The Color of Winter IV: Willfulness

After tackling the bicycle problem head-on, I felt actually able to do what needed doing. I rode across town to the medical clinic and got my throat looked at. They found nothing wrong but took a culture to be tested at the hospital. I was handed a plastic bag with a vial inside.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Your throat culture.”

“And why are you giving it to me?”

“So you can take it to the lab.”

“Me? I thought you would do that.”

“Oh no. The lab's at the hospital. Just take it over and drop it off. You'll be in and out in two minutes.”

I was furious, and anxious because it was getting close to when I needed to be at a friend's birthday. I was in clothes that stank of sweat and I was still somewhat smeared with bike grime. But I had no choice, so I rode it to the hospital. It took five minutes to find the lab and when I put the vial on the counter, the man behind it looked at me like I'd just spit in his mouth.

“What's that?” he asked.

“A culture from OnCall.”

“Why is it on my counter?”

“I was told to drop it off here.”

“Well, have you checked it in at the Registration desk?”

“Uh...no?”

“Then take it away. We can't do anything with it until you've checked it in.”

By this point, I was livid. I found the Registration desk. The woman behind the counter was already helping someone. I stood a few paces back. She looked up at me, surprised.

“Are you waiting, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Well, here, take this pager. We're going to be a while.”

The Color of Winter III: Not This Time

Two weeks ago I felt withdrawn. I was exercising a lot, but the effort to do so seemed inordinate. A few steps into my midweek dance class, I was lightheaded, weak, and a sore throat I'd had for two months became unbearable. I dropped out of the class and while it was a reasonable thing to do, I felt ashamed and shaken for doing so. I vowed I would finally get my sore throat tested the following day. That night, I had a terrible dream of both my parents telling me they were dying. I woke off center and couldn't find my momentum. The class had shaken my confidence in my body. The dream had shaken my confidence in my emotional state. Doctors' offices shake me in general. So it took the better part of the day to go. At which point, I realized I had a broken spoke on my bike.

I'd never replaced a spoke. It was on the right side of the rear wheel, behind the free wheel. I'd need to take that off before I could replace the spoke, then put it back on. I'd never removed or put on a free wheel before, either. I stood there, gaping at my bike, trying to make the logistics of how I would get the bike fixed, get to the medical clinic, and get through the next several days, come together. But they wouldn't and after a few minutes, I gave up and retreated inside. I felt the deep urge to hide. Beyond the bike and the trip to the clinic, I had plans for the evening. I contemplated canceling them.

And then I recalled the car I gave up almost a year earlier. Hiding hadn't helped then, and believing it might help now left me angry. I pictured everything paralyzing me with fear and pictured the hardest, most proactive thing I could do in response. I called a friend who'd know, O, and asked him how much damage it would do, riding the bike as it was, to the bike workshop. None at all, he told me. So I rode there. The place was deserted. I'd watched people do the procedures I needed to do to disassemble, fix and reassemble my bike. Once. I recalled it, held it in mind, and fixed my bike myself. The repairs were perfect. My dimmed confidence began to brighten. That bear's bellowing roar came back to me. I rode off to face the day, reinvigorated.

The Color of Winter II: Fade Out

Holidays are hard for me, typically. At my worst, the few years before this last one, I slid into hopelessness at the beginning of October and didn't crawl out again until April. This last year, I struggled some, to make social plans, but much of the rest of my life was unscathed. The hardest period was nothing compared to that black six months of years past, and it only lasted a couple of weeks around Christmas. But the holidays still wore at me. The weather wore at me. I was terrified to cycle in the snow and cold. And the prospect of moving, repeatedly yanked away from me, that wore at me most of all.

I managed a few great things over the winter. I applied for a job. The first time in six years of disability. I added two more dance nights, so that I was taking west African dance classes four times a week. I added another night of volunteering at the bike workshop, and I began to join the other volunteers in community activist projects. And I beat that snow and ice terror and got to cycling through the worst of the weather, feeling deeply empowered for having done so.

But with everything that wore at me, my social tendency suffered, confidence waned, direction became muddled. Trust in the universe and the sense that my path was open, beautiful and attainable, and the compassion that came with that sense, began to fade. I was still doing all the big things I'd cultivated over the last year, but all the small things I'd been doing to make it all flow smoothly were left unattended, and began to wither. And the scold of the raven, the roar of the bear--days passed, then weeks, where they would to fail to reach me at all. I wasn't in a nosedive, but my climb upward had become a precarious hang in space without my feet rooted in reality.

The Color of Winter I: On the Road.

Over the course of last spring, summer and fall, I'd found, after years of faltering, a steady rhythm for my life. I found it by focusing on what I would do instead of what I wanted things to be, and by fostering trust in the path the universe had in front of me, instead of the dread and worry over whether or not I'd managed to cover all my bases. The patterns led me from one thing to the next, not through the fixation on long term goals, but by taking that which most enlivened me that was suddenly close enough at hand to be reached one step ahead of where I was already standing. And trusting as I was learning to do, every step, there was another deeply rewarding goal another step along. The sense that life is a journey was vivid and visceral.

So, after a progression of wonderful steps, I was offered a chance for my first trip out of Santa Fe in several years. I helped me friend, D, move his belongings from Santa Fe to Seattle. We cleaned, refurbished and then packed up the house, and drove the truck cross country. Over the course of the last several years, time away from home became unbearable. But the offer felt like the next step I hadn't realized I wanted, one pace beyond where I stood, so I took the opportunity. The trip was enlivening beyond description. I danced and felt my joy in that rekindled; I met with friends who I hadn't seen in 7 years, and some I hadn't seen in 20.

And while there, D dropped a bomb in my lap—he offered to rent me a room in his house there. I was being offered a chance to move. Anyone who's talked with me at length these last 8 years or so knows how often I've spoken of moving. I've never felt quite at home here. Just the offer was enough to kick my overplanning impulse into high gear. So I was knocked off kilter when the offer had to be rescinded. Shortly after, my roommate here in town offered to move my things up to Seattle when he moved back to Portland this summer. And shortly after that, THAT offer had to be rescinded. The entire issue of whether or not to move is a separate post by itself, so I won't get into that any more here, but I spent a large portion of my winter stumbling around due to the roller coaster the prospect turned out to be.