Sixteen days

Sixteen days since I last wrote and I'm finding it hard to get back into the rhythm of writing a blog post. I had it, even though many of my 'daily' entries were in fact last minute, even spilled over into the next day. Today, I talked to my dad about where the posts had wandered off to and I lacked a good excuse to explain the leave of absence I granted myself, so here I am. Presenting what comes from my heart.

Since childhood, I've had a tendency to hole up and forget that I have a whole tribe of people I love who love me. I'm not sure when that started; the earliest memory I have of hermit behavior is day one in first grade when I climbed to the top of the tallest tree at the bus stop in the hopes I would be forgotten. I liked being by my self, since my imagination conjured numerous friends to share adventures, and books supplied even more. These days, I hide out in the frantic pace I committed myself to Jackson for a working summer.

It's been a long while since I wrote, called, emailed, even peeked at your pictures on Facebook. I'm not connected, even though I have the power of numerous devices to shrink the distance between me and you. I've cultivated this reclusive role in the three years I've lived in this town and have avoided the headlong plunge into it, afraid to trust the waters and their depths to hold space for the parts of me that seem to belong somewhere other than here. I feel as adrift and wonky as my choices and inclinations have decided.

For years, I've struggled to find balance in my life. I either don't work or I'm a workaholic. I drink responsibly until one night I implode from poor choices, and give thanks that there was only a little fall out. I shrink away from writing in a public venue for years, then start a blog which becomes an almost daily habit for a month and then I quit cold, moldy turkey for over two weeks. I treat myself fair until I treat myself like shit.

And then comes the mean goad - how harsh can I talk to myself and what do I hold over my head to make a change, a new habit? I rail and flail and find my head in a spin as thoughts and emotions flood and all the debris of a lifetime gets flushed out of memory and it's shaken, stirred and mixed. There's flotsam and jetsam, a cocktail of chemicals and oil slicks that look like rainbows the way the light falls. If I'd just let go of the past instead of making a collection of all that garbage the suffering would lessen, I'd be free.

It'd just be Egypt before the dams, as the waters of the Nile rise over the land and seem to wreak destruction but instead bring new life to the earth. The kind goad arrives in spring, when flood waters from the delta provide a tonic to heal, to make fecund, to rebirth self. I can become someone who transmutes the burdens of regret, past wounds and unresolved emotions into my fullest potential.

You are as you decide. I am as I decide. I sit, write and author a blog and the writing might be solo but the inspiration that creates isn't birthed in isolation. I'm also part of a tribe (which I define as the web of kinship that includes family of blood and choice) and I have a responsibility not only to myself but to you to connect. I can be an introvert and an open hearted part of the world - but the goad must be kindness and love.

Posted with Blogsy

A moratorium on negativity

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday and I struggled to regain my equilibrium late into the morning. Everything can seem out of proportion when you live in a 20' travel trailer. With the recent feeling of being thin skinned and a natural tendency toward empathy, I have an increased sponge-like ability to take on other people's emotional states. So when I wake to a call that my massage has been cancelled, my trailer mate complains of a bad belly, and the lawn mower roars outside, I'll admit I didn't handle it well.

I made complaints, numerous ones, in fact. Outside of my head, it might have even sounded like I was whining, which is true because inside my mind it sounded like a temper tantrum. In this moment, it doesn't matter how little I want to be like this - reduced to a filter that only allows frustrations and irritations to pass into my consciousness - I descend into the depths of not good enough and there I am. In a pit, like one of those oubliettes used to torture people, alone with their thoughts and little else.

Yes, I exaggerate, but it's all part of feeling a feeling with total committment, in order to then allow it to pass. I know my trailer mate didn't much appreciate this method I experimented with at the start of our day, but since he went to work I was free to figure out how to pass through the mess of emotions that had formed a noxious cloud to stink up my thinking.

With an unexpected morning free to indulge my mood, I laced up and ratched tight my roller blades over knee high socks and added the essential knee pads, wrist guards and neon orange trucker's cap for visibility. I cranked up the tunes after I made it to the relative safety of the bike path, and skated my way to a better attitude. Excercise improves my perspective on the world, and roller blading has the added factor of being silly and also graceful in moments. When my whole body becomes involved in forward motion and it's long legs and long arms swinging and the music adds an element of dance, it's moving meditation.

I returned home and decided I'd choose to enjoy the day, whatever it brought. I had work, I got some tasks started or completed, I recovered an expensive and difficult to replace window frame for the Airstream that had gone misssing after I took it to a shop to have glass cut for it, I worked somewhere else, and I ate sushi for dinner with my happy to see me trailer mate. I chose a different attitude, and if I had to fake my way into it at first, I eventually found it.

Now I'm committed to a moratorium on negativity. Ironic but it's a little intimidating - sometimes a focus on the rubbish side of things seems easier to fulfill. Who cares about that, though? I'd like to be happy and I'm pretty sure it's a habit, just like the choice to see the worst in any given situation can be. I'm starting with a week, in the hopes it will spill over into a month, a year, the rest of my days. Habit forming happiness, this is something for which I aspire.

Posted with Blogsy

Pay it forward

This morning at my local coffee shop the woman in line ahead of me turned and looked at me and told the gal behind the counter that she was adding whatever I wanted to her order. She told me that today she's paying it forward. I lifted my eyebrows and asked if she'd planned ahead to do this the night before, or if she had decided in that moment to practice random acts of generosity.

It turns out that she's paying it forward in honor of a friend's child - a two year old who died of cancer - it would have been his birthday today. After she tells me this, my eyes sting with sudden, not-quite tears, and then we both have red eyes but keep it polite, don't cry. I am amazed at this sweet way to honor the beloved dead, allow them a voice in their silence. To do a kindness for another person, casual, in the moment, no other thought but today I decide to pay it forward.

"Okay, I'll have a coffee. Just a dark roast drip coffee."

"That's all, isn't there something else you'd like?"

I can hear the disappointment in her voice, so I order a chocolate croissant, which I don't ever splurge to enjoy unless it's in the day old basket or I require a chocolate and buttery flaky bread fix to survive the day. I thank her and she moves forward into her day, and I into mine. And the honored dead do whatever it is they do after life, and I am left with food for thought and ecstatic tastebuds.

People have paid it forward over the millennia; this is not a new concept that began with the novel Pay it Forward, published in 1999 by Cathering Ryan Hyde, or with the movie of the same name the following year. One of my favorite traditions, the potlatch, was the cornerstone of the Pacific northernwest native peoples until a ban by the Federal government in 1884. For some communities, like the Puyallup tribe in Washington State, it remains so to a more limited degree.

This is not your casserole and cherry pie type potlatch, but a necessary means by which these societies took care of the poorest amongst themselves. It also acted as a means to solidify the strength and connectivity of the community. The hosts accumulated food and goods in order to be able to hold a gathering, where a marriage or birth amongst other important events was celebrated with a feast layed out and the honoring the attendees with gifts. Often, it was a way for the wealthy to exhibit their power, as they could give and give more. A wealthy person might become poor in the process, but solidifed their stature in the community.

If instead of banning this practice, the US government had adopted it, we'd see an America that looks and functions radically different to what it does at present. With the heavy hand of Big Business and the personification of corporations that leaves them running wild and trampling our democracy, we could stand to have a shift to pay it forward rather than pay it to we, we, we. And I mean the corporate we, as if these companies had been graced by God like kings or queens to do whatever they want in order to reap the bounty of profit and power.

In this moment, I have no control over the structure of corporations in the US, and I can't say I'm even close to the kind of audacity it would take to shift from an attitude of survival mentality to a full on giveaway at a party. But a more altruistic attitude doesn't have to be relegated to grandiose gestures, it doen't take much to offer some small kindness to another person. A cup of coffee, the quality of empathy, even the moment shared to contemplate an almost new being already gone and grieved.

Posted with Blogsy

The wordie recommends

Books for kiddos

The following books are ones I loved as small child - they were first read to me and then I mastered the art of reading and read them to myself . . . and others. Once upon a time I had Green Eggs and Ham memorized. I have several other Dr. Seuss books on my milk crate shelf, that's how important I believe it is to infuse life with whimsy, rhyme and not entirely subtle be better/ do better themes.

• The Monster at the End of This Book
• Stellaluna - because bats rock
• The Giving Tree
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Goodnight Moon
• Anything by Dr. Seuss. My favorites include The Thinks You Can Think, Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Green Eggs and Ham and The Lorax.

Tweens and Teens

As a voracious reader in my youth (and beyond), I was indifferent to the intended age level a book targeted, reading anything that caught my attention. I will share authors and some of their titles that I enjoyed during those angst filled years of junior high and high school - conveniently rolled into one building when I passed through 7th - 12th grade. These are the authors (and their works) who made the long days in class more interesting, the longer bus rides (in spirit if not actual time) tolerable and my chaotic home life manageable:

• Ursula le Guin - I met her through the Earthsea books
• Laura Ingalls Wilder - I loved her Little House books
• Lloyd Alexander - The Black Cauldron
• Susan Cooper - Over Sea, Under Stone
• Margaret Mahy - The Tricksters
• Jane Austen - yes, I was that bespectacled girl who loved the Victorian novelists
• Louisa May Alcott - even a girl with two sisters and two brothers can want more
• Emily Bronte - I have a woodblock art copy of Wuthering Heights from the 1800s somewhere in storage
• Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time and about sixty others
• Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
• Juliette Marillier - fall in love with the folk of the Sevenwaters series
• Charles de Lint - I first read Trader, but I adore all this guy's books

To be continued . . .

Posted with Blogsy

Surfing at the Pink Garter

Yesterday Brad scored two free tickets to a Led Zepplin cover band performance at the Pink Garter here in Jackson Hole. I wanted to go see Zosos' performance last year when they came through town, but I was working or in the midst of a frugal period, so it was a treat to enjoy them last night. We rode bikes the two blocks to Pinky G's and shared a few slices before we ascended into the former theater for the show. I like to imagine it as a gambling den and whore house back in the day when Jackson was a dusty row of houses huddled around a village green, but it was probably never either one.
Even though I do't often listen to the original rockers, I felt the music thrum and pound its way into my cells last night. I might have missed my era - I could almost smell the steaming bodies, reefer like a skunk's spray and the pheremones rising like a cloud from the stage - except I did really smell all that. The band dominated the boards in their painted on jeans, shiny chests exposed through unbuttoned shirts, and the guitarist strutted like a peacock with his double neck guitar and black spandex with white side panels glittering with sequins under the house lights. I thrashed and shook my hips in time with the thrumming rhythm, to the epic drum solo punctuated by a gong and writhed with my man as the sound rose and fell, rose again.

There were a few attempts at croudsurfing last night, in particular two guys who tried multiple times to get up and ride the wave of hands. One guy, relaxed, managed to travel half the distance of the main floor, but the other looked too excited and bounced right off the top and down to the ground. That didn't stop him from trying again, a few more times with less success and diminished crowd participation.

I've crowdsurfed at a few concerts - it's a far different experience to be a young woman surfing the crowd - and it's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. You're popcorn exploding in a pot, bouncing on a trampoline that tries to grope you, connected and yet caught then released by the crowd. You hope no one grabs any parts that don't want to be touched, and at the same time you don't think of anything except this weightlessness, the split second decision to trust the hands below.
I don't remember what show I was at the last time I crowd surfed, but I know why I haven't since. The crowd in that university district venue that night pulsated with some wild energy and I got carried away by hands that weren't gentle, that grabbed rather than sent me across the surface. In the end, an undertow pulled me deep and I slammed to the floor. The surge of bodies kept me submerged and the beer I'd guzzled and humid heat of hundreds of people in motion sent my brain into a tail spin.

That night I discovered I have claustrophobia in crowds and that while I'd love to learn to surf, I'll save my attempts for the ocean and avoid the less predictable nature of humans in a group. I clawed my way off the booze soaked floor and stood, shaken, missing a shoe and my glasses no where to be seen. I found a wall to huddle against and waited out the show until I could make my mole blind way around the hall to reclaim shoe and specs. I found both and relinquished any desire to crowdsurf again. It's entertaining to watch others ride the wave, but I'd rather stake my claim to a piece of the dance floor and thrash my way through a show.

Posted with Blogsy

The habit of procrastination

As I sat under moon and fairy lights late last night, editing my post, I considered how often I'd been in this very same place. Posting to Words and other adventures near or on the other side of midnight, working late to finish a project. And this one doesn't have much of a deadline.

I have lived most of my life convinced that I lack proactive qualities that would make life a little simpler and less stressful, called myself a procrastinator, a slacker, lazy or inept. Harsh, right? To decide a character flaw is so ingrained that it's my nature hides the truth: my tendency to often leave a task to be completed last minute is nothing more than a habit I've repeated year after year, one opportunity to reinforce it after another. Now, I procrastinate because it feels comfortable, a well worn rut my feet find in the path, as water follows the path of least resistance.

Rivers are living things, not static and unchanging. When I landscaped in the Snake River valley last summer, I found river rocks buried in dirt as smooth and collected as if the river had just receded the year before, instead of a thousand. The Snake has wandered across the valley numerous times, since even for this creature of habit, the default can be redefined. Does a human consciousness help or hinder making the changes I wish to see in my life? That's a question I cannot resolve, but I know that my own particular stubborn self is capable of shifting its habits.

Planning a wedding is, of all surprising events, what's helping me become more proactive. Even though my fiance and me aim for simple - more a party for family and friends to share our union than the elaborate ritual that my older cousins celebrated in the Catholic tradition - a wedding takes on a life of its own, just like the river. Gathering email and snail mail addresses struck me as easy as herding sheep, one of those simple tasks that requires persistence and small steps. Maybe herding sheep is easy if you have experience doing it, but my few attempts were hardly that. However, I kept at it and after several weeks of queries, data entry and discovering the beauty of Paperless Post, I succeeded. Well, almost entirely . . . I apologize if I missed you.

Single steps, one after another, persistent to go the distance. This is how I'm creating a new habit, how I'm checking off items on my punch list, how I'm going to find my way to post on this blog at some time other than the last minute. That and scrap paper filled with lists I revise over and over, writing in bold the sneaky to dos that consistently escape completion.

I read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg this spring in the hopes I'd figure out how to subvert my tendencies and find a new rut to roll through, one that shortcuts the delay and frustrations of the procrastinator's reality. What I learned is that our daily activities are primarily controlled by habit in a loop. A habit initiates by a cue, which then implements the routine, leading to a reward or outcome.

When I have projects to complete that involve writing, I have two primary routines: an older one in which I wait and wait and wait a little longer to get started because I always try to do tasks in big chunks and I always underestimate the time required to see it start to finish. The second, in my morning pages routine, gets me out of bed and writing first thing. It is a sure path to success: I sit and write and I get my 3+ pages done every day. This is the loop I've decided to adopt and follow.

Right now, it's 7:59 a.m. and I'm finishing the first draft of this post. I need to figure out the next piece, the edit and upload, but I'm well on my way to a new and positive habit. Step aside, procrastination and bad attitude about it, here comes every day consistent choices deferred to the easiest route forward. Except it's 12:17 the next day and here's to getting it right, another time.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Morning pages and photographs

I've written some variation of morning pages since I was a teenager. If you're familiar with the work of Julia Cameron, you will have heard of morning pages, but for those of you whom have yet to have the pleasure, the gist is as follows. Wake up, grab a pen, a notebook and write. Yes, with your hand, not on a computer or tablet or dictated on the morning commute to work. Write three pages, across one side of a sheet of 8"x11" paper, or if you like a comp book as I do (they have that rigid cover so it's easy to write on them anywhere, like in bed or on the couch), I generally add a few pages more.
These are throw away pages, meant to clear out the cobwebs of the night's sleep and start you fresh for the day. They are not high prose, though sometimes a clever turn of phrase emerges or I'll write down an idea that startles me by its insight. More often, though, the morning pages feel like having a really good session on the toilet. After, my body feels lighter, my mind ready to conquer the blessings and challenges the day brings. I use them as a form of meditation, and my monkey mind is just as present when i sit to write these pages as it is when I sit cross legged and try to think of nothing. Or not think at all.
I'm fully committed to the philosophy that this life is simply an experiment, and this summer is the first part in the next step to manifest a new kind of life. I've made wonderful progress in some aspects of how I think and go about things, but I've also been stuck in a rut when it comes to others - like how I make a living, where I live, etc. I'm giving the time I write morning pages over to my blog, because I believe this is an important part of the shift. This morning I skipped both and went for a bike ride first, except I started late and didn't return home until noon. By then the heat had zapped my morning zeal and initiative. So here I am again, finishing my post for the day on the following one, a little after midnight.
I feel like I'm back in high school, or college, in a rush to complete a project just before it's due. These are definitely not all-nighters, but my mind and drive seem to wake up when others are tucked snug in their bed, out for a night of drinking, or even working the night shift. Or down in the Southern Hemisphere, perhaps in the midst of some school project due tomorrow morning.
In addition to crafting posts for Words and other adventures, I've been scanning photographs at the library as jpegs to upload to my laptop. My retired rugby cleats came in this box that I repurposed to hold prints, and the photos within have acquired curled or crumpled edges. Those shoes are buried beneath my broomball padding and shin guards in our storage unit, but the state of those photos had been on my mind of late. I pulled them out to make digital copies, to have access to them for daily use on the blog or elsewhere, but also to remember.
Looking back, even though I find it easy in the present to have regrets about what I haven't done, when I see these photographs that's the farthest thing from my memory. I think what an amazing adventure I've had, what incredible people I've been blessed to know (in the earthiest of senses, since I'm not a christian to say biblically), and oh, the places I've been... What a brilliant bit of luck and choice, or chance and choice as this boy I once knew would say.
The morning pages act in this fashion on the rare occasion when I peek back in a notebook, into time and the slice of perspective I had that day, or the time period it contained in its sheets. Sometimes when I read older ones - I do have journals dating back to high school, after all - I can't image that the person writing these sentiments, doing these deeds has any connection to whom I am at present. Seventeen year old me reads as a little crazy, though I have to cut her some slack that she was doing the best she could with what she, I mean I, had.
Their catharsis, though, has the same distancing quality as looking at old photos. In this case, the awareness that life is continual change comes as a relief. At times those emotions, almost always the negative ones, the weighty, oppressive, woe-is-me humdingers, hang around like a bad smell in a close, hot room. They are never going to go away. Until one day they have and that slice of you frozen in the photo, on the page, is a negative to the image you now carry within.
The photos aren't burdened with the weight of sad, irritated, content, betrayed, bored, madly in love or ecstatic. Even if you can remember you felt that then, it's only a story now, just like the writing I did all those mornings. A story after the time, being now, has slipped into the past.
This morning I didn't write, but that's just part of the story, part of the experiment, undocumented except for on this digital page. And there are plenty of photo files now to prove that the experiment so far has been a success, even when I had frizzy, tripod hair or ended up not liking the person I'd once been head over heels in love with, in the photo.

Posted with Blogsy