It's a holiday, we're traveling, and we're staying with family. I'm having difficulty loving and accepting those closest to me.
No, really.
I tried a couple of little "grace" exercises over the last couple of days. I didn't know what else to do. At one point, it was either that, or swill a Bloody Mary at 9 a.m. on the airplane and fall asleep later at a critical juncture.
My husband tries his best to make everything orderly and safe for us when we travel, which is lovely, but I respond to his Travel Personality with disproportionate irritation and eye-rolling. (Yep, he loves that.) On the plane from Seattle to Boston, we were seated a row away from each other, me across and behind him. (He had both the kids, I had a sweet young couple beside me.) At a moment when I was really getting into my inner rant about Matt's Travel Personality, I experienced a crossroads. I thought, hmm, I can continue to sit here and feel tense abou how tense I think my husband is, or I can do something else. What happens if I try a little metta meditation* on him? So I stared at his broad shoulder wrapped in an olive green cotton sweater I bought for him five years ago, and I breathed in the suffering he might have been feeling then (tension, anxiety, annoyance at bitchy wife), and breathed back goodness and peace. I did this until a flight attendant began squawking over the loudspeaker.
Then, you'll never guess what happened: Matt got up and started dancing in the aisle!
Ok, not really. Since we didn't interact for awhile, I've no idea if he actually calmed down then. But I sure calmed down. And that made me nicer. So I was one less person on that plane thinking bilious, vile thoughts. I was one more person in the world meditating, which meant I was causing no suffering at that moment. And this was all practice for me in contacting compassion for someone else when I really didn't feel like it.
And then later, when I really felt compassion for him, I offered to trade seats.
*metta is a Buddhist technique of meditation in which the practitioner breathes in the suffering of another person and sends back something positive, like liberation. It's also called "loving-kindness" meditation. This is my primitive understanding.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
Rats!
Rats
I’m single-parenting this week. It’s turned out to be better than I expected. I don’t have to confer with someone about every little thing, and I don’t have to wait around for someone else to do what they said they’d do. I just take care of business.
The down side is that I had to perform the manly task of hunting down a dead rodent in the basement. There was an unmistakable smell wafting up through the heating vents. Shit, I thought, how come every time Matt leaves town I have to deal with varmints? (It’s true. The last time he was gone for more than a few days, there was raccoon issue and the appearance of a hornet’s nest in the tree overhanging my car). Armed with Matt’s yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, long tongs, a plastic bag, and a flashlight, I went down into the basement to investigate. My son trailed behind me, holding his nose closed, asking me what the rat would look like, or would it be a mouse, and why was it dead, and how did I know it was dead? I pulled up a stepladder to the aluminum heating duct where I could see the corner of the big wooden rat trap hanging over the edge. I grasped it with my BBQ tongs and pulled it toward me until I saw the sad little grey lump matted with blood lying on it.
“Is that it?” cried my son, hopping from foot to foot and craning his neck toward the ceiling.
“Jonah, get out of here,” I said. “This is gross. I don’t want you to see this.”
“Mommmmmm, I want to tell you something-"
“I mean it!”
He ducked his head and walked out of the furnace room. I deposited the poor rat and its instrument of death into a plastic Safeway bag.
“Mom, it still smells out here,” Jonah reported.
I raced past him to run up the stairs and lay the animal in its final resting place. Then I had to go back and swab up the leftover gore.
After it was all over I felt victorious. I texted my husband that I had succeeded.
“Did you find the new rat hole and cover it up?” he asked me later on the phone.
“What? No. The old crib is leaning against the wall, I can’t get into that corner to even look. “ Who cared? I was a pioneer woman for God’s sake! I could do anything! I could probably rope a steer.
I’ve been living with my husband for nine years. During this time it has become clear that he and I are not cut from the same cloth, especially when it comes to dealing with, say, pestilence. His response upon seeing a rat leap from the top of a heating duct to the floor, inches from his face, was to yell and then rush upstairs to call an exterminator. Mine was to laugh hysterically and hold my hand over my heart. Left to my own timeline, I’d have called an exterminator several weeks later after sweeping up rat turds for too many days in a row. In this case, I was all about putting out the fire, and he was all about preventing one in the future.
This is as good an analogy for our respective upbringing as any. It’s no mystery that we found each other. It’s really true that opposites attract.
So while I missed him this week, I also enjoyed being my freewheeling self. My kids and I ate a lot of food on the fly. We went for dog walks at night and watched an extra movie or two this week. I let bedtimes go long when it made the kids happy. I would never do this if I were a single mom for real, because that would set me up for a nightmare, but it was fun to let things go a little lax this week.
Another bonus is that I didn’t have the chance to feel guilty about not being a better mother. I wiped my kids’ butts, I made their food, I read them 1,000 stories, I put their covers back on them at night, and no one was here to do it better.
That feels good.
I’m single-parenting this week. It’s turned out to be better than I expected. I don’t have to confer with someone about every little thing, and I don’t have to wait around for someone else to do what they said they’d do. I just take care of business.
The down side is that I had to perform the manly task of hunting down a dead rodent in the basement. There was an unmistakable smell wafting up through the heating vents. Shit, I thought, how come every time Matt leaves town I have to deal with varmints? (It’s true. The last time he was gone for more than a few days, there was raccoon issue and the appearance of a hornet’s nest in the tree overhanging my car). Armed with Matt’s yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, long tongs, a plastic bag, and a flashlight, I went down into the basement to investigate. My son trailed behind me, holding his nose closed, asking me what the rat would look like, or would it be a mouse, and why was it dead, and how did I know it was dead? I pulled up a stepladder to the aluminum heating duct where I could see the corner of the big wooden rat trap hanging over the edge. I grasped it with my BBQ tongs and pulled it toward me until I saw the sad little grey lump matted with blood lying on it.
“Is that it?” cried my son, hopping from foot to foot and craning his neck toward the ceiling.
“Jonah, get out of here,” I said. “This is gross. I don’t want you to see this.”
“Mommmmmm, I want to tell you something-"
“I mean it!”
He ducked his head and walked out of the furnace room. I deposited the poor rat and its instrument of death into a plastic Safeway bag.
“Mom, it still smells out here,” Jonah reported.
I raced past him to run up the stairs and lay the animal in its final resting place. Then I had to go back and swab up the leftover gore.
After it was all over I felt victorious. I texted my husband that I had succeeded.
“Did you find the new rat hole and cover it up?” he asked me later on the phone.
“What? No. The old crib is leaning against the wall, I can’t get into that corner to even look. “ Who cared? I was a pioneer woman for God’s sake! I could do anything! I could probably rope a steer.
I’ve been living with my husband for nine years. During this time it has become clear that he and I are not cut from the same cloth, especially when it comes to dealing with, say, pestilence. His response upon seeing a rat leap from the top of a heating duct to the floor, inches from his face, was to yell and then rush upstairs to call an exterminator. Mine was to laugh hysterically and hold my hand over my heart. Left to my own timeline, I’d have called an exterminator several weeks later after sweeping up rat turds for too many days in a row. In this case, I was all about putting out the fire, and he was all about preventing one in the future.
This is as good an analogy for our respective upbringing as any. It’s no mystery that we found each other. It’s really true that opposites attract.
So while I missed him this week, I also enjoyed being my freewheeling self. My kids and I ate a lot of food on the fly. We went for dog walks at night and watched an extra movie or two this week. I let bedtimes go long when it made the kids happy. I would never do this if I were a single mom for real, because that would set me up for a nightmare, but it was fun to let things go a little lax this week.
Another bonus is that I didn’t have the chance to feel guilty about not being a better mother. I wiped my kids’ butts, I made their food, I read them 1,000 stories, I put their covers back on them at night, and no one was here to do it better.
That feels good.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Pick Up Your Shit
7 a.m.
Here's the scene: dirty white tablecloth on table. One green poker chip in the center. Salt and pepper shakers. Folded over section of yesterday's newspaper. Kid's brightly-colored plastic place mats askew as if fallen from the sky. One empty foil chocolate candy wrapper. One Matchbox car, blue, upside-down, occupants presumed dead. All six dining room chairs are pulled away from the table, like everybody left in a fire.
My entire house looks like this. I can't do anything about it. No force can stem the tide.
Sometimes I feel like my real job around here, if we are to be frank, is putting items back where they belong. Because really, that's what I do all day. I put away the laundry, the food, the shoes, the coats, the toys, the mail, the recycling piles, the stray scraps of paper, the kid art, the bulletins from school, and the dog's toys. Then there are my own things, such as the contents of my huge mama-purse which regularly get dumped on the counter because I'm in a fit and can't find my keys (Chapstick, money, ID, whatever). It's ongoing. We stubbornly keep taking things out and using them. But that's not the only cause of the constant mess.
My daughter is in a power-trip phase right now where she drops things on the floor at dinner and stares at me to see what I'm going to do about it. Typically, I stare back and raise an eyebrow. Then she yells, "GET MY FORK!" Then I look away and say, "You can get it yourself."
Can you guess how this goes over with her?
"No, YOU get my fork!" she says, eyes squinched shut, fists balled.
At this point, my blood pressure rises. Nobody likes being ordered around by an imperious three-year-old, but to add to my irritation is the keen awareness that if I'd ever uttered such words at home, I'd have been smacked and sent to bed immediately.
Anne Lamott says that when you overlook a kid's bad behavior, you injure them. "You hobble their character," she says.
I believe this. So, I don't want to overlook this behavior, but I don't want to smack Audrey and send her to bed. The alternate consequences we tend to employ do not often have the intended result, and they exhaust the whole family. Still, not knowing what else to do, I pull the same ones out every time.
In any case, picking up her damn fork is the last thing I want to do at dinner, since, as I mentioned above, I've been picking things up off the floor all day. Not to mention that I would hate to set a precedent that I'm Audrey's servant. So I'll be damned if I'm picking up that fork.
And so will she.
Hence the exhaustion, noise, and stress that will ensue.
I guess this is just life with kids. Why do I expect anything different?
Anyone have any tips, techniques, or sage words they would like to share with me? I could really use them.
Here's the scene: dirty white tablecloth on table. One green poker chip in the center. Salt and pepper shakers. Folded over section of yesterday's newspaper. Kid's brightly-colored plastic place mats askew as if fallen from the sky. One empty foil chocolate candy wrapper. One Matchbox car, blue, upside-down, occupants presumed dead. All six dining room chairs are pulled away from the table, like everybody left in a fire.
My entire house looks like this. I can't do anything about it. No force can stem the tide.
Sometimes I feel like my real job around here, if we are to be frank, is putting items back where they belong. Because really, that's what I do all day. I put away the laundry, the food, the shoes, the coats, the toys, the mail, the recycling piles, the stray scraps of paper, the kid art, the bulletins from school, and the dog's toys. Then there are my own things, such as the contents of my huge mama-purse which regularly get dumped on the counter because I'm in a fit and can't find my keys (Chapstick, money, ID, whatever). It's ongoing. We stubbornly keep taking things out and using them. But that's not the only cause of the constant mess.
My daughter is in a power-trip phase right now where she drops things on the floor at dinner and stares at me to see what I'm going to do about it. Typically, I stare back and raise an eyebrow. Then she yells, "GET MY FORK!" Then I look away and say, "You can get it yourself."
Can you guess how this goes over with her?
"No, YOU get my fork!" she says, eyes squinched shut, fists balled.
At this point, my blood pressure rises. Nobody likes being ordered around by an imperious three-year-old, but to add to my irritation is the keen awareness that if I'd ever uttered such words at home, I'd have been smacked and sent to bed immediately.
Anne Lamott says that when you overlook a kid's bad behavior, you injure them. "You hobble their character," she says.
I believe this. So, I don't want to overlook this behavior, but I don't want to smack Audrey and send her to bed. The alternate consequences we tend to employ do not often have the intended result, and they exhaust the whole family. Still, not knowing what else to do, I pull the same ones out every time.
In any case, picking up her damn fork is the last thing I want to do at dinner, since, as I mentioned above, I've been picking things up off the floor all day. Not to mention that I would hate to set a precedent that I'm Audrey's servant. So I'll be damned if I'm picking up that fork.
And so will she.
Hence the exhaustion, noise, and stress that will ensue.
I guess this is just life with kids. Why do I expect anything different?
Anyone have any tips, techniques, or sage words they would like to share with me? I could really use them.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Is it a Sign?
I'm over my embarrassment enough to explain what happened.
I was trying to apply to a writer's retreat. In order to do this, I needed to prepare a ten-page original writing sample, and two essays. I started at least six weeks before the deadline. I know myself, I know how family life goes, I know that everything creative takes at least three times longer than a reasonable person would expect.
Still, I found myself down to the wire, and struggling. You would not believe how hard I worked on this application. I haven't done that much soul-searching about my art in...well, maybe never.
The night before I was to send out the packet, as my ancient printer slowly choked out the writing sample, I gathered the rest of the materials for the application. I wrote the date on the check for the application fee: 9/25/07. I glanced at the application checklist, where the deadline was printed in bold: ***Applications must be postmarked no later than Sept. 25, 2007***.
But...
I glanced at my watch. Midnight. Midnight of September 25. Which meant that, technically, the date was now September 26. Which meant...
***All applications bearing postmarks after September 25 will be returned unopened***
...which meant I had just fucked myself.
I sat at my desk and stared at nothing. Was this for real? How had this happened?
My brother-in-law, a manic-depressive painter, happened to be in the same room, working feverishly on his own project on another computer.
"Tim," I said. "I missed the deadline."
"What?" he said. "You mean all this work you've been doing is for nothing?"
"Um, yeah, I think so. I can't believe I did this. How could I not notice the date? Oh my God, I'm a moron."
Tim, across the room, turned back to his computer screen. "I've done that many times," he said flatly.
"But I can't apply for another year," I whined.
"I've missed deadlines where I couldn't apply for another two years," he said.
How could this happen? Everyone knew my deadline! Even my husband, upon whom I rely to remember dates and deadlines. He's Rainman-like about these things. Had he not been so obsessed and focused and stressed out over his stuff that week (multiple job interviews), I feel certain that he would have corrected me that Wednesday was actually the 26th, not the 25th.
It is frustrating in the extreme that the first time I've abandoned myself completely to a creative project in a few years, I screwed it up by not knowing the date. I worked my ass off. I didn't cook or clean or walk the dog or play with the children or practice yoga for a week straight because I was so busy with this. I really had to set everything else aside to get continuity. It worked, at least creatively speaking. My tether to reality snapped, but the creative part worked. I stand by my old assertion (made cavalierly before I had children) that it takes at least six hours per sitting to write anything. (Blogs appear to be an exception, thank the Lord.)
I refuse to take this whole experience as a sign that I just should give up. Here's why: 1. I've already tried to give up writing, and failed repeatedly. 2. The triumph of finishing the writing, and the joy of doing the writing, and the pleasure of being lost in it for days and days, is better than anything else, maybe even sex. 3. I can try it again next year. 4. I fucking finished! I am a star just for that.
My dad is an artist and most of the time he doesn't know his phone number or whether or not he put on underwear that day. My brother and I like to joke that it's brain damage from a lifetime of chemical excess. Maybe it is. But there's something to the fact that he lives his life in his right brain.
Now I just need to make my own retreat happen.
I was trying to apply to a writer's retreat. In order to do this, I needed to prepare a ten-page original writing sample, and two essays. I started at least six weeks before the deadline. I know myself, I know how family life goes, I know that everything creative takes at least three times longer than a reasonable person would expect.
Still, I found myself down to the wire, and struggling. You would not believe how hard I worked on this application. I haven't done that much soul-searching about my art in...well, maybe never.
The night before I was to send out the packet, as my ancient printer slowly choked out the writing sample, I gathered the rest of the materials for the application. I wrote the date on the check for the application fee: 9/25/07. I glanced at the application checklist, where the deadline was printed in bold: ***Applications must be postmarked no later than Sept. 25, 2007***.
But...
I glanced at my watch. Midnight. Midnight of September 25. Which meant that, technically, the date was now September 26. Which meant...
***All applications bearing postmarks after September 25 will be returned unopened***
...which meant I had just fucked myself.
I sat at my desk and stared at nothing. Was this for real? How had this happened?
My brother-in-law, a manic-depressive painter, happened to be in the same room, working feverishly on his own project on another computer.
"Tim," I said. "I missed the deadline."
"What?" he said. "You mean all this work you've been doing is for nothing?"
"Um, yeah, I think so. I can't believe I did this. How could I not notice the date? Oh my God, I'm a moron."
Tim, across the room, turned back to his computer screen. "I've done that many times," he said flatly.
"But I can't apply for another year," I whined.
"I've missed deadlines where I couldn't apply for another two years," he said.
How could this happen? Everyone knew my deadline! Even my husband, upon whom I rely to remember dates and deadlines. He's Rainman-like about these things. Had he not been so obsessed and focused and stressed out over his stuff that week (multiple job interviews), I feel certain that he would have corrected me that Wednesday was actually the 26th, not the 25th.
It is frustrating in the extreme that the first time I've abandoned myself completely to a creative project in a few years, I screwed it up by not knowing the date. I worked my ass off. I didn't cook or clean or walk the dog or play with the children or practice yoga for a week straight because I was so busy with this. I really had to set everything else aside to get continuity. It worked, at least creatively speaking. My tether to reality snapped, but the creative part worked. I stand by my old assertion (made cavalierly before I had children) that it takes at least six hours per sitting to write anything. (Blogs appear to be an exception, thank the Lord.)
I refuse to take this whole experience as a sign that I just should give up. Here's why: 1. I've already tried to give up writing, and failed repeatedly. 2. The triumph of finishing the writing, and the joy of doing the writing, and the pleasure of being lost in it for days and days, is better than anything else, maybe even sex. 3. I can try it again next year. 4. I fucking finished! I am a star just for that.
My dad is an artist and most of the time he doesn't know his phone number or whether or not he put on underwear that day. My brother and I like to joke that it's brain damage from a lifetime of chemical excess. Maybe it is. But there's something to the fact that he lives his life in his right brain.
Now I just need to make my own retreat happen.
Help
It's been a dicey month. I won't go into details, because most of it's private. I will share that we've had two visiting relatives, a child's birthday party, four job interviews, and one massive writing project disaster.
The writing project disaster is far too embarassing to discuss. Let's just say that the combination of the maternal mind and balls-to-the-wall right-brained living are (a) fundementally incompatible, and (b) disastrous.
What's balls-to-the-wall right-brained living? That's when an artist is immersed in her work and can't quite surface into the real world of food and clocks and calendars. What's maternal mind? That's when the mind is stuffed to capacity with a list of small tasks to be completed, school schedules, and all the other basic shit we moms live our lives having to remember. Either right-brain or mom-mind can land a person locked outside the house without keys or shoes. For two weeks, I found myself alternating between the two. This was no fun for anyone. And, ultimately, it was ineffective for the purposes of actually making the deadline I needed to make.
It's been hard for me to write a word since. It just feels pointless.
The writing project disaster is far too embarassing to discuss. Let's just say that the combination of the maternal mind and balls-to-the-wall right-brained living are (a) fundementally incompatible, and (b) disastrous.
What's balls-to-the-wall right-brained living? That's when an artist is immersed in her work and can't quite surface into the real world of food and clocks and calendars. What's maternal mind? That's when the mind is stuffed to capacity with a list of small tasks to be completed, school schedules, and all the other basic shit we moms live our lives having to remember. Either right-brain or mom-mind can land a person locked outside the house without keys or shoes. For two weeks, I found myself alternating between the two. This was no fun for anyone. And, ultimately, it was ineffective for the purposes of actually making the deadline I needed to make.
It's been hard for me to write a word since. It just feels pointless.
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Renunciation
As a tethered bird flies this way and that
And comes to rest at last on its own perch,
So the mind, tired of wandering about,
Settles down in the Self
-from The Chandogya Upanishad
Friday at noon I started yet another three-day yoga training immersion. This is my tenth in the past year. I was tired. I was also deranged by some personal iss-yews which my mind resisted relaxing about. I dragged my carcass to class, and submitted to my teachers' direction, and by and by allowed myself to step into the goodwill of my beloved tribe of yoga people.
A little. It's not easy to let go of some problem or thought that has become part of my recent identity. I can get pretty invested in it. Oh, I think, I've done all this work to get to this state of obsession! I would hate for it all to go to waste. Maybe if I obsess a little longer, I will solve my problem.
So even though I was noticing some pretty strong indications that it was time to lay down my burden for awhile, I continued to grasp it. I thought, I won't let myself be pulled into this squishy, goody-two-shoes, everything-happens-for-a-reason BULLSHIT. Never mind that it's probably true. I'm enjoying my torture. Anyway, I'm just going to end up right back here, because, hello, the problem has not been solved.
By the beginning of day two of the immersion (hour seven, but who is counting), I started to think, well, maybe I'll let it rest just while I'm in yoga class. We talked about the idea of renunciation. Denise, my teacher, asked us all the question, What happens when you think of renunciation? Several people said they felt a huge sense of relief. I said the same thing. It was true. I felt relief when I thought about giving up about half the shit I own (even my house!), my many consuming desires, and smoking, to name a few things. Just for a start. What if I didn't have to argue with myself about these things anymore? How glorious and free would I be?
Denise told us that the way the Buddhists talk about renunciation can be described thusly: Release the grasp. YES! I thought to myself. What a wonderful, uncomplicated, non-wordy, non-esoteric way to think about it. This will work for me. I scribbled into my notebook:
Release the Grasp!
"Susie," said Denise. "What is your relationship to renunciation?" I looked up at her, my pen still scribbling. I started to laugh. "There's this one thing I really don't want to give up," I admitted. "I can't get my head around it."
She nodded. "Try to observe that moment of grasping that arrives when you think of having to let go of something."
Uh huh.
"Consider the difference between gratification and fulfillment."
Okay, I know, I know. But is it so wrong to want to take the low road sometimes? Is it so bad to immerse oneself in the baser pleasures of life every now and again?
The Upanishads say that once you release your grasp on all things, you will be prepared to meet your true self, which is to say, God.
"Reaching the state of Self is 5,000 times better than any of the sense pleasures," said Denise.
All right, fuck it, I thought. Maybe there is something to this. (The fact that wise and transcendent people have been practicing these ideas for 4,000 years just isn't a good enough reason to buy into it, apparently.)
By the time we practiced yoga for 75 minutes and had reached the pose of savasana, I had undergone a subtle shift. I lay in the dark, spread out like a corpse, covered by a scratchy wool blanket. Around me, 40 or so people did the same. My teachers sang us the Gayatri Mantra, which is the most beautiful song I have ever heard. By the time they rang their little bells to signal us to start stirring again, I felt such fullness in my heart. I felt grateful, really, for the whole human experience.
I went home, ate dinner with my family, played a game of Go Fish with the kids, and put them to bed.
Maybe I am going to be ok for awhile.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Surrender Now, Obsess Later
In yoga class ten years ago or so, I felt for the first time the earth beneath me. I was lying in the dark with a blanket over my prone figure. My teacher said, "Let the earth support you." I thought, okay, if you say so. I noted the floor beneath me as it met the points of my shoulder blades, vertebrae, sacrum, elbows, heels. I relaxed into it until I could feel gravity tugging at my skin, my muscles, my deep heavy bones.
By some miracle, I was not immediately swallowed up by a sinkhole. Nor was I left to scramble at some post or floorboard like the doomed passenger of a sinking ship. Nothing tilted, nothing moved, nothing hurt. I was just spread out heavily and the ground held me. I kept breathing. And that's what it was like to feel solid ground. I realized that I usually walked around as if I were about to fall through a trap door.
No wonder I was so tense.
This is what savasana does for me. And as far as I can understand, this is what it is supposed to do. Now, much of the time I struggle to quiet the shopping lists and plans for dinner and thorny conversation I need to have with some person later. After class, Honey, I tell myself. You can go back to thinking about all of this after class. It will still be there!
Sometimes, this is about as far as I get in savasana with my mind. If it's a missed opportunity for real integration of mind and body after a hard practice, well, that's what it has to be today. (Really, though, spiritual teachers say there are no wasted efforts and no missed opportunities so long as the intention and awareness are there. So if I notice that I'm having a hard time letting go of my daily mental hamster-wheel marathon, then I am more conscious than I was five minutes ago.)
Lately, my life feels disorienting and relentless. Savasana has been one of the most challenging yoga poses for me to perform. The strong, muscular, pushing-the-edge poses of yoga practice feel like a great release and something solid to master. But when I come to a moment of quiet, when I am invited to "relax", I feel that old sense of sliding off the deck of the Titanic.
Yesterday when it came time for savasana I found myself right back on the mental hamster-wheel. I realized I was trying to solve a problem for which there is no solution. I knew there was no solution, but I couldn't seem to abandon the effort, however fruitless and exhausting. I remembered that savasana is my chance for a wee vacation from that. I promised myself I would be allowed to continue obsessing later. So I felt the points of my bones push into the floor. And then my skin, from the back of my head to my heels, spread out a little. And then my deep muscles fell downward, too. I surrendered.
I floated in the quality of surrender for about five seconds. Then I thought, Right! This is what I am supposed to do with my life right now. Surrender! I can surrender to this situation, and that situation, and then maybe x or y will happen...
Soon I was obsessing again. But I had contacted a quality that I could remember, that beautiful sense of not being in charge. Chances were good that I'd be able to contact it again. Practice, practice, practice.
This kind of mental training is not unlike training of the body. The muscle must be built. The memory must be made. Then you can come back to it, recognize it the next time, have something to work toward.
I will try again today.
By some miracle, I was not immediately swallowed up by a sinkhole. Nor was I left to scramble at some post or floorboard like the doomed passenger of a sinking ship. Nothing tilted, nothing moved, nothing hurt. I was just spread out heavily and the ground held me. I kept breathing. And that's what it was like to feel solid ground. I realized that I usually walked around as if I were about to fall through a trap door.
No wonder I was so tense.
This is what savasana does for me. And as far as I can understand, this is what it is supposed to do. Now, much of the time I struggle to quiet the shopping lists and plans for dinner and thorny conversation I need to have with some person later. After class, Honey, I tell myself. You can go back to thinking about all of this after class. It will still be there!
Sometimes, this is about as far as I get in savasana with my mind. If it's a missed opportunity for real integration of mind and body after a hard practice, well, that's what it has to be today. (Really, though, spiritual teachers say there are no wasted efforts and no missed opportunities so long as the intention and awareness are there. So if I notice that I'm having a hard time letting go of my daily mental hamster-wheel marathon, then I am more conscious than I was five minutes ago.)
Lately, my life feels disorienting and relentless. Savasana has been one of the most challenging yoga poses for me to perform. The strong, muscular, pushing-the-edge poses of yoga practice feel like a great release and something solid to master. But when I come to a moment of quiet, when I am invited to "relax", I feel that old sense of sliding off the deck of the Titanic.
Yesterday when it came time for savasana I found myself right back on the mental hamster-wheel. I realized I was trying to solve a problem for which there is no solution. I knew there was no solution, but I couldn't seem to abandon the effort, however fruitless and exhausting. I remembered that savasana is my chance for a wee vacation from that. I promised myself I would be allowed to continue obsessing later. So I felt the points of my bones push into the floor. And then my skin, from the back of my head to my heels, spread out a little. And then my deep muscles fell downward, too. I surrendered.
I floated in the quality of surrender for about five seconds. Then I thought, Right! This is what I am supposed to do with my life right now. Surrender! I can surrender to this situation, and that situation, and then maybe x or y will happen...
Soon I was obsessing again. But I had contacted a quality that I could remember, that beautiful sense of not being in charge. Chances were good that I'd be able to contact it again. Practice, practice, practice.
This kind of mental training is not unlike training of the body. The muscle must be built. The memory must be made. Then you can come back to it, recognize it the next time, have something to work toward.
I will try again today.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
What if You're Already There?
What if there was
No other shoe?
Instead, just
The sun splash on my cheek,
Perfect grapes,
Good grooving tunes,
Happy, basking smiles,
Long, warm hugs,
Clothes that fit,
Deep, heavy sleep,
All things in their place,
Wide, expansive time.
And disruptions were
Merely
Small
Drops
In
The
Ocean?
No other shoe?
Instead, just
The sun splash on my cheek,
Perfect grapes,
Good grooving tunes,
Happy, basking smiles,
Long, warm hugs,
Clothes that fit,
Deep, heavy sleep,
All things in their place,
Wide, expansive time.
And disruptions were
Merely
Small
Drops
In
The
Ocean?
-Jonna Hensley
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Finer Points of Breathing and Booty-Building
Yesterday in my yoga immersion class*, after a long discussion of energy channels and muscle alignment, and a hard practice using muscles I didn't know I had, Denise said:
"When your gluteus medius are strong, they act like a Wonderbra for your butt."
Now, I don't have a lot of back. And I would like some more. So this was music to my ears. Additionally, Denise said, "Now those for you who are thinking, well, I just don't have a butt, I will tell you something. Your butt is just depressed. You work these muscles, and you will have a butt."
There's hope for me after all! "Thank you, Denise!" I said. It was sort of like a hallelujah moment. (Not to mention comic relief after the above-mentioned activities.)
Later, my other teacher, Rainey, demonstrated uddiyana bandha - it's this crazy thing you do with your abs and diaphragm, while leaning over, holding an expelled breath, and moving your stomach muscles around in a circle like a revolving door. It's freaky. On her, since she is pierced and tatooed and gorgeous, the act looked freaky and sexual. After she was finished and the rest of us were blindsided with awe (especially me, since I had been kneeling directly below her to get a good view) fellow student Jodi said,
"I can hook you up with some people and you could make a lot of money with that."
This is why I love my studio.
*The Anusara yoga immersion is a series of weekend workshops I'm taking to prepare for teacher training.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Stretching Your Sympathetic Imagination, Exercise 7
Here is the last exercise from Susan O'Dohery's book Getting Unstuck that I'm going to post. This one is about expanding beyond your comfort zone in what you read, so you can stop being so snobby and judgmental about other kinds of writing. The idea is you might actually grow as a writer this way. Even if only a leetle tiny bit.
So I'm a big ol' snoot-snot about most kinds of "genre" books. Partly because I haven't been made to read many of them, partly because they come in ugly fat supermarket-style book forms, partly because all the biggest nerds I know (including my man) have bookshelves crammed with them, and this turns me off like a mouthful of bad teeth. Whatever, I'm a nightmare, whatever.
I asked my husband to recommend a good genre book written by a woman. He piled about five of them on me, a few in that tattered-flimsy-yellowed form, and a few nice hardbacks. I chose Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell, one of the former kinds. It's crime/mystery novel written in wordy British. (As opposed to American, an entirely different language by contrast.) Funny that I should choose this considering my aversion to bad teeth.
My response upon finishing it: huh. Nice little read. I do not feel changed, I did not learn anything new about myself or humanity. I may have learned a few things about arcane British tax law. I was not transported in any way. The writing was witty, taking place almost entirely in conversation. But there were no evocative images, nor much in the way of appealing to the senses. It was a murder mystery wrapped in a play of manners with English attorneys as the central players. I suppose you could say that is also true of the movie "Gosford Park," but GP at least delved into the culture clash of Americans, English upper classes and their servants. Adonis did not.
In any case, I wasn’t moved by this book. But I had fun with it.
I did appreciate how, in a mystery, every detail matters. Something I can stand to work on in my fiction is how certain objects or small behaviors of characters can tilt things one way or another. Nothing can be there for fluff, it all has to be considered a part of the storytelling. What if I wrote my Oly novel* as a murder mystery? The murderer is whatever kills the relationship. And it will seem almost preordained. I think it was preordained.
God, could I really take up that novel again?
I liked that the language was an important part of the story in Adonis. It's not what I expected for a genre novel. The conversations were hilarious in their circumvention of saying anything outright. Crazy flippin' Brits.
The other interesting thing is that one never knows whether the narrator is male or female. It’s interesting how that disturbed things for me. When I wanted to decide whether another character was treating the narrator properly, it mattered. I couldn’t tell.
I’m glad I did this and I think I may move on to something sci-fi. That’s an area where I have a real prejudice. And it’s too bad because lots of smart people who I respect read sci-fi. I need to get over myself. Maybe this will help.
* "My Oly novel" is a novel I wrote two years ago in 30 days as a part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Every now and then I take it out and move things around and masturbate with it a little (in a figuritive sense, of course), decide it's juicy and decide it's all fucked, and then I don't look at it again for awhile.
So I'm a big ol' snoot-snot about most kinds of "genre" books. Partly because I haven't been made to read many of them, partly because they come in ugly fat supermarket-style book forms, partly because all the biggest nerds I know (including my man) have bookshelves crammed with them, and this turns me off like a mouthful of bad teeth. Whatever, I'm a nightmare, whatever.
I asked my husband to recommend a good genre book written by a woman. He piled about five of them on me, a few in that tattered-flimsy-yellowed form, and a few nice hardbacks. I chose Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell, one of the former kinds. It's crime/mystery novel written in wordy British. (As opposed to American, an entirely different language by contrast.) Funny that I should choose this considering my aversion to bad teeth.
My response upon finishing it: huh. Nice little read. I do not feel changed, I did not learn anything new about myself or humanity. I may have learned a few things about arcane British tax law. I was not transported in any way. The writing was witty, taking place almost entirely in conversation. But there were no evocative images, nor much in the way of appealing to the senses. It was a murder mystery wrapped in a play of manners with English attorneys as the central players. I suppose you could say that is also true of the movie "Gosford Park," but GP at least delved into the culture clash of Americans, English upper classes and their servants. Adonis did not.
In any case, I wasn’t moved by this book. But I had fun with it.
I did appreciate how, in a mystery, every detail matters. Something I can stand to work on in my fiction is how certain objects or small behaviors of characters can tilt things one way or another. Nothing can be there for fluff, it all has to be considered a part of the storytelling. What if I wrote my Oly novel* as a murder mystery? The murderer is whatever kills the relationship. And it will seem almost preordained. I think it was preordained.
God, could I really take up that novel again?
I liked that the language was an important part of the story in Adonis. It's not what I expected for a genre novel. The conversations were hilarious in their circumvention of saying anything outright. Crazy flippin' Brits.
The other interesting thing is that one never knows whether the narrator is male or female. It’s interesting how that disturbed things for me. When I wanted to decide whether another character was treating the narrator properly, it mattered. I couldn’t tell.
I’m glad I did this and I think I may move on to something sci-fi. That’s an area where I have a real prejudice. And it’s too bad because lots of smart people who I respect read sci-fi. I need to get over myself. Maybe this will help.
* "My Oly novel" is a novel I wrote two years ago in 30 days as a part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Every now and then I take it out and move things around and masturbate with it a little (in a figuritive sense, of course), decide it's juicy and decide it's all fucked, and then I don't look at it again for awhile.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
SAHM Juror
I took this photo across from the federal courthouse, where I do grand jury duty four times per month for the rest of my natural born life.
Or maybe it's only the next 18 months.
Anyway, whenever people ask me why I didn't try to get out of this rather lengthy commitment to public service, I tell them that I didn't want to get out of it. I love it. Four times a month, I ride the bus downtown during rush hour and feel of a piece with the rest of the world. There is no kid hanging on me, wiping body fluids on me, or asking me questions about the cranes and the tractors outside the window. On those days, I feel like an adult.
Nay, a civilian.
Over a bowl of udon at Red Fin, a fellow juror/SAHM and I shared revelations about our jury experience.
"It's like a mini-vacation from the house," she said.
"I know," I said, slurping my steaming, fat noodles. "And I get to have tofu udon for lunch!"
"Right, like, if I was at home, my kids and I would be eating something with melted cheese on it." She paused. "Though I do realize that maybe it's time to get some new clothes. I think I've been wearing the same stuff since I had my kids. I look at all these other women down here in their fancy little pencil skirts, and I feel like a slob."
I shared that I had recently been bitten by a bit of a clothes bug. I mused it may be that for the first time in five years, I'm not lactating, pregnant, flabby, or constantly being peed on. We looked at each other for a moment, feeling a little happy and proud. Then she rolled her eyes.
"Of course, this might not work out for me for much longer." She described the complicated tag-team game she and her husband play with caring for the children on her JD weeks, for which she has to travel by ferry and long distance and be gone for nearly three whole days.
Well, there's that. For me, though, it's not a hardship because I live right up the hill and I don't have regular paid employment anyway. I am, in fact, a perfect candidate for grand jury service. I cost them very little. I don't have a lot of onerous jury-service forms to be processed like other people do, for their employers, hotel expenses, and mileage.
My only complaint is that they don't pay for child care. I can see how doing so would quickly become a tangled web of liability and fraud, but still it digs a little when out-of-towners get to stay at the Max Hotel, and my per diem doesn't cover the price of a baby sitter. For many women, this would be a major hardship.
And that's too bad, because we all deserve the right to indict pimps and child pornographers.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
sweet man tricks
I was sneering over the popularity of "life lists" the other day, and describing how making artificial lists like that only causes tension and disappointment and also causes us to put things on them that we don't really want, just to fill them up, etc., when my husband interrupted.
"The other day you said Clive Owen was on your list," he reminded me.
"Oh, ha ha! I meant THE list, you know, the one where we get a free pass to sleep with the celebrities on our list if we ever get the chance."
"Yeah, except that there is no such list," he said dryly.
"Oh, come on, it's it's a fun idea. It's not for real. Like there's any way I'm ever going to get the chance to sleep with Clive Owen! Ha!"
He walked toward me, deadly serious. "Clive Owen would like you." He wrapped his arms around my waist. "I'm not going to agree to any list."
Sigh. I guess the next time I'm at a premier at Cannes and a gorgeous international superstar wants to get into my pants, I'm just going to have to say no.
Life is so unfair.
"The other day you said Clive Owen was on your list," he reminded me.
"Oh, ha ha! I meant THE list, you know, the one where we get a free pass to sleep with the celebrities on our list if we ever get the chance."
"Yeah, except that there is no such list," he said dryly.
"Oh, come on, it's it's a fun idea. It's not for real. Like there's any way I'm ever going to get the chance to sleep with Clive Owen! Ha!"
He walked toward me, deadly serious. "Clive Owen would like you." He wrapped his arms around my waist. "I'm not going to agree to any list."
Sigh. I guess the next time I'm at a premier at Cannes and a gorgeous international superstar wants to get into my pants, I'm just going to have to say no.
Life is so unfair.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
To Keep Your Side of the Deal
In Seattle, a huge music and arts festival called Bumbershoot heralds the end of summer every Labor Day weekend. It takes over the sprawling facility surrounding the Space Needle and draws 40,000 people per day for three days.
When I was childless, whether or not I should go to Bumbershoot was a no-brainer. I took the bus, paid my money, and stayed all day. I'd hear six or seven bands. I'd drop in on some book readings. I'd wander through the galleries. When I felt like resting, I'd sprawl out on the grass somewhere until I felt like getting up again. I'd come back the next day and repeat.
Everything's different now that I have little kids. If a kid is involved at a big event like this, the time is fractured and focused on food and potty issues. If I go without the family, I'm required to negotiate times and chores with my husband, weigh this activity against other upcoming things I might want to cash in my child care chips for, and shoulder some guilt.
This year the timing wasn't right. It was a busy weekend. I was suffering some kind of mental/physical sickness. It all just seemed like too much of a pain. I decided to forget it.
I was okay with this decision, mostly.
I was okay with it until the last night of the festival, when, while I stirred a pot of Thai curry on the stove at home, a Steve Earle song came over the radio. I rushed to the nearest speaker.
"I love Steve Earle," I sighed to my husband. I turned the volume up, went back to the kitchen, and continued to swoon.
"Never heard of him," said Matt.
"He is a great songwriter. In the 80's he - wait, is this LIVE?"
Matt, sitting in the living room with his laptop, offered to look it up on the KEXP website. "Yep, it's live," he said. "Some private KEXP thing at Bumbershoot."
Motherfucker. I sunk down into a chair beside him. My heart had started to bleed a bit. I got up and turned off the pot of rice. I assembled the kid's quesadillas.
It's okay, I told myself.
We all sat down to dinner. Steve Earle continued to play this intimate show where I was not present. My heart started to bleed more. It was no longer okay.
I dropped my spoon with a clatter. "I really want to go see The Frames and Steve Earle tonight," I blurted.
The bus dumped me at Seattle Center just in time to see The Frames. I nosed my way past casual onlookers into the part of the crowd where people were screaming requests at the band and standing shoulder to shoulder with one another. All I had to carry was my own bag. All I had to listen to was the music. A great tree canopy overhead released a few drying leaves on our heads to memorialize the last day of summer. The sky grew steadily darker.
Glen Hansard, the tall red-headed Irishman capturing our attention onstage, sang about how hard it is to keep your side of the deal. I knew what he meant. I'd been trying all weekend.
Watching Hansard's lanky body jerk and shimmy, hearing him cry "you'll see how hard it can be," gratified about nineteen different desires, and brought to mind the fundemental struggle that is always mine to manage: how do I keep my side of the deal and keep myself at the same time?
Sometimes it can feel as if feeding any need or desire I have will take something away from my babies or husband. It can feel as if wanting to be lost in pure pleasure - like music - is somehow aberrant. This is especially so since my husband and I follow different passions. It feels like if it's purely mine, it can't be good.
I tore myself away to catch Mr. Earle on another stage. He sang of a woman ("Whatsername, wherever the hell she is") who ran wild and disappeared into the sunset on a motorcycle.
I took a cab home, helped with last-minute bedtime water cups and pee-pee trips, and slept beside my domestic husband just like millions of other women were doing that night. I fell asleep thinking about the Whatsername-like woman inside me. She shimmers below the surface most of the time. At times she's so close I think she might take me over. Just noticing her makes me feel aberrant.
Well, I thought, snuggling in for the night, here's one more day she stayed put. Meanwhile, I'm still here keeping my side of the deal.
(Photo by joshc off Frames website. See more here.)
Monday, September 03, 2007
Claiming Creative Time, Exercise 5
The title of the chapter this exercise comes from is, "The Impossible Position: Managing Motherhood and Creativity."
It took me two years and a hard second pregnancy to hire a regular babysitter.
It took a major breakdown for me to use the time for writing.
There is always something else to do.
This exercise from Susan O'Doherty's book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued, has only one directive: take the time you would be using for something else (such as an exercise) and make some art. Do whatever you have to do to get someone to watch your kids. Pretend you're sick, whatever.
Then repeat as often as necessary.
Because I have learned to do what the exercise suggested, I wanted to take this idea a step further. I wanted to see what it would be like to live the whole cycle of a day totally around writing. I needed at least a full 24 hours.
My family and I took a short vacation to the beach condo of a friend. Matt and the kids stayed for two nights. I kicked them out the third morning, at a hair before 9.
Then I promptly applied my iPod and walked on the beach.
That day, the tide was out very far. The sky was clear and I could see the Olympic Mountains across the Sound. Fog sat on the horizon, just off the water. I was the only soul on the beach. I scrambled over piles of rocks. I walked on the trunks of fallen trees.
I sang to the seagulls, the sandy bluffs, the mountains, the fishing boat passing out into the Pacific. I felt divine and whole and free. Like my natural self.
Denise, my beloved yoga teacher, uses that term every now and then. Natural self. She lets us decide what it means. I try not to dwell on it too much. ("First thought, best thought," is another Denise mantra.) First thought says this is the real me, this freedom, this open heart.
Three years ago I would never have been able to feel this way walking on the beach. I could never just appreciate something for what it was. My head was too full of what I should be feeling. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get outside myself enough to feel the air, smell the drying seaweed, be happy that the mountains were out. I was burdened with thoughts about the person who was waiting for me back at the beach camp. And if someone were with me, I was burdened by trying not to annoy them, or hoping they were having a good time, or letting it be known that I was having a good time.
(Are there women who do not engage in this kind of behavior? I would like to meet one.)
Now...ah! The sky! The fishing boats! The dead crabs on the beach! I love it all!
After my walk, I spent the day eating, writing, cooking, and reading. I left my laptop and notebooks open on the table and went back to them whenever I needed to. I didn't have to divide my time the way I normally do. Like, now is writing time, now is kid care time, now is the time on Sprockets when we must dance.
It was the way I would always live if left to my own devices.
The following morning, I drank my coffee while watching a Presto log burn in the fireplace. Fog was so thick on the water, all I could see outside was white. I wrote some more. After awhile, I put my notebook down and looked around the place: I'd left shit lying around everywhere. It was still all there. I had to clean. I had to leave.
How could I possibly leave?
It took me two years and a hard second pregnancy to hire a regular babysitter.
It took a major breakdown for me to use the time for writing.
There is always something else to do.
This exercise from Susan O'Doherty's book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued, has only one directive: take the time you would be using for something else (such as an exercise) and make some art. Do whatever you have to do to get someone to watch your kids. Pretend you're sick, whatever.
Then repeat as often as necessary.
Because I have learned to do what the exercise suggested, I wanted to take this idea a step further. I wanted to see what it would be like to live the whole cycle of a day totally around writing. I needed at least a full 24 hours.
My family and I took a short vacation to the beach condo of a friend. Matt and the kids stayed for two nights. I kicked them out the third morning, at a hair before 9.
Then I promptly applied my iPod and walked on the beach.
That day, the tide was out very far. The sky was clear and I could see the Olympic Mountains across the Sound. Fog sat on the horizon, just off the water. I was the only soul on the beach. I scrambled over piles of rocks. I walked on the trunks of fallen trees.
I sang to the seagulls, the sandy bluffs, the mountains, the fishing boat passing out into the Pacific. I felt divine and whole and free. Like my natural self.
Denise, my beloved yoga teacher, uses that term every now and then. Natural self. She lets us decide what it means. I try not to dwell on it too much. ("First thought, best thought," is another Denise mantra.) First thought says this is the real me, this freedom, this open heart.
Three years ago I would never have been able to feel this way walking on the beach. I could never just appreciate something for what it was. My head was too full of what I should be feeling. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get outside myself enough to feel the air, smell the drying seaweed, be happy that the mountains were out. I was burdened with thoughts about the person who was waiting for me back at the beach camp. And if someone were with me, I was burdened by trying not to annoy them, or hoping they were having a good time, or letting it be known that I was having a good time.
(Are there women who do not engage in this kind of behavior? I would like to meet one.)
Now...ah! The sky! The fishing boats! The dead crabs on the beach! I love it all!
After my walk, I spent the day eating, writing, cooking, and reading. I left my laptop and notebooks open on the table and went back to them whenever I needed to. I didn't have to divide my time the way I normally do. Like, now is writing time, now is kid care time, now is the time on Sprockets when we must dance.
It was the way I would always live if left to my own devices.
The following morning, I drank my coffee while watching a Presto log burn in the fireplace. Fog was so thick on the water, all I could see outside was white. I wrote some more. After awhile, I put my notebook down and looked around the place: I'd left shit lying around everywhere. It was still all there. I had to clean. I had to leave.
How could I possibly leave?
Thursday, August 30, 2007
What it's Like for a Girl
Today I had a quintessential female day.
I felt frisky, so wore heels and a bustier under my clothes. Being nipped in here and pushed out there was feeling all nice and happy until I went to the federal courthouse to do my twice monthly grand jury duty (more on that later). There, my undergarment set off the metal detector. Hoping to God this was not the case, I submitted to a wanding by a US Marshal. Finally, he asked me gently if I could lift up just a piece of the hem of my blouse so he could see what was setting his metal detector off there. "I won't tell your boyfriend or husband," he said.
"It's got to be this thing," I sighed, piching the bottom edge of the garment in question.
"OK, ma'am," he said, letting me through. Whereupon I retrieved my high-heeled sandals from the metal x-ray conveyor belt and made a note to myself never to wear a bustier in an airport.
One of the cases we heard today was a proposed indictment of a child pornographer. Some of the evidence we had to hear included graphic descriptions of the images found on this fellow's computer. The FBI agent who testified tried his best to be tactful, but there really is no nice way to describe photos of children being violated. I listened to one. Then I felt coated with bile from the inside out. Then I stuck my fingers in my ears.
I felt overcome by the vulnerability of children, and suddenly couldn't bear the thought that my son was about to enter kindergarten. To imagine him being shepherded by one teacher along with 17 other five-year-olds for 6 hours a day, and succumbing to playground injustices, and just being without me all day, gave me such a heaviness in my gut that I wanted to lay my head down on my yellow legal pad and cry.
At the end of the day, a few of us lingered around in the jury room chatting about what we heard that day. There's a sweet woman there from Rhode Island who is always telling me I look nice and that she likes my drawings, and that day she had given me a graphite pencil to sketch witnesses with. So we stood at a table talking about art (she also draws) and by and by other subjects came up. Two other women drifted over, and pretty soon we were holding a summit conference on the vulnerability of stay-at-home-moms. I mentioned the horrifying spectacle of a column of zeros on the Social Security documents I receive yearly.
"The really scary thing is the disability," Rhode Island interjected. "I work with women who are going through divorce, and what I see over and over are women who stayed home with their kids for years, they get divorced, and then at some point need to draw on disability. It's just not there if you haven't worked for a long time. It takes much longer to accumulate credits for that."
"...!" I said.
Another woman piped up. "That's why it's important to always have your own 401K or CD, and stay connected to the work force as long as possible. You need to have financial independence, and you need to be getting those Social Security credits. I had four kids and my husband and I were both in the military but we made it work."
"...!" I said.
The gut-heaviness increased. It lasted all through my wax appointment afterward, where I lay on a cot in a shorty white terrycloth robe and submitted to the pain of hundreds of leg hairs being ripped out by their roots. This quelled the heaviness for some time. But by the time I'd paid and tipped the esthetician, it was back.
At home, while stirring a pot of simmering vegetables and a whole chicken for stock, I felt a deep need to smoke. Smoking, I realized as I sat in my little side-of-the-house smoking roost, also alleviates that heavy feeling in one's gut. Why was I having that heavy feeling today? I wasn't quite sure. One of the side effects of the drugs I'm on is that it can be hard for me to distinguish mental/emotional disturbances from physical ones. Which is to say, if I'm feeling sad, the sadness may manifest itself as a stomach ache rather than tears.
Over a glass of wine on the back deck I told Matt about my conversation with the jury ladies. "If you divorced me and decided to be a jerk about money, I'd be screwed," I said.
"I wouldn't stress about it too much," he replied.
Easy for him to say.
I finished making dinner, served it my family, and took the kids on a walk afterwards while Matt settled into a long night of World of Warcraft. Jonah pedaled ahead on his little training-wheel bike, while Audrey walked beside me, her hand in mine. The August light was draining from the sky quickly, and as we passed a neighbor's burgeoning front-yard pumpkin patch I noted that her fat green pumpkins were turning orange. We passed a row of lettuce that had gone to seed. The small stand of corn looked dry and ready to harvest.
How did this woman keep a kitchen garden, a four-story house, and three children?
Did she have a long column of zeros, too?
I herded the children home and observed that the feeling in my stomach had not faded. Well, I though, if it's something to worry about, it'll be back tomorrow.
Meantime, I'll go home and pop some more Advil for the menstrual cramps. Bathe the kids.
Sit with this feeling and see what it's about.
I felt frisky, so wore heels and a bustier under my clothes. Being nipped in here and pushed out there was feeling all nice and happy until I went to the federal courthouse to do my twice monthly grand jury duty (more on that later). There, my undergarment set off the metal detector. Hoping to God this was not the case, I submitted to a wanding by a US Marshal. Finally, he asked me gently if I could lift up just a piece of the hem of my blouse so he could see what was setting his metal detector off there. "I won't tell your boyfriend or husband," he said.
"It's got to be this thing," I sighed, piching the bottom edge of the garment in question.
"OK, ma'am," he said, letting me through. Whereupon I retrieved my high-heeled sandals from the metal x-ray conveyor belt and made a note to myself never to wear a bustier in an airport.
One of the cases we heard today was a proposed indictment of a child pornographer. Some of the evidence we had to hear included graphic descriptions of the images found on this fellow's computer. The FBI agent who testified tried his best to be tactful, but there really is no nice way to describe photos of children being violated. I listened to one. Then I felt coated with bile from the inside out. Then I stuck my fingers in my ears.
I felt overcome by the vulnerability of children, and suddenly couldn't bear the thought that my son was about to enter kindergarten. To imagine him being shepherded by one teacher along with 17 other five-year-olds for 6 hours a day, and succumbing to playground injustices, and just being without me all day, gave me such a heaviness in my gut that I wanted to lay my head down on my yellow legal pad and cry.
At the end of the day, a few of us lingered around in the jury room chatting about what we heard that day. There's a sweet woman there from Rhode Island who is always telling me I look nice and that she likes my drawings, and that day she had given me a graphite pencil to sketch witnesses with. So we stood at a table talking about art (she also draws) and by and by other subjects came up. Two other women drifted over, and pretty soon we were holding a summit conference on the vulnerability of stay-at-home-moms. I mentioned the horrifying spectacle of a column of zeros on the Social Security documents I receive yearly.
"The really scary thing is the disability," Rhode Island interjected. "I work with women who are going through divorce, and what I see over and over are women who stayed home with their kids for years, they get divorced, and then at some point need to draw on disability. It's just not there if you haven't worked for a long time. It takes much longer to accumulate credits for that."
"...!" I said.
Another woman piped up. "That's why it's important to always have your own 401K or CD, and stay connected to the work force as long as possible. You need to have financial independence, and you need to be getting those Social Security credits. I had four kids and my husband and I were both in the military but we made it work."
"...!" I said.
The gut-heaviness increased. It lasted all through my wax appointment afterward, where I lay on a cot in a shorty white terrycloth robe and submitted to the pain of hundreds of leg hairs being ripped out by their roots. This quelled the heaviness for some time. But by the time I'd paid and tipped the esthetician, it was back.
At home, while stirring a pot of simmering vegetables and a whole chicken for stock, I felt a deep need to smoke. Smoking, I realized as I sat in my little side-of-the-house smoking roost, also alleviates that heavy feeling in one's gut. Why was I having that heavy feeling today? I wasn't quite sure. One of the side effects of the drugs I'm on is that it can be hard for me to distinguish mental/emotional disturbances from physical ones. Which is to say, if I'm feeling sad, the sadness may manifest itself as a stomach ache rather than tears.
Over a glass of wine on the back deck I told Matt about my conversation with the jury ladies. "If you divorced me and decided to be a jerk about money, I'd be screwed," I said.
"I wouldn't stress about it too much," he replied.
Easy for him to say.
I finished making dinner, served it my family, and took the kids on a walk afterwards while Matt settled into a long night of World of Warcraft. Jonah pedaled ahead on his little training-wheel bike, while Audrey walked beside me, her hand in mine. The August light was draining from the sky quickly, and as we passed a neighbor's burgeoning front-yard pumpkin patch I noted that her fat green pumpkins were turning orange. We passed a row of lettuce that had gone to seed. The small stand of corn looked dry and ready to harvest.
How did this woman keep a kitchen garden, a four-story house, and three children?
Did she have a long column of zeros, too?
I herded the children home and observed that the feeling in my stomach had not faded. Well, I though, if it's something to worry about, it'll be back tomorrow.
Meantime, I'll go home and pop some more Advil for the menstrual cramps. Bathe the kids.
Sit with this feeling and see what it's about.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Communicating With Your Shadow Self, Exercise 4
In this exercise, I'm asked to imagine a day without consequences. What would I choose to do if there would be no repercussions and I didn't have to make anybody else happy?
I wrestled whether to record this on the blog. One's deepest fantasies are (a) not always interesting to others, and (b) private and meant to stay that way.
But this exercise blew my mind, so I can't leave it out. It is edited to focus on work.
First, I imagine and record the fantasy:
Wake up alone, drink coffee in bed while reading a book. Get up when I'm hungry and eat a sausage and a fruit yogurt smoothie.
Go for long walk or do yoga practice. Shower.
Write.
Eat hot meal while writing. Maybe a nice grilled panino. It's still only 10:30 in the morning.
Read and write some more.
Nap or go for walk.
Go out to dinner with fun girlfriends.
Read.
Now I have to characterize this person who does all the things on this day of no consequences:
A person like this would be a little bit mean and a little bit ruthless. She would put her art first before anything. She would have to be mostly free of responsibilities. Her name would be Susan or Sarah or Sharon, some "S" name, and she would have red lips and brown hair and be in her 40's.
When I talk to her in my mind, the book says I am to tell her it's safe for her to show herself and that I'm not going to act on her impulses.
The thing is, she's not actually dangerous, and her impulses are really a way of life. That is to say, my way of life, or the one I want to have some day.
I want her life.
What she feels and says about my life: "Just wait, Honey. You need to do all the things you need to do now, and this life awaits you. I am right here and I'm going to live this way until I die. I want you to live right, so that when you get here you are clean, free and deserving. Earn it, my Dear, and it'll be yours."
I wrestled whether to record this on the blog. One's deepest fantasies are (a) not always interesting to others, and (b) private and meant to stay that way.
But this exercise blew my mind, so I can't leave it out. It is edited to focus on work.
First, I imagine and record the fantasy:
Wake up alone, drink coffee in bed while reading a book. Get up when I'm hungry and eat a sausage and a fruit yogurt smoothie.
Go for long walk or do yoga practice. Shower.
Write.
Eat hot meal while writing. Maybe a nice grilled panino. It's still only 10:30 in the morning.
Read and write some more.
Nap or go for walk.
Go out to dinner with fun girlfriends.
Read.
Now I have to characterize this person who does all the things on this day of no consequences:
A person like this would be a little bit mean and a little bit ruthless. She would put her art first before anything. She would have to be mostly free of responsibilities. Her name would be Susan or Sarah or Sharon, some "S" name, and she would have red lips and brown hair and be in her 40's.
When I talk to her in my mind, the book says I am to tell her it's safe for her to show herself and that I'm not going to act on her impulses.
The thing is, she's not actually dangerous, and her impulses are really a way of life. That is to say, my way of life, or the one I want to have some day.
I want her life.
What she feels and says about my life: "Just wait, Honey. You need to do all the things you need to do now, and this life awaits you. I am right here and I'm going to live this way until I die. I want you to live right, so that when you get here you are clean, free and deserving. Earn it, my Dear, and it'll be yours."
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Identifying Your Inner Critic, Exercise 3
In this exercise, I was asked to think back to the earliest creative effort I can remember sharing with an adult, and what happened.
By the time I was about eight years old, I needed a teacher. I had a lot of talent and passion, but everyone around me saw what I did (drawing, paintings, little sculptures from modeling clay, illustrations, calligraphy, lettering) as parlor tricks. Adults would lean over my shoulder and say, "Are you an artist?" They were asking me? What did that mean? I didn't know what to say, so I said maybe someday when I get paid I will be. They all thought that was hilarious.
The only time I came close to getting actual instruction was when I plagiarized an entire book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, creators of the "Frances" series. One night I sat at the dining room table of a house we were renting on Comanche Drive in San Jose and recreated the story and drawings about a little hedgehog. He was rather full of himself and gave himself a gold star on a calendar every day, just for being his wonderful self. (In the end, his parents take him down a peg in some loving storybook way.) I had read this book at my cousin's house, where I spent every day after school until my mom got off work. I set about recreating it, page after page, and when I was done I stapled my plagiarized pages together. I did not intend to show it to anyone. I just liked the story, and I was possessed by the artist's drawings. This book was unlike any I had at home. I wanted a copy for myself. So I made one and had a blast recreating those drawings.
My mother wandered in to refill her wine glass or something, and saw the booklet. She looked through it. She went nuts. She said it was amazing. She said if I had that kind of talent, she'd a find a "write a story" class to put me in. Would I like that?
Does a bear shit in the woods? I nodded. Visions of me and some other smart kids huddled in a class room after hours danced in my head. I thought my heart would explode.
But, aside from nodding, I said nothing. I felt very weird. She rushed into the other room to show her TV-watching boyfriend. Finally she asked the dreaded question: "Did you make this up all my yourself?"
I shook my head. I confessed it was a copy of a book I'd read at my cousin's.
"Oh," she said, adopting her usual tone of world-weariness. She gave the book back to me. "For a minute there I thought I was going to have to find you a special class or something." The subject was dropped. I wasn't going to get the class. Obviously, my mother was disappointed.
Here's the thing she was not: curious. From whence did this irrepressible need to create come? ("Her dad's an artist," she would tell people, her voice dripping with irony. "I guess it's in the genes.") What could be done to shepherd it? That was a question that never seemed to keep anyone up at night.
Looking back on this now, it strikes me that I was just looking for something to do with my hands. I wanted to make things, I wanted to write books and illustrate them, but I needed to figure all of this out on my own. That's a lot for a little kid in my circumstances. My dad was just an occasional visitor. He was an artist, but his lifestyle was not too appealing to anyone. He drove a Frankenstein VW bus, had long hair and a long beard, and lived in a group house with people who gave themselves wheat grass enemas.
It's a classic step to take as an emerging artist - you copy other people's stuff to figure out how they did it. It's totally normal. The work of other artists and writers were the only teachers I was going to have for a long time.
As this all relates to my current feelings about my work, I find it interesting that even as a kid I thought I wasn't going to be a "real" artist until I got paid. And that I didn't have a direction all my own, just a strong need to make art.
My mother will never understand what I do. And that's getting to be okay, and I'm getting to the point where I don't have to scold her in my mind for it. It's just my thing now.
Oh, and p.s. Much later in life, I wrote a short story called "Stars" about a 6th grade tomboy who is spending her summer before entering junior high trying to rid herself of her bad habits. She and everybody around her feels it's time for her to become a proper girl. For every day she doesn't smoke, look at her step dad's Playboys or hit anyone, she gives herself a gold star. Naturally, this doesn't altogether work and the day she karate-chops an annoying neighbor boy in the testicles she decides to give up the campaign completely.
I used this story to apply to a creative writing program at my college.
I got in.
By the time I was about eight years old, I needed a teacher. I had a lot of talent and passion, but everyone around me saw what I did (drawing, paintings, little sculptures from modeling clay, illustrations, calligraphy, lettering) as parlor tricks. Adults would lean over my shoulder and say, "Are you an artist?" They were asking me? What did that mean? I didn't know what to say, so I said maybe someday when I get paid I will be. They all thought that was hilarious.
The only time I came close to getting actual instruction was when I plagiarized an entire book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, creators of the "Frances" series. One night I sat at the dining room table of a house we were renting on Comanche Drive in San Jose and recreated the story and drawings about a little hedgehog. He was rather full of himself and gave himself a gold star on a calendar every day, just for being his wonderful self. (In the end, his parents take him down a peg in some loving storybook way.) I had read this book at my cousin's house, where I spent every day after school until my mom got off work. I set about recreating it, page after page, and when I was done I stapled my plagiarized pages together. I did not intend to show it to anyone. I just liked the story, and I was possessed by the artist's drawings. This book was unlike any I had at home. I wanted a copy for myself. So I made one and had a blast recreating those drawings.
My mother wandered in to refill her wine glass or something, and saw the booklet. She looked through it. She went nuts. She said it was amazing. She said if I had that kind of talent, she'd a find a "write a story" class to put me in. Would I like that?
Does a bear shit in the woods? I nodded. Visions of me and some other smart kids huddled in a class room after hours danced in my head. I thought my heart would explode.
But, aside from nodding, I said nothing. I felt very weird. She rushed into the other room to show her TV-watching boyfriend. Finally she asked the dreaded question: "Did you make this up all my yourself?"
I shook my head. I confessed it was a copy of a book I'd read at my cousin's.
"Oh," she said, adopting her usual tone of world-weariness. She gave the book back to me. "For a minute there I thought I was going to have to find you a special class or something." The subject was dropped. I wasn't going to get the class. Obviously, my mother was disappointed.
Here's the thing she was not: curious. From whence did this irrepressible need to create come? ("Her dad's an artist," she would tell people, her voice dripping with irony. "I guess it's in the genes.") What could be done to shepherd it? That was a question that never seemed to keep anyone up at night.
Looking back on this now, it strikes me that I was just looking for something to do with my hands. I wanted to make things, I wanted to write books and illustrate them, but I needed to figure all of this out on my own. That's a lot for a little kid in my circumstances. My dad was just an occasional visitor. He was an artist, but his lifestyle was not too appealing to anyone. He drove a Frankenstein VW bus, had long hair and a long beard, and lived in a group house with people who gave themselves wheat grass enemas.
It's a classic step to take as an emerging artist - you copy other people's stuff to figure out how they did it. It's totally normal. The work of other artists and writers were the only teachers I was going to have for a long time.
As this all relates to my current feelings about my work, I find it interesting that even as a kid I thought I wasn't going to be a "real" artist until I got paid. And that I didn't have a direction all my own, just a strong need to make art.
My mother will never understand what I do. And that's getting to be okay, and I'm getting to the point where I don't have to scold her in my mind for it. It's just my thing now.
Oh, and p.s. Much later in life, I wrote a short story called "Stars" about a 6th grade tomboy who is spending her summer before entering junior high trying to rid herself of her bad habits. She and everybody around her feels it's time for her to become a proper girl. For every day she doesn't smoke, look at her step dad's Playboys or hit anyone, she gives herself a gold star. Naturally, this doesn't altogether work and the day she karate-chops an annoying neighbor boy in the testicles she decides to give up the campaign completely.
I used this story to apply to a creative writing program at my college.
I got in.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Unleashing Your Inner Wisdom, Exercise 2
In this exercise, I'm asked to picture myself in a safe place that has some meaning for me, and imagine that out of the mists walks a benevolent person who has something important to tell me. This person is, more or less, my mentor. I listen to this person, and write down everything she says to me.
I'm at the Sleeping Lady Retreat Center in Leavenworth, WA. I'm sitting alone in a cabin, resting on a bed made with down blankets and pillows. My yoga teacher Denise appears. She says to me:
"Work with your vanity, your pride, your egoism. They are a part of you. They are a part of your practice as a yogini and an artist. Don't fight with them."
"Apply principles of yoga to making your art. Use yoga to drop down deep, to listen to your natural self."
"Cultivate neutrality instead of judgment."
"In the end, it all comes down to compassion."
I could meditate on each one of these statements for a lifetime. In them, I see all the things that have held me back, and all the things that will release me.
I'm at the Sleeping Lady Retreat Center in Leavenworth, WA. I'm sitting alone in a cabin, resting on a bed made with down blankets and pillows. My yoga teacher Denise appears. She says to me:
"Work with your vanity, your pride, your egoism. They are a part of you. They are a part of your practice as a yogini and an artist. Don't fight with them."
"Apply principles of yoga to making your art. Use yoga to drop down deep, to listen to your natural self."
"Cultivate neutrality instead of judgment."
"In the end, it all comes down to compassion."
I could meditate on each one of these statements for a lifetime. In them, I see all the things that have held me back, and all the things that will release me.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Girls Should...Exercise 1
I'm posting from Freeland, WA, on Whidbey Island. Last family vacation of the summer. As a bonus, I am staying an extra day...alone. To write and read and walk on the beach. The beach condo on Mutiny Bay that I've rented from a friend has no Internet service, which is a lovely blessing.Thanks to the Island County library system, I am able to reach you.
Here is the first of the exercises from the book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued by Susan O'Doherty. She asks me to draw a picture of the person who was my primary caregiver when I was a child, with a dialogue bubble starting with the words, "Girls should..." At first I had an image of my mother, but then I had an image of my husband! Instead of freaking out, I went with both. Here is what I wrote:
My primary caregiver then...
[drawing of my haggard mom with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, a frazzled perm, and a dialogue bubble]
"Girls should be pretty and well groomed. You want to be able to attract a man. It's important to be sexy. Iron your clothes, make sure your hair's clean, and use proper English."
Both of my mom's parents had come from homes with no stability or safety. Together, they raised a family that tended to be one paycheck away from broke, but strived to be clean and respectable. It was a point of pride to have a spic and span house, to owe no favors or debts. They were quite strict about boundaries and limits, even when it came what one was allowed to ask for in life. Especially then. About being so strict, my grandma told me, "My mother didn't know what all I did when I was girl. I rode the street cars all over Oakland and San Francisco when I was ten, twelve years old. When I had children [at 16], I wanted them to know that someone gave a damn about them."
My primary caregiver now...
[drawing of my husband with a mild expression and dialogue bubble]
"Girls should enjoy being wives and mothers."
His mother was quite stoic and I don't believe he had any idea how unhappy she was. They don't complain in his family. When I'm with them in Boston I pick up on their sense of duty and repressed conflict. It's one of the things I actually found refreshing when I met them.
In the interest of fair representation, I must point out that my husband is supportive and wonderful. But we had to work to get to a place where it was okay for me to blow off steam about the kids or struggle openly with postpartum life. I don't think he witnessed this kind of thing as a kid.
Here is the first of the exercises from the book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued by Susan O'Doherty. She asks me to draw a picture of the person who was my primary caregiver when I was a child, with a dialogue bubble starting with the words, "Girls should..." At first I had an image of my mother, but then I had an image of my husband! Instead of freaking out, I went with both. Here is what I wrote:
My primary caregiver then...
[drawing of my haggard mom with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, a frazzled perm, and a dialogue bubble]
"Girls should be pretty and well groomed. You want to be able to attract a man. It's important to be sexy. Iron your clothes, make sure your hair's clean, and use proper English."
Both of my mom's parents had come from homes with no stability or safety. Together, they raised a family that tended to be one paycheck away from broke, but strived to be clean and respectable. It was a point of pride to have a spic and span house, to owe no favors or debts. They were quite strict about boundaries and limits, even when it came what one was allowed to ask for in life. Especially then. About being so strict, my grandma told me, "My mother didn't know what all I did when I was girl. I rode the street cars all over Oakland and San Francisco when I was ten, twelve years old. When I had children [at 16], I wanted them to know that someone gave a damn about them."
My primary caregiver now...
[drawing of my husband with a mild expression and dialogue bubble]
"Girls should enjoy being wives and mothers."
His mother was quite stoic and I don't believe he had any idea how unhappy she was. They don't complain in his family. When I'm with them in Boston I pick up on their sense of duty and repressed conflict. It's one of the things I actually found refreshing when I met them.
In the interest of fair representation, I must point out that my husband is supportive and wonderful. But we had to work to get to a place where it was okay for me to blow off steam about the kids or struggle openly with postpartum life. I don't think he witnessed this kind of thing as a kid.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Getting Unstuck
There's a ghost from my past who visits me often. I'll call him Curtis. Curtis and I had a relationship during an impressionable period in my life. He introduced me to an expanded world of art, books, and music that proved to be a marvelous jumping-off point for me. His influence in other areas, however, has lasted in a way that I would rather it didn't.
More often than I care to admit, I still look at things from Curtis's perspective. This is too bad, because in the end, Curtis found me inadequate for his purposes. Curtis and I had the kind of relationship you hear about when two "creatives" get together. If one finds success and the other doesn't, things don't altogether work out. While I struggled to earn a living and find relevance as a writer, Curtis was hired by a newspaper as an editorial assistant, then moved on to critic and editor. I got and quit lame job after lame job. From my perspective, he got to do exactly what made him happy, for enough money to pay rent and buy beer. He followed his dreams and desires, and seemed to find opportunities everywhere.
I didn't. It was a frustrating exercise for me to analyze the reasons behind his success and my failure. He felt he deserved what he wanted, and didn't question the motivation to go for it. He took risks, was willing to look a fool, elbowed his way into things when necessary. The best reasons I could conjure for his easy sense of entitlement were that Curtis had supportive parents, a financial cushion through them, and had gone to an Ivy League school. He'd travelled. His parents travelled. He also had a lot of good dumb luck. This is the story I told myself.
I, however, had substantial barriers to being a real, paid writer. I was often depressed, chronically broke, and struggling mightily to break free from my family. I had a silly education from my four years at The Evergreen State College. I had not done internships, had not sought out extracurricular writing opportunities in college, and had not really learned any skills. I wasn't qualified to do anything. I had no support and no connections.
This is the story I told myself. I tried my best not to believe that there was any more going on in this scenario than my external circumstances. I was a good writer. I was just starting at a deficit and needed a lucky break.
This little story worked moderately well for me, most of the time. Every so often though, I broke down. It was too hard shoring myself up all the time, hoping that Curtis would not lose respect for me, hoping that my life would change somehow and I'd get out of the deep hole I was in. It was also pretty hard not to believe that I was just a fraud, a hobbyist, a hanger-on; in short, a loser.
Once, when Curtis hung up the phone after making plans to visit a friend in New York, I fell into a deep funk. We were at my apartment, and I'd been listening to his excited phone conversation with increasing bitterness. Once again, he was doing something interesting and glamorous, and I was still toiling over my little stories and drawings and striking out every time I tried to improve my life.
"You always get to do cool stuff," I blurted after he hung up the phone. He looked at me like I was nuts.
"I don't GET to do cool stuff," he replied with irritation. "I just DO cool stuff." From which I inferred, "So could you if you would get your head out of your ass."
"It's easier for you," I sniffed. "All the people you went to school with are doing interesting things. Your parents know people all over the place. They give you money for stuff like this. There is no way I could do what you're doing."
He looked like he was about to explode. "It's not all about money!" he said. "I see interesting things to do and I do them. Nothing's stopping you!"
A lot was stopping me. And reading Susan O'Doherty's new book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued; A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity has helped me see what it was.
My blockages have not so much been related to money, as Curtis suggested. They are, however, deeply rooted in the culture from which I sprang. I came up in a world of certain expectations for life. These were, more or less, (a) finish high school, (b) get a job, and (c) shut the fuck up. Getting by was the most you could hope for. It was foolish and even sinful to want anything else. If you were female, even more so. People in my family do not travel, pursue creative work, or go to college. I won't say it's a bad life for all my cousins who stayed, it's just a very particular life that doesn't lend itself to supporting dreamers, drifters and creative types like myself. To leave it, I had to reject everyone from home.
Still, their ideas about life followed me, especially the harder things got. Curtis would seem, on the surface, to have been a perfect influence for me, but he turned out to be a terrific snob and I turned out to be pathetic. I absorbed his disdain. He started wishing for a different kind of girlfriend.
I continued to not know how to do much but survive.
It's many years later. I am no longer stuck. Still, the very title of O'Doherty's book brought up such a wave of Curtis-like disgust that I had a hard time opening my mind to it at first. But through doing the exercises, I began to look at my past behaviors and habits of mind in this area with much more compassion than I had before. O'Doherty, a therapist, does such a good job of getting right down to what matters - the creative lives of women and our specific issues - with great compassion for what we are up against.
My therapist, Joan, once told me after I apologized for boring her with my dithering, "I'm never bored with you, Susie. I only try to understand." O'Doherty gives this impression, too, on nearly every page, about women who do creative work. She tries to help us see and understand.
I first wrote a review for this book in which I tried desperately to distance myself from the book's intended audience. "I am not one of you," I seemed to say. "I do not have your silly problems." If I needed to read a book like this, I must not be a real writer. I must be just another whiny female with too many excuses.
Oh, Curtis. Do shut up.
I have to thank O'Doherty for getting me to see that my drawn swords and plates of armor caused me to write a review that was not only dripping with bitterness, but was not a good read. I was trying too hard to protect myself to develop a thought.
In case you are interested in reading Getting Unstuck, doing the exercises, and comparing notes with me, I am going to post my written exercises in future installments of the blog. Please tell me about your progress! I recommend it to any female artist or writer who has an immediate distaste for the title, like I did, or for one who feels the mystery and mechanics of getting one's head out of one's ass have become overwhelming. As a companion, I recommend Pema Chodron's fantastic, funny recordings on a similar subject, also called Getting Unstuck. Download it, plug it in to listening device, and watch your experience on the bus become something altogether different.
And thanks for listening to my story about Curtis's ghost. It feels good to liberate it.
More often than I care to admit, I still look at things from Curtis's perspective. This is too bad, because in the end, Curtis found me inadequate for his purposes. Curtis and I had the kind of relationship you hear about when two "creatives" get together. If one finds success and the other doesn't, things don't altogether work out. While I struggled to earn a living and find relevance as a writer, Curtis was hired by a newspaper as an editorial assistant, then moved on to critic and editor. I got and quit lame job after lame job. From my perspective, he got to do exactly what made him happy, for enough money to pay rent and buy beer. He followed his dreams and desires, and seemed to find opportunities everywhere.
I didn't. It was a frustrating exercise for me to analyze the reasons behind his success and my failure. He felt he deserved what he wanted, and didn't question the motivation to go for it. He took risks, was willing to look a fool, elbowed his way into things when necessary. The best reasons I could conjure for his easy sense of entitlement were that Curtis had supportive parents, a financial cushion through them, and had gone to an Ivy League school. He'd travelled. His parents travelled. He also had a lot of good dumb luck. This is the story I told myself.
I, however, had substantial barriers to being a real, paid writer. I was often depressed, chronically broke, and struggling mightily to break free from my family. I had a silly education from my four years at The Evergreen State College. I had not done internships, had not sought out extracurricular writing opportunities in college, and had not really learned any skills. I wasn't qualified to do anything. I had no support and no connections.
This is the story I told myself. I tried my best not to believe that there was any more going on in this scenario than my external circumstances. I was a good writer. I was just starting at a deficit and needed a lucky break.
This little story worked moderately well for me, most of the time. Every so often though, I broke down. It was too hard shoring myself up all the time, hoping that Curtis would not lose respect for me, hoping that my life would change somehow and I'd get out of the deep hole I was in. It was also pretty hard not to believe that I was just a fraud, a hobbyist, a hanger-on; in short, a loser.
Once, when Curtis hung up the phone after making plans to visit a friend in New York, I fell into a deep funk. We were at my apartment, and I'd been listening to his excited phone conversation with increasing bitterness. Once again, he was doing something interesting and glamorous, and I was still toiling over my little stories and drawings and striking out every time I tried to improve my life.
"You always get to do cool stuff," I blurted after he hung up the phone. He looked at me like I was nuts.
"I don't GET to do cool stuff," he replied with irritation. "I just DO cool stuff." From which I inferred, "So could you if you would get your head out of your ass."
"It's easier for you," I sniffed. "All the people you went to school with are doing interesting things. Your parents know people all over the place. They give you money for stuff like this. There is no way I could do what you're doing."
He looked like he was about to explode. "It's not all about money!" he said. "I see interesting things to do and I do them. Nothing's stopping you!"
A lot was stopping me. And reading Susan O'Doherty's new book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued; A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity has helped me see what it was.
My blockages have not so much been related to money, as Curtis suggested. They are, however, deeply rooted in the culture from which I sprang. I came up in a world of certain expectations for life. These were, more or less, (a) finish high school, (b) get a job, and (c) shut the fuck up. Getting by was the most you could hope for. It was foolish and even sinful to want anything else. If you were female, even more so. People in my family do not travel, pursue creative work, or go to college. I won't say it's a bad life for all my cousins who stayed, it's just a very particular life that doesn't lend itself to supporting dreamers, drifters and creative types like myself. To leave it, I had to reject everyone from home.
Still, their ideas about life followed me, especially the harder things got. Curtis would seem, on the surface, to have been a perfect influence for me, but he turned out to be a terrific snob and I turned out to be pathetic. I absorbed his disdain. He started wishing for a different kind of girlfriend.
I continued to not know how to do much but survive.
It's many years later. I am no longer stuck. Still, the very title of O'Doherty's book brought up such a wave of Curtis-like disgust that I had a hard time opening my mind to it at first. But through doing the exercises, I began to look at my past behaviors and habits of mind in this area with much more compassion than I had before. O'Doherty, a therapist, does such a good job of getting right down to what matters - the creative lives of women and our specific issues - with great compassion for what we are up against.
My therapist, Joan, once told me after I apologized for boring her with my dithering, "I'm never bored with you, Susie. I only try to understand." O'Doherty gives this impression, too, on nearly every page, about women who do creative work. She tries to help us see and understand.
I first wrote a review for this book in which I tried desperately to distance myself from the book's intended audience. "I am not one of you," I seemed to say. "I do not have your silly problems." If I needed to read a book like this, I must not be a real writer. I must be just another whiny female with too many excuses.
Oh, Curtis. Do shut up.
I have to thank O'Doherty for getting me to see that my drawn swords and plates of armor caused me to write a review that was not only dripping with bitterness, but was not a good read. I was trying too hard to protect myself to develop a thought.
In case you are interested in reading Getting Unstuck, doing the exercises, and comparing notes with me, I am going to post my written exercises in future installments of the blog. Please tell me about your progress! I recommend it to any female artist or writer who has an immediate distaste for the title, like I did, or for one who feels the mystery and mechanics of getting one's head out of one's ass have become overwhelming. As a companion, I recommend Pema Chodron's fantastic, funny recordings on a similar subject, also called Getting Unstuck. Download it, plug it in to listening device, and watch your experience on the bus become something altogether different.
And thanks for listening to my story about Curtis's ghost. It feels good to liberate it.
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