I can't describe how displeased I was as I took a seat in the waiting room. I was lost in that ire, until I heard someone crying to my left. At first, that made me angrier still. Late, odorous, filthy, tired, and now I was being made to wait in what was a nexus of woe, a hospital waiting room. Fucking GREAT. I turned to cast a baleful glance at the person crying.
I froze and fell to pieces in mid-glance.
The person weeping was a developmentally disabled boy of perhaps 14. He was in his wheelchair. Not a hospital wheelchair he was in for liability issues—his lifelong wheelchair. He was slumped over in his own lap. His younger sister was cradling him in her arms. She was dried-eyed and was looking over my shoulder with calm determination—I guessed she'd been through this scenario often enough to be inured to it. On the back of his wheelchair was a very large oxygen tank—I gathered he had enough difficulty breathing he needed to have a large supply at hand at all times. He was sobbing desperately against his sister, but his breathing was a terrible struggle. He wept, snuffled, shook, hacked, wheezed, gasped and cried out breathlessly. The woman at the counter, being helped ahead of me, that caused me so much frustration, was his mother checking him in. Tears filled me. I'm crying again, writing this.
The bottom dropped out of my anger and all my fixation on my difficulties came apart. What the fuck was I doing? What did I have to be anxious about? I needed a shower, had a sore throat and was late for dinner. It beat a large dose of perspective into me. I don't suppose that's surprising. But it occurred to me how much all our suffering would diminish if we'd have the mindful presence to step more often outside of our own narratives and offer consolation to one another.
I closed my eyes and pictured myself breathing in his despair, his pain, his suffering. Breathing it in like a poisonous black smoke, taking it from him into myself. And I pictured myself breathing out clean, crisp spring air, clear and sweet—breathing it out so that it washed back over him. I held onto that for several minutes. And then I prayed.
“Universe, my throat is sore, I'm on disability and I've spent years trying to overcome depression and social anxiety. But I recognize it's all a luxury. You can take my health, take my happiness, take my friends, take years off my life, take my prosperity, my peace of mind, take my home, take away the things that I love, or my sense of purpose. You can have any or all of these things already, I know. You don't need my permission. But I'm offering them freely anyway. Take them, if they'll help. Ease his pain. Take what I have in trade and bring that boy some peace.”
The family eventually went upstairs. The woman behind the counter called me over. She apologized extensively for the time it took. But by then, I'd let all that go. I smiled at her and said it was all part of life. She checked me in, I turned in the vial next door and I rode to dinner, smelly, dirty and late. And I had a great night. The next day I realized I couldn't let all my control mechanisms go. I tightened my grip on my diet and on my sleep schedule. I resumed meditating. I started managing my finances again. And in so doing found I had 500 dollars less than I thought and would be in the red by the time rent was due—I guess the universe took me up on my offer of prosperity. Honestly, it gave me a silly sense of warmth to see my account dry, thinking that.
And with that, my weight began to drop again, a goal coalesced a pace or two ahead of me, and I could hear the ravens laughing in this burgeoning spring.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
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.”
“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.”
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, March 28, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
A Truth, a Pact, and the Dawn
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.
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.
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.
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