When I was 20 years old, my father recommended to me that I go to listen to an old shaman from the Picuris Pueblo talk about manhood. But first he demanded I promise I would not leave before the talk was over. I was annoyed but finally I relented and promised to stay. I'm glad he made me promise.
Beautiful Painted Arrow (Tslew-teh-koyeh), Joseph Rael spoke like a lunatic. Nothing that came from his mouth made a damn ounce of sense. With no preamble he launched into one incomprehensible concept after another. He spoke of the sound a wall makes when your hand brushes over it. He spoke of a seed falling into the soil. He spoke of running into a post as hard as you could with your face and knocking out your teeth. And every time you started to contextualize what he was talking about--not make sense of it, not understand it, just start to feel familiar with the constellation of images he was using in a given instant, he'd drop that topic entirely and launch into a different concept entirely unrelated and just as incomprehensible.
People began to get up and leave. By the end of the talk there were fewer than 1/5 of us left in the room. I wanted to leave myself, but I'd promised to stay. My head felt like it was going to split open, it was throbbing so painfully. Trying to wrap my brain around his talk was giving me the worst headache I'd ever had.
The talk ended without resolution. He just...stopped. I shook my head. I remember being too disoriented to be properly angry, but that's the direction was going: anger. I stumbled out of the room, grabbed stuff off the table on my way out. I met up with my father.
He beamed at me like someone enjoying a joke at my expense. Or...no, more like someone who was trying to share an initiatory experience with someone else who'd been through it. Trying to wink to someone else who understood. The fact that I didn't understand made me angrier.
"So?" he asked conspiratorially. "How was it?"
"I have NO idea, Dad. It made no sense!"
"No? What did he say?"
"That's just it! I don't KNOW! It was...it was gibberish!"
"Why? What sort of things did he talk about?"
"DAD! I. DON'T. KNOW. He went on and on about stuff that made no sense."
"...like what?"
"Shit, Dad. It was...well, he said..." And BOOM. I opened my mouth and I vomited up a beautiful, succinct encapsulation of the theme, the message BEHIND what he'd said. Everything he'd said all of a sudden fell into a beautiful, small, perfect little message. And it wasn't a message I even realized I'd heard. It just...got into me. And as soon as it left my lips, I was dumbstruck. My eyes shot open, my jaw hung slack. My father nodded and grinned even wider. "Uh huh. See?"
The message was one of the most sublime understandings I've had in my life. It's still with me. I can no longer put it into words, but it's still there. And in the hardest parts of my life, it's been there to get me through.
That afternoon, I went back to my room and fell ill. I threw up literally a few times, ran a fever. The shock was way too much. Once I came down off that shock, I finally looked at the papers I'd picked up on the way out of the talk. One was a sign up for an initiation into manhood Rael was offering on the 5th, 6th and 7th of March. The 8th of March was my 21st birthday. I felt like a plucked guitar string. I knew I had to go, so I did.
The first day of the ceremony, his talks pushed me towards more illness, but less so. The second day was a moderate struggle. By the third day, everything he said hit me instantly and easily. I felt like one bad-ass zen mofo. I carried that zen feeling for a year. You could not shake me that year.
That 21st birthday, there was a full moon. And it was the closet lunar perigee in something like 75 years, if I recall correctly now. I recall feeling very connected to everything, and looking up and thinking how BIG the moon looked. But more than big, it felt present. Like it was the eye of the universe, looking back down on me with attentive care. I looked up and it looked down and I felt intensely bonded with it.
That bond hasn't left me, even after the zen feeling of oneness has drifted off some, the bond with the moon is still immediate. I felt like we made a pact that day and even now, that covenant is strong.
The holiday season is hard for me. I don't like our modern notions of community or what constitutes a "community" holiday. I don't like what our holidays say about us. And struggling with depression, I've had trouble connecting with people at all as the holidays roll around, leaving me isolated at the worst times to be isolated. I've managed what feels to me like a very successful, very active year, but the holiday's still knocking me around.
But this solstice, there was the full moon again, and this time, a total lunar eclipse, leave the moon's umbra a red ember in the sky. I lay out in the cold and watched the whole thing. I had a nice long conversation with the moon, and felt like the covenant was renewed. Most of that is too private and too intense to share. But I woke up the next morning feeling as if the entire difficult season was largely behind me. The season marks the death of the old, the Saturnalia, and the birth of the new, the glorious child (to continue in the Roman ethos, the birth of Zeus). I felt reborn the next day. I'm ready for the rest of winter and the coming spring.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
On the Solstice, and the full moon, and the eclipse
The dying fire that is the opal of her eye is shaded from the sun by shadow of our silhouette, so that for this instant, in this midday that is our night, she can see us clearly.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Published 12 years ago, and written maybe 14 years ago
Cadence
The breath of light that holds our bodies at bay
pales and flares, drumming the hollows
like twelve hours of seawater, a liquid prism
held between two silver slivers of glass.
I ride a reaching tide, your trigonometry;
it rams cell into cell amid the rich silt
that swims in the basin of my brain like sparks
shouting, "Live!" across a childless ocean.
But then this slim caesura breaks.
The circling Earth buoys you up
and bears you away, where far to the south
another beach awaits your advance.
Abandoned to this empty expanse, damp,
salt-kissed, I ache in the smothering mist
to be again pinned to your naked, unbreachable
breast, where I know from the hum of your heart
that I am alive.
The breath of light that holds our bodies at bay
pales and flares, drumming the hollows
like twelve hours of seawater, a liquid prism
held between two silver slivers of glass.
I ride a reaching tide, your trigonometry;
it rams cell into cell amid the rich silt
that swims in the basin of my brain like sparks
shouting, "Live!" across a childless ocean.
But then this slim caesura breaks.
The circling Earth buoys you up
and bears you away, where far to the south
another beach awaits your advance.
Abandoned to this empty expanse, damp,
salt-kissed, I ache in the smothering mist
to be again pinned to your naked, unbreachable
breast, where I know from the hum of your heart
that I am alive.
Published 13 years ago. Written perhaps 15 years ago.
Tide
The cleft that is the breath's brief span is spent;
the soft enfolding moment's music dies.
The cord drawn taut from mouth to ear is rent,
and you have wiped my sleep from out your eyes.
While much like music, ardor wanes and swells
with measures both of stillness and of tone,
I fear that every silent breath foretells
how at your core all sound of me is gone.
Though I may dry to dust I won't be blown
from off the sentinel branches of life's crux;
your name anoints the hollows in the bone
and sates with faith opinions still in flux.
Though clouds conceal the water from all sight,
you pull the ocean up the beach each night.
The cleft that is the breath's brief span is spent;
the soft enfolding moment's music dies.
The cord drawn taut from mouth to ear is rent,
and you have wiped my sleep from out your eyes.
While much like music, ardor wanes and swells
with measures both of stillness and of tone,
I fear that every silent breath foretells
how at your core all sound of me is gone.
Though I may dry to dust I won't be blown
from off the sentinel branches of life's crux;
your name anoints the hollows in the bone
and sates with faith opinions still in flux.
Though clouds conceal the water from all sight,
you pull the ocean up the beach each night.
Archeology
I'm a writer. I say that despite that fact that I rarely write anymore. To be fair, I wasn't particularly prolific at my high water mark either, but it was more than what I manage today.
To say that I'm my harshest critic is perhaps too excoriating a condemnation of criticism and critics. I am my meanest bully. And though I consider myself a person bound to the need to create, my creative impulses bear the worst burden of that bullying.
Through the years I've explored a number of creative outlets. And I've enjoyed all of them intensely. A variety of visual media: from pencil drawings to charcoal and paint, computer graphics and design, 3d animation, architectural drafting and modeling. Dance. Writing. Photography. Music. Most of these outlets have been closed, atrophied in disuse, shut down out of a hopeless inability to live up to my own expectations. And I assure you, my expectations far outreach yours.
I do not say as much out of pride. Why bother hoping to write the Great American Novel, when you can hope to write the work that defines the next two thousand years of intellectual discourse? How's that for overweening? And while it begs the question, "Where does something like that even come from?" and while I've come to a few answers on that count, it begs a far more important question: "How do I go about dismantling such an enormous, detrimental construction?" I'm finding such demolition work is perhaps the effort of a lifetime.
I can still write some, before I'm shut down, and I continue to press on in dance, despite how many minefields I've laid out there too. I've found a bit of a work around in dance--I switched dances, where I could cultivate beginner's mind again without as much self-recrimination. It's not as easy in writing, but it occurs to me that the important aspect of the work in overcoming the self-bullying is not the success, but in the continued focus and determined intent. So I will keep writing, but it will probably continue to be less than I could produce. But then, so what? How much less is it bullying, telling myself I'm not writing enough?
Anyway, what brought this on is the fact that in unpacking all my books yesterday, I found two literary zines a friend published 13 years ago. They'd been sitting in a box in my closet for the last seven years. Two of my poems got into them. They're pretty much the only two things I wrote that wasn't ad copy in my entire post-college 20s. I'll be posting them here in the blog entries that follow.
To say that I'm my harshest critic is perhaps too excoriating a condemnation of criticism and critics. I am my meanest bully. And though I consider myself a person bound to the need to create, my creative impulses bear the worst burden of that bullying.
Through the years I've explored a number of creative outlets. And I've enjoyed all of them intensely. A variety of visual media: from pencil drawings to charcoal and paint, computer graphics and design, 3d animation, architectural drafting and modeling. Dance. Writing. Photography. Music. Most of these outlets have been closed, atrophied in disuse, shut down out of a hopeless inability to live up to my own expectations. And I assure you, my expectations far outreach yours.
I do not say as much out of pride. Why bother hoping to write the Great American Novel, when you can hope to write the work that defines the next two thousand years of intellectual discourse? How's that for overweening? And while it begs the question, "Where does something like that even come from?" and while I've come to a few answers on that count, it begs a far more important question: "How do I go about dismantling such an enormous, detrimental construction?" I'm finding such demolition work is perhaps the effort of a lifetime.
I can still write some, before I'm shut down, and I continue to press on in dance, despite how many minefields I've laid out there too. I've found a bit of a work around in dance--I switched dances, where I could cultivate beginner's mind again without as much self-recrimination. It's not as easy in writing, but it occurs to me that the important aspect of the work in overcoming the self-bullying is not the success, but in the continued focus and determined intent. So I will keep writing, but it will probably continue to be less than I could produce. But then, so what? How much less is it bullying, telling myself I'm not writing enough?
Anyway, what brought this on is the fact that in unpacking all my books yesterday, I found two literary zines a friend published 13 years ago. They'd been sitting in a box in my closet for the last seven years. Two of my poems got into them. They're pretty much the only two things I wrote that wasn't ad copy in my entire post-college 20s. I'll be posting them here in the blog entries that follow.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Three
That winter, in the field behind my house, we laughed to see the trees stoop under the weight of their thick diamond blankets. The impossible burden buried the world in silence and the late night was ice bright. The snow muted our excited steps, the gleam crushed all care. The silence devoured our laughter and we three felt absurdly light.
That summer, in the field behind my house, the rain threatened to wash away the world beneath our feet. We struggled to find dry land to stand on in the rivers, we fought to speak over the din of that deluge. The sky broke in hail and electric staccato strikes. Forty feet from where we stood, lightning roared to ground and shook the slackening ground as we huddled under the carport. The roar of thunder drowned out our gasps and wonder.
Now, in the field behind my house, I stand alone beneath the barely waning swell of this so recently full moon. We three have gone our three ways to live three separate lives in three separate cities. The cottonwood trees are half emptied of their paddle-leaves but them that remain still hiss against one another in the bite of the lengthening night’s breeze. The grasses blow in this last, lost summer, a dry rattle of one hollowing husk against another. I stand transfixed, alone and stare into the depth of the lidded moon until I can swear I hear laughter carried on the wind, blowing from beyond the end of the field, in the dark silhouette of trees, ephemeral, inviting. And I know if I were to turn and walk into that darkness, follow that laughter, I would be gone and this world would never know me again.
But I wonder, in this field behind my house, in this newly-minted autumn, if that’s a journey started too late. If you two were here, perhaps, and we all three heard that call and made that trip, maybe that would be a worthy journey. As it is, I turn and head back inside. I think maybe tonight, this long chapter finally reached its end. Tomorrow I will have to start packing and preparing after so long, to leave.
And yet in the field behind my house, the crickets continue their surging song that marks each night, and will continue long after I’ve left this place.
For DM and DK
That summer, in the field behind my house, the rain threatened to wash away the world beneath our feet. We struggled to find dry land to stand on in the rivers, we fought to speak over the din of that deluge. The sky broke in hail and electric staccato strikes. Forty feet from where we stood, lightning roared to ground and shook the slackening ground as we huddled under the carport. The roar of thunder drowned out our gasps and wonder.
Now, in the field behind my house, I stand alone beneath the barely waning swell of this so recently full moon. We three have gone our three ways to live three separate lives in three separate cities. The cottonwood trees are half emptied of their paddle-leaves but them that remain still hiss against one another in the bite of the lengthening night’s breeze. The grasses blow in this last, lost summer, a dry rattle of one hollowing husk against another. I stand transfixed, alone and stare into the depth of the lidded moon until I can swear I hear laughter carried on the wind, blowing from beyond the end of the field, in the dark silhouette of trees, ephemeral, inviting. And I know if I were to turn and walk into that darkness, follow that laughter, I would be gone and this world would never know me again.
But I wonder, in this field behind my house, in this newly-minted autumn, if that’s a journey started too late. If you two were here, perhaps, and we all three heard that call and made that trip, maybe that would be a worthy journey. As it is, I turn and head back inside. I think maybe tonight, this long chapter finally reached its end. Tomorrow I will have to start packing and preparing after so long, to leave.
And yet in the field behind my house, the crickets continue their surging song that marks each night, and will continue long after I’ve left this place.
For DM and DK
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Getting Back Up, XI: Epilogue, Where the Path Is Found Again
That feeling I got when I first saw Lindy Hop? I got another feeling just like it a few weeks ago, meditating. I hadn’t started actually dancing at the African dance class; I’d just watched the dancing two days before. In my meditation, I saw the studio where class was held. I stood at the door in terror. A raven flew in. The Morrigan was at my left shoulder. A taller version of myself, indistinct, seemingly molded out of light stood behind my right shoulder. An enormous bear trundled into the center of the room and stood up to his full height. He roared a bellow at every corner of the room. It was like light driving away shadow. But what he drove from the room was fear. Then a foot was planted in the small of my back and I was kicked into the room onto my face. I got up and the Morrigan was over me. Her face was contorted and her eyes were burning with ardor. She seized me by the shoulders and shook me stupid. She yanked me so I was an inch from her face and bellowed at me as loud as I’ve ever heard anyone scream, “Dance! Dance, damn you! DANCE!!”
I got tired of being bitter. I learned how keep myself from sliding back down that hole. I learned to trust fate’s rough guiding hand and consigned myself to the swift, ungentle current of life sweeping past me. And 15 years later, I got shown what to do again. I have no idea how long that will last. But I intend to dive into it and strive in that joy and hardship for as long as this new direction works for me. And when it no longer does, the next time life knocks me on my face, or pulls this or any other great joy out from under me, I intend to say thank you with every fiber of my being.
Thank you. And bring it.
I got tired of being bitter. I learned how keep myself from sliding back down that hole. I learned to trust fate’s rough guiding hand and consigned myself to the swift, ungentle current of life sweeping past me. And 15 years later, I got shown what to do again. I have no idea how long that will last. But I intend to dive into it and strive in that joy and hardship for as long as this new direction works for me. And when it no longer does, the next time life knocks me on my face, or pulls this or any other great joy out from under me, I intend to say thank you with every fiber of my being.
Thank you. And bring it.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Getting Back Up, X: Fire, and the Regreening of the Heart
So now, my heart is aflame, my mind is incandescent, my body is vibrating. I mean, I feel like anyone does—I’m just a person being human in the way we all are. But the difference between that feeling of baseline humanity and the feeling of the depth of severe, chronic depression is a drop that beggars perception. And being back nearer to baseline feels like some form of magic. And if the difference between Hell and Earth is perceptual, how much more so the difference between Earth and Heaven. So here I am, aflame. Why? The only answer I can give is, “Because I’m tired of running and I’m angry.” Why am I angry? Because my entire psychological and emotional reframing finally matured enough in my gut and my power was ready to shoot up out of my head. What finally caused that to happen? Luck. Or call it Fate. Or Providence. Or say rather that it was time for it to happen, so it had to. That’s the anchor. Thank you, Universe. I look forward to you knocking me on my face tomorrow.
Of course, the process isn’t over. I have so much left to do. Of course I do, right? We all do. You can tell if you have more to do by putting two fingers along the inside of your wrist. You have a pulse; you have more to do. Thank the powers that be for that, eh?
Of course, the process isn’t over. I have so much left to do. Of course I do, right? We all do. You can tell if you have more to do by putting two fingers along the inside of your wrist. You have a pulse; you have more to do. Thank the powers that be for that, eh?
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Getting Back Up, IX: Fire, and the Controlled Burn
Separating ardor and rage is challenging. But crucial. I am an aggressive, passionate person. Not really a violent person—I’ve never really been in a fight, I don’t hit the people I love, and I have no desire to. But I’m contentious and self-willed, and that fire in me won’t go out. I’ve tried a long time to make it do so, but that mostly just made me the second kind of angry: outraged, brooding, nursing hurt.
When the car was cut from me, I stood up. Tall. And the blood began to throb and thrum inside me. I needed the hardship. I needed the difficult solutions. I needed to use my own body to establish my own will, to get what I needed as an exercise in resolve and drive. I needed the hardship that life threw in my face, desperately.
That fire’s been in me, but I’d been turning at the Universe, choosing the second aspect, brooding on the wrongs done me. And I’d been willful before, but it was a bitter will to establish, without success, my desire for how things should be. But finally I got to it: screw the wrongs done me, screw how things should be. The wrongs done me are my greatest strength, the way things are, are the way things should be--even if they're not the way I intend to let things stay. The way things are is purposeful; I set will to deciding what I wish to do in this time. And the bumps and bruises of life are when I know I’m most alive. Because they force me to adapt, force me to redefine what success and happiness are, force me to prevail using my own faculties, force me to be alert, mindful, and they force me to do so with compassion—because having to shift balance and awareness shifts outlook. So much compassion is generated in that struggle.
When the car was cut from me, I stood up. Tall. And the blood began to throb and thrum inside me. I needed the hardship. I needed the difficult solutions. I needed to use my own body to establish my own will, to get what I needed as an exercise in resolve and drive. I needed the hardship that life threw in my face, desperately.
That fire’s been in me, but I’d been turning at the Universe, choosing the second aspect, brooding on the wrongs done me. And I’d been willful before, but it was a bitter will to establish, without success, my desire for how things should be. But finally I got to it: screw the wrongs done me, screw how things should be. The wrongs done me are my greatest strength, the way things are, are the way things should be--even if they're not the way I intend to let things stay. The way things are is purposeful; I set will to deciding what I wish to do in this time. And the bumps and bruises of life are when I know I’m most alive. Because they force me to adapt, force me to redefine what success and happiness are, force me to prevail using my own faculties, force me to be alert, mindful, and they force me to do so with compassion—because having to shift balance and awareness shifts outlook. So much compassion is generated in that struggle.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Resentment and His Nemesis, Work
A couple of weeks ago I started going to the local Clubhouse, which is an international support organization for people with depression and other mental illness. The first time I went, we talked about food and watched Supersize Me. I’ve avoided the movie for years. I mean, it’s not telling me anything I didn’t already know. And it’s a triggering movie for me. All that information, and plenty more than was even covered in that film were playing through my head all last year, as I daily ate about two meals worth of “food” in one sitting, usually at McDonalds, always at a fast food joint. And I’d follow it up by going out to the store, buying a small pizza and a pint of ice cream.
I’d been eating really well for a couple of months up to the point I sat down to watch the film. But honestly, watching it, all I felt was hunger. I mean, the guy’s eating FRIES. All that info was nothing new, but it’s two hours of him eating fries. I was at the crest of about the world’s biggest Jones coming out after we finished watching. The whole world smelled like grease and salt.
There’s a pupuseria a block from the clinic. It’s not as bad as McDonalds by a long shot, but it’s a far cry from how healthy I’d intended to eat that day. And I was planning a trip to the place the next day—a small once a week sort of indulgence. So I was wrestling with the desire to go there. I said I shouldn’t. But then a voice I am well familiar with from this last year chimed in.
“I just know my bus is going to pull up and pull away before I can get it. Fucking stupid world. If that happens, I’m going to take it as a sign I should get pupusas.”
As I got near, the bus pulled up across the street and pulled away.
That voice had been my poisonous inner-adversarialist and the bus leaving set him OFF, “Fuck this, I’m getting food now. If I was supposed to do otherwise, the world should have thought twice before it fucked me and thumbed its nose at me with the bus. Fuck this shit, I’m going to order a mountain of pupuas and ski down them.”
I haven’t heard from him much in the last three months. Unprepared for his re-emergence, I started to autopilot there, guided inexorably to fried cheese. But I found my footing about halfway there.
“No. Frankly, I don’t like this ‘fuck the world if it upsets me’ routine. I lived it for years and I’m done with it. The only person I hurt in that feedback loop was myself. And it left me angry all the time. So no matter the conclusion, the relational stance to the world is toxic and will lead to me being unhappy for the rest of today. Maybe the rest of the week. So, no. Beyond that, I said no. I already outlined what I would eat. I’m not interested in bargaining with myself. No hiccup will change that. Trusting and consigning myself to fate when I have two equal choices that are both healthy and hard and beneficial, that’s wise non-attachment. Blaming an upset on fate in order to rationalize a bad habit is just cowardice and self-destructive nihilism. I said no, and I meant it. The universe didn’t force me to eat pupusas, it forced me to choose without the crutch of the bus. The bus is gone and I *still* say no.”
At the end of the block, the pupusas were to the left and the next bus stop was to the right. I turned right and waved over my shoulder to the pupuseria. I walked on to the bus stop, but as I walked my steps and breath took on a brisk but not rushed regular rhythm, like the beat of a drum, driving. The drum that was my legs and lungs began to beat out a message to me, a chant or mantra: “Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal”
I got to the bus stop and walked past it. And I walked past the next one. And the next. The bus came up as I passed perhaps the 6th one along. I waved it on. Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal!
I know an hour and a half walk home isn’t really an “ordeal” in the strictest sense, but it occurred to me that toil was healthy and work was joyous and however little an ordeal my walk was, it was more of an ordeal than sitting down to wait for the bus. And the thought of no longer moving, no longer walking on, sitting, seemed odious right then.
At that point, it recalled two very moving things to me. One was a quote from Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape: “A much more interesting, kind, adventurous and joyful approach to life [than trying to avoid all pain and just get comfortable] is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is…how the whole thing just is. If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.” And that reminded me of my realization that hedonism and asceticism are related, that the richest celebration of life can be the stripping most of the window dressing from it and just relishing the simple process of existing.
The second was three days of ceremony I spent with an old Picuris shaman, Beautiful Painted Arrow, before my 21th birthday. He only talked in metaphors. He never made a narrative out of them, or explained what they meant, but afterwards, you understood. It was one of the most profoundly moving three days of my life. But he was also kind of nuts. He sought visions through ordeal. The stuff he did was terrifying. Starved himself, buried himself alive, hung himself upside down from a tree, walked hundreds of miles without rest. Ordeal was rebirth, to him. He remade himself countless times. His 200 mile walk without rest is what came to mind as I burned past the bus stop and walked home.
The hunger passed, the voice was addressed, the rage at the universe dissipated again, the barrier was passed by, the long walk without rest that is the rest of my life was resumed. And I was filled with joy that the walk promised to be hard.
I’d been eating really well for a couple of months up to the point I sat down to watch the film. But honestly, watching it, all I felt was hunger. I mean, the guy’s eating FRIES. All that info was nothing new, but it’s two hours of him eating fries. I was at the crest of about the world’s biggest Jones coming out after we finished watching. The whole world smelled like grease and salt.
There’s a pupuseria a block from the clinic. It’s not as bad as McDonalds by a long shot, but it’s a far cry from how healthy I’d intended to eat that day. And I was planning a trip to the place the next day—a small once a week sort of indulgence. So I was wrestling with the desire to go there. I said I shouldn’t. But then a voice I am well familiar with from this last year chimed in.
“I just know my bus is going to pull up and pull away before I can get it. Fucking stupid world. If that happens, I’m going to take it as a sign I should get pupusas.”
As I got near, the bus pulled up across the street and pulled away.
That voice had been my poisonous inner-adversarialist and the bus leaving set him OFF, “Fuck this, I’m getting food now. If I was supposed to do otherwise, the world should have thought twice before it fucked me and thumbed its nose at me with the bus. Fuck this shit, I’m going to order a mountain of pupuas and ski down them.”
I haven’t heard from him much in the last three months. Unprepared for his re-emergence, I started to autopilot there, guided inexorably to fried cheese. But I found my footing about halfway there.
“No. Frankly, I don’t like this ‘fuck the world if it upsets me’ routine. I lived it for years and I’m done with it. The only person I hurt in that feedback loop was myself. And it left me angry all the time. So no matter the conclusion, the relational stance to the world is toxic and will lead to me being unhappy for the rest of today. Maybe the rest of the week. So, no. Beyond that, I said no. I already outlined what I would eat. I’m not interested in bargaining with myself. No hiccup will change that. Trusting and consigning myself to fate when I have two equal choices that are both healthy and hard and beneficial, that’s wise non-attachment. Blaming an upset on fate in order to rationalize a bad habit is just cowardice and self-destructive nihilism. I said no, and I meant it. The universe didn’t force me to eat pupusas, it forced me to choose without the crutch of the bus. The bus is gone and I *still* say no.”
At the end of the block, the pupusas were to the left and the next bus stop was to the right. I turned right and waved over my shoulder to the pupuseria. I walked on to the bus stop, but as I walked my steps and breath took on a brisk but not rushed regular rhythm, like the beat of a drum, driving. The drum that was my legs and lungs began to beat out a message to me, a chant or mantra: “Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal”
I got to the bus stop and walked past it. And I walked past the next one. And the next. The bus came up as I passed perhaps the 6th one along. I waved it on. Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal!
I know an hour and a half walk home isn’t really an “ordeal” in the strictest sense, but it occurred to me that toil was healthy and work was joyous and however little an ordeal my walk was, it was more of an ordeal than sitting down to wait for the bus. And the thought of no longer moving, no longer walking on, sitting, seemed odious right then.
At that point, it recalled two very moving things to me. One was a quote from Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape: “A much more interesting, kind, adventurous and joyful approach to life [than trying to avoid all pain and just get comfortable] is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is…how the whole thing just is. If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.” And that reminded me of my realization that hedonism and asceticism are related, that the richest celebration of life can be the stripping most of the window dressing from it and just relishing the simple process of existing.
The second was three days of ceremony I spent with an old Picuris shaman, Beautiful Painted Arrow, before my 21th birthday. He only talked in metaphors. He never made a narrative out of them, or explained what they meant, but afterwards, you understood. It was one of the most profoundly moving three days of my life. But he was also kind of nuts. He sought visions through ordeal. The stuff he did was terrifying. Starved himself, buried himself alive, hung himself upside down from a tree, walked hundreds of miles without rest. Ordeal was rebirth, to him. He remade himself countless times. His 200 mile walk without rest is what came to mind as I burned past the bus stop and walked home.
The hunger passed, the voice was addressed, the rage at the universe dissipated again, the barrier was passed by, the long walk without rest that is the rest of my life was resumed. And I was filled with joy that the walk promised to be hard.
Getting Back Up, VIII: Fire, the Differing Flames
After the car, I finally was ready to get back up. Of all the horrible things to lose, the Universe granted me the easiest thing I could cope with. I was lucky. All the work I’d done which had done no good was finally ready to fall into place. It happened when I was most ready to address it. I was lucky. That my terrible diet and lack of exercise, my explosive high blood pressure didn’t kill me while I waited for my opening to start moving again—that too was me being very lucky.
Onto my face I went, and I stayed down for about six hours. It took that time for the reframing and tools to click into the places in me they were designed to fit. And it took that time for my fire to flare up.
That’s really the third component of my recovery. Anger. Or something akin to it. I think there’s two aspects to anger. One is a vigorous, aggressive affirmation of life. It’s the desire to yell, “BRING IT!” at the top of your lungs when something challenging needs doing. It’s the desire to leap into an icy pool, or jump into something new. There’s terror, there’s exhilaration and there’s a terrible desire to LIVE through it all and take part. It drives you out into the storm to face the wind and rain. For me, it’s the Morrigan present in the pounding blood in my temples. It’s the creeping tingle up my spine, along my arms and up around the back of my head. It’s the sharp intake of breath, eyes widening, nostrils flaring, back straightening as I’m preparing to spring into the fray.
A second aspect to anger is the affronted, outraged desire for violence. But both spring up when the blood begins to pound. For me one aspect is anger turned on concepts, the other upon people and things. The one points me up and out into the world with vigor and joy, the other points me down and directedly, rigidly inward with malice. If not inward to my center, into the center of another person. The one is like a hunting animal, alert, alive. The other is a brooding, revenge-obsessed thug. Separating the two is challenging. But I can't think of another way to describe the first fire, other than to say, it too, is anger. And I'm harnessing it.
Onto my face I went, and I stayed down for about six hours. It took that time for the reframing and tools to click into the places in me they were designed to fit. And it took that time for my fire to flare up.
That’s really the third component of my recovery. Anger. Or something akin to it. I think there’s two aspects to anger. One is a vigorous, aggressive affirmation of life. It’s the desire to yell, “BRING IT!” at the top of your lungs when something challenging needs doing. It’s the desire to leap into an icy pool, or jump into something new. There’s terror, there’s exhilaration and there’s a terrible desire to LIVE through it all and take part. It drives you out into the storm to face the wind and rain. For me, it’s the Morrigan present in the pounding blood in my temples. It’s the creeping tingle up my spine, along my arms and up around the back of my head. It’s the sharp intake of breath, eyes widening, nostrils flaring, back straightening as I’m preparing to spring into the fray.
A second aspect to anger is the affronted, outraged desire for violence. But both spring up when the blood begins to pound. For me one aspect is anger turned on concepts, the other upon people and things. The one points me up and out into the world with vigor and joy, the other points me down and directedly, rigidly inward with malice. If not inward to my center, into the center of another person. The one is like a hunting animal, alert, alive. The other is a brooding, revenge-obsessed thug. Separating the two is challenging. But I can't think of another way to describe the first fire, other than to say, it too, is anger. And I'm harnessing it.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Getting Back Up, VII: Hard Work, the Tools of Change
I took about five years of classes in a technique known as DBT. It’s a cognitive therapy system designed for people Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD. I don’t have the former but I have a complex case of the latter. I learned about Mindfulness. I worked on Distress Tolerance. I hammered away at Emotion Regulation. I picked at Interpersonal Effectiveness, which is still my Achilles heel in DBT.
It’s a great set of skills to boost you that 12% I mentioned before. They’re probably the easiest answer for me to give when I get asked how I’m doing it. I just rattle off my DBT skills, and how I implement them. So my 12% is at least an hour of walking a day, cycling an hour 4-5 times a week, rigorously enforced regular sleep, vitamins, self-cooked meals using minimally-processed foods, very little meat, no high fructose corn syrup ever, daily meditation, an ever more challenging and full schedule of socially, emotionally demanding activities, cleaning, constant regulation and restructuring of my inner dialogue, a deliberate facing-off against panic and taking opposite action to negative emotions: approaching when the desire is to flee in fear, gently addressing or gently avoiding when the desire is to rigidly verbally and mentally lash out in anger, deliberate visibility and healthy volume when the the desire is to hide in unwarranted shame, activity when the desire is to collapse in grief. And as they never did me any good, I got off the psychoactive medications. Getting off your meds is not something I recommend for everyone, or even for most people. But it continues to feel like the right choice for me.
But again, this litany of skills didn't actually affect much, until the Universe knocked me down and waited to see if I was finally going to shake it off and get back up.
It’s a great set of skills to boost you that 12% I mentioned before. They’re probably the easiest answer for me to give when I get asked how I’m doing it. I just rattle off my DBT skills, and how I implement them. So my 12% is at least an hour of walking a day, cycling an hour 4-5 times a week, rigorously enforced regular sleep, vitamins, self-cooked meals using minimally-processed foods, very little meat, no high fructose corn syrup ever, daily meditation, an ever more challenging and full schedule of socially, emotionally demanding activities, cleaning, constant regulation and restructuring of my inner dialogue, a deliberate facing-off against panic and taking opposite action to negative emotions: approaching when the desire is to flee in fear, gently addressing or gently avoiding when the desire is to rigidly verbally and mentally lash out in anger, deliberate visibility and healthy volume when the the desire is to hide in unwarranted shame, activity when the desire is to collapse in grief. And as they never did me any good, I got off the psychoactive medications. Getting off your meds is not something I recommend for everyone, or even for most people. But it continues to feel like the right choice for me.
But again, this litany of skills didn't actually affect much, until the Universe knocked me down and waited to see if I was finally going to shake it off and get back up.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Getting Back Up, VI: Hard Work, Changing Nothing
I’ve taken a MOUNTAIN of therapy. I’ve made a stack of amazing, earth shattering realizations about how I live my life. And they did nothing. At first. Seven years ago, I learned I self-sabotage. Not “I’m afraid of my own success so I can’t cope with it” self-sabotage. “I want to fail at life, destroy everything good in my life, and lay down to wait to die, to assert even the merest illusion of self-determination and will in a life where I feel out of control and in over my head” is more how it goes. A tiny, poisonous, but insanely influential part of me is done. Wants everything to fall away so I can lay down and let time sweep all memory of me away and let it sweep me from the Universe and the Universe from me. That realization left me in shock for three weeks. But it changed nothing. And there've been a steady stream of other equally momentous realizations along the way. They changed nothing either.
I’m a smart guy. Very. No, really. Very. And I’m beyond introspective. I’ve figured out a lot about how I function. For much of my life, it's what I've done most of with my time. But that information is conceptual. An intellectual eureka is not a revelation. It won’t change your life. I’ve had more than I can remember anymore. And they change nothing. They need years to percolate down into the subconscious and take actual HOLD someplace other than just in an intellectualization. They need to seep down and marinate your guts in the new truth they offer. Until you reek of it, and one day you have a whole body Eureka. That rumbles up from the gut, scours the heart clean in the pressure and shoots out the top of your head. And the only thing that will set off the final explosion is the Universe kicking you on your face, which you have no ability to dictate the timing of.
I’m a smart guy. Very. No, really. Very. And I’m beyond introspective. I’ve figured out a lot about how I function. For much of my life, it's what I've done most of with my time. But that information is conceptual. An intellectual eureka is not a revelation. It won’t change your life. I’ve had more than I can remember anymore. And they change nothing. They need years to percolate down into the subconscious and take actual HOLD someplace other than just in an intellectualization. They need to seep down and marinate your guts in the new truth they offer. Until you reek of it, and one day you have a whole body Eureka. That rumbles up from the gut, scours the heart clean in the pressure and shoots out the top of your head. And the only thing that will set off the final explosion is the Universe kicking you on your face, which you have no ability to dictate the timing of.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Getting Back Up, V: Luck, Departing
I lost my sense of purpose. Giving up my trust of the Universe, the Universe stopped directing me. It started dragging me on my face. And that trust on my part was replaced with rage. Rage at the Universe for hurting me, for hobbling me, for destroying my joy.
That rage, I couldn’t shake it off for much of the decade. I started to reframe, so slowly, but the desire to reframe takes years. The ability to reframe takes more. That reframing takes another few years to gain power before it’s ready for use. Part of that reframing was the subtle movement of the image of the Morrigan, overlaying over the Universe. Replacing the toxic, adversarial image I was carrying in my gut.
But even that wasn’t enough. Life had to KNOCK the wind out of my routine of avoidance before that reframing could finally fall into place and get working.
The Universe doesn’t always knock gently. For every gentle nudge in the right direction granted one person, another person makes one wrong move and pays with their life. And for every serendipity visited upon one, another finds misfortune they have no say in. Did I deserve the luck visited upon me? I don’t like the word “deserve”. I’m no more deserving than any of the people whose lives are a long furrow of uninterrupted misery. But I’m learning to trust that whatever misery, whatever reward I get, I’m supposed to do something with it. Not bask in its awesomeness. Not gloat about how deserving I am, or how much I did to earn it. But use it, live it, trust it, build on it, share it with others. And living it requires new learning, learning that requires me to learn how to balance all over again. There's no way to embark on that learning without falling down some. So when it’s time to learn something new—be it learning how to live with more compassion, or learning the next leg of my path, or learning a new skill, I know it’s going to mean the Universe will knock me on my face.
And it did. It took my car away from me. That’s when years of reframing could finally take hold. That’s when the trust started to creep back in. And that’s when the Universe started directing me again.
But the biggest change I could make was learning how to trust the Universe to make the big changes. And 99% of the rest of the work offered no improvement, no results. That too was a lesson in cultivating trust.
That rage, I couldn’t shake it off for much of the decade. I started to reframe, so slowly, but the desire to reframe takes years. The ability to reframe takes more. That reframing takes another few years to gain power before it’s ready for use. Part of that reframing was the subtle movement of the image of the Morrigan, overlaying over the Universe. Replacing the toxic, adversarial image I was carrying in my gut.
But even that wasn’t enough. Life had to KNOCK the wind out of my routine of avoidance before that reframing could finally fall into place and get working.
The Universe doesn’t always knock gently. For every gentle nudge in the right direction granted one person, another person makes one wrong move and pays with their life. And for every serendipity visited upon one, another finds misfortune they have no say in. Did I deserve the luck visited upon me? I don’t like the word “deserve”. I’m no more deserving than any of the people whose lives are a long furrow of uninterrupted misery. But I’m learning to trust that whatever misery, whatever reward I get, I’m supposed to do something with it. Not bask in its awesomeness. Not gloat about how deserving I am, or how much I did to earn it. But use it, live it, trust it, build on it, share it with others. And living it requires new learning, learning that requires me to learn how to balance all over again. There's no way to embark on that learning without falling down some. So when it’s time to learn something new—be it learning how to live with more compassion, or learning the next leg of my path, or learning a new skill, I know it’s going to mean the Universe will knock me on my face.
And it did. It took my car away from me. That’s when years of reframing could finally take hold. That’s when the trust started to creep back in. And that’s when the Universe started directing me again.
But the biggest change I could make was learning how to trust the Universe to make the big changes. And 99% of the rest of the work offered no improvement, no results. That too was a lesson in cultivating trust.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Getting Back Up, IV: Luck, When Trust Fades
It took 5 years for my social anxiety to start to wear down my joy Lindy Hopping. And another 5 to wear it away almost completely. But it happened.
After the first five years, my inner critic had found its footing again. And I stopped trusting. I stopped trusting the Universe to steer me where I needed to be. I was still getting steered about. We all are. But I started to get caught up in needing to plan, to fret, to weigh if I was being successful. I got a high paying, challenging job that made me feel like an adult. Ah, the fretting that job helped me bring to the fore! I fretted about home ownership, car ownership, marriage, parenthood, job advancement. We all do. But those are topics and that was an intensity that shut me down. I couldn’t keep up with it. And there was no where to retreat from that stuff—my inner critic was making short work of my joy in dance. I began to falter.
After the first five years, my inner critic had found its footing again. And I stopped trusting. I stopped trusting the Universe to steer me where I needed to be. I was still getting steered about. We all are. But I started to get caught up in needing to plan, to fret, to weigh if I was being successful. I got a high paying, challenging job that made me feel like an adult. Ah, the fretting that job helped me bring to the fore! I fretted about home ownership, car ownership, marriage, parenthood, job advancement. We all do. But those are topics and that was an intensity that shut me down. I couldn’t keep up with it. And there was no where to retreat from that stuff—my inner critic was making short work of my joy in dance. I began to falter.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Getting Back Up, III: Luck, Arriving
I freaked out and left college my senior year, without graduating. I fled to the Bay Area. I had no idea why I was going to school. I wasn’t feeling it. The entire reason I was there was conceptual, and had no basis in my drive or my will, just my belief that I was supposed to be there without a real sense of what I wanted to be there for.
I ran to San Francisco to spin my wheels. I applied for school again a few years later—the shoulds, oughts and musts caught up with me and I was getting restless. I had NO idea what I was doing with myself.
And that’s when the Universe planted a boot on my backside and knocked me onto my face. I got routed into a club where Lindy Hop was being danced. And the Universe grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed. THAT, my brain shouted at me in the most assured voice of authority. A whisper that rattled around in my gut and chest til it bellowed behind my ears. “I have to do THAT before I die.” Those exact words. I can still hear them. There was no debate. Had I not been there, I’d have never seen it, and I’d have never heard the voice. But the Universe put me there, so I found what I needed.
I ran to San Francisco to spin my wheels. I applied for school again a few years later—the shoulds, oughts and musts caught up with me and I was getting restless. I had NO idea what I was doing with myself.
And that’s when the Universe planted a boot on my backside and knocked me onto my face. I got routed into a club where Lindy Hop was being danced. And the Universe grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed. THAT, my brain shouted at me in the most assured voice of authority. A whisper that rattled around in my gut and chest til it bellowed behind my ears. “I have to do THAT before I die.” Those exact words. I can still hear them. There was no debate. Had I not been there, I’d have never seen it, and I’d have never heard the voice. But the Universe put me there, so I found what I needed.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Flourishing Past the Furthest Bounds of Learning
I volunteer four hours or so every Sunday at the local bike collective. I know nothing about bikes. They gave me a bike, I volunteered time to pay back for the bike I was given, then when my time was done, I just kept going.
Some days I feel like a mascot. I know nothing, but I'm eager to learn. But in doing so I frequently feel like I'm underfoot and slowing everyone down. But how else do I start, right?
In the time I've come in, they taught me how to use most of the tools, how to dismantle a bike for parts, how much of what's there is sorted, how to evaluate a few items to decide what to keep and what to toss (inner tubes, brake levers, pedals, and such stuff).
I've met a lot of the people who run it, over the two months I've been coming in. And I've gotten a bit of a rhythm there. So I've started to feel a little bit comfortable coming in. Yesterday's African dance class was so amazing and invigorating, this morning I was started to sink into a feeling of smug complacency, a sort of egotistical, safe self-satisfaction. Nothing major but it was building.
I opened the door today at noon and the place was already swamped. Patrons everywhere needing help. O and K, who are almost always there, were busy in the workshop. I'd never met the guy at the front desk before, and he was busy, so I started to walk back into the workshop to see what needed doing. I got barked at by C, the guy running the desk. "Hey, GUY! Yeah, just come on back to the front. Now."
I asked what needed doing, but no one had time for me. K finally told me if I needed something to do, the fridge really needed cleaning. I rode there thinking, "I'm going to work on BIKES!" Instead I was sponging up coffee grounds.
C kept trying to hook me up with patrons. "This kid needs help picking out a new frame for a good bike for him. Can you do that?" "Uh, no. I don't know how to do that yet." "Ok, well, can you fix this guy's tube with him? It needs patching." "I haven't learned patching yet, really. I know how to inspect them for leaks, is all." And so on. He tried to set me up about three or four times. I had to admit I knew next to nothing, several times.
And patrons kept coming up to me with questions. "Is this right? Will this part work for my bike? Can you tell me what's wrong here?" And time and again, I had to confess I was new, I still knew essentially nothing.
O eventually came up to me to ask if I'd make another pot of coffee. I don't drink coffee. I never have, really. I had to tell O that I really have never brewed a pot before. I cannot express how small and worthless I felt right then. I began to ponder leaving. "They don't have time for me today. I should just get out of the way."
But I knew that wasn't a possibility. So, aching inside, I stayed. I sat on the couch for about an hour and a half. But that was demoralizing. So I got up and loomed over C until he said, "A's about help a kid replace the u-brakes on his bike. Why don't you shadow him and see how it goes?" So I did.
It was interesting. Until C had to leave and he called A to the front room to take over at the desk. The kid A was helping, his bike was partly dismantled on the rack. A was gone. The kid turns to me and asks, "What do I do next?"
I've got to tell you, there's not much room for self-doubt, or self-pity when a 12 year old is looking to you to help him put his bike back together. So, I shrugged, asked O what was next. He outlined what needed doing, and left. I was left to direct the kid and do for him anything he couldn't manage. O stepped in for a few of the trickier bits, but for the most part I just had to muddle through and call on anything I did know to get us through. And we got through.
I was in a bad state much of the time. The Universe kicked me on my face. HARD. I stammered and fumbled with the tools. But, it was the best workshop I've been to so far. I just had the ego stomped right out of me, and when that was done, there was work to do. Humbled, I just did it and enjoyed the ludicrous impression of how impossible it all seemed, but got done anyway. I feel very good right now. Thank you, Universe, for the cold snap. I can't wait to go back next week.
Some days I feel like a mascot. I know nothing, but I'm eager to learn. But in doing so I frequently feel like I'm underfoot and slowing everyone down. But how else do I start, right?
In the time I've come in, they taught me how to use most of the tools, how to dismantle a bike for parts, how much of what's there is sorted, how to evaluate a few items to decide what to keep and what to toss (inner tubes, brake levers, pedals, and such stuff).
I've met a lot of the people who run it, over the two months I've been coming in. And I've gotten a bit of a rhythm there. So I've started to feel a little bit comfortable coming in. Yesterday's African dance class was so amazing and invigorating, this morning I was started to sink into a feeling of smug complacency, a sort of egotistical, safe self-satisfaction. Nothing major but it was building.
I opened the door today at noon and the place was already swamped. Patrons everywhere needing help. O and K, who are almost always there, were busy in the workshop. I'd never met the guy at the front desk before, and he was busy, so I started to walk back into the workshop to see what needed doing. I got barked at by C, the guy running the desk. "Hey, GUY! Yeah, just come on back to the front. Now."
I asked what needed doing, but no one had time for me. K finally told me if I needed something to do, the fridge really needed cleaning. I rode there thinking, "I'm going to work on BIKES!" Instead I was sponging up coffee grounds.
C kept trying to hook me up with patrons. "This kid needs help picking out a new frame for a good bike for him. Can you do that?" "Uh, no. I don't know how to do that yet." "Ok, well, can you fix this guy's tube with him? It needs patching." "I haven't learned patching yet, really. I know how to inspect them for leaks, is all." And so on. He tried to set me up about three or four times. I had to admit I knew next to nothing, several times.
And patrons kept coming up to me with questions. "Is this right? Will this part work for my bike? Can you tell me what's wrong here?" And time and again, I had to confess I was new, I still knew essentially nothing.
O eventually came up to me to ask if I'd make another pot of coffee. I don't drink coffee. I never have, really. I had to tell O that I really have never brewed a pot before. I cannot express how small and worthless I felt right then. I began to ponder leaving. "They don't have time for me today. I should just get out of the way."
But I knew that wasn't a possibility. So, aching inside, I stayed. I sat on the couch for about an hour and a half. But that was demoralizing. So I got up and loomed over C until he said, "A's about help a kid replace the u-brakes on his bike. Why don't you shadow him and see how it goes?" So I did.
It was interesting. Until C had to leave and he called A to the front room to take over at the desk. The kid A was helping, his bike was partly dismantled on the rack. A was gone. The kid turns to me and asks, "What do I do next?"
I've got to tell you, there's not much room for self-doubt, or self-pity when a 12 year old is looking to you to help him put his bike back together. So, I shrugged, asked O what was next. He outlined what needed doing, and left. I was left to direct the kid and do for him anything he couldn't manage. O stepped in for a few of the trickier bits, but for the most part I just had to muddle through and call on anything I did know to get us through. And we got through.
I was in a bad state much of the time. The Universe kicked me on my face. HARD. I stammered and fumbled with the tools. But, it was the best workshop I've been to so far. I just had the ego stomped right out of me, and when that was done, there was work to do. Humbled, I just did it and enjoyed the ludicrous impression of how impossible it all seemed, but got done anyway. I feel very good right now. Thank you, Universe, for the cold snap. I can't wait to go back next week.
Getting Back Up, II: Luck, Rising and Falling
The biggest aspect of the answer really would start with, “I didn’t do anything to bring this about. It just happened. I count myself embarassingly lucky.”
There’s so much you can do to take care of your peace of mind. I’ve learned a lot of techniques, I have a lot of tools in my toolbox. But those tools, if you use them all, and use them well, will boost you perhaps 12% up the peace of mind scale. If the bottom of normal functioning is at 60% and you’re at 49%, doing it all will get you functional. If you’re at 12%, getting up to 24% won’t do a thing. And at 12% you won’t have the confidence, the focus, the energy, the resilience to even put in that 12%.
I was at 12% for much of the last 10 years. I went to classes, to therapy, to coaching sessions, to teach me the skills, to hammer them home. Those skills are great. Even more than boosting you up, a lot of such skills will teach you how to keep from spiraling down. But spiraling down isn’t the issue when you’re already near the bottom. Without a boost, I wasn’t going to be able to use them much, and they weren’t going to do much for me.
After a decade life finally brought me up to 49%. The Universe kicked me into gear—the same Universe that let me sit and stew for a decade. Both were necessary; both left me grateful. Though it took the decade to find gratitude for being left to stew.
There’s so much you can do to take care of your peace of mind. I’ve learned a lot of techniques, I have a lot of tools in my toolbox. But those tools, if you use them all, and use them well, will boost you perhaps 12% up the peace of mind scale. If the bottom of normal functioning is at 60% and you’re at 49%, doing it all will get you functional. If you’re at 12%, getting up to 24% won’t do a thing. And at 12% you won’t have the confidence, the focus, the energy, the resilience to even put in that 12%.
I was at 12% for much of the last 10 years. I went to classes, to therapy, to coaching sessions, to teach me the skills, to hammer them home. Those skills are great. Even more than boosting you up, a lot of such skills will teach you how to keep from spiraling down. But spiraling down isn’t the issue when you’re already near the bottom. Without a boost, I wasn’t going to be able to use them much, and they weren’t going to do much for me.
After a decade life finally brought me up to 49%. The Universe kicked me into gear—the same Universe that let me sit and stew for a decade. Both were necessary; both left me grateful. Though it took the decade to find gratitude for being left to stew.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Getting Back Up, I: Unanswerable Questions
I’m in a state of recovery. Recovery from 10 years of severe major depression and social anxiety, and a mounting struggle with panic, and 22 years of moderate depression, anxiety and panic before that, all tied to PTSD.
I struggled terribly from ages six to fourteen. I defiantly stalked my teens, managed my twenties fairly well, then stumbled in my thirties and never fully managed to start getting back up. Until this May. I went from being a shut in who did three things and met with two people a week, last year (and those two were professionals), to 4 hours of volunteer work at the bike collective, a cooking class, a dance class, a night out dancing, a support group, and a large group of people I associate with because I want to. I have several things I want to add, and I have no desire to stop.
People ask me—friends, professionals, family—what changed. How did I do it? How did I recover? Which is an odd set of questions because they’re all in the past tense, like I’m over it now. I’m not. I’m recovering. I feel like a powerhouse right now, but this is going to take years. But even if it’s framed in the right tense, that’s such a huge question and it has an even bigger answer and honestly most of the answer I think would cause people to look at me strangely. So, constant long blog posts about it aside, usually all I can do is shrug and reply, “I couldn’t say. I’m not entirely sure.”
I struggled terribly from ages six to fourteen. I defiantly stalked my teens, managed my twenties fairly well, then stumbled in my thirties and never fully managed to start getting back up. Until this May. I went from being a shut in who did three things and met with two people a week, last year (and those two were professionals), to 4 hours of volunteer work at the bike collective, a cooking class, a dance class, a night out dancing, a support group, and a large group of people I associate with because I want to. I have several things I want to add, and I have no desire to stop.
People ask me—friends, professionals, family—what changed. How did I do it? How did I recover? Which is an odd set of questions because they’re all in the past tense, like I’m over it now. I’m not. I’m recovering. I feel like a powerhouse right now, but this is going to take years. But even if it’s framed in the right tense, that’s such a huge question and it has an even bigger answer and honestly most of the answer I think would cause people to look at me strangely. So, constant long blog posts about it aside, usually all I can do is shrug and reply, “I couldn’t say. I’m not entirely sure.”
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, VII: …and When Fear Falls
A week ago Tuesday, that happened. Cooking class. Practicing knife technique left me raw with a feeling of inadequacy. I started skipping ingredients and closing myself off. By the time we got to a particularly tricky cut for me, I felt it coming. My chest tightened. My throat closed up. A sense of claustrophobia settled over me. I felt tears and paranoia rising up.
Then I heard the cawing in my head. And wise mind took over: “E, if you leave now, you won’t come back. Not today, not next week. And if that happens, you’ll cascade. You’ll stop riding and going to the bike workshop. You’ll be back where you’ve been for years. And I say no. I want this. I signed up for this. I was hoping for exactly this lesson and I want to stay. And so I will. So, if you need to break down, you go ahead. But you’d BEST find someplace else to do it other than over this cutting board, because this where I intend to keep cutting until I say I’m done and I won’t relinquish this spot until then.”
And the panic was gone. Just like that. I went back and added all the ingredients I’d skipped. I’d resolved earlier to throw the whole thing away when done. Now I was resolved to take it home and eat every bite of it. Which I did.
I rode my bike back home, food in my backpack. I was exhausted beyond description. And a half block from home, a crow swooped overhead, cawing over and over in a pattern. And it didn’t sound like “Fight!” or like raucous laughter. It sounded like a teammate shouting in triumph at me as I left the field. And then another crow took up the same pattern, in unison with the first. Then a third. And there was a cascade of at least nine, all joining as one in that sound that jolted me so. I got to my door and looked up. They were all on the highest branch of all the trees and houses around me in a circle looking down. When I took my helmet off, they all stopped as one.
That was the first day in a couple of years I opened my curtains and let the world back into where I lived.
And that was the first night I danced again after a year of sitting-by, too terrified to stand.
Then I heard the cawing in my head. And wise mind took over: “E, if you leave now, you won’t come back. Not today, not next week. And if that happens, you’ll cascade. You’ll stop riding and going to the bike workshop. You’ll be back where you’ve been for years. And I say no. I want this. I signed up for this. I was hoping for exactly this lesson and I want to stay. And so I will. So, if you need to break down, you go ahead. But you’d BEST find someplace else to do it other than over this cutting board, because this where I intend to keep cutting until I say I’m done and I won’t relinquish this spot until then.”
And the panic was gone. Just like that. I went back and added all the ingredients I’d skipped. I’d resolved earlier to throw the whole thing away when done. Now I was resolved to take it home and eat every bite of it. Which I did.
I rode my bike back home, food in my backpack. I was exhausted beyond description. And a half block from home, a crow swooped overhead, cawing over and over in a pattern. And it didn’t sound like “Fight!” or like raucous laughter. It sounded like a teammate shouting in triumph at me as I left the field. And then another crow took up the same pattern, in unison with the first. Then a third. And there was a cascade of at least nine, all joining as one in that sound that jolted me so. I got to my door and looked up. They were all on the highest branch of all the trees and houses around me in a circle looking down. When I took my helmet off, they all stopped as one.
That was the first day in a couple of years I opened my curtains and let the world back into where I lived.
And that was the first night I danced again after a year of sitting-by, too terrified to stand.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, VI: When Fear Comes…
Panic’s a strange beast. It’s a terrible experience, a panic attack. Bad enough, that the thought that you’re about to have one can send you INTO one. Because you begin to fear the panic more than anything. That’s what happened to me. For the last several years, I fled every panic. It left my life tiny. Two years ago, I found if thoughts sent me into panic I could work my way back out through calm breathing. But that trick only worked if the thing causing me panic wasn’t continuing to sit in my face. So if I started to have a panic attack in a class or during a task, I still needed to flee to come out of it. The result was I hadn’t done anything intensive in a long, long time.
When April and May reintroduced me to my courage, I signed up for a few things: an activity club, a bike coop workshop, a cooking class. None of them monumental things. But I did it knowing that sooner or later, I’d have to address panic if I wanted to keep growing. More than once.
When April and May reintroduced me to my courage, I signed up for a few things: an activity club, a bike coop workshop, a cooking class. None of them monumental things. But I did it knowing that sooner or later, I’d have to address panic if I wanted to keep growing. More than once.
Friday, July 9, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, V: April’s Coldest Snap
Everything fell into place when my car fell apart. I couldn’t tell you why. I’d been dreading it failing, along with a dread my computer would fail, my lease would fail, my body would fail. Mind you, I wasn’t doing anything about any of that—such is the way fear grips the heart.
And I’d been meaning to ditch the car anyway. But that’s a wonderful exercise in theory, when you’re considering it behind the wheel of your car.
So, when it failed, I shut down. And suddenly the crows and ravens around me were cast into sharp relief. And just as suddenly, my whole symbolic collection settled into a working system again. And the ravens called to me, “Fight! Fight!’ The way a coach would exhort his team to get back up and win the game they were trailing at the half. Fight! The way a father would tell he son to face his fear of trying something new. Fight! The way one must welcome every challenge life throws with aplomb and grace and zeal for the next challenge. Fight! You fight for what you hold dear, fight for your path, fight the sleep to wake up every morning, fight the fear to face your demons, fight your grief to create joy in the life of those you love and who love you.
Sometimes the crows cawing sounded like raucous laughter. Ungentle but not unkind. The sort of laughter a friend gives when you fall on your ass, as they help you back up and slap you on the back. Chiding, maybe. Filial. But always intended and attentive.
And so the car went but my will came back. Whenever that will would start to wane, I heard the call, “FIGHT! FIGHT!” and I’d find myself straightening up, shoulders back, head high and I’d suddenly find the bravery to walk into my fear, with avid anticipation and delight.
So I began to do just that.
Two nights into bouncing back from the car, the nightmare of holding shut a door came back to me. And this time, the two figures outside got in. For the first time in my life. Before I could see their faces I awoke, gripped with fear. But I sprang from bed in challenge. “Next time, I may yet try to keep you out, but sooner or later, I will master this fear and I will DARE you to come in then. I will be waiting and you will find the tables turned that night. If you want that day to come, then let’s have that dream again, right now. I’m waiting.” And I intend to stay ready.
And I’d been meaning to ditch the car anyway. But that’s a wonderful exercise in theory, when you’re considering it behind the wheel of your car.
So, when it failed, I shut down. And suddenly the crows and ravens around me were cast into sharp relief. And just as suddenly, my whole symbolic collection settled into a working system again. And the ravens called to me, “Fight! Fight!’ The way a coach would exhort his team to get back up and win the game they were trailing at the half. Fight! The way a father would tell he son to face his fear of trying something new. Fight! The way one must welcome every challenge life throws with aplomb and grace and zeal for the next challenge. Fight! You fight for what you hold dear, fight for your path, fight the sleep to wake up every morning, fight the fear to face your demons, fight your grief to create joy in the life of those you love and who love you.
Sometimes the crows cawing sounded like raucous laughter. Ungentle but not unkind. The sort of laughter a friend gives when you fall on your ass, as they help you back up and slap you on the back. Chiding, maybe. Filial. But always intended and attentive.
And so the car went but my will came back. Whenever that will would start to wane, I heard the call, “FIGHT! FIGHT!” and I’d find myself straightening up, shoulders back, head high and I’d suddenly find the bravery to walk into my fear, with avid anticipation and delight.
So I began to do just that.
Two nights into bouncing back from the car, the nightmare of holding shut a door came back to me. And this time, the two figures outside got in. For the first time in my life. Before I could see their faces I awoke, gripped with fear. But I sprang from bed in challenge. “Next time, I may yet try to keep you out, but sooner or later, I will master this fear and I will DARE you to come in then. I will be waiting and you will find the tables turned that night. If you want that day to come, then let’s have that dream again, right now. I’m waiting.” And I intend to stay ready.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, IV: The Masks of Goddess
I read a mountain of books on mythology. 20 plus years of such reading starts to push some of the symbolism out of the realm of the academic and into the circle of meaningful, personal life metaphors. You reach out your hand for an analogy to describe what’s happening to you and there at hand is a 2000+ year old Irish Goddess, as your own and immediate as that thing that happened to you one summer at camp that you still liken much of your adult life to. It’s a strange process.
I would put the symbol down, every time I pulled my hand back to find it there in my palm again. But it came more often through the middle of the last 8 years.
The Morrigan. An Irish Goddess of death, war and sex. The maligned half of the ancient great goddess of Ireland. When the Irish father God, the Dagda, married a good aspect of the goddess, it’s telling that he nevertheless had a yearly affair with the Morrigan as well. Her name means “The Great Queen” or the “The Spectral Queen”. But again, as I never talk about absolutes and I have no illusion that I’m talking about anything but my own personal metaphor, I’d probably say I have no relationship with THE Morrigan, but I’m finding a way to MY Morrigan.
Sex, death and war. But what I see when I read that trio is a personification of the blood pounding in my temples. Drive, passion, will, a refusal to surrender to hardship, dogged perseverance, a exultation in hardship because it’s a chance to fight on and grow, a love of grief because it gives one a chance to cultivate the bravery of letting yourself experience fear and knowing that the fear only makes you braver. She’s the feeling of life you get when you strive because you believe you have a right to and because you believe you have the power to. And because you realize life is in the striving.
The animal most associated with the Morrigan is the crow, or raven. And for years I’ve been seeing them. I mean, they’re everywhere, right? So we all do. But I’ve instantly noticed them, watched them—my ears are keyed to hear them first and foremost in a noisy cityscape or in the woods. My head cranes to look when they call, of its own. And I feel like they’re looking back.
I would put the symbol down, every time I pulled my hand back to find it there in my palm again. But it came more often through the middle of the last 8 years.
The Morrigan. An Irish Goddess of death, war and sex. The maligned half of the ancient great goddess of Ireland. When the Irish father God, the Dagda, married a good aspect of the goddess, it’s telling that he nevertheless had a yearly affair with the Morrigan as well. Her name means “The Great Queen” or the “The Spectral Queen”. But again, as I never talk about absolutes and I have no illusion that I’m talking about anything but my own personal metaphor, I’d probably say I have no relationship with THE Morrigan, but I’m finding a way to MY Morrigan.
Sex, death and war. But what I see when I read that trio is a personification of the blood pounding in my temples. Drive, passion, will, a refusal to surrender to hardship, dogged perseverance, a exultation in hardship because it’s a chance to fight on and grow, a love of grief because it gives one a chance to cultivate the bravery of letting yourself experience fear and knowing that the fear only makes you braver. She’s the feeling of life you get when you strive because you believe you have a right to and because you believe you have the power to. And because you realize life is in the striving.
The animal most associated with the Morrigan is the crow, or raven. And for years I’ve been seeing them. I mean, they’re everywhere, right? So we all do. But I’ve instantly noticed them, watched them—my ears are keyed to hear them first and foremost in a noisy cityscape or in the woods. My head cranes to look when they call, of its own. And I feel like they’re looking back.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, III: The Masks of God
I cannot speak of what the absolute is. So I can’t speak of faith or my beliefs in any concrete way. I would describe myself as a devout, militant agnostic. I reside powerfully in the sublime realization that I do not know, that I cannot know.
So I have no concept of what THE Divine looks like. But I know what my life’s narrative feels like to me. So, at times, I gain a feeling of what MY Divine might look like. In that moment of time, at that place.
For much of my adult life, when I closed my eyes and saw the Universe as I felt it must be when it looked upon me, I saw a circle of my ancestors, arrayed around me. Like a council where I had the talking stick, or a dance jam where they were all gathered to cheer me on. My grandparents were arrayed behind me, their hands on my shoulders, offering strength.
That image formed slowly over time; pieces fell into place as years progressed.
When I hit the rough patch of my 30s, the image stopped working. A circle around me, as I stood in place. There was no movement anywhere. The circle hemmed me in. And I have no idea what my ancestors all look like. So mostly it was a featureless circle of silhouettes. Silhouettes not unlike the silhouette of panic I awoke to at night, when I startled from nightmares as a child. And my grandparents in my mind’s eye offered encouragement, but no drive or direction or strength. So, they were really nothing like my grandparents in the world, but such is the limitation of a child’s perspective, which is the only one I really ever had of them.
As it stopped feeling right, I let my image of the divine go. And another one swooped in on me. It had been materializing for years. But it was still a shock when it arrived.
So I have no concept of what THE Divine looks like. But I know what my life’s narrative feels like to me. So, at times, I gain a feeling of what MY Divine might look like. In that moment of time, at that place.
For much of my adult life, when I closed my eyes and saw the Universe as I felt it must be when it looked upon me, I saw a circle of my ancestors, arrayed around me. Like a council where I had the talking stick, or a dance jam where they were all gathered to cheer me on. My grandparents were arrayed behind me, their hands on my shoulders, offering strength.
That image formed slowly over time; pieces fell into place as years progressed.
When I hit the rough patch of my 30s, the image stopped working. A circle around me, as I stood in place. There was no movement anywhere. The circle hemmed me in. And I have no idea what my ancestors all look like. So mostly it was a featureless circle of silhouettes. Silhouettes not unlike the silhouette of panic I awoke to at night, when I startled from nightmares as a child. And my grandparents in my mind’s eye offered encouragement, but no drive or direction or strength. So, they were really nothing like my grandparents in the world, but such is the limitation of a child’s perspective, which is the only one I really ever had of them.
As it stopped feeling right, I let my image of the divine go. And another one swooped in on me. It had been materializing for years. But it was still a shock when it arrived.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, II: 20 Years Before My Past
As I reached adulthood, I realized how much I’d done in my teens to keep people at arm’s length, how temporary a solution it all was. I dismantled the outward trappings of the persona and tried to find my way to social connection again.
I did. I found dance. I danced with thousands of strangers. I found friends. Lots of them. Around the world. Friends found me high paying prestige work. I was connected, I was successful. I finally felt like an adult. But the panic was coming back, slowly. And there was no longer a persona to hold it at bay.
A panic attack hit me my 30th year. A month later, another followed. Then two weeks after that, a third. Six months later, I was having around three a day, every day. My thoughts turned dark. I left work and sought help.
But all the help offered no way out. Every time I sought to stretch again, regain something I’d felt I lost, panic would return, ever more powerful than the last time. I retreated time and again, but all that does is make life smaller each time I fall back. My life became one room. And the nightmares of holding doors closed returned.
I did. I found dance. I danced with thousands of strangers. I found friends. Lots of them. Around the world. Friends found me high paying prestige work. I was connected, I was successful. I finally felt like an adult. But the panic was coming back, slowly. And there was no longer a persona to hold it at bay.
A panic attack hit me my 30th year. A month later, another followed. Then two weeks after that, a third. Six months later, I was having around three a day, every day. My thoughts turned dark. I left work and sought help.
But all the help offered no way out. Every time I sought to stretch again, regain something I’d felt I lost, panic would return, ever more powerful than the last time. I retreated time and again, but all that does is make life smaller each time I fall back. My life became one room. And the nightmares of holding doors closed returned.
Monday, July 5, 2010
The Long Journey Through Night, I: Shadow Boxing
When I was a child, panic was my constant companion. It was a living thing. By day, it had its hands around my neck. Every breath was a labor and I lapsed into silence because all my words could not find their way through the narrow constrict of my throat. At night, panic was a black silhouette hovering over my face, its hand pressed against my mouth, til the breath in my lungs turned to poison and I scrambled the long hours of darkness for air.
I ran from panic. I had no other solution, no one I felt I could confide in. When a person panicked me, I cut them from my life—without malice but without choice. When a project panicked me, I shut down. School became failure, loneliness soared, family vanished from my view. The more I was cajoled to say what was wrong, the more caged I felt, and the more I shut the doors, tightly. My most profound, constant nightmares were of doors that would not lock properly, as unseen assailants would throw themselves bodily against them as I tried to hold the doors closed with all my will and muscle.
My teens, I found a way through panic with defiance. A shrewd, mocking defiance that manifested in a persona I came to call the “Fuck You Man”. I acted oddly to defy people’s conceptions of me. I was positive everyone misunderstood and hated me—why not make them do so as an act of will, instead of waiting for them to do it for me? I wore stupid clothes, I walked stupidly, I spelled my name stupidly. And the panic subsided, as did the anxiety and depression that were part of it.
I ran from panic. I had no other solution, no one I felt I could confide in. When a person panicked me, I cut them from my life—without malice but without choice. When a project panicked me, I shut down. School became failure, loneliness soared, family vanished from my view. The more I was cajoled to say what was wrong, the more caged I felt, and the more I shut the doors, tightly. My most profound, constant nightmares were of doors that would not lock properly, as unseen assailants would throw themselves bodily against them as I tried to hold the doors closed with all my will and muscle.
My teens, I found a way through panic with defiance. A shrewd, mocking defiance that manifested in a persona I came to call the “Fuck You Man”. I acted oddly to defy people’s conceptions of me. I was positive everyone misunderstood and hated me—why not make them do so as an act of will, instead of waiting for them to do it for me? I wore stupid clothes, I walked stupidly, I spelled my name stupidly. And the panic subsided, as did the anxiety and depression that were part of it.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Zen of Loss
I was talking with my friend A about hedonism today and it occurred to me that I tend to attract two kinds of folks in my life: bohemians (many of whom are hedonists) and hippies (many of whom live ascetically).
For much of my life I believed that hedonism was the opposite of asceticism. But our talk reminded me of a personal epiphany I had a year or more ago, that hedonism isn't actually the opposite of asceticism at all. I think deep asceticism is actually the heart of hedonism.
An ascetic seems to give up all the fluff of life. All the meat, all the neat stuff. But it dawned on me that one doesn't do that because that stuff's not great. But because the greatness of that stuff is intrinsic to everything. If you get a buzz from fine clothing, when you're poor, you're nothing. If your buzz comes from sex, then when you're alone, you're bereft. If your buzz comes from food, real hunger is the end of the world. But if you strip away every distraction, and look hard enough til you can experience that buzz from BREATHING, then there is nothing in life that is anything but bliss. An ascetic's so far into hedonism, they don't need the stuff anymore. Everything bestows that joy.
I bring this up because it's core to what's going on with me right now. I've said to many that I'm feeling much better lately. A lot of folks probably don't even know what was so bad in the first place, so in a nutshell here's what's been bad: a lifetime of PTSD, depression and social anxiety that spiraled into full blown chronic panic attacks for the last 7 years. And this last year I was so shut down I barely functioned at all.
So, when I say I'm feeling much, MUCH better, I mean that. I feel FUNCTIONAL. I cannot stress how much of a rush that is when you've felt inert every day for a year or more. I'm still scared, I'm still shy, I still struggle with sleep. But there's no similarity between functional depression and nonfuctional depression. It hurts terribly when it's moderate depression. But when it's so bad you can't do anything, it makes that moderate depression look like a half-hour cartoon special about Strawberry Shortcake singing about how berry, berry wonderful everything is. Moderate, severe; no relation. I feel better than both of those.
What happened to bring that about? That brings me back to the musing on asceticism. I got a flat tire three weeks ago. I'm poor--I could manage a tire, probably. With difficulty. It's money that should go elsewhere. But another thing will soon break on my old car and there's no way I could afford to fix anything more than a tire. I'd been meaning to get rid of the car for ages now. I can't afford a car. But the idea of getting rid of a car, while you're driving it to the store in the snow, is too scary to think about for long. I've been living in mortal terror the car would die on me. And basically, it did.
I melted down. I clambered into bed for six hours and hoped I'd never wake up. The universe cruelly denied my wish. I got up, but the hopelessness was gone. I had a meeting the next day I didn't want to miss. I walked to the credit union, by the bus stop that would go to where I needed the following day. I timed the walk. I got money from the ATM for a bus pass. I came back and checked the bus schedule. It occurred to me the curse was a blessing. It was the best season to start walking--spring. It was the most readily adapted-to thing I could have break down--much better than an eviction or a heart attack. It was timed and chosen exactly suited to my needs.
I felt more actualized and accomplished than I had in maybe 7 years. I hate cars. I always have, even when I was too scared to live without one. They're cop outs. They're crutches. I realized I didn't need one. But I would need to plan. Plan my days around bus schedules and around grocery store runs. I'd need to plan my weeks around laundry trips to the nearest laundromat, miles away.
It brought me out of my house. It brought me out in the sun. It forced me to exercise. It forced me to eat small (only so much I can carry back home). It put me next to people who I started talking to again. It gave me energy and a feeling of control. It made me feel human again. I started enjoying sun, clouds, wind, sky, rain. I'm enjoying life more because the simple stuff is harder, so it's harder to take for granted. It gives me less time to endlessly fret over the big stuff.
I carry a backpack with me everywhere; pen, notebook, book, phone, water, shopping bag. I feel so much more alive. Everyone has their own way to that feeling. I don't recommend everyone give up their cars. But I wish the feeling on everyone, no matter what you have to do to get to the feeling.
I remember now how great I felt living in SF without a car. And while there were other factors more key, I know that I began to spiral down when I got a car. So, while there are still other factors, some more crucial, I feel like I'm ready to start the slow spiral back up. On foot.
For much of my life I believed that hedonism was the opposite of asceticism. But our talk reminded me of a personal epiphany I had a year or more ago, that hedonism isn't actually the opposite of asceticism at all. I think deep asceticism is actually the heart of hedonism.
An ascetic seems to give up all the fluff of life. All the meat, all the neat stuff. But it dawned on me that one doesn't do that because that stuff's not great. But because the greatness of that stuff is intrinsic to everything. If you get a buzz from fine clothing, when you're poor, you're nothing. If your buzz comes from sex, then when you're alone, you're bereft. If your buzz comes from food, real hunger is the end of the world. But if you strip away every distraction, and look hard enough til you can experience that buzz from BREATHING, then there is nothing in life that is anything but bliss. An ascetic's so far into hedonism, they don't need the stuff anymore. Everything bestows that joy.
I bring this up because it's core to what's going on with me right now. I've said to many that I'm feeling much better lately. A lot of folks probably don't even know what was so bad in the first place, so in a nutshell here's what's been bad: a lifetime of PTSD, depression and social anxiety that spiraled into full blown chronic panic attacks for the last 7 years. And this last year I was so shut down I barely functioned at all.
So, when I say I'm feeling much, MUCH better, I mean that. I feel FUNCTIONAL. I cannot stress how much of a rush that is when you've felt inert every day for a year or more. I'm still scared, I'm still shy, I still struggle with sleep. But there's no similarity between functional depression and nonfuctional depression. It hurts terribly when it's moderate depression. But when it's so bad you can't do anything, it makes that moderate depression look like a half-hour cartoon special about Strawberry Shortcake singing about how berry, berry wonderful everything is. Moderate, severe; no relation. I feel better than both of those.
What happened to bring that about? That brings me back to the musing on asceticism. I got a flat tire three weeks ago. I'm poor--I could manage a tire, probably. With difficulty. It's money that should go elsewhere. But another thing will soon break on my old car and there's no way I could afford to fix anything more than a tire. I'd been meaning to get rid of the car for ages now. I can't afford a car. But the idea of getting rid of a car, while you're driving it to the store in the snow, is too scary to think about for long. I've been living in mortal terror the car would die on me. And basically, it did.
I melted down. I clambered into bed for six hours and hoped I'd never wake up. The universe cruelly denied my wish. I got up, but the hopelessness was gone. I had a meeting the next day I didn't want to miss. I walked to the credit union, by the bus stop that would go to where I needed the following day. I timed the walk. I got money from the ATM for a bus pass. I came back and checked the bus schedule. It occurred to me the curse was a blessing. It was the best season to start walking--spring. It was the most readily adapted-to thing I could have break down--much better than an eviction or a heart attack. It was timed and chosen exactly suited to my needs.
I felt more actualized and accomplished than I had in maybe 7 years. I hate cars. I always have, even when I was too scared to live without one. They're cop outs. They're crutches. I realized I didn't need one. But I would need to plan. Plan my days around bus schedules and around grocery store runs. I'd need to plan my weeks around laundry trips to the nearest laundromat, miles away.
It brought me out of my house. It brought me out in the sun. It forced me to exercise. It forced me to eat small (only so much I can carry back home). It put me next to people who I started talking to again. It gave me energy and a feeling of control. It made me feel human again. I started enjoying sun, clouds, wind, sky, rain. I'm enjoying life more because the simple stuff is harder, so it's harder to take for granted. It gives me less time to endlessly fret over the big stuff.
I carry a backpack with me everywhere; pen, notebook, book, phone, water, shopping bag. I feel so much more alive. Everyone has their own way to that feeling. I don't recommend everyone give up their cars. But I wish the feeling on everyone, no matter what you have to do to get to the feeling.
I remember now how great I felt living in SF without a car. And while there were other factors more key, I know that I began to spiral down when I got a car. So, while there are still other factors, some more crucial, I feel like I'm ready to start the slow spiral back up. On foot.
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