We Can Do Hard Things, Wednesday 3/18/20

Hey, Readers. How's it going? Are you keeping it sexy out there, social distancing?

Speaking of sexy, I read an article about a nun who's basically been social distancing for 29 years in a convent. She had three pieces of advice:

1. Establish structure.
2. Be intentional and love others.
3. Use the time for self-reflection and relaxation.

(I've formally renounced Catholicism in my very own creation: The Eighth Sacrament or Renunciation of the Catholic Church, but I've had a life-long love of nuns -- the good ones -- so I'm trying to take her advice).

In the morning when I open my eyes, I try not to think about what I've thought about for the last three-plus years (I'll leave it to your own imagination but it has something to do with November 9, 2016), and instead I put my hand over my heart and say metta for all of us:

May we be happy, healthy and peaceful.

May no harm come to us.

May no difficulties come to us.

May no problems come to us.

May we always meet with success.

May we also have patience, courage and understanding to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems and failures in life.

Structure:

I get up and make my bed.

I take care of Sophie.

I begin my job teaching middle school and high school kids English literature and language arts.

I take care of Sophie.

I make breakfast and lunch and eat them. I feed Sophie.

I let Oliver take Sophie out for a walk.

I go out for a walk.

I take care of Sophie.

I take care of Sophie.

I catch up with all of you.

I make dinner.

I eat dinner and feed Sophie.

I prepare my lessons for tomorrow.

I sit with Carl and watch something on the teevee or just talk.

I take care of Sophie.

I go to bed and rest.

Being Intentional and Loving Others:

I check in with a lot of people every single day via text, phone and email. How lucky we are to have technology, right?

I tell Oliver and Carl how grateful I am that they are helping me and how much I love them for being who they are and being here with me and with Sophie.

I tell Sophie how much I love her and how difficult all of this is for everyone. Taking care of Sophie (see above) is a form of meditation. Honestly. It is.

I have cut out complaining as much as I can -- an intention most difficult for this old, crabby, sharp-tongued human

I bake bread and cookies and lovingly make food that is nourishing and looks good. Today I pulled something out of the freezer that looked like soup, but I believe it was gravy? Good thing I didn't feed it to Sophie? I am intentional in maintaining a sense of humor. I remember how goddamn fortunate we are to have purchased enough food to carry us through the next couple of weeks.

I paid my saintly childcare worker ahead of time and told her to stay home with her own family. I was able to do this because of the help I receive from my parents and from the glorious state of California.

I talked to my sisters, one of whom was feeling particularly agitated this morning. I reminded her that we should always acknowledge our fears, that bad things are happening and might happen to us. These are facts. I humbly say that it's been my experience that acknowledging things as they are or could be is very helpful in distilling fear and instilling acceptance and calm.

Use the time for self-reflection and relaxation:

See above for self-reflection. I have done hard things. We can do hard things.

I'm working on the relaxation but have been, so far, unsuccessful.

What I've Been Doing

Photo by the inimitable Carl Jackson,

I bet you're wondering what I've been doing since I last posted when the year was young -- only two days -- and so filled with promise and resolution and new beginnings. Well, we're eighteen days in, Reader, and so far my favorite thing about the new year is writing 2020 instead of 2019. It looks better, it sounds better, and I'm hoping it gets better.

So, what have I been doing?

1. Reading: I've read Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney which I really liked (she's just such a readable writer), but I didn't like it nearly as much as last year's Normal People. I'm still reading The Water Dancer by Ta Nehisi Coates and finding it difficult. Dare I say he's a better non-fiction writer (beyond brilliant) than fiction writer? As the kids say, IMHO. I'm almost finished with the sensational The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah Broome. It's so good. In the bathroom I've got this great book called Sharp by Michelle Dean.  The subtitle is "Ten Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion," and so far I've gotten through the first profile on Dorothy Parker. I'm not one of those people who spends a lot of time in the bathroom on the toilette or doing my toilette, but I do like to pick up something interesting and short to read that I can come back to and easily pick up where I left off. I've also just begun to read Garth Greenwell's Cleanness because two of my writing mentors recommended it, and the editor of MGDB* touted it as well. I read Greenwell's earlier book, so I'm expecting this to be as good. The sex is very, very graphic. By the way.
2. Going to movies: I've seen "1917," which sucked me in and under as I've always been partial to the Great War, if one can be partial toward wars at all. Aside from sitting on the edge of my seat throughout the movie and being enthralled by the cinematography and the two beautiful co-stars, the main feeling I had was a sort of bemused rage and incredulous sorrow. WE MUST DO ANYTHING WE CAN TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO MORE WARS. Honestly, nearly every war movie I've ever watched has manipulated me into this emphatic imperative. Wars are hideous. There is no glory or honor in them. They are madness and insane, and anyone who justifies killing on a grand scale like that is spouting propaganda. Speaking of wars, I've also seen my beloved Terence Malick's "The Hidden Life" which is another war movie, but it's about goodness -- about what it means to be deeply moral and good. I saw Goddess Greta Gerwig's "Little Women" and was utterly enchanted by it, transported in exactly the same way I was transported by the book -- any book, actually -- as a very young girl. That took me by surprise as I had never seen any of the other renditions and only had the book to compare it to. The movie was just as much about writing and reading as it was about being a sister and a woman chafing at societal constraints. I absolutely loved it. I've watched some Netflix and Amazon stuff, too -- most memorably, "The Two Popes" which was more a story of two human beings than the weird fuckery of the Catholic Church. I think that's because Anthony Hopkins and especially Jonathan Pryce were exceptional. Reader, I still can't abide the Catholic Church and that dislike would include Francis, as he is still THE POPE of an institution that I believe should be dismantled.
3. Teaching at two different schools: I have around 60 students that range in age from 13 to 18. The majority are in a small, private, ultra-religious high school here in Los Angeles that is, at the very least, giving me a lot of material for a future memoir. No more need be said or will be said. Stay tuned, though. I have a few students in another, very highly specialized school, each of whom I adore. Truly. One of my students began reading Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and on a day when I wasn't even teaching her, she poked her head in my office and said, Oh my god! I love the book you picked out for me! I was having a particularly difficult time finding something for another of my students to read and relate to -- and then I thought of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. The kid is sucked in and under and very, very into "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own." Reader, this thrills me to no end. 
4. Having my mind blown without the use of psychotropics: I attended a 12-hour Holotropic Breathwork workshop last Saturday. I haven't fully processed the experience and don't have the words to describe the journey I went on during the 3 hours of breathing I did, blindfolded and  carried by incredible music that filled the room and my body with sound. You can read about holotropic breathwork on the world wide webs. I released a whole lot of shit and am still feeling the effects in a positive way over a week later.
5. The tedious work of what Divorce Lawyer World calls "Discovery." I will say no more except that I have been set into a Matrix, a strange and mad world of no reason, where everything is transactional and my worth measures in negative numbers. It's a good thing that one of the hallucinations I experienced during the Holotropic Breathwork session was my generous body as Mother Earth, merged with the indigo Cosmos and lit by stars, my children rushing toward me as beings of power, my pelvis on fire and the only thing to fear a strange, searing pain that ran up and down my left side but, allowed to speak for itself, was released and transformed into dance. Honestly.

* My God-damn book, which I have worked on only in my brain with not a thing on paper to show for it for over a year.

 

Dispatch from Los Angeles, via Holland and Italy*

dedicated to my comrades, particularly Sandra

When my friends and family check in with me of late, I reply with the above Bitmoji. Those of you who live on another, better planet, or who don't own a smart phone, or who disdain pictorial representations of oneself or, worse, words, who bemoan the dwindling use of language and/or have no idea what a Bitmoji is or even an app, should stop reading now. I wish I lived on another planet, wish I didn't own a smart phone, disdain pictorial representations of myself and, worse, of words, and I bemoan the dwindling use of language, but I do love the Bitmoji app and find endless delight finding exact representations of myself thinking certain thoughts, having certain emotions and otherwise living. 

It's going. My uncle is recovering very well here at the house, and Sophie is on her second day of her sixth month of intravenous immunoglobulin infusions. I have successfully navigated the World of Sub-Sub Acute Rehab by scheduling my uncle's health aide, bathing, OT and PT home health visits. The highlight of my week was when I paid $1.69 for his medication which filled my tiny little mother mind™with wonder, as you can imagine.

If you can't imagine, I wondered what our lives might have been like if Sophie's medications cost $1.69 over the years, as opposed to at least $70 after countless hours of wrangling and upwards of $500 when the wrangling doesn't work. All thinking by the tiny little mother mind™ is rhetorical, of course. Socialized medicine works effectively, I guess, for some of the country but could, apparently, be disastrous for the rest of us (I don't want no government coming between me and my doctor!), so we continue to grease the wheels of capitalism, the free market and Big Pharma in the labyrinthine corridors of the greatest country on earth's medical system, Brazil.

What else?

Speaking of capitalization, I've CAPITALIZED on the increased caregiver duties by increasing my meditation practice which means at this point that I've started meditating off and on all day long. Reader, I can already feel those neurons in my brain firing off peace as opposed to chaos.

The trick (for me) is to be truly mindful of even the shitty stuff, to acknowledge it in whatever way you need, to dwell on it, to muck around in it, to weep profusely over it, to wallow in it and to take your time doing it. It's only then that it rolls off your back, maybe even disappears. I say trick because, let's face it -- I generally feel completely unhinged and at the edge of consciousness, especially when I learn at 7:15 in the morning that Saint Mirtha will not be coming in, that I won't be able to attend my friend Tanya's screening, that the IVIG nurse is going to be early and -- well -- I won't bore you.

So, that's the dispatch from Los Angeles. The upcoming week includes continued caregiver duties on two fronts but also more teaching of English literature, a Clippers game with my love and, hopefully, a trip to Portland next weekend, planned for months.

* This title is a nod to those who were subjected in the early days of their child's disability or diagnosis to the treacly treatise by a certain writer who compared the journey of special needs parent-dom to landing in Holland instead of Italy. Don't ask.

Still

Somewhere in Durham, NC, 1982

I recently found a bunch of letters from friends and lovers in a box at the back of my closet. I also found a trove of negatives from a documentary photography class I took as a sophomore at UNC in 1982. I'd forgotten about the family that I visited over a period of three months and chronicled and with whom I became friends. I moved away. Still I remember developing them in the darkroom, my hands immersed in the bath, the slippery feel of the paper blooming shadows and light, the hands of the boy I loved mixed up with mine, his mouth.

Saturday morning. Complacencies of the peignoir.

Still. What makes me "happy" is fifteen minutes in bed meditating, then reading about authors I love and their new books, then hearing Sophie in the room down the hall humming again after more than a month of silence. Also, Costa Rican coffee from the man I love who is out there somewhere taking photos of burrowing owls.











Field Guide

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious dement of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That's all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Tony Hoagland

The Struggle

After rain

Trump's grand and vulgar self-absorption is inviting all of us to examine our own selfishness. His ignorance calls us to attend to our own blind spots. The fears that he stokes and the isolation he promotes goad us to be braver, more generous.

James S. Gordon, founder of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine 

The whipsaw of anger and sitting in stillness.

A long time ago Sophie began to seize and I began to resist.

A long time ago I placed the baby in the middle of the bed while she screamed and got into the shower, turned on the water and crouched there under it. The word drown covers both the sound and my life, in those moments.

A long time ago I also rocked my baby and recited a mantra as she screamed for hours and hours. I've written that sentence, juggling those words, over and over for the last two decades. Sometimes I write more than twenty years. A while back I wrote over ten years ago. 

While the baby screamed I recited the words of Thich Naht Hanh over and over, aloud.  Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I smile.

When I feel most angry I sit with it feeling its flood. Lately, I go to water, swim back and forth, fluid and cutting.

Anger both cuts out the noise and is the noise. It is both distraction and diversion and the means to focus and sharpen.

Sophie and her seizures prepared me for resistance and for anger.

The peace that came was not something to work on, that I worked on but was, rather, imposed.

The story of the angel and Jacob, wrestling on a hill.



A little East of Jordan (145)

A little East of Jordan, 

Evangelists record, 

A Gymnast and an Angel 

Did wrestle long and hard – 

Till morning touching mountain – 

And Jacob, waxing strong, 

The Angel begged permission 

To Breakfast – to return! 

Not so, said cunning Jacob! 

"I will not let thee go 

Except thou bless me" – Stranger! 

The which acceded to – 

Light swung the silver fleeces 

"Peniel" Hills beyond, 

And the bewildered Gymnast 

Found he had worsted God!

Emily Dickinson

Gaugin, The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel), 1888

Tonglen

Because there's this country, richer beyond any yet bankrupt in all the ways that count --

Because there's Syria --

Because it's the anniversary of Sandy Hook --

Because our planet is being plundered --

Because my own heart is bitter --






Tonglen:

Breathing in the suffering of the world and others, breathing out love and compassion. Taking on the world's suffering seems ridiculous, except that it's not.

I am tempted to take care of my own, to tend my own garden, to go within as without seems dark. The hammering next door, the squirrels' chatter over a tangerine, the way the sun slanted through the window this morning.

The sense of the country going to pot. Our country, the wretched led by the morally bankrupt. The impossibility for me of not looking out, not being engaged and informed. The impossibility for me of only looking within. Illusion.

My reliance on meditation, specifically tonglen, forgotten and remembered. Relief.

Acknowledging misery -- the world's and my own -- is just that. Acknowledgement. There is peace in acknowledgement. Breathing out love and compassion.

Love is a verb.

Hospital Thoughts, Day Four

Aside from the putty and dirty lavender-colored walls in the hospital, I'm intrigued by the hospital gown print. Sophie almost looks like a Modigliani with her narrow face made even sharper by the tightly-wrapped turban. My mind wanders here and there during the interminable hours spent in the hospital. The hours are actually not interminable, though, as much as -- well -- hours. They literally while away. Hospital Time is something that I have struggled to articulate for as long as I've spent time in hospitals, and I want to do some justice to what, exactly, it means. The big round clock with the black numbers, hangs on the wall about four feet from the big black television and about six inches above the dry erase board that Robert the Nurse Assistant (when he introduced himself the first day, I thought he said I'm Robert the Narcissist, so I laughed and asked is it all about you? and he laughed and said that too) scribbles the names of who's attending us. The big black clock shows me every time I look up and glance at it (why? why do I glance at it? what does it matter?) what time it is, and I'm startled each time by how much time has gone by. I don't know how to explain this, really, and you probably won't understand unless you've spent some time in a hospital room. The time doesn't go slowly, really. It's not even boring. It's like being in a hospital makes a mockery of time. I've been here five hours! I'll think when I glance up at the clock, and in what seems like six minutes later, I've been here eight hours! It's really kind of astonishing. I feel the opposite of wired which would ordinarily be calm but it's not that either. Maybe it's a third state of being, a dimension all its own. I'm not complaining, just musing. During these hours not much goes on, which I imagine is something I should be thankful for as any number of things could be absolutely horrific in a hospital. The nurses pop in and out and the nurse's assistant, the one who takes vitals (weird expression, right?) tells me about her doll collection and then shows me a picture of the silicone toddlers that she dresses up and puts in a stroller and takes for a walk. I look up at the clock and notice that six hours have gone by as I spoon a pale macaroni and cheese into Sophie's mouth. I hear through the wall a man's voice saying Bend your knees, that's right, that's good. When I gaze out the large window facing east, I see some snow-capped mountains which I guess is nice, but really it seems like a mirage. The mirage would include the rest of you out there, living your lives, rain and sunshine, snow-capped, hours ticking and most probably defined where ours are blurry, cloud-covered.

When I think of the time, I think of bottle and a tiny ship suspended on a wave that does not move.

This morning while driving to the hospital I thought about meditation and how I am making a sort of meditation from this life. I was telling a friend that I'm not a chanter, but if I could make everything I do a kind of chant it was all I could do. Sort of an undoing. One of the nurses yesterday claimed that there's a meaning for everything, but you know what? I disagree. I don't think meaning is inherent in anything, really, nor is the absence of it. It's funny how we look for meaning and then find it. I think I'm making meaning which doesn't mean I'm in control but rather exercising some kind of sublime creative agency, and Sophie's situation helps to give me license to do so. Does that make sense? Of course I feel despair and depression, too, and that's okay. See how I'm whiling away the hours?





Bless your hearts for reading. Sophie is okay. She'll hopefully go home tomorrow, although we're not quite certain. The two doctors who've been treating her are pretty awesome in that they really include us as partners. Maybe not equal partners since I'm basically calling the shots, but they're smart and humble and one even told me that I was the bravest mother he'd met. I told him that because he's not a pediatric neuro, he probably hasn't met many mothers because the ones I know are so kick-ass brave, it'd take your breath away. They wish they could help us more, and so do I, but I'm struck by what seems to be a real shift in the neurologist/patient relationship. Since I haven't been in the hospital with Sophie for so many years, it's marked, and that's a good thing. I like to think that the work I and many of my peers have done for decades is finally making a difference, that medical students are being educated in empathy and humility. That or they're taking electives in theater and performance.

Calculated Waiting: On Consulting Chinese Oracles

I'm pretty sure most people think me crazy to regularly and confidently consult the I Ching for answers when I am stumped by life's assault. I say assault because that's what it feels like, sometimes. Life. The seizure life. Epilepsy life. I've delved into the Chinese oracle for just about thirty years, ever since I took Chinese literature and language classes in college and learned to ask a question, throw the coins and interpret the answer using my copy of Wilhelm and Bayne's Book of Changes. I also use R. L. Wing's The I Ching Workbook to clarify and simplify the reading. The workbook says in its introduction that

the search for a solution to the mystery underlying the constant motion and change in the universe has spawned both the science of physics and the earlier science of metaphysics. Physics attempts to express mathematically the physical laws dominating the universe. Metaphysics attempts to express mathematically the effects of these physical laws on human affairs...

The tao literally means the way or gate through which all things move. To move with the tao is to be in a state that Christianity refers to as "grace." The Chinese philosophers were fond of comparing taoist behavior with that of water: It flows onward always. It penetrates crevices, it wears down resistance, it stops to fill deep places and then flows on. Always it holds to its true nature and always it flows with the forces in the cosmos.

Although the tao implies the path of least resistance, it is often a very difficult path to accept and follow. In following the tao, the individual can find his place in the cosmos and harmonize with it. At this point he can exercise true free will as he makes real decisions based upon real possibilities. Here "The Book of Change" can illuminate the individual by revealing immediate tendencies in the cosmos.

So what does all of this mean to me? Well, even after twenty-two years, I find myself in a sort of suppressed panic (it used to be overt) when Sophie goes through downturns like she seems to be in now. I won't belabor how difficult it is to watch her have more and bigger seizures than she's had in years. I feel terrible for her and, as always, helpless to fix things, figure them out. I call all my wisest friends, do what I call my Grand Rounds, and pick their brains. I lie next to Sophie and place my hand over her head and allow myself to go absolutely still and calm. I imagine some kind of innate healing power in my fingers, not mine but rather the universe's, and I coax it out. I know on some level, though, that there is no fixing or figuring and that I have to find this small and still part of myself where, if I abide there, with that, something will unfold. I wait.

This has always been true for me.

Today, I asked the I Ching how I should do this, how I should remember this place, this small still part and how I should get there. I rolled the coins six times and drew out the fifth hexagram.

Called Hsu, the upper trigram is water over heaven, and the lower trigram is fire over lake. The translation of Hsu is Calculated Waiting.

Have I lost you? I don't have the time or inclination to really explain all of this to you, but know that the principle of synchronicity (which the great psychologist C.J. Jung explains in the forward to the Wilhelm/Baynes edition) is at work once again. If you are skeptical, so be it, but I gently suggest you try it for yourself and see what happens.

Here are a few lines that jumped out at me from the reading that I take quite seriously:

A period of CALCULATED WAITING must pass before the cosmos can address itself to your needs. Many areas are undergoing significant change. 

That which you desire is caught in this change. In essence, it is a dangerous time, since the elements involved are not directly under your control. You may be facing some kind of threat or awaiting the outcome of a decision that could greatly affect you. If you worry about it you will grow inwardly confused and succumb to chaos and fear. You will waste valuable energy through agitation. When the time does come to act, your judgement may be impaired.

In order to attain your aim, you must wait to act until circumstances are in your favor. Inwardly bide your time and nourish and strengthen yourself for the future. Through careful observation attempt to see things without illusions or fears. Face the facts. If you are aware of your shortcomings and advantages, you will know what to do when the time comes. Ultimately you will meet with success.

The time of CALCULATED WAITING will put your confidence to a test. It is now that you must make a show of confidence. Do not express your doubts about the past or the future. Indulge totally in the present. Keep your thoughts and words on a positive note and maintain an assured and cheerful attitude.  

They also give me a kind of preternatural peace.

 

 

 

 

 

A French Or Maybe Italian Movie

Moi, 16 months old and dead serious

About 6:15 tonight, after I'd dragged in a couple of bags of stuff from Target and a giant box of diaper wipes, after I'd realized that the cashier had not packed the red mat for the porch and that I'd have to go back to Target to pick it up tomorrow, after The Husband (yes, there's still The Husband) had put the food down on the table and The Brothers and The Husband began arguing about baseball statistics, not noticing the stink emanating from The Daughter whom I promptly took back to her room to change, and after I noticed that everyone was eating and no chair had been pulled up to the table for me -- well, just at that very moment after, The Angry and Very Resentful Woman took over my body. She hissed some very dispiriting words, something to the order of being sick and tired of this, just so sick and tired of this, and the Arguing Men and Boy looked dopey and confused and said What? but The Angry and Very Resentful Woman had enough sense to just walk away and out of the house into the rain  (the house was so damn hot! why is the house so damn hot?), and she lifted her face to the rain, the cool drops a cliche (like a French movie! or maybe Italian!), if she'd been sugar, she would have dissolved right there into a puddle, also a cliche, but she wasn't sweet, she was angry and resentful. There are reasons to be angry and resentful, and then there are reasons and more reasons, but reason never got angry and resentful anywhere. The Angry and Very Resentful Woman who had taken over my body walked back into the house and changed her wet shirt, lay down on her back and closed her eyes. It would take hours to quell it, and what's the good of subjugation (a remnant of the partriarchy, the mansplaining! she'd listened to it all day! the justifications for violence! the guns! that ugly little man named Paul or Rand or Ayn who married that tiny little girl who did poetry in motion in college when you knew her!)? What's the good of subjugating anger and resentment?

Better to lay your peasant body down alone, to unwrap your arms from the embrace that keeps them in, the anger and resentment, to spread your arms and embrace the space around your body, instead, to melt, to melt, the sweetness a puddle right there on your bed.

Fall back

I've taken a mindfulness meditation challenge with a great group here in Los Angeles called Insight LA. I've sort of pledged to sit -- to meditate -- twice a day for 15-30 minutes. I say "sort of" because I balk at the "challenge" wording, the pledging, all that jazz. I should probably meditate on my resistance to certain types of language. This morning, though, I set my little timer that begins and ends with a gong (a beautiful, resonant sound) and did it. I haven't been formally practicing of late, although I would say that mindfulness meditation is so much a part of my life that I'm aware of it nearly always. The act of sitting quietly and paying attention to breath, to watching the mind wander and then gently bringing it back to breath -- well -- it's an experience or a way of being like no other. This morning, when the gong went off, I lay back down in my bed and fell asleep for three more hours, and during that sleep I dreamt vividly, something else I haven't done in so long I really can't remember. Fall. Fall back.

Mindfulness

With cousins in  Florida, sometime in the late 1960s

The sense of being far away is not something to overcome but to respect and include in loving awareness. This is the way to work with our difficulties, to include them and learn from them. Feelings that seem like adversaries can become our allies when they’re included, and mindfulness offers us nobility and joy as we open to what is present completely.

In fact, there can be something more authentic in the times you feel something’s missing than when you feel satisfied. The more deeply you practice, the more you realize how much there is to learn. Even the self that would judge your experience is not a problem to be fixed, but to be held with compassion as part of the path.

This is a way to keep loving awareness in the center of your life, even when it feels far away. Remember, where you are now is the perfect place to practice. 

Trudy Goodman

Founder and Guiding Teacher of Insight LA

from The Perfect Place to Practice

 

How Not to Figure Things Out

dedicated to Mary, Tanya, Heather and my Mom

It occurred to me the other day that I'm not going to figure things out. I probably use that expression many times a day in various forms -- I can't figure it out, You'll figure it out, Figure it out! I need to figure it out, Just figure it out! -- and certainly popular culture is filled with tips on how to do it or on how other people have done it. I can figure out a math problem or how to work my new phone or what to do about Oliver's schooling or how to help Henry navigate high school, but there's no figuring out the really big life things. I'm not saying that things just happen without effort and thought, but it's a rare big life thing that is figured out in the sense that one comes to an answer in a direct way. Does this make sense? Because there's a lot that is unbloggable now in my life, I might sound vague, but what I can draw an analogy to is my early years with Sophie, right after she was diagnosed and probably for the next ten years or so when I was always trying to figure things out. This meant many active hours of brain anguish, of being on all the time, in the event I'd miss something. When I say that, I mean it quite literally. I spent conscious and unconscious hours worried that if I didn't do something or think something or research something or talk to someone about something, I'd miss the chance to fix Sophie. In other words, I would miss figuring things out. I remember with an almost PTSD-like intensity the cover of a Time Magazine article about child development and the brain, how at age three, a window shut on language. I believe that has been debunked since then as we've discovered the brain's capacity for amazing feats of regeneration, but the sound of that window slamming haunted me for years. I spent a lot of time trying to figure things out before that window slammed and well afterward.

When I sat down to write this morning, I looked at the collection you see in the photo and realized that I'd made a sort of shrine, and that gazing often blankly at these things helps me to center myself and channel all the energies I have in me and outside of me to create and to write. There's a card there at the back that a blogger friend who's become one of my best friends sent me. There's a little jade statue of the Buddha, and a tiny tin of holy dirt from a shrine in New Mexico that my friend Tanya brought me. There's a bit of driftwood from the beach in Victoria where I spent a week last year, a week given to me by Heather McHugh and her organization Caregifted. There's a little house behind it with the words A house without books is like a room without windows. These objects sit on a box of postcards from Penguin that replicate one hundred book covers, and in front is a glass coaster that my mother gave me years ago with a sweet saying. I always feel joy and content when I write, to tell you the truth, and that's true for both online and off-line writing, but particularly so when I sit in a sort of reverence and allow it to just happen. I hesitate to use the word channeling for all its over-used weight, but I'm not sure what else to call the release of fingers on keys, the rush of language and words falling into place. I'm not figuring things out, though, and it's not about me.

I get a lot of emails and telephone calls from people with little children who are new on the path of disability or epilepsy. I'm always struck by their bravery and by their sense of urgency as much as by their anguish. I recognize all of their emotions because I've had them or continue to have them. When I cast my memory back to my own early days with Sophie, I remember the visceral details of trying to figure things out, but I don't remember much of who I was or how it happened, or even how I did it. I want to say, sometimes, you won't figure things out, but even twenty years later, I don't have the wisdom -- or presumption -- to do so.

If I could, I'd tell them how not to figure things out, but I haven't figured that out either, other than to treat with reverence and love this place inside of me that persists in opening to possibility.

Seahorse Days of August

August 2010

I can sit in the cheap garden chair, coffee in a yellow cup on the arm and the small fountain that Oliver built gurgling beside me, reading. I hear the yips of the neighbor's dog, lift my head to wonder from where the constant hum of a chain-saw comes, notice my irritation and notice it drift away.

If we wish to live well in the world, not just amble along through life without any examination of our being, then we must engage in the effort to find meaning in our lives. In order to do this, we have to find a way to balance our own interiority with an empathic recognition of others. Without this balance, we can become invested in our needs and performance while forgetting that there are others in the animal, vegetable, and mineral world. Or we can become so outwardly directed, perhaps even to the point of interfering, as to fail to see our own shortcomings. We must ask: for whom do we practice? We see the paradox of self in the world, focusing inwardly in order to manifest outwardly. The inward look is the outward view. Ultimately we practice for others as our inward polishing manifests itself as good action in our activities.

-from Following the Way of Ryokan in the Fall 2014 issue of Tricycle Magazine


There is goodness and gratitude everywhere. Yesterday, as I made my way through the day, caring for my children and worrying about Sophie, I thought much, probably too much, about the criticism thrown at me. I tried to give it space, to open myself up not to the words, the venom in the words,  but to my own reaction to the words. That takes away the sting in the same way that breathing through physical pain lessens its impact, if not the pain itself. Does that make sense? Last night, this post, one that I wrote in response to overwhelming generosity afforded me in the midst of that person's horrific pain, appeared on my Facebook feed. I will take this as a sign of grace and am stunned, again, by the wonder of the world and this community.

Urban Observations and Musings on Mindfulness and Disappearance

I left the CVS last night at dusk and on the way out listened to a woman, on her way in, lamenting the death of Robin Williams. It took a moment for me to realize that she was not all in her right mind, as they say, because she was asking questions of no one in particular. Robin Williams is dead? Was it a suicide or did his wife kill him? For not doing the diapers? I made tentative eye contact with her, and she asked Do you want to change dirty diapers?

As I walked home, I realized that in my purse I carried nearly $1,000 of a powerful narcotic but that I was hardly the richer for it. I also carried a $12 razor and $20 razor blades for my older son. Narcotics and razor blades nestled in a brown leather purse.



Today I took Sophie to her every three month or so neurology appointment. While I really like and admire The Neurologist, have I told you how much I hate my life when I have to go to hospitals and appointments with Sophie? You'd think at this point that I'd be sort of numb to it all, but I'm not. At the very least, my mindfulness practice enables me to identify that the physical nausea, elevated heartbeat, stifled whimpers that would so much like to eke out of my mouth, and pinprick of tears behind my eyeballs are all just -- there. I can just acknowledge them as visitors, in a way, not suppress them or hate them or indulge them. It's very precise work, though, to do that -- one of those tightrope walks that I've told ya'll about. I have no idea why I have this problem, if you can call it that. At worst, I fantasize about various ways I could disappear -- not so much suicidal thoughts or death wishes but just an end to it all.


Those legs in that photo belong to three women who were in the waiting room in the neurology department this morning. Directly behind them is a sign on the wall in large letters, spelling out the word:

C O N Q U E S T

Whenever we go to see The Neurologist, I stare at that word and the plaques below it, memorializing the generosity of various people who, I guess, have helped to conquer neurological disease. I rarely feel gratitude when I look on this but rather am reminded, again, of how much I hate the medical world and, particularly, war imagery. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that I'm not waiting to see a doctor in Africa -- let's say -- where the walls and floors are speckled and splattered with Ebola-infected blood. The world is vast and cruel, my own issues and problems dwarfed. I just hate the idea of conquest and warriors and all that lingo. I make myself laugh by thinking it should read:

D A M N A T I O N

or maybe:

H O L Y  S H I T

I recognized a kindred spirit in one of those three ladies attached to the legs in the photo. She was an old woman, flanked by another old woman who was her sister and a middle-aged woman who was her daughter. I know these things because the three of them spoke loudly throughout our wait to see The Neurologist. The kindred spirit woman was the one who had some sort of problem, and while her daughter and sister were relentlessly cheerful in the manner of those who aren't sick, she said at some point or another that rather than have the test, which I think was a spinal puncture, she wanted to just go ahead and die. The middle-aged daughter remarked that her mother was so negative, and the sister, who was markedly thinner and sported a bouffant hairdo and make-up, opened her mouth in a sort of gasp and declared, Well, then, who is going to take care of me when I am older? I sort of wanted to get up and go over to the sick one and put my hand on her shoulder, tell the other two to knock off the positive shit and then say, Let's get the hell out of here, but just about then, the male nurse called out Sophie's name so I got up and reluctantly walked away. I did hear my kindred spirit tell her sister testily that she did have two daughters to help her out, but the sister said, It's not the same thing, and you need to cooperate and have a better attitude and then I was out of range, on my way in to juggling Sophie while the nurse tried to get her blood pressure and to walking her up and down the bland hallways waiting for The Neurologist to appear. 

I confess that the fantasizing happened in the parking lot, after the appointment, when I forgot where my car was parked, an occurrence that happens so regularly as to belie my otherwise formidable memory. Again, mindfulness practice helps, but oh, to disappear.

Saturday Night West Coast Re-Post: Continuing the Dialogue about Mindfulness

So, today I drove to Santa Monica with my friend Shannon to listen to the great Buddhist psychotherapist, Dr. Mark Epstein. I imagine many of you know his books -- there's Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart and there's Psychotherapy without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective, and also Thoughts Without a Thinker. His new book is called The Trauma of Everyday Life. After being introduced by the equally great Jack Kornfield, Epstein read many passages from his new book, told us stories and led us in a 10 minute sitting meditation that included turning ON our cell phones and then listening throughout those ten minutes. Mindful listening to the beeps and whirs and pings and rings from hundreds of people's cell phones was incredibly interesting and, at least for me, hilarious. It made me realize, again, that we are not our thoughts, that the values and judgments we impose on circumstances are just that: impositions. I'm not sure that I articulated that in the best way -- what struck me is that while we normally are highly irritated when we hear cell phones go off in quiet rooms, looking at them as intrusive, when instructed to do so, to just listen and almost welcome the sounds, the experience became light, easy, even funny.

So where's the re-post? I thought the following post from almost exactly a  year ago, that I found when I searched the blog for Mark Epstein, was perfect to post here, especially in light of the comment exchange that we had here the other day with a fellow blogger who wondered how some people "cope" better than others. I still maintain that "coping" -- particularly with trauma -- is not something done "well" or "better" than others, but that the practice of mindfulness meditation is profound and life-changing.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Mindfulness

What arises in our experience is much less important than how we relate to what arises in our experience.

                               Mark Epstein 

I'm not sure I've ever written about the first mindfulness meditation class that I took about fourteen years ago when Henry was a newborn baby and Sophie, a screaming for unknown reason three year old with uncontrolled seizures. I look back on many phases of my life since my children were born and wonder how in the hell I got through them, but here I am. Through them and sort of, kind of, prepared for the next phase.

One of the things that helped me most, that didn't just help me, actually, but transformed me was a class called Mindfulness Meditation for Stress Reduction. Each week, I traveled to the deep, dark San Fernando Valley for a three hour class with a group of people whose problems included chronic pain, depression, severe illness, trauma and post-traumatic stress syndrome. We were taught the basics of mindfulness meditation and the practice of sitting, as well as the benefits of utilizing the principles throughout one's daily life.

I'm not a master at meditation, but I know that the practice enables me to cope in far better ways than the frantic pleading and praying I did previously. For me, there had been so much dread in the practice of a religion with no resonance, and when I began to meditate, I finally found a bit of the peace and connection with divine love that I had only read about. More importantly, though, the practice of meditation helps me to deal with nearly everything difficult and challenging -- it doesn't make anything not difficult or challenging, but  somehow, almost by stealth, the seemingly impossible becomes possible.

When the flakes settle

Like the archer straightening his arrow and perfecting his aim, the practitioner of meditation straightens out the mind while aiming his or her attentional energy at its object. Learning to drop what we’re doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it and its flakes settle.

Lama Surya Das 

Paddling the boat, the bed

Is it a coincidence that the word "present" and "gift" are interchangeable? I still have tendrils of what it feels like to be rested, truly, in body and mind, and I'm doing my best to not so much hold onto them because that holding on is contrary to what it feels like, but to call them up like gods or portents or totems. In the history of sleep, I am sound, a read-for-several-hours-in-bed-at-night, watch the words fall off the page, turn off the light, roll to my side, close my eyes and -- when? how? -- sleeper. I never toss or turn or struggle. I wake, awake, a brain in full motion, always, always projected outward, the present underneath me, white and rumpled, my heavy body in the way.

Mantra (A re-post from 2010)

Yosemite, 2010

Breathing in, 

I calm myself.

Breathing out,

I smile.

Thich Nhat Hanh

4 am

a print that hangs by my bed

I'm a good sleeper. I go to bed on the late side, after writing and reading for two to three hours, and when I put down my book and turn out the light, I turn to my side and go to sleep. I wake up seven or so hours later when the alarm clock light begins flashing, and I have no trouble turning it off and then lying there doing a short meditation. I know, this is a blessing. This morning, though, I woke up at exactly 4 am in full thought, and it seemed like the thoughts were exactly the same as they had been when I'd fallen asleep. I had gone over the day, an upsetting one, actually, worried for my boy Oliver who is so unhappy at school. As those of you who work the early morning shift know, 4 am is the time when all worries are magnified and seemingly insurmountable. They don't call it the darkest hour before dawn for nothing. It also seems that telling oneself that worrying at 4 am is stupid is useless, and after fifteen minutes or so of rising terror that might have, could have, would have tipped over into despair, I got up and crept into the boys' bedroom and over to Oliver who was sleeping peacefully. I stood beside the bed and touched his exposed hand, curled softly on top of the cover. He rustled a bit but continued to breathe deeply, so I stood there with my hand on his and breathed deeply, my eyes closed. I prayed for peace for him when the sun rose, for strength for me to love and be compassionate. I prayed for ease while he continued to breathe, in and out, his face still the baby's that I'd rocked every night and sung to years ago. When I left the room, light was curling around the blinds, but I climbed back into bed, closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

Virgo

Henry and Sophie, Hilton Head 2010

Virgo:

You could use a bit more faith. Instead

of working hard to clear a path, believe that 

the path before you is already being cleared.

That was my horoscope in today's morning paper, over which I glanced and then paused. I threw up the shackles at the word faith, and then I thought hmmmmmm and wondered if I let go of my current path of worry and doing (Oliver's troubles, Sophie's seizures, filing for guardianship for Sophie and SSI, how and when and whether to go to Vancouver for Sophie's drug, the path is long, seemingly endless) what might happen? Is that a path of sand or boards? Is it clear to the ocean or are those weeds? Who and what is clearing it for me?

I'm giving it a try -- at least for the moment which, I imagine is all we can possibly do.