Category Archives: body, mind, soul

New Year’s Revolution

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moonrise

I’m digging the double entendre inherent in the title of this blog. The year, like the planetary movements that ultimately control the way we measure and understand time, revolves from one December 31st to the next. A revolution. Another kind of revolution is contained in our ability to reinvent ourselves on New Year’s Day. We make resolutions that might revolutionize… us.

Living in the northeast allows me to feel with tremendous immediacy the pattern of the revolving year. Slick, grayly invisible ice appearing on driveways and roadways in January is familiar because I’ve seen it again and again, on the roadways of my life.  Furred infant leaves appearing overnight on the branches of early spring put me in mind of past springs, and the feelings that come with all that rebirthing. The purple sunset on a humid summer’s evening fills me to the brim with familiar wonder, and the warm spectrum of an autumn afternoon when sideways sunshine explodes a hillside with color is as part of my internal rhythms as menses, or sleep.

Circles, and spirals for that matter, are nature’s way of returning to the beginning as we continue on the path to the future. These shapes symbolize unity, wholeness, and infinity. Don’t you love that? If something is whole it is complete, but a circle (or spiral) can be complete and yet still go on and on into infinity, in eternal revolution.

I want to think of this new year, 2014, as a revolution.

  • I want to return, as always, to my core self, looking inward to the center of my own personal spiral and stay true to that me.
  • I want to continue rolling forward on the path of change and growth that has accelerated for me over the last decade and really sped the hell up over the last couple of years. (I just this minute realized that the word “revolve” contains the word “evolve.” Wow. That is so perfect.)
  • I want to do some things so differently that they become as new as they are old. Like how to see myself. How to have a fight. How to be and stay attached to a life partner.
  • I want to revolutionize my self-image at this midpoint+ of my life and finally actually realize how beautiful and amazing I am, so that it does not feel stupid and weird to write those words.

I guess I’m a New Year’s Revolutionary.

 

Intention

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buddha

I used to teach my 6th graders about the 8-fold path of the Buddha when we were investigating Eastern religions. Together, we practiced meditation, and discussed profound precepts such as Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Intention. I wonder if you would predict how these privileged, well-educated (up till this point) children reacted to such lessons?

Well, not only did they instinctively grasp the concepts, they eagerly embraced the practices, at least to the extent that they gladly meditated before tests, after recess, before performances, and closely monitored themselves and each other in the pursuit of the 8-fold path… as they understood it. Even they grasped what Buddha reassured us of – that no one is perfect and that we can only try our hardest. Being exposed to these ideas, even on a rather rudimentary level, it was as if they suddenly had a new lens with which to view the world of middle school. If a classmate said, “I’m so stupid,” 6 voices would chime in: “RIGHT SPEECH!” Why is that important, I would ask? Someone would explain, “Say what is true. You are not stupid, you are smart.” Or: “Your words have a lot of power, you know.”

What about intentions? How do we know if we are living in positive, healthy intention? What if our “best intentions” come to nothing? Is that possible if we are “doing it right?” I had a student tell me once, “As long as everyone truly intends what is good and what comes out of love, how can they really hurt anyone?” I believe that is true, oh wise 11 year old. If my intention for myself (I can’t actually have an intention for anyone else – and trying to is just about control or manipulation, isn’t it?) aligns with my true values and comes from a place of love (including self-love), I will be in a good place. In the words of Phillip Moffitt, my happiness “will come from the strength of my internal experience of intention.”

A client of mine recently sent me an awesome article by the guy I quoted in the last paragraph — Phillip Moffitt — the founder of the Life Balance Institute. I’d never heard of Phillip Moffitt before, but I’d heard and/or absorbed and/or been exposed to the concepts he explores in his piece – about the difference between intentions and goals. He said what my student said, only not quite as well: “You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values.”

So yeah. Whether I’m throwing the Tarot or blowing intentions into sticks to burn in a ritual fire, or simply lying in bed focusing on a way of being in this moment and the next and the next, somewhere along the line I became a person aware, at least on an intellectual level, of the value of setting intentions, and how doing so helps create my desired reality (both inner and outer). Easy? No. A valuable exercise? Yup.

Maybe kids, unadulterated and pure, understand instinctively that living inside intention is a “practice that is focused on how you are ‘being’ in the present moment” and that when you do, “your attention is on the ever-present ‘now’ in the constantly changing flow of life” (Moffitt again). Children are all about the “now” and no one can be in the flow like they can.

I want to live by “right intention” and I want to live with abandon, joy, and love. (I’m not at all ambitious.) So one thing I started trying to do a few years ago is this: I look into the eyes of everyone I meet, even if briefly in a check-out line. As a native New Yorker this is something I had to teach myself, for sure, having been taught that avoiding eye contact preserves a stranger’s privacy. Screw that!  The results of this exercise are inevitably  incredible. People can open like flowers or shut down like vaults when faced with a stranger’s open, seeing eyes. But I do try to see each person as a person. I think about the lives that stretch out behind all these people whose paths cross mine. It is not that hard to love them—on some level—and have compassion for them, their unknown plights, their unrevealed gifts. If I can look at everyone and myself with this kind of intention and love, every day, I will be a little closer to something meaningful.

 

My Body Tells Me So

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blue xmas

A few weeks ago my internal soul rhythms, for lack of a better term, grew distinctly unrhythmic. Swallowed unexpectedly by inexplicable sadness at work, or in my car navigating a holiday parking lot, or proofreading a document for the 432nd time. Not inherently sorrowful activities.

I would awaken out of an ordinary moment to the heavy darkness rising inside my chest. That feeling in my throat –tight, achy, and swollen with unuttered sound. Hot tears threatening. What the hell?

On some level, not being a complete moron, I realized it had something to do with the holidays. Holidays I truly love and holidays I am beyond excited about because this year, unlike last, I will (for one thing) have my children with me. And I have (for another thing) a sense of what the future can be, maybe, if I will make it so. That (for another thing) there is a future for me. And so much more than that.

It’s not what is, but what was. It’s not where I am, it’s where I was. The anniversary came upon me unbidden, and caught me by surprise in an unguarded moment. Repeatedly.

Every moment of our lives is an anniversary of something, if you look at it a certain way. I mean, ten years ago this minute I was doing something. If I was driving my kids to get their hair cut, then this is the anniversary of my doing that. If I was chopping carrots, this moment is a carrot anniversary. An absurd notion. An anniversary, by definition, “a date that is observed on an annual basis because it is the same date as an important event in a past year.”

Emotionally, anniversaries of happy events feel good. We honor them, at least take note of them. They involve, at the very least, a smile, a toast, a special piece of pie. At best, maybe a cruise around the Greek islands, if you’re lucky, or a nice dinner out. However, we often forget anniversaries until they are upon us. It’s not that we don’t care about them, but they don’t intrude into our consciousness. They are rarely pushy and demanding. Some people even forget anniversaries altogether. That’s why Hallmark makes so many versions of the “belated” card.

Then why is it that our bodies are capable of such treacherous, overwhelming reactions – entirely outside what is in our consciousness – to the return of seasons that mark traumatic events from the past?  Talk about pushy and demanding. Those nasty anniversaries will have their way.

Such memory lives in the body, not the mind where we think memory hangs out.

Of course I had “thought” about what a different place I’m in this year than last. Last year: the explosion of what I thought my life was, the immolation of the love I thought would comfort me till life’s end, the realization that I had screwed up badly, misjudged horribly, and neglected to take care of myself. The essential realization that I was utterly alone, unfriended, and far from home on Christmas. Total bottoming out. I spent Christmas Day packing boxes. The movers came the next day and by end of week I was flying out of Louisiana and back to the frozen north where I hoped warmth awaited me.

Despite the life-threatening pain I felt, I still could not empathize with my own predicament, choosing instead to rail against myself for getting into this mess in the first place. The one person who deserved my love and support—me – wasn’t getting it. But for right now, that stuff’s not important. The point is, sure, I “thought about it.” As this recent Thanksgiving approached, I did a mental inventory of the last year. As Thanksgiving receded, I was still, in my head, “thinking about it.” Categorized, filed, compartmentalized conveniently somewhere where I could pull it out if I wanted to. But why would I want to? Best to keep it tucked away. At least till the holidays were over.

Yeah, but as I’ve established, that’s not how that kind of memory works. Unprocessed shit, and all the terror and/or sadness it has attached to it, has a way of residing in the lining of the stomach, the muscles of the bowels, the tissue of the solar plexus, the highways and byways of the circulatory system. Since my inner organs don’t have a calendar or a clock, I can only assume that, using the circadian rhythms inherent in all life, my own body said, “Hey, it’s that time again!”

BAM.

My goal is to become whole enough… holistic enough, that different “parts” of me can’t sucker punch other “parts” of me on a whim. Not long after my second or third crying jag, I took out my journal and lifted the sluice gate. The process began to flow, or rather gush. There’s no end in sight at least for now, so it’ll take time, and in case you were worried, I am giving it the time it deserves. I promise. And it’s not like I didn’t do ANY processing during the preceding year. For a long time after fleeing (everything), the process was about emotional and psychic survival, full stop. Gradually it became about so much more. Some rooting out. Some letting in. Some getting help. Some wallowing in aloneness. Etc.

But it ain’t over, is it? My body tells me so.

The Genius of Community

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In Walter Isaacson’s book Einstein: His Life and Universe it’s not clear to me which part of the mind-blowing story of Albert Einstein is the most mind blowing. I know how difficult it is to rethink my own inner universe, throw out entrenched ideas and preconceptions and false realities in order to usher in something closer to the truth, knowing all the time that the truth may elude me until I die, and maybe even beyond that. And that’s just one middle class, middle aged white woman. So how did Einstein have the chutzpah, brainpower and vision to do all that for the ACTUAL universe? He didn’t just blow his own mind, he blew everybody’s minds. And with a few exceptions, people loved him for it.

But as fun as it would be to draw analogies straight down the line between Einstein’s breakthroughs in theoretical physics and the path to understanding one’s self, it would be forced and silly and not that revealing.

But there is something about his process that keeps coming back to me. Einstein was a loner in many ways, in that he worked for large stretches of time in solitude, doing thought experiments and re-seeing everything from atoms to distant stars in a totally unique way. But he always came out of his genius cave to interact with others. He had genius friends –tons of them—who could pretty much keep up with him when he’d run his cool ideas past them. They’d sit around, or ride the trolleys, or write letters, discussing and debating and sharing. A lot of the time, when Einstein did that, he came up with even better ideas about his ideas. He understood something in a new way or figured out what the roadblock was that had been pestering him. He had lots of “aha” moments when he was by himself, but it seems pretty clear that he had lots of “aha” moments when he was in profound communication and dialogue with other people. I don’t think he would have gone as far, realized as much, redirected our understanding of the universe as completely, had he kept to himself.

I find this fact comforting and validating and not at all surprising. I guess I could have assumed that someone of Einstein’s capabilities might not need a sounding board the way normal (non-scary-genius) people do. But I would have been wrong, as it turned out. He did need it, and so do we.

As both a former student and educator, I always got such a kick out of the way the sparks fly in a classroom where people are talking. A lively dialogue will take everyone to that “new place” in their learning far faster, and more thoroughly, than reading, listening or memorizing will. Even Einstein would admit that reading, listening and even some pesky memorizing are all important pieces too, but those things do not a mind create. Without playing mental catch with someone, it’s just not the same.

My son learned a lot about pitching from throwing a rubber ball at the chimney outside, on which he drew a square out of chalk. He’d go out there all by himself and throw it and throw it and throw it till his accuracy was incredible. But what made him a damned good baseball player was … yeah, you get the picture. Playing baseball. With other people.

Community is so irreplaceable and joyful. A bunch of people sitting around a table drinking wine and discussing politics. Close friends exploring spiritual beliefs gathered together under a full moon on a summer’s night. Parents with their children having dinner together and letting the topics of life unfold among them. Kids leaning forward at their desks as they listen and wait their turn to share an insight or epiphany, and then as they sit there, someone else says something and inside their head, everything gets notched up another level. The hand that was raised suddenly reaches five inches higher and the look of ecstatic awareness on the face of that student is unmatchable. An idea looks like pure joy on the face of someone in the process of thinking. Or learning. Which go together, don’t they?

I get nervous about distance learning, and on-line courses, and the ways education is adjusting to trends, financial reality and the needs of the consumer. The community of the classroom is such a big thing to lose. The very fact that we don’t live within a few blocks of our extended families, to share and pass down the wisdom of the generations that way, as people used to do, saddens me. Where was the red tent when I needed it? When I think of all that I had to reinvent and figure out for myself about being a woman, being a wife, being a mother, taking care of myself, seeking fulfillment, and juggling the things we all juggle, it’s a shame. Will my wisdom be lost among the interstates and computer wires that have replaced, in many ways, the connective tissue of community?

Being connected to other people is one of the best things about being a person and that connection gives me a chance to tap into my genius self. I learn so much about life through the example and sharing of others, and about myself by bouncing me off of people and letting them bounce themselves off of me. We need time to ferment in solitude and a chance to bounce and share. There are times in our lives when we have less time to ourselves, and other times when we have fewer chances to connect with others. It’s a balancing act. Einstein had to figure it out. We all do.

 

Community

And Then There’s Me

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I’m up at 2 a.m. Exhausted after a gratifying day of hauling suitcases and boxes from two cars into my daughter’s brand new on-campus apartment as she begins her junior year at college. But I can’t sleep. The coffee I drank at 8 p.m. so I could stay awake on the highway is doing its job all too well. The highway is far behind me but the coffee is the gift that keeps on giving.

Instead of lying in bed cursing the goddess of caffeine, I will use this gift of time. Moments stolen from the 24 hours of a typical day. Moments when I can do something for me.

The day was beautiful and mostly about her, my daughter. It was about her and that is as it should be. It was also about us and the bond we are so lucky to share. A joyful day full of simple expressions of love. Unpacking, talking, planning, laughing.

But for me it was also a strange anniversary, and I cannot help remembering last year at this time and how different it all was. When I dropped her off on Labor Day weekend 2012, I was in the middle of a serious upheaval and only a few weeks away from the start of a huge adventure of my own. I had taken a leave of absence from my job, and was setting out to learn how I fit into the new world I had made. A world where I was no longer married, and, for a year at least, no longer a teacher. A world full of an unknown, untested passion and new love. A business I was going to try to support myself with. I was leaving literally everything I knew behind me for things all new.

That move-in day was a normal, if exciting, stepping stone in the life of my second born who was also creating her own world and her place in it. I was painfully aware that my pursuit of a life different from the one she had always known me to live was an excruciating upheaval for her and she was scared, angry, and sad. And yet she, too, was venturing out. She wanted me to stay in place, and be there, familiar and close. But it was not to be.

As full as I am of the mother-urge and as natural as that role has always been for me, the last year of my life has taken me deep inside myself. Truly an epic journey into what I needed, wanted, craved, and even feared. I never forgot my children, gave up my responsibility to them or altered so much as a molecule of my love for them, but I let myself sit in the front row of my own life for the first time, maybe ever.

My children (my college age daughter plus my son who lives in Vermont), adults now themselves, faced a world in which the mother was, for once, distracted by a life of her own. Tumult and change, divorce and distance, love and sorrow, anguish and renewal. Do our children automatically believe these to be the provenance of the young? Certainly having the truth—that there is no age limit on… well, anything, really—smack them upside the head is a cold splash of water for kids cradled in a world eternally made safe and warm for them.

Today’s college return was much less fraught than last year’s. Last year our goodbye had many faultlines of uncertainty. When would we see each other again? Instead of my being within a car ride for a lunch date or a visit home, I would be over a thousand miles away. My daughter felt abandoned. As much as I was compelled from within to do this thing, I also felt very sad, and very guilty. Mama was being unpredictable. Mama was taking chances. Mama was adventuring. What was happening to the predictable world?

We expect our children to be unpredictable, take chances, adventure. When my son ventured off to Rome or to ski in the Alps with people we barely knew, we were simply excited for him. Thrilled that he could experience such a thing. When my daughter threw herself into a first love that ended in agonizing hurt, I ached for her all the time knowing that, hoping that, she would heal. As much as I bite my proverbial fingernails at the crazy uncertainty of their lives, I know it to be right and suitable and healthy.

But it was (and I understand this) very difficult for my children to see me veering off the path I had been on so long. Reinventing myself and the future that might be out there for me. Throwing caution to the winds and trusting the universe—just as they do. Trusting life to give me what I need, whether joy, suffering, or simply a lesson to be learned.

I wish I could say that all my risks paid off. That my leap of faith was justified by a joyful happy ending. But no. In crucial ways, I crashed and burned. Yeah, pretty much. The balloon of hope pricked by the needle of harsh truth. A big fat lot of harsh truth.

My business was a gratifyingly successful endeavor, considering it was just the first year. But in the realm of the heart, I was, at least temporarily, road kill.

But you know, I can only hope that the lesson for my children is not: “Oh, well, of course it ended badly. Whenever a woman her age stirs the pot or tries something so unexpected, it is bound to fail. It’s good she’s back and come to her senses.”

Because I have not come to my senses. Not a bit. I am devoted to my choices and the path I am standing on right this minute, tonight, in the black hours before dawn, caffeine coursing through my system. I have learned more in a year about me, them, life, love, art, courage, pain, beginnings, endings, failure, success, attachment, clarity, heartbreak, independence, fear, passion, forgiveness, trust, anger, and humility than I had learned in the twenty preceding years. Though I have regrets, I regret nothing.

I want my children to love me because of—and in spite of—the fact that I had the guts to blow up my life (and, to an extent, theirs) and reconfigure it in a way that seems much more like life. They did know, have known, still know and know again that no matter what happens, they are the golden threads that tie my heart to this lifetime of mine. Nothing can come between me and them—not even me. Not even them. But they live for them. I live for me and them. “Don’t forget me,” my learning reminds me.

So today was a beautiful day. A young woman stirs herself back into the rich syrup that is college life. I return to the ongoing journey that is an examined life. I miss her. And then there’s me.

maggie and me

Dog Blog

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Cats have always been my animal. Well, and horses. In some ways I’m a girly stereotype, at least as identified by my animal preferences.

It’s not that I have not liked dogs. I’ve always enjoyed them, and even retained a strong attraction to German Shepherds despite the fact that I was attacked rather viciously by one when I was just three. My only distinct memory of that event was the sight of my dad’s shirt turning from white and brown check to red as he ran with me over his shoulder from Central Park to the nearest doctor’s office. Still, my brother-in-law’s shepherd, Miles, was one of my favorite people.

I feel an affinity for other animals at other times in my life, and pay close attention when one species in particular makes repeated appearances over the course of a few days or weeks. I love the book, Animal Speak, by Ted Andrews. He writes about animal medicine and advises his reader to stay alert to the lessons that can be learned, and what clues are to be found to help us step along our path toward inner knowing. The medicine comes to us through the spirits that greet us in the form of the hawk, the skunk, the bear, the heron, the deer, or the coyote. And many more.

But for me, 2013 so far has very much been about dogs. Through a series of circumstances, I have spent a lot of time with them. Different dogs. I have been moving around a lot and have ended up, several times, living with, getting to know, taking care of—dogs.

I’ve fallen in love with them. My heart has been melted by dogs. Even dogs who are complete strangers, whom I met while visiting a dog park with my sister and her pup, Dexter, have winnowed their way into my consciousness and heart.

So what is the animal magic dogs have brought to me? I’ve been thinking about this.

Live in the moment

A dog forgets the full bladder of dawn, the hungry tummy when the human dinner is cooking and no one has gotten around to feeding him yet, the hours of neglect in favor of the laptop, the washing machine, or the lawnmower. For a dog, history is gone forever and the now is everything. The smell of my flip flop. The flicker of laughter outside on the sidewalk. The sight of a favorite human. The feel of fingers scratching under a tilted chin. A dog’s sensations of the moment trump everything else. The past is meaningless. The future does not exist yet, so why bother?

Forgiveness

A dog’s forgiving nature relates to living in the moment, as I see it. The two dogs I am living with and caring for now, Nico (a poodle) and Chini (a lab mix), are dear, affectionate souls who love nothing more than to romp through the woods with me, flop in the sun at my feet as I read a book, lounge across me as I watch TV and scratch them languorously. They have accepted me into their lives as a surrogate mom they like a lot. Sometimes I have to leave them. Life happens. I try not to leave them for more than 5 hours at a time, if possible, and if I must, to enlist the help of a neighbor. One day, I got stuck. Frantic, I watched three hours tick by, over my deadline. When I finally pulled into the driveway, I heard their barking. Clearly I was not the only one feeling frantic. I ran at top speed into the house, patted Nico who was jumping literally 4 feet off the ground, released Chini from the crate (Nico doesn’t get crated), apologizing effusively the whole time. The dogs would not leave the house to relieve their bladders until they licked me, nuzzled me, received my loving in return. There was no canine acrimony. No pouting (I mean, admit it—a cat will pout). No attitude. Just love, and flat out forgiveness as the past was forgotten and the moment of love and liberation cherished.

Patience

My friend Terri has some dogs. Five, to be exact. Two labs. A bull dog. An Australian Silky. A mix of Chihuahua, Greyhound and something else. Somehow, it all works. Scout, one of the labs, is one of the most long-suffering, calm, unflappable beasts in the universe. He will lie on the floor while Lily, the mixed breed dog, inexplicably humps his head with abandon. He will romp all over the sprawling property with Daisy, the terrier, who is 10 times smaller than he is. They run; he waits; Daisy eventually catches up; they run some more. Invariably, they come home together. Rosie, the bulldog, has a temper. Scout refuses to be riled. Admittedly, he is not that patient when it’s close to meal time, but he is a dog, after all.

Unconditional love

Bodhi, king Poodle (very tall) with floppy hair and melting eyes, sits every day like a Buddhist monk of royal lineage, feet neatly aligned, waiting for his mom, my old friend Annie, to come home. He waits all day. Sometimes he sleeps on the couch. (He takes up half of it, but, when he wants to fit up there with two or more humans, can curl into a remarkably small package.) This hippie dog’s heart is as huge as Ghandi’s or Mother Theresa’s. While I was there for a two week visit, Bodhi tuned in to me remarkably fast. He sensed my sadness, and in a compromise borne of his own empathy, left his mother’s bed halfway through the night to come sleep on mine. He did not do this at first, but after he’d gotten to know and care about me, it became part of his action plan of love. Did he ask for anything in return? Not really. But he got my undying love. Bodhi loves without condition. Dogs know how to do that. They do not question, criticize, doubt, or demand. They may ask for pats and ear scratches, and surely find it suitable to be fed upon occasion, but in the scheme of things, they give so much more than they get.

Dignity

It’s true that dogs can be pretty goofy. They don’t have the meticulous standards of a cat. Dogs will roll in rotten raccoon guts. They’ll make a scene, barking hysterically at a leaf floating by. But I now see these behaviors as endearing in their unbridled enthusiasm for life. Bella, a Swiss Mountain dog, belonged to my friend Teri for ten years. I met her the day she came home with Teri and her two daughters, and knew her all her life till her recent death. Bella could be pretty maddening. For example, eating chocolate, reading glasses, undergarments, and a variety of other unorthodox, unhealthy, and indigestible items. But somehow, no matter what mischief she got herself into, Bella had inherent dignity. She embodied the qualities of forgiveness, unconditional love, living in the moment, and endless patience for the other dogs in her family too. But it was her dignity in the face of adversity that struck me at the end, as she gradually let go of life. Though she was not in awful pain, she grew weaker and more wobbly as tumors spread over her body. Breathing was not always easy, and it hurt to walk. But she roused herself each morning to walk the gardens with her mom, waited for her girls to come to say goodbye, and left life on her own terms.

Embracing the doggy lessons into my life is the task I’m grappling with this year of 2013. I can’t ignore the future and though my mind occasionally erases it, the past still has a strong hold on me. I can forgive easily, except the one it is most important to forgive—myself, though I am getting better at it. Patience. That’s a good one. My record is spotty there. As a teacher, I could have oodles of patience. But being patient about my own process? Not what I’m best at… yet. Patience goes with forgiveness in some ways, doesn’t it? And maybe unconditional love, too. Something easy to feel for one’s children—so hard to feel for oneself. And finally, I seek my own dignity in the face of egregious failures and errors. “Be patient with, forgive, and love yourself,” I hear the dogs say to me, “and live for today. Isn’t today wonderful? And aren’t you lucky to have it?”

Chini and Nico on a woods ramble with me.

Chini and Nico on a woods ramble with me.

Saying goodbye to Bodhi down in Virginia.
Saying goodbye to Bodhi down in Virginia.

Scout is patient with my daughter's hugs because he loves her!

Scout is patient with my daughter’s hugs because he loves her!

Chini and Nico -- the look of love.

Chini and Nico — the look of love.

Dearest Bella in her last days, the epitome of all the doggy lessons, patient, loving, forgiving, dignified, and living in the last moments available.

Dearest Bella in her last days, the epitome of all the doggy lessons, patient, loving, forgiving, dignified, and living in the last moments available.

The Bed Lesson: Remember Who You Are

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I have a new bed. Off to the bed store I went, driven by pain and blessed with an IRS check that had some flexibility within its digits. Going to Metro Mattress, New York State’s own bedding outlet, turned out to be an educational experience. (Most things in life are educational experiences of one kind or another, I find.)

I learned many things, one of which was that I could actually afford a memory foam mattress since a market glut has driven prices down from the heady heights. But the upbeat and overqualified store manager, who graduated from college with a double major in biochem and business 8 years ago and somehow wanted me to know it, taught me a thing or two about memory foam. As I lay on a floor model bed, rolling around to feel the embrace of the magic foam, he sagely informed me: “Memory foam is called that, not because it remembers your shape. Memory foam remembers its own shape, and goes back to it every time. Guaranteed for 20 years.”

Makes sense. You don’t want your bed to have a giant imprint of your body in it. But I guess a lot of people don’t get that at first, what with the name “memory foam” and all—they get confused.

Three nights so far in my new bed and I’m loving it. I woke up in the middle of the night last night (not from pain, but because of a cat settling on my chest and drooling on my chin), and realized something very cool. At two a.m. it even seemed profound.

I realized that memory foam is how I want to be. It always knows who it is. It remembers itself. It is true to its nature. Aligned with its core being.

As a human being, I also want to remember who you are. The figurative “you”—the people in my life. I want to notice, see, hear and remember you, of course. But what is harder for me is remembering me.

For one thing, I don’t remember my life. Huge swatches of life—seemingly erased from my memory banks. I’ll go to alumni weekends and hang out with elementary and high school classmates, and someone will say, “Vanessa, remember when Mrs. Southwell….” And I’ll listen and respond: “No.” They are often surprised that I don’t have such a shocking, fun, important, humorous event at my fingertips, in my mental filing cabinet. Entire years, gone. Details—huge, significant, life altering details—missing. My theory is that a few significant traumas trained my mind to delete things to avoid retraumatizing via memory. The problem is, my subconscious is very sloppy when in erase-mode and errs on the side of getting rid of too much. I guess it figures it won’t miss anything really awful that way. But the good stuff gets lost too.

But there’s more to this memory foam lesson than retaining the details of my life, though one of the resolutions I made this year was to retrain my brain to hold on to more.  There’s also that self-knowledge I think everyone would say is important to possess. But so many people don’t. It is not so easy. We all know someone about whom we might say, “She is so wise at understanding people, but gosh, why can’t she see how messed up she is?”

Remembering our true selves is easier sometimes than others. When I am feeling very threatened, uneasy, out of sync with myself or my life, I tend to ignore the signs. I forget to remember who I am.

All the good people in the world, me included, behave well. We behave in accordance with our principles and sure, that is part of remembering ourselves. But that hard look. That close look. The inward look that is akin to sitting in a room flooded with natural light and looking at your own face in a magnifying mirror. That kind of look. Where you see the sags and wrinkles, and the beauty too. (Why is it so hard to see the beauty through the flaws?)

Remembering who I am is about being able to admit that I am worthy, loving, independent, smart, talented, committed, brave, hardworking, loyal, honest, funny, insightful and capable of great joy. Easy to write down a list of adjectives, but harder to really live every day in possession of that glorious self.

Remembering who I am is also about seeing the darker truths, some of which exist in direct opposition to my strengths. That I am fragile, controlling, needy, insecure, shy, compulsive, obsessive, anxious, feel unworthy, mask my true feelings from others and am capable of going into the dark and not finding my way out. And the list goes on. None of these things is what I want to believe about myself.  I have spent much of my life in denial of them. On the other hand, I am very willing to censure myself when it is UNwarranted. The compulsive apologies. The faux self-blame: “I’m an idiot,” “I’m a jerk,” “It’s all my fault,” “I’ll take care of it.”

It’s okay to not be to blame. It doesn’t always have to be up to me. It’s also okay to be weak or scared – these are not faults. It is okay to be good, brave, and loveable – these are not faults either. And besides, it’s okay to have faults! When we are jerks, let’s say it! Accept responsibility and take action to better ourselves. But let’s not say we’re jerks when we are just being human.

With any luck, by the time I remember how to remember who I am all the time, it will be guaranteed for more than 20 years.

The Voice Inside My Head

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I got an email from myself yesterday. It was written from my iPhone in the middle of the night when apparently I woke up with an idea I did not want to forget. Here’s what I wrote (typos corrected): “Inner knowing. Big decisions. Hearing the voice. And trusting it. When you go too long ignoring it, when you finally hear it, maybe it’s off balance.”

I think if I’d woken up fully, then and there, I might have been able to channel what the heck it was I wanted to get across. But I’m going to tackle this one anyway, two days later and in the early morning light, surrounded by unpacked boxes.

My inner-knowing radar may need calibration. I am having a hard time trusting myself these days. Why? Because a year and a half ago, in the middle of my seemingly normal life, I salted my own fields, retreated, repatriated elsewhere, retreated again, and am still picking up the pieces of my heart, mind, life….

At first, my choices—all the dramatic and insistent maneuvers of the last year and a half—were made with the certain knowledge that I was doing the right thing. That feeling faded to the point that now, no matter which direction I take, it seems fraught with confusion and doubt.

In an effort to protect the innocent, I will skip over a lot of the gory details. I will focus, instead, on something that, both literally and metaphorically, defines much of my life over the last year.

Moving.

Some history. As a younger woman, living in Charlottesville, VA, I moved a lot. I could handle it. I had enough stuff to fit into an efficiency apartment, small cottage or two pick-up trucks (usually one, making two trips). Each new place was a new nest I’d feather, efficiently and cozily, knowing I could unfeather it quickly if the need arose.

Then I divested, moved back to New York to attend grad school. I lived in a room at the top of a friend’s brownstone. Monastic and luxurious at the same time. I knew what I was doing.

When I got married, suddenly the moveable feast that was my life became something more settled. With that came security, steadiness and 25 years in one house. A lovely house more than 100 years old, filled with the joyful objects of family: framed photos, a favorite omelet pan, walls of books, a collection of tablecloths and napkins. That kind of thing.  Nothing about the choice to buy a home 40 minutes from work, at the crest of a housing boom, in a rural town (I’m a city girl remember) seemed uncertain. It was right and I knew it. My life was right and I knew it.

Fast forward. When did all that certainty turn into such a pretense of certainty? But the thing about pretense is that the pretender does not know she’s pretending…. I became my role. I was the method actor of all time. Talk to my friends. They were convinced by my performance. (Well, most of them. Okay, well maybe not, but lots of people were.)

Sometimes the universe (or my inner voice) tries so hard to get my attention and I just power through life, ignoring the signs. So one day I found myself moving out of the house of 25 years. Moving out of the marriage. Moving. Like the Tin Man, once my rusty joints were oiled, I careened wildly, leaving quite a wake.

After my daughter was firmly ensconced back at college, I looked around the home I’d made so lovingly for so long, and was ready (wasn’t I?) to leave it. I started to pack. Box after box. When I left, my estranged husband was to move back in and take possession. Did I let the grief of it all penetrate my plan-addled mind? Did I allow for one minute my inner knowing to communicate with my inner idiot long enough to wake me up so that I could, at the very least, process what was happening?

I packed. I loaded. I moved far far away for my sabbatical year. (Yes, it seemed a good idea to take a break from my job of 25 years at the same time I left my marriage of 26 years. Not to mention my home. Where was my inner knowing? I just don’t know.)

Well, things did not work out. I did not make it a year. By Christmas I was packing again. (There is a lot of story I’m leaving out here; can you tell?) But the point is, I had been so sure. The trauma of changing gears so soon again after the first move was great. Many insistent dreams were showing their true colors as fantasy, idealism, delusion. But, with every box I packed on Christmas Eve, my inner voice was clear.

Or was it?

At this point, the sight of a box taped shut with my handwriting on it— “Kitchen/serving platters,” “framed photos,” “books,” “sweaters and lampshade”—creates a visceral reaction in me. Sorrow, panic, comfort, doubt, curiosity and a glimmer of hope all swirl around and make me nauseated.

Now, I’m moving again. Unpacking. Again. I have made a decision based on the advice given to me by my heart, my head, my hopes and what remains, essentially, an optimistic outlook. But I cry a lot. I don’t trust myself any more.

After so many years of dishonoring the inner voice, I decided to do whatever the inner voice said, without question. Neither approach worked that well. Is there more than one inner voice? Is one my friend and one a saboteur? How to tell them apart?

All that being said, I know that I have a deep well of wisdom within me. We all do. I am the only potential saboteur here. I am the only one who can block the voice from reaching me.

A friend of mine recently said, “You may not trust yourself, but I trust you. I trust that whatever you do it is for your highest good.” I needed to hear that.

This year, my highest good has been served, apparently, by uprooting myself, repeatedly. By humbling myself as I learned at last how insecure I really am; how much my pretense of certainty was a tool of survival but not a path for growth. Okay, inner knowing– I’m ready to listen.

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The Broken Pause Button

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Negative space, I remember from high school art class, is the space between the stuff of this world. In a painting, the shapes between objects are created by negative space. I figure the world of sound has its own negative space—the quiet between the noise. The pause.

Of course, there is rarely utter quiet. Unless you are hermetically sealed in an isolation chamber, you will hear the traffic below, the bird or cricket speaking, the low frequency buzzing of the lights, the fridge, the neighbor’s TV, the thump of the bass line from a radio zipping by on a midnight joyride.

Right now, I sit alone in a kitchen. The dryer hums rhythmically in the next room. I hear a high pitched buzz from somewhere in the room and can’t pin it down. My stomach just rumbled, almost drowning out the rest.  But in my world, this is the equivalent of silence.

I worked most of my career in a school, where silence is rare. A lively classroom is about dialogue and sharing, singing, asking questions, excited “Eureka” outbursts, and the muted conversation of collaborating learners. As a teacher, I had to learn to pause, though. Even when asked a direct question, if I paused, a lightbulb often went on for the student. If I’d spoken immediately, I might have derailed that moment, and prevented a neural connection from forming. When I asked a question, I would force myself to pause long enough, and teach others to resist filling the silence, so that thinking could happen.

But it’s not just thinking that takes place in the pause. It’s breathing. Expanding. Sometimes the pause lets us practice the oh-so-difficult non-thought.

My mind is virtually always full of buzz, like this “quiet” house. But in that blissful moment of waking, when my mind is momentarily unaware of much at all except the sensation of lightening from unconsciousness to consciousness, I sometimes don’t know where I am. I forget the ache in my heart. I don’t miss anything, or long for anything. I don’t feel burdened by tasks. I am anxiety free.

I wonder how long it is in actual time before the thoughts pop in. For me, it is such a minute fraction of a second that it is incredible that I even notice the empty pause at the beginning of my waking day. It is infinitesimally brief. I guess this is what meditation is supposed to gain for us. An extension of that moment. The ability to push the pause button on the soundtrack inside our heads.

Thoughts and utterances need to sit in the back seat and let mommy drive. The unbidden thought, “How can I make my deadline?” (Negative programming.) “Am I doing the right thing?” (Fear.) “Did that deposit clear yet?” (Anxiety.) “How will I get that stain out of my sweater?” (Busywork.)

The unbidden words, “I’m sorry.” (But I didn’t do anything.) “I’ll do it!” (Control freak volunteer.) “Do you really want to wear those shoes with that skirt?” (Judge and jury.)

Where’s the pause button?

Mine broke.