i didn't know we had Iran in the first place...

And on a slightly lighter note, I noticed a New York Times editorial titled, "Have We Already Lost Iran?" (The editorial itself seems interesting, though in my current mood I didn't read past the first page, uncharacteristic as that is!)

Hmmm. Have you tried between the couch cushions? In the pockets of jackets you haven't worn since the weather warmed up? Under the seat in the car?

Cuz if you have, and you still can't find Iran, I got nuthin.

(I read this to Loopy who patted the dog's head and asked, "What about you? Did you eat Iran?")

traveling shoes

a year ago today i started an indescribable journey... one of, as i wrote at the time, "pushing my limits and seeing how far they can go... finding that limits are not limits... it is fascinating... like exploring new parts of my own mind on some kind of expedition..." it was one of the best things i ever did... taught me so much about myself, opened whole new worlds to me, and healed old things too.

now i'm on a different kind of journey. trying to ... hm. in buddhism you're not supposed to be trying, it's too "grasping," too "clinging." but so, ok, fuck buddhism ;-) ... i'm trying to find some sanity. some peace.

i feel crazy and tired. very tired. so tired.

my shrink today said, "you've been through A LOT." the way she said "A LOT" made me feel heard, understood, listened to, and comforted. (how do they do that? i just wanted to curl up in a fetal position on her floor and never leave). anyway. then she said, "you need a break, you need to rest." i am inclined to agree. 16 work days left.

my favorite part was when she threatened to "go down there and beat [my students'] asses," which was pretty funny because she's a beautiful, young, VERY elegantly dressed Polish (i think) woman who speaks with a delicately charming accent, and does not seem likely to swear, never mind kick anyone's ass—and yet, when she says it, you kind of believe she could and would.

anyway, she said other comforting things that i can't completely remember and gave me a bag full of free samples of Abilify and told me to come back in two weeks.

two weeks and two weeks and two weeks. but at the moment that's my equivalent of "one foot in front of the other." one shrink appointment at a time. just hang in there. just hang in there. just hang in.

space for space

i finally made up a little meditation space in my home.

in the midst of all the chaos and strong emotions, i've been going up to the center to meditate a lot more often, and now have a meditation instructor. i've been wanting a daily practice, then longing for it, and finally got up the willpower to move some of the physical obstructions (a loveseat & a big box of crap) that were in the space where I wanted to be.

i put up pictures of my teachers (Miri will know who they are: Pema, Khandro R., and Thich Nhat Han - i will add the Sakyong when I find a good big pic). I added a pic of a lotus flower about to blossom - wanted a photo of something transitory that lives and dies quickly, as humans do (considered and rejected an AIG ad). There is also a small incense burner, incense, and a cigarette lighter with an ad from a porn shop on it (hey, it was free). And a poster of an amazing stupa in Nepal, which is one of my favorite places on earth.

gave it a trial run today - went well. had to move the poster because it was in my line of sight and too distracting. i worried that it would be weird to have the teachers' pix there, like i was worshipping them or something, but it feels like they are just there to encourage me, so that's a great support.

so yeah. hope i can stick to this.

this too shall be a clichéd poem

as i walked the dog around the block i noticed that, after two hot days, the irises have burst open in streaming glory and the lilacs are really getting going. i love it.

recently i was thinking about how often i say "it's really been a tough year." it's been "a tough couple years" year after year.

maybe that's just life. maybe i should stop thinking that "tough years" are such an anomaly. i'd probably be happier if i could stop hoping for that golden "good year" and instead spend more time savoring good moments, happy things, of which there really are many, and accept that years are made up of millions of moments, tough and easy.

i have a suspicion that one or two other people have pointed this out. yes, my realization is a cliché. so fucking sue me.

looking at the flowers, i thought to myself that i might as well say, "oh my god, it's been such a heartbreaking spring - first the daffodils died, then the tulips, soon the irises will be just brown pulp, i can't bear it!" heh.

recently was discussing poetry with a friend and frost's "nothing gold can stay" came up. (friend commented that he likes that poem but hates "the outsiders" in which the poem is quoted.) true that "nothing gold can stay," but actually, as buddhism tells us (and actually so does the bible), nothing at all can stay. nothing good, nothing bad, it all passes. long-term things are made up of moments, some good, some bad, and all pass.

let go. let it all go. *sigh*

another *sigh*

ok.

blogging

Ok, so I'm gonna try to cut down on the blogging.

I'm glad I've started up again, cuz even though I don't get comments here I've gotten email responses, and I love being in touch with people.

But, I don't want to slide into the potential mire of twitter, flickr, and blogging that could potentially swallow all job-search efforts without leaving a trace. It's happened before... you may remember the 285 posts in 2005, the year between 2004, when I finished my classes, and 2006, when I actually turned everything in and got my degree.

plus, i don't like how, when i'm blogging or tweeting a lot, everything that happens becomes potential blog or tweet fodder - so i start responding to the world by thinking "oh this'll be great on the blog, what am i gonna say exactly" instead of "wow this is so beautiful/startling/painful/funny/awful/cool."

So yeah. Gonna try to save it for weekends. Also gonna try to make a habit of checking everyone else's blog on weekends, so as to keep communication going both ways (so start fucking blogging again, Rie! March 31? are you kidding me?)(Joel darling you are exempt, I understand completely! But then you're not reading this for the same reason you aren't writing yours! i'll call you asap xoxo). Anyway. I will check.

But first............. my Star Trek review!

i love (sarcasm here) that i wrote a post over a couple of hours, from early morning to midday, and in that time went from despair to hope, and somehow forgot that i ride that roller coaster every day. it always starts out in despair, flies up to hope, then crashes back down by evening.

and then i close the post by saying i think my meds are working. yeah.

spring: deleted, rewritten. summer: anticipated, feared. life: life.

Miri wrote about spring on her blog... including this: "I am not a summer person, and I have noticed the poignancy of spring in a new way this year - I do not look forward to loud stereos and too much sun."

I do like sun, and all the flesh it brings out for my visual delectation, but was initially inclined to say that I dislike spring.

So I spent over an hour writing a long blathering post in which I wrote - with increasing difficulty - about how I like summer but dislike spring. I had lists of bad things that had happened in spring, I quoted from Eliot's overquoted "Wasteland" (of course!)...

...but gradually I thought of more and more good things that had happened in spring, and began to feel that whenever it was that I decided that I like autumn, don't like spring, etc. - whenever those moments were, they were utterly arbitrary, meaningless, and dependent on how I felt that moment... but I decided to attach a lot of weight to that feeling, codify it as "my opinion," then carry it around with me... could walk around much lighter without.

(None of this is meant to disrespect or distort Miriam's words - I'm fairly sure that I've wandered far, far from their connotation if not their denotation - and certainly far from the openness of the mind of the writer as expressed in her post).

So instead, a few fresh and immediate thoughts about seasons right now.....

I love the wave upon wave of flowers that break across the country, across the region (from Chicago to Madison in twelve to eighteen days), and across the street (from the sunny side to the shady side in three to six days)... i suppose across the hemisphere as well... don't know anymore how long that takes. We are just past the last of now-fraying tulips; glorying in the first full burst of lilies-of-the-valley; and just glimpsing the earliest lilacs and irises.

For those who have spent much of their lives on the academic calendar, spring tends to bring mixed feelings of the end-of-semester craziness and anticipation of summer pleasures.

For me personally, this particular year, the mixed feelings are intense. I look forward to summer, and dread, utterly dread, the job search and the unstructured time.

There are many simple summer pleasures that I anticipate cheerfully. First of all, hanging out with Loopy. Summer is our time to enjoy each other, and this year, as we renew our communion, I am really looking forward to that a lot. It makes me happy already to see how those things that should always be hers - my attention, my thoughts, my check-in texts - all these things are hers again. Feels right, makes me happy... And soon we'll spend all our time together again, which we love to do... and this year we're focusing on healing our individual mental health and our health as a couple, so as long as that doesn't turn inward too much, I think that this could really be a very happy summer for us.

Other summer pleasures.

Watermelon. Peaches.

Summer blockbuster movies. Loving the thrill and the popcorn. Coming outside blinking in the blazing heat.

Planting new plants in my pots outside... futzing with said plants... training morning glories to grow over my fence.

Warmth, heat, walking around in a skanky lil sundress (need a new one - shopping!), sweat running down, dress sticking to me...

Having time to let myself enjoy little things that only i enjoy, like watching insects doing insect things...

...as i did this morning on my way out of the front gate - there was this amazing, gorgeous spider, whom I watched and examined, and just now identified online by her iridescent green mouthparts - she was a Bold Jumping Spider. maybe she should be my totem.

(Yes, I'm not just a nature geek but specifically an insect geek - check out this post all about a giant, six-foot weed that I couldn't bring myself to pull because, among other fascinating insect life, it featured an enormous colony of aphids being methodically destroyed by a few ladybugs.)

(Ok, so spiders aren't insects, but saying "insects and spiders" or "members of the Phylum Arthropoda" wouldn't flow as well in the writing).

But over all this looms a lot of fear about ... in short... not being able to handle unstructured time and the job search very well. about teaching again in the fall. about my life.

But here's a ray of hope.

This morning I woke up and went into my usual unstructured time mode. First I poked and prodded myself into misery. Then I moped anxiously about how I was depressed and not being productive. Finally I called dear Miri and cried freely. There is sadness in me and it's reasonable, it has reasons, many. It comes out.

But somewhere in there I forced myself to eat, and Loopy reminded me to take my pills.

And in spite of myself, I feel better. That last bit about Loopy and summer and insects, I wrote after the pills kicked in. You can tell, can't you. Well I know I can.

I'm still really terrified of how this summer will go. But I deleted a lot of anxious blather about that. Somehow, the movies and spiders and morning glories now seem to dominate the fears as easily as the fears dominated the strawberries a few hours ago.

Maybe we're getting close to the right combo of meds. Maybe, finally? this year will be different. Is it too un-Buddhist of me to hope that it will?

"O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." (Romeo & Juliet, 2:2:109-112)

For some reason, I loved those lines when I first read them in high school, and remembered them (quoting them at annoying moments as any pompous Harvard windbag is wont to do).

Recently it occurred to me that it seems there are two things Juliet didn't know, though perhaps Shakespeare did.

First, the moon doesn't change. It's still there. We just can't see it sometimes. But unlike many things in life, it's pretty damn reliable.

Second, everything changes - everything's "variable." Eventually the sun will explode and eat the moon. It's just hard to know what changes will happen and when - there's the rub. Juliet lived less than a week after saying these lovely words. So yeah.

So, moons. It's been a month since what was pretty much the worst week of my adult life. My wife almost left me, my aunt almost died, I lost a dear friend, and the bathroom ceiling fell in. Yeah, literally. Apparently there was a leak upstairs.

The whole losing my job thing, that was a week or two later, but maybe I can kind of toss it in the mix.

So now, a month later, I take stock: still big holes where friend n bathroom ceiling used to be; job still lost. On the other hand, aunt is revived and seems ok (though her mind seems to be gone), and marriage has revived more promisingly than aunt (with its mind still intact) - revived much, much more than I'd have dared to hope a month ago.

So, I have much to be grateful for (what do you do with that dangling preposition? Much for which to be grateful? :-P ).

As I walked down the sidewalk with wifey yesterday laughing and talking about the Star Trek movie (separate post!), as she woke up this morning all sleepy-eyed and beautiful, as she made me breakfast and made me take the dog out, i felt and feel so lucky, lucky, lucky. The absolutely most wonderful person in the world is my wife. And she still loves me! After all that's happened, all I've done, all these years.

My moods are getting more and more unpredictable, the tears and laughter sweeping over me like waves, like storms, like tides that rise and fall at the whim of a moon I can't yet see or chart... I know at times it makes me seem unreliable or confused, confusing...

...but my love still is true, my friendship is true, I am still here after all these years, and so are you. Thank you.

not doing a good job at this job or at finding a new job.

Took the day off yesterday to go to a job fair. Panicked, cried, changed clothes, wasted time, slept when I should have been working, and missed the thing completely. Drove up to the gates at 3pm - the event was 12-3.

Cried and cried in the car. Felt terrible. Called myself names. As I cried, everything awful from the past month came up to stab me as well.

Desperately sought something to hold onto, some story or drama to take and run with. But, each story that presented itself, I recognized as such, and dropped it.

So I again tried, and managed - for a few minutes - to follow the teaching discussed below, about staying present, leaning in, letting my heart be pierced. Again I found that when I did that, in my tears, I saw things that I wouldn't have seen if I'd been all in my head - brilliant tulips - decided to drive home through the city - felt present and alive - despite the pain and flowing tears the whole time.

And then the feeling passed. Like a storm in the desert that rushes past, heavy and powerful with thunder and lightning and torrential downpours, then gone. I still felt weak and ragged, but I didn't feel all that misery and self-hatred or hysteria.



(by calc-tufa, aka too-ticky, one of my fave flickr peeps esp when it comes to Arizona pix)

I guess I'll keep trying.

keeping on trying

"Do, or do not. There is no try." Well, I've always trusted Yoda completely, but I'm starting to think he might be wrong about that one. I know, I know, heresy! but...

I try a lot. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I don't know which is which. I think there is a lot of try.

I've made a lot of bad decisions in the last.... oh, lifetime or so. Not that some of them haven't been.... well, delicious, wonderful, impossible to regret. But. I've been selfish and harmed others, even though I thought I was trying to be a good person. It hurts to see this about myself. (See also the quotes at the top and bottom of the blog... "Success and failure are your journey.")

When Loopy almost left me, she played a song with these lyrics a lot:

...The thing you claim to love so much
You don't do very well

I'm sure someone will love you
'Til the day that they must die
And someone will mourn for you
With bitter, tear-stained eyes
Will this be enough for you?
You got them in your spell
Because the thing you claim to hate
You do it very well

...in doing all these hateful things
You are unparalleled
At doing all these hurtful things
You really do excel.

(Eef Barzelay, Bitter Honey, "Well.")

This really cut me to the heart. I don't want to be that person. But I know - sometimes I have been that person. And all while I was trying to be loving and caring. But I guess not trying hard enough.

Maybe there is no try after all.

anti-depressants and other drugs

chocolate cake the size of your head: definitely an anti-depressant.

saw the shrink today and she said I'm taking too much of one of my meds.

that's why i'm doing things like falling asleep in class - one time, i actually fell asleep while standing up and writing on the board. also fell asleep several times during a field trip today, while we were listening to the proceedings of the seventh circuit court; one time I almost fell out of my seat (my students looked at me disapprovingly - I had admonished them to be quiet and not embarrass the school, and here it was the teacher who was embarrassing everyone!).

then there's the sleep-driving, but we don't like to talk about that too much because it (understandably) upsets Loopy.

another anti-depressant? wikipedia. (for me anyway!) in response to a friend's comment on my flickr pix, I've been wiki-ing about Persian Gardens and trying to figure out what influence/connection there is between them and the Alhambra's Generalife gardens. I mean, they're both Islamic-architecture-related, but they're a continent away from each other, so I'm wondering, how exactly does the connection work in space and time? I'll let you know if I figure it out. :-)

My pic of the Naranj-e-stan ("Orangery") Gardens in Shiraz (ever wonder why oranges are "naranja" in Spanish? yeah).		A pic from the Alhambra's website

And now... a nap.

zoo

yesterday we went to the Brookfield Zoo, in honor of Loopy's birthday, which is tomorrow. it was really wonderful, both because it's an amazing zoo and because we had a lot of fun together. it's possible that ice cream was also consumed, but i refuse to verify that rumor.

pix are on flickr.


we have been through a lot lately - a LOT - and it was really great to get some good time together and just enjoy each other's company in a way we haven't in a long time. really, really great. i love my wifey so, so much... n i have the impression that she loves me too. maybe. a lil bit anyway. ;)

summer usually brings us closer because we have more time together, although i'm usually a little crazy so that's no fun, especially since in recent years i'm looking for and/or preparing for a new job. maybe this summer i can be less crazy. what with the new meds and all. i'll work on that.

wifey may rightly reserve judgment, though, until i can prove that i can balance work life and home life better next year. fingers crossed... and this summer i'll try to practice the things that will help me do that effectively... (well first i'll try to figure out what those are. that's what therapy is for.)

so yeah. at this time of year i start to say "fuck it" to my job, and my students say the same, so we are all quarrelsome for the duration, tho we all also feel we can endure anything for the remaining weeks.

their progress reports come out this week and in past quarters, i would have spent the pre-progress-report weekend freaking out completely, desperately trying to grade everything and enter it in the online gradebook, miserable over anything i couldn't grade. probably crying.

this weekend, instead, i went to the zoo; went to meditation; napped a lot (some of it during meditation ;) ); went to Target and Costco (where we picked up our favorite gigantic chocolate cake for Loopy's birthday—promising each other that we will only eat a few pieces before i take it to work, instead of eating it every day for two weeks, like last time (did I mention that it's a gigantic cake?)); watched episodes of "House" and "The Tudors"...

....and....

...i'm just gonna override their grades and give them what grades i think they deserve. hee hee. as long as they're all B's and C's (and a few A's) nobody will complain.

so thank you wifey for a great weekend, and for everything, everything, everything.

one is silver and the other gold

so... you may ask... why am i blogging all of a sudden?

well... for a while i've been neglecting a lot of my friends and just spending all my time with a very few people. i'd like to re-establish the connections that i do make via the blog... i think there are at least four or five of you out there... which is a lot, considering that you are some of my favorite people.

and as most of you or all of you know, things have been kinda hard lately... i specially appreciate my friends right now. :) i'm grateful to you all for being there for me in different ways through this time. i hope i can always return the favor when you go through difficult times... i hope you all know that if you ever need me i'm here, even if we haven't been in touch recently - that's the V-guarantee, no expiration date ;) .

i'm also setting a goal of making more new friends in Chicago. for the last month i've been going to a support group for queer n crazy people like me, and i really, really like the folks there a lot, so that's good. and maybe i'll try attending a normal people's thing like a scrabble club or the "frontwalkers," queers who go for walks by the lake once a week, or something. so... yeah.

(speaking of queers, now that i've been fired, i'm trying to decide whether to come out to my students before the end of the year... but that's a whole nother post).

so yeah. just trying to get back on my feet again in all areas of my life... one foot in front of the other.

forward march (or may)

loopy told me a very corny joke on May 4. "It's Star Wars day," she said. Of course, I said, "What?" and she said, "May the fourth be with you." Uuuuugggghhhh.

Reminds me of how my grandmother and mother always used to call the fourth of March "moving day." You know. "March forth." Aaaaaaaarrrrrgh.

Anyway.

Here is the photo that's been my wallpaper on my phone for two weeks.


I took it on my way to meditation two weeks ago, crying near-hysterically cuz my meds hadn't kicked in and stoned on my meds cuz i hadn't eaten. Still, when I saw this (in some ways unremarkable) image, it somehow got through to me.

I took the pic and put it on my phone to remind me to look forward instead of backward... it would be easy to get mired in cherished memories and drown in them (as I have been for months, to the detriment of myself and others). The future is scary and hard to deal with at the moment.

But the past is not coming back, no matter what the future holds, and dwelling in it "robs [me] of the present moment," to quote one of the teachings I've heard. I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Here is one of the teachings that's been sustaining me:

Each day, we're given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can't handle whatever is happening. It's too much. It's gone too far....

Basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where we just cannot feel good, are a sort of death.... Rather than realizing that it takes death for there to be birth, we just fight against the fear of death.

How do we work with our minds when we meet our match? Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart. This is easier said than done, but it's a noble way to live. It's definitely the path of compassion—the path of cultivating human bravery and kind-heartedness.

~Pema Chödrön

This is a hard teaching, but I've been working with it a lot. Facing the present instead of running away and hiding.... when I can do this, it does seem to deepen both my moment-to-moment connection to the world; it also helps me experience my feelings and then let them go.

And sometimes when I'm present I can accept unexpected gifts, like these beautiful clouds gathering over a car dealership as I hurried to a Chinese restaurant last night:



The world is full of richness and beauty, if I can only slow down and breathe and see and feel, and not be afraid of any of those things. Especially that whole feeling thing. Dangit.

One foot in front of the other.

all fired up

So I got fired today, finally. (OK, so I was "not asked back for the fall." Same dif afaic). I knew it was coming and didn't cry, got through the day ok. Maybe I'm getting used to it.

The shocking thing was how many of my friends also got the axe, including some very good teachers. I guess it's political. I don't know. Some of them were really, really stunned. Others said it was just as well, they wanted to leave anyway.

In my case, the administration did warn me three times, and I wasn't able to pull my shit together, so it was neither unreasonable nor unexpected.

The principal and I discussed that I had done better with the honors class than with the regular students, and that I would probably be better suited to a more selective school or a gifted program of some kind. (I said I considered this more of a failing than something to be proud of, but that's the way it is right now). He said they'd provide letters of rec and I suggested that maybe they could say that explicitly.

(And what a contrast to my previous psycho principal! She would not write a letter nor allow anyone on her staff to write a letter, due to fear of lawsuits - i.e. if I had documentation saying anything positive, supposedly I would sue the school for letting me go!)

However, my spirits continued to fall all day, and toward the end I realized why: I don't care so much about this job. But I feel like I'm looking ahead to a bleak summer. Job hunting and ensuing anxiety are always fun. Lack of structure does also tend to be difficult for me. We don't have any money to travel anymore (maybe we'll drive to Minneapolis...) so I feel like there's nothing much to look forward to.

And then... perhaps even more so... if/when I achieve that wonderful goal - a new job - it is hard for me to imagine going through this whole process AGAIN. The new school, the terror, the struggle, figuring things out, not knowing what to do, constant stress and confusion... Perhaps the same constant failure. Some people say it gets better in your fifth year. I don't know if I'm going to last that long. But I don't know what else I'd do.

Well... one foot in front of the other...

I leave you with a lil quote, and gratitude for all of you.

"To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is an understanding—in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed—that can make of this earth a garden."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

After work today spent some time w a coworker who just enrolled her husband in hospice... It's taken him 3 years to die... I can't even imagine all she must be feeling as the end draws near.

I remember when Loopy was in the hospital, I used to be struck by how all the faces around me were stripped of social graces and laid bare to the most basic humanity... We all wore the same expression of stunned vulnerability. I remember every time I got into the elevator, I stared dumbly at the floor listings, alphabetical... and read the series, "bone...breast...burn..." thinking of human fragility and all the ways we can be hurt.

You never know where pain will come from, or how you'll survive. But it always does, and you always do.