as Leonard Cohen wrote, that lets the light in. A reminder who I am. Who we are. There’s no end game here, just a human heart that keeps on trying.

I’m both relieved for the reminder, right there in print, and grief stricken that it is so easily forgotten; and in the oblivion so much lost.

The other day I came upon a blog by a woman older than me who quite unexpectedly became an entrepreneur later in life. She writes that each morning she jumps out of bed excited what each new day will bring, what might be created that day.

My envy was palpable. It’s been years since I’ve known that feeling. Definitely not since my marriage ended ten years ago and I was plunged into acute depression and a true dark night of the soul that went on for years. The worst has passed, but most of the time I’m like a cloudy day. I know the sun is there somewhere, I just can’t find it. Or worse, when days string into weeks and weeks into months, forget that it exists altogether.

Then along comes Nepo, who has pulled me out of the dark and cold time and time again, writing in his simple staggering way about the heart, about our precious human journeys. And a silly little five-day online thingy about writing your dreams into being. Spiritually schooled for years in Advaita, where the ever present now is the only place to be, it seems like heresy. This dreaming is bullshit, I mutter to myself and at the same moment I pull out my colorful markers and giant pad of paper and begin to fantasize about what I would like my life to look like in two or three years. 

But it’s no mystery. I can tell you right now, I want it to look like that woman’s: Creative and exciting. Filled with passions and beauty. But also, I want an open heart; I want more sunny days than cloudy. And while we’re at it, let’s heal that trauma and the shame and exhaustion that pour from its center. How about an entire revisioning about the whole ageing thing? Oh god, and learn how to finally make those gorgeous, dreamy photos that I swoon over; write enough essays to fill a book; learn how to use Tumblr; be in nature everyday; have a relationship again.

And for a moment the clouds are parted and there it is: a tender human heart singing its wild dreams. 



Saturday, March 2, 2019

Hope


This morning I feel hope. For the first time in these miserable fucked up Trump years, I feel a glimmer of that beautiful thing pulsing through me. And not just hope, but excitement, though the rational part of me that loves to spoil the party warns me to rein it in.

I did not get it until recently that when Trump was elected president it triggered my post traumatic stress. I’d thought it was because near the same time my sister had been diagnosed with a recurrence of her cancer. I didn’t get it until the Kavanaugh hearings when I wanted to scream with wild and unhinged rage. When I wanted to arm myself. When I wanted to reach through my laptop and claw his eyes out, and choke the hateful life from that entitled, misogynistic man. Then I put two and two together.

At 6:30 the morning after the election, I drove to Berkeley for my weekly dance and meditation practice. There were thirteen of us that dawn--sacred goddess number--filing quietly into the old church building. It wasn’t until we were all seated, scattered randomly around the room, some of us on chairs, some on mats, others lying flat, that I heard the first muffled sob.

It exploded out of all of us then. One by one. The keening and the wailing. The utter disbelief.

Until the first deep bass notes hit off the walls, and one by one we rose and then together the music took us.

Hope is that thing with feathers. Emily Dickenson.


Written the morning after Michael Cohen testified publicly before Congress.