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June 2004 Ya know. By the way. In case anyone wonders. I am not a Buddhist. I don't even play one on TV. I had a few years of Buddhist practice way back. I loved the ritual. I loved the smell of incense in my hair.
In some ways my life has been a religious studies program. In my book I write about how my search for a better relationship with God was really a search for a better relationship with my father. And once I met Baba that search felt satisfied. When my dad died I knew that search had never been satisfied.
Whiskey River posted a bit from Thich Nhat Han.
Was I reconciled with my father? In some ways. In the big soul kind of way. I had more or less accepted him for who he was. I called him on Father's Day and Christmas and his birthday. I almost always hung up and wept. It's not simple. I don't blame him for making me suffer. But I did suffer. When I am at the pool I watch father's playing with their children. Teaching their daughters how to swim. I know that I don't have a sense of what that feels like. The feeling of having a man who is there, loving you and teaching you and delighting in you. It feels like missing information. It feels like something I have to learn on my own. I feel lost to it. There's a laundry list of things about who I am many of which can be filed in the was-not-fathered file. Not all of which are bad. Basically. For the most part. I like who I am. I'm always working under the hood but I do like who I am. So it's all good.
Except...
It's not really.
There is no doubt in my mind that my father is inside me. No doubt. He lives there as an object of desire. An absence. I feel the need to apologize for the hole he left in me. I feel like it shows. I feel like it causes problems. I feel like I have to find a way to fill it up.
In the big soul way of looking at it all I am a narrative line that will trail off. I will leave photos and words on a page and a bunch of stuff that will be distributed to ... oh I don't know. Anyone want some salt and pepper shakers? In the big soul way of looking at things he was a fatherless boy. No one there to teach him how to do the job. How can I blame him? I can't. I love him too much.
Years ago I read a story, written by a father, about a tantrum a child was having just as the family was about to leave the house. It was an inconvenient time to have to deal with the need of a child. But the whole family sat down and listened to the child's complaint. Apparently that was all it took. A few minutes of listening and the child was comforted and willing to move on. The story stayed with me all these years.
No doubt because I am trying to teach myself to swim, but I am always wondering about the times when we need to have a tantrum. My feeling is that no child has a tantrum for no good reason. I understand negative attention getting. But, really, children cry for a reason.
Sometimes my feelings of loss are so overwhelming. I can't imagine how I'm going to take the next breath. But I do. Or, rather, my body does it for me. My body eventually sucks in oxygen. With or without my conscious agreement. And sometimes I wish I could have one time with my father in which he could have taken my hand in his and said, "I'm sorry." It wouldn't have had to taken a lot of time. No pillory. No trial. Just a moment of acknowledgement between humans. A moment to pay attention to what didn't go well.
I take refuge in ideas. And the beautiful hearts I find everywhere. I take refuge in the way we work to express it all.
But. It is not simple. Things do go wrong. We make holes in one another. It's Sunday morning and I am churchless, fatherless and my spiritual practice involves lots of clicking on hyperlinks. We are one in a stream of life. But we are also many. Reconciliation is a process. Best done heart to heart. And often left to philosophy. Sometimes the family grabs the kid and drags them out the door. Sometimes the family leaves the kid behind.
I'm just trying to understand how to do two things at the same time. Reconcile with my father and still tell the truth. I'm just chin stroking today. Chin stroking is usually done by people with beards, I suppose. But that's the way I'm feeling. Chin stroking. Ponderous. Wondering about my place in the whole what-ever-it-is-that's going on.
As usual, Monday bring the tension of finding a job into focus. It isn't that I don't pick through job sites over the weekend but I don't feel the tension in the same way. And writing? I certainly could write over the weekend and often do. When the tension of needing to look for a job is lifted the blood flows back into my head and I actually can write. Sometimes.
Last night I was cooking yellow beans. They were pale and beautiful and I wanted to find a way to write about them. I wanted to commemorate them. I blanched them. Hot water and then into ice water. The ice water stops the cooking process and the beans stay crunchy. They also retain their color and I was so intoxicated by the pale yellow.
That's how my blog gets written. Something becomes vivid and I want to point to it and say, look. In some ways, it's easier to write about pale yellow beans than the machinations of my inner life. Especially when my inner life isn't ... mmm ... how should I say this? Seemly?
I've been introduced to some new blogs recently. I'm enjoying getting to know new people. Some of them seem quite dear. Many of them are heart wide open. I find myself feeling a bit shy and yet trenchant. It's the way I feel at a party. Part of me want to be nice and make small talk and part of me want to act out. I don't go to parties. I don't like the way there are things that aren't being talked about but hang in the room like balloons that are losing helium and falling. Slowly. My awareness of the things that are being said and the things that aren't being said is messing with my writing. I want to talk about the balloons. I'm reading these new people with an odd hyper vigilance. My teeth chewing my lip. Wondering. Some of this is because of how I found them and some of this about events in June in which I felt stung and has nothing to do with any of them but has everything to do with the nature of relationships forged online and some of this is because of the dang balloons.
So I am chin stroking.
I need to turn my thoughts to the job search. I need to think about submitting more writing. I need to make another push to find a publisher for Avoirdupois. I need to do laundry and clean the apartment and go the store and call Barbara and ...
But I'm clicking. And reading. And chewing my lip.
Relationships will be what they will be. I'll stumble along. Smiling and acting out and sometimes finding myself heart to heart. I know that there's no way to know someone, until you know them. And even then there are surprises. I'm just wondering about my part in it all.
So begins a post. Paul has blogged it. April has blogged it. I've been thinking about it. There's just so much to say.
I've been remembering a time when I was flying. I go to great lengths to not be a problem to anyone when I am flying. I've been remembering a trip on which I was sitting in a row of three seats. There was an empty seat between me and the other person. I try to make sure I can sit in a seat with a movable arm rest, on the aisle. I shift my weight so that if I'm going to take up more than my seat I am in the aisle. I get bumped by carts and passersby but I deal with it. I travel on redeyes, or during times when there may not be as many people traveling. If the arm rests don't move. I just get squeezed. I pull my arms tight across my chest. God forbid I touch anyone. I get off airplanes so tense my body feels like it might be made of granite.
But anyway. There was a seat between us and a movable armrest so I was almost comfortable. The other person was comfortable. I never eat on a plane. The food sucks. I carry my own bottle of water. I read a book and try to ignore all the images of crashing and burning that are inevitably filling my head. The fellow in front of me was leaning back and pulling forward and leaning back again. The head rest of his seat was under my nose. He stood in the aisle for awhile. The people across the aisle from me actually leaned across and commented on how annoying he must be to me and how nice I was being. I was barely noticing him. I was too busy trying not to annoy anyone.
Now, if you read this story and you are fat you might relate. You might have a similar story. If you are thin, or average sized and my friend, or someone who reads me and likes me, you might notice the part where I'm uncomfortable. Your concern would be for me. But if you see me walking down the aisle on an airplane headed towards your seat, you might care less about my comfort. And I wouldn't blame you.
Here's what I wonder. I wonder why you're mad at me and not the airlines. Seats are smaller than they used to be. Asses may be bigger but seats are also smaller. The space between seats is smaller. I realize that airlines are struggling. I also realize that when the airlines get bailed out my tax dollars are in that pot. The right to access on means of transportation is written into law. Whether or not we're comfortable isn't mentioned. But don't you imagine that they can find a way for us all to be comfortable?
And news flash. Even the medical community, knee deep in diet and pharmaceutical industry money and pulling down piles of cash sawing stomachs into barely functioning organs will tell you that the size of my ass is not just about how much I eat.
I just never get this. The taxes part I really don't get. The insurance rates part? Well. Again. Why aren't you mad at the insurance companies?
I often wonder how many kids are going to have extreme eating disorders in the next few years. With the constant hammering away from the media about how terrible it is to be fat I'm imagining a rise in eating disorders. And make no mistake. People die from eating disorders. Even when they don't die they suffer damaged emotional and physical health. How about if instead of talking in terms of limiting we talk in terms of a fully engaged relationship with food. If no kid ever walked into a fast food restaurant again there would be no one happier than I. Kids who hang out with me know that this is the time of year to eat lots of heirloom tomatoes. Unless you don't like tomatoes. In which case, let's talk about peaches. Kids who hang out with me listen to rants about the difference between real food and crap food. Make kids exercise? How about if we stop jamming them with Ritalin and telling them to sit still. How about if we fund after school programs and school sports.
This guy is just not happy with any of us, is he? My fat grandmother worked in her garden well into her seventies. My fat mother goes swimming three times a week. Watch out for me though.
The post was also was linked here and the comments are worth reading. For awhile. It all makes me tired. I can't even summon up the energy to argue. I have no argument with the people who want to take down the fast food companies. I have no argument with the people who think we spend too much a time in front of screens and in cars.
That's where my argument begins. If you see me on the street and think yelling, "Watch out Fatso" is way to make sure your taxes and your insurance rates are low, think again. If you don't know me and you see me on the street and decide that you think you know how I eat and how much I exercise you're a bigot. When you start rationalizing calling children names you're something much worse. The movie channels that I didn't realize I had are not a good thing. They are Starz channels. I never ordered them. The cable line up changes from time to time and I don't always track it well.
I have the TV on, off to the side. I have the radio on in the morning. KPFA or KQED or KALW. The TV is on much of the day. I listen to city politics, Book TV, Moyers, the news channels. I have my junk television and I can watch reruns of the West Wing again and again. But it's all off to the side. I tune in and out. I leave the room and don't worry about missing anything. I'm either reading on the screen or from a book and the TV is off to the side. I do yoga with the sound of public policy making.
The movie channels aren't easy to tune out and I've been flipping them on, just to see what they're playing and then I end up watching a movie. There are no commercials. I think I'll just watch for a minute and suddenly an hour has gone by. It's just not good. They run movies for a few days in a row so you can tune in at a random point and see the rest another day. I end up watching the movies in patches. Generally speaking they aren't great movies so it's not a problem to watch them that way.
Yesterday they were showing The Accidental Tourist. It's one of my favorite movies if only for the last scene. In the last scene there is an expression on William Hurt's face that I could look at forever. He's really happy to see someone. And there is this deep recognition in his expression. It's like he sees the person in a way that calms him to his core.
Ahhhhhh. It's you. What a relief.
I watched the last twenty minutes of the movie so that I could see that expression. I've seen a few movies that I would not have seen. Movies that weren't so bad. But I get sucked it. It's not good.
The thing about music is that I can't tune it out. If I have music on I'm listening to it. And I do. When I cook or clean I listen to music. I listen to music in the evenings. Adrienne (who I just want to hug) read my post about Steve and realized that since I've been unemployed I probably didn't have my own copy of the new disc. So she bought me one and I've been listening to it. It's so good! Steve wrote to say that three people bought a disc because of the post. Thank you! I'm so happy to turn people on to his music.
Silence is good. I probably need more silence. It's just that I've been in this struggle with fear and loathing and loss. I know I am using the noise to distract me from the fear and loathing and loss. It doesn't really work. And it's the movies that really bring that home. I watched twenty minutes of a movie I'd already seen just to see the expression on a man's face. An expression of deep recognition and relief. I'm not sure why I'm doing this. But Cyndy said to do it. So I am.
The guy who started it says "it will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected." He's speaking in terms of the technical process.
Last night I had a dream in which Susan and I were sleeping in a dorm. We were awakened by the sound of someone crying and we were worried because we thought it sounded like Dru. You are all on my mind and in my dreams. That's how we are connected. Sometimes when I out myself on the blog about stuff I do, I don't do it. I turned the TV off and put on some music. The disc player was loaded up. Linda Ronstadt, which I put on when she got kicked out of Vegas. Cat Stevens, still on from the Harold & Maude evening. Todd. Been on there for awhile. The reasons are not good. Nora. Steve. (Thank you Adrienne.)
My voice is shot. I have no upper range. But it still feels good to sing.
Head back. Eyes closed.
Yeah.
I've been so miserable. And I knew I had to be less miserable. So I worked really hard. It feels like I've pulled myself onto a ledge and I've been pressed against the wall. I can't really rest here. There's more climbing to do. And I'm just pressed against the wall, trying not to look down. Even music feels dangerous. Kristina has been going through her books and packing for her move to LA. I'm trying to be positive about the move since I think there are great things about it for them. It just feels so far away.
Sigh.
I got to go through the books she is getting rid of and pick the ones I wanted. I ended up with four bags full of books. Picture me dancing around the room, drunk with books. That's how I feel.
I love to look at people's book shelves. It may be rude. It may be true that I'm making judgments about a person based on their books but it's also about looking at titles and seeing if there are books I don't know. In Kristina's case it takes a long time and there are many I don't know. She reads more poetry than I do since she is a poet. And she knows so much about who is writing what. Her book shelves are like a library with all the best stuff in one place. She also shares my preference for hard backs. Some of the books in the four bags are hard back editions of books I already have. Four bags full. It makes me giddy. I feel drunk.
I went down to see her on Caltrain. I ended up sitting backwards on the way down so everything was rushing away from me. Despite the fact that A Terrible Love of War has been in my side bar as a book I am currently reading, the book has been sitting on my table untouched. I saw Hillman on book TV talking about it and got it with a gift certificate from Margaret. (Thank you Margaret.) I took the book on the train. It's a long trip so I had plenty of time to read. Hillman writes:
I thought of Kurt's morning verse. Intellectually I hold the idea that I need to see myself in the thing or person bringing hate to my heart. I'm revolted by the hate in my own heart and I'd like to ignore it. But it lives there. How can I know myself if I don't look at it? The trick I think is not look at it with contempt but rather with a desire to understand.
This doesn't mean I don't want to vote Bush out of office and see an end to war. I just don't want to make war to end war.
The most difficult part of the book is the detailing of how war like we have always been. Lists of wars and genocide. Descriptions of atrocity and damage. But even as Hillman pushes the detail in our face he sits back and asks us to consider things in terms of how we hold them. What does normal mean? Is war normal? What does inhumane mean? He talks, as Jungians are wont to do, about metaphor and archetype.
I may write more about this. My head is full of thought.
When I got off the train we went for coffee. There was a man playing flute as we talked. People walked by. Beautiful children and lovely senior couples. The people who aren't at jobs. One woman stopped quite near us to adjust her bag. She was wearing a leopard print jacket and there was a tiger applique on her bag. I imagined her in an apartment full of faux fur and wild cat figurines. I wondered what would be on her bookshelves.
Then we went to the condo for the book festival. It was like Santa opening his bag and saying, "Take what you want." Four bags full. Have I mentioned that? I am drunk with books. Borges and Lopez and a book about Sontag and Kael and so much more. I am dancing around the room.
We had a wonderful lunch. Carnitas and nopales. Plantains and jicama. Drank Mojitos. I flirted with our effusive waiter, Jason and was over come with the need to speak in my not very good Spanish.
The train ride home was faster. We were skipping stops. I read more Hillman. I was facing the city as we came back in. I love that feeling when you see the first landmarks signaling you are almost home and then the vista opens and there is the city. Glittery and tall.
I was home in time for Amish in the City.
Belly full. Head full. Heart full. Still on the ledge but fortified for the rest of the climb. I'm so happy. I went to see if Rana had watched Amish in the City and she had taken this test. Rana finds the best tests. Rana is Gandhi. At first I wanted to be Gandhi. But guess who I am?
I haven't been this happy since it turned out I was Eugene Debs. But it is also odd in light of my reading yesterday. Gandhi or Che? Hmmm. Gandhi is big for me. But Che? Che makes my heart beat faster.
I like to think that I would rather be killed than kill. But I know that the body responds. I don't know how I would react in violent situation. And I know that if someone were trying to hurt someone I loved my reaction would be aggressive. At this point in my life I'd be more useful in a pacifist political movement than in a mountain revolution. But I have to admit. There is romance in revolution.
But.
You know.
War by any other name...
There was a woman on the train yesterday talking on her cell phone. Loudly. I thought about all the times in the day when people were annoying. The car that moved too slow out of the parking space or wouldn't let us into the lane. The woman in the grocery store, blocking the lane. We get on each other's nerves. We arrive in each other's day at inopportune moments and want things from each other. Things that aren't easy to want to give. When I've worked in service jobs like waitress I've felt such rage at people's demand on me and my invisibility. Spend one year of your life being a wait-person or a sales clerk. It will change the way you see people.
We are so estranged from one another. The first brother of the world struck down his own because he couldn't get the approval he wanted from dad. And I am trilled to be a guerrilla leader fighting a righteous cause.
I remember hearing Bruce Cockburn in concert right after he wrote If I had a Rocket Launcher. Suddenly it seemed to me he knew where the lions were. And he was taking aim. I felt sad. And yet I loved the song.
It's too true. Dying tragically on a mountain does appeal to me.
But I am going to get off this ledge.
And maybe I'll learn to spin. Wednesday night I had a dream in which I was living in a hippie commune farm kind of a place with Viggo Mortenson and Bette Midler. I had just woken up (in the dream) and walked into the yard in my nightgown and big snow boots. Viggo had a tray on which was a croissant and some coffee that he was bringing me. He said, " Go get back in bed."
I laughed and ran back to bed but I passed the kitchen table and Viggo and Bette were kissing. Bette followed me to the bed room and said. "Are you getting back in bed so Viggo can visit you? " I said, " What is he to me?" He was in the shower next to us and he heard me say it. Bette put her hand on my face and smeared me with paint. She said something about us all covering our bodies in paint and playing but she called me Trish. I don't like it when people call me Trish. I said I was going to call her Betty but she just laughed and ran off to play. I curled up in bed to cry. Viggo came in with a bowl of warm water and a wash cloth and began to wash my face. In this very tender but insistent manner.
And then I woke up.
I know there will be people who think me quite mad but I've never thought Viggo was attractive. Oh but now I do. I thought about him all day yesterday. I may join a cult. Is there a cult?
I hate it when you wake up right at the sweet part. I was wishing I'd dream about him again last night. But no. I am wondering about it in Jungian terms. Can't say I'm coming up with much. Maybe it was just wish fulfillment.
Insistent tenderness?
Yeah. Probably it was wish fulfillment. Renee had all four wisdom teeth taken out. So she's staying with me and my gazzillion channel television. The narcotic trance of screen is a welcome distraction from her sore jaw.
We stocked up on things that didn't need to be chewed. I made ginger carrot soup and mushroom barley soup. I blended both so that they can be sipped. Today I'm making corn chowder.
It's not as big a deal as we thought it might be. I thought she might be groggy. She's fine. Especially right after she takes her Vicodin.
We're watching The Last Days of Chez Nous and eating blueberries and yoghurt. Me from a bowl. Mine with a spoon. Her from a glass. Her's blended.
It's a tucked in kind of a day. I've seen The Last Days of Chez Nous before. It's not a great movie but the acting is great and there are interesting themes.
My assumption about relationship is that hurt will happen. Not because I think people are mean, or bad inherently. I just think shit happens. For me everything turns on what happens after the hurt. All I need is presence and communication and I can let go of tons.
But I know it's hard for some people to find words. Sometimes it is for me.
The thing I have a hard time with is when someone can't hold a part of what's gone wrong. There are times when what's a great thing for one person really hurts another. There are times when we say things and we don't mean to be insensitive but we are. All I ever need is to hear that the person knows how hard it is for me. Trying to make me feel like I'm crazy isn't a good idea.
There's a character in the film who is fumbling through life. All questions and doubts. I can relate. But she is not able to hold her fumbles. She can't just cop to fucking up. And one a way of looking at things, she didn't really fuck up. She just needed attention. I just wanted her to say that she knew what was happening was causing her sister pain but it was making her very happy. And she wanted to know what she could do to bridge that distance.
Obviously the movie plugs me in. Look at this picture and then look at this one. And then come back and tell me how to find a place that looks just like both of them so that I can take a walk. When the song starts I imagine them dancing. I'm sure they are beautiful together. He swings her and she spins. The fire ignites in my heart and I have no choice but to let it burn. I quit trying to reason. I am burned into ash. The wind blows the ash across the floor into corners. I am scattered and meaningless. When the song stops I feel the weight of the book. I am more aware of myself as solid mass than I have ever been. I am dense and meaningless. I cannot support the weight of the book. It is too sad anyway. Like everything else. The cutest part of the day was when Renee realized that one hour after she took the Vicodin the world was a wonderful place to be. Where I can spend the day in a dark room curled up and sulky she wanted to open the blind and let in the light. As a general practice, her diet is vegetation, almost vegan. But she eats everything. Except tomatoes. She likes projects. The lay on the futon watching television life isn't fun for her. And really, after two episodes of Will and Grace in a row, I feel warped.
We have watched a lot of home decorating shows and The Simsons and we ate soup and mashed potatoes. I make myself smashed potatoes. Cook them. Drain off the water. Put some butter, salt and pepper and smash. Lumps and peel are fine. But for Raybay I peeled them and heated milk and butter in a separate pan. I wished for a ricer. The way to get lump free mashed potatoes is almost over cook them. But I never can. I like chew in my food. The more you mash potatoes the mote the starch comes out. If you add the milk and butter too soon and keep mashing the protein bind with the starch and they can get glue like. If you put them through a ricer you get smooth potatoes even when they are just cooked. So they have substance and they are smooth. But I don't have a ricer. And I'm not as patient as I could be. So the potatoes had a few lumps. Not that anyone was complaining. It's just funny how cooking changes for me when I'm doing it for even one more person. I want everything to be perfect.
On the first day the television was a welcome distraction but yesterday we got tired of it. Renee says everything is about people being mean to each other. Twice yesterday we turned off the TV and read.
I'm just enjoying the time with her. Too soon she'll be back at college. Sniff. My apartment is the perfect size for me. Sometimes I wish the kitchen were a bit bigger but for the most part it's just right. But when someone stays over I wish I had another bedroom. Just because I feel like they'd be more comfortable.
This morning the apartment feels big and empty. Which is more about knowing that time is passing and things are changing and Renee is growing and everyone is growing. Am I growing? Some days I think I am. Not so much today.
It's not a big bad deal. I'm preoccupied with things like laundry and cleaning up. I just feel a little mooky and slow. And just a little lonely. Already, as August moves on, the fog is thinning with each day. Come September and October, the sun, unencumbered by the whims of fog, will make up for lost time, bearing down with a hot vengeance that will wilt and wither gardens and fill the skies with haze. Some days, that haze will be thicker and more acrid from fires that will rage, as they do every year, to the north or west of us. Still, here at the border of sun and fog, where the winds patrol shifting borders, where strips of land shrink and grow with tides that mix the salty waters of the ocean with that of creeks from the mountains ... I feel in awe of so much bounty. - From Maria's 400th post. |
