fucking gratitude... dammit

i've done a lot of puttering, a lot of putzing, to avoid writing this post, once i decided to write it. i'll get to that at the end. heh.

in recent weeks i've been having trouble "getting to the cushion," i.e. making up my mind to meditate and actually doing it.

when life was shittier i rushed to meditate, taking refuge when there was no ground.

but now that life returns to varying degrees of normal, i convince myself that there is ground and that i'm happy standing on it, and so i don't feel the need to meditate ... (emphasis on "feel").

somehow as a ... well not a substitute but... an urge to do something, i've been reading some of the teachings, and recently have become interested in the "four preliminaries."

the "four preliminaries" are four ideas that one should contemplate to put oneself in the frame of mind to do meditation. we are permitted to use whatever expression of them seems most helpful to us. here is mine, based about 90% on Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's version:

1. This short, free life is so precious.
2. Death is certain: this body will be a corpse.
3. We cannot escape karma: cause and effect.
4. Samsara is unendurable, unbearably intense; all beings suffer.

this morning, as a substitute for any contemplation or calm, i went into some kind of hyperactive four preliminaries tasmanian devil thing... i decided to make them my phone's wallpaper, wrote them a bunch of times, took pix... yeah.

at the end i felt, well, going hyper over something intensely contemplative still has a few shreds of benefit, but let's take more time with these. i came up with the idea (inspired by an iPhone app :-P ) of doing a week's contemplation of/attention to each one in turn. yes! what a great idea!

oh.

fuck.

the first one is on gratitude.

can i just skip it and go for a nice morbid juicy one, like the corpse thing or karma?

nope.

gratitude.

start with fucking gratitude.

dammit.

ok.

cuz you can never have too much glitter

Went to the pride parade today... ended up covered with glitter and happy. Loopy didn't want to go - she hates crowds and heat and sun, which pretty much covers any parade. So for once, instead of any compromise involving either a disgruntled me at home or a disgruntled Loopy at the parade, we did what was most likely to make us happy: Loopy stayed home and I went by myself.

I walked 1.7 miles (happy tipsy glittery exercise!) through the crowd - loved looking at the crowd, couldn't care much less about the floats - ate a coconut paleta, had a sangria, bottled water, and caught two strings of gorgeous purple beads. Like I said. Happy.

Then I went to see Away We Go, which, similarly, Loopy did not want to do. The first 2/3 were very funny. The last 1/3, where they're supposed to be making profound human insights/connections, was painfully stilted and stupid.

To finish up the night, I was just bringing the dog inside when I saw - could it - yes! I saw my first fireflies of the season. They always seem so fragile in the city, little lights against the mammoth glare, but they endure so it must not be too bad for them here... they always give me tremendous joy...

love to all from a glittery city :-)

not so great

I feel terrible just at the moment.

Probably because it's 2 a.m. But also cuz Loopy's mad at me and I keep giving her more reasons to be... I feel I can't do anything right... as though I'm toxic even. It's a lonely feeling... I'm the featherless screaming chick right now for sure.

The loving mother bird says, "Sweetie, it's 2 a.m... get some sleep, you'll feel better in the morning."

OK. I will.

loving-kindness: the essential practice

"[One] image for [loving-kindness] is the mother bird who protects and cares for her young until they are strong enough to fly away.

"People sometimes ask—'Who am I in this image—the mother or the chick?' The answer is we're both...

"...We stay with ourselves and others when we're screaming for food and have no feathers, and also when we are more grown up and more appealing by worldly standards."

— Pema Chödrön, Comfortable With Uncertainty

我想要教中文。

So somehow I have ended up applying for all these jobs teaching Chinese. Those seem to be the jobs that are available.

Do I speak Chinese?

No.

How do I plan to finesse this?

I plan to study like hell all summer.

If you're saying "W....T....F???" ...... you are not alone.

mary mary quite contrary

my garden is doing splendidly, thank you! people complain about the weather and i do sympathize, but holy fuck it has been FANTASTIC garden weather.

two days of rain, a day of hot sun. repeat. for a month. i love it.

nine days ago	today

me: OH! AND! guess what else!

you: WHAT!!?!?*

me: snapdragons and another flower i can't name have also resurfaced from last year, even though they were supposed to be annuals and even though that sometimes happens it's not sposed to happen in containers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you: WOW!!!! that's SO COOL!!!!!*

me: I KNOW RIGHT!!!!!

my right-brain, with all its certainty - "those are NOT weeds, do NOT pull them" - is smug about this victory over the pseudo-rational, neurotic left brain - "but are you sure? but are you sure? but are you sure?"

sun shining. beautiful day.

---

*i know, i have to supply your side of the dialogue - it's ok

painfully obvious

fmr [also fired] coworker: "I'm really anxious, I couldn't even leave the apartment today, and I don't even know why.'
me: "are you joking?"
fmr coworker: "um... I didn't... I don't think so."
me: "don't you think maybe it has to do with the fact that tomorrow's Monday and we have no place to be?"
fmr coworker: "oh... um... yeah... you might be right about that."

(i roll my eyes)

two hours later.

me: "oh my god i could just crawl out of my skin."
Loopy: "poor baby."
me: "i'm so fucking anxious. maybe i forgot my meds or something... i feel like i must have forgotten my meds."
Loopy: *snort* "yeah right."
me: "but i can't have forgotten them, i'm sure i took them..... ohhhhhhhhhhh."

(we both roll our eyes)

delta means change

i've long been fascinated by the few "interior deltas" that exist in the world... these are places where a river passes through an area that is basically flat, but it is not the mouth of the river (thus "interior"). The river spreads out over the land and, instead of cutting a single channel, the waters separate and meet each other again and again and again.

Copper River delta, Alaska	Inner Niger Delta, West Africa (the "inner" part is on the left)

The wildlife in these places is rare and spectacular...

I'm forced to truncate this post, but all I was going to say is, sometimes it feels like I've gone over a waterfall on the edge of the world and spun out into space...

...but changes in life are much more like these waters...few things are final, few things are deadly, most changes will change again...lost things return or regenerate, deep things resurface to be healed... many things come and go like the phases of the moon i wrote about earlier, following their own cycles...

ok so it might have sounded less like a cliché if I'd had more time to write. :-P (and certainly would have included fewer instances of the word "thing" - sorry, Ms. Rogers).

Off to Miriam's writing retreat - can't wait to see her and experience the retreat for the first time! See you in a couple days.

d'oh

i forgot to mention i have a job interview tuesday! and another in the works. both are part-time... not ideal but... a ple p r

ok, sleep typing alert! bedtime!!!!!

awash

for some reason, i'm flooded with feelings.

clinginess, annoyance, uncertainty, anxiety, desire and aversion... slow tides and ebbs...

maybe it's just because the depression has receded, so all these things are bubbling up...maybe it's because my job is ending and i need a new one....

at the same time, underlying everything, there's a constant feeling of just being so grateful to not be depressed, almost a euphoria... i walked home slowly from my haircut this evening, savoring each garden and each interesting passer-by... just enjoying that i can look at things without crying or wanting to cry, without feeling that everything i see is cutting into me, breaking my heart.

earlier i was grabbing onto the different feelings and trying to make sense of them, thinking they were telling me something, that i should do something in response to them. i was working myself up into anxiety about what i was supposed to do...

fortunately i remembered the instruction... they are just feelings... they come and they go like ripples, like waves... let them pass. let them come and let them go.

i'm trying.

up down up down updown updown updownupdownupdown

roller coaster. still the roller coaster.

mornings have been better. much, much better.

i'm talkin' singing to the radio and swinging into school, cheery good mornings all around. probably way too much for most people to cope with when they're just barely getting their coffee.

so that's good, right? the days of sobbing hysterically in the car on the way to school (and the occasional fantasy of just driving right off the road) seem to be past. so that's good, right?

but then by afternoon - least the last couple afternoons, and the way things have been changing that constitutes a trend - i seem to go way downhill. when i cry it's at night.

and, yesterday and today at the end of the day at school i couldn't stop the tears from spilling out in front of my students. yesterday one of my students said "you're the worst teacher." and i cried. cuz i agreed. if he woulda said "you're the worst swimmer" i woulda been like, "fuck you kid."

(instead i said "til you're the best student keep yer freakin mouth shut." which was bad. i'm the grownup. i'm the grownup! why is it so hard to remember that?)

oh i don't know. trying to make sense of my moods when they maybe don't make sense... trying to find patterns when maybe there is none... "morning is this, evening is that." who the fuck knows.

i'm confident, i crumble. i laugh, i weep.

who the fuck knows.

don't get me wrong. half a day feeling happy is half a day more than i've had in years and years. half a day every day i feel pretty damn good, and i feel pretty damn good about that.

i was so cheery that Loopy started to worry that I was going manic. (the fact that i told a potential employer that i could learn Chinese over the summer and teach it in the fall was what worried her). But my shrink certified that i was not manic, just happy. (i thought that was pretty funny). (and c'mon... we all know that i could learn Chinese over the summer!)

so yeah.

I've known rivers...

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about the profoundly resonant rivers of history and human experience that are referred to in Langston Hughes's flavorful poem.

I'm talking the Nile and the Seine.

As in, I've been in de Nile and I've been in Seine. hahahaha ok maybe that just seems funny at 1 a.m.

Lately I've been thinking, "oh, I don't have a mood disorder. In April and May it was just grief - now that's past, I'm fine, I should really go off all these pills."

But sometimes - and tonight especially - I get glimpses of the fact that no, it wasn't just grief, and god no, I shouldn't go off the pills: I stayed up late trying to work, and hadn't taken my night pills at my usual time. Lo and behold, the same unstoppable rivers of tears, the same despair and paranoia, washed over me.

That friggin Lamictal has a 24-hour life, period. You have to take that shit regularly. Dang.

Does this have to do with the fact that I'm planning a resume drop tomorrow and I can't get online? Sure. But we're talking about the same person who just yesterday faced Monday morning with cheer and good nature, smiles and laughter.

Or, apparently, I should say, faced Monday morning fortified with Abilify.

My moods are a cocktail of drugs. I guess that's ok. As long as I just keep taking the cocktail.

Right?

Is that how it should be? Am I doing something wrong?

Is my despair when I take my pills late - is that just because I'm used to/addicted to the pills, and if I went off them, I'd adjust?

Or is that how I'd feel all the time if I didn't take them? (Those of you who lived through February and March with me might answer that second question with a strong "yes!")

I know I'm sometimes in Seine and sometimes in de Nile. I just don't always know which river I'm in, or the difference between rivers and solid, dry, sensible land. It's irritating.

list

i came up with three things i want to do to make friends, get out of the house, and not go crazy or drive Loopy crazy this summer.

1. get involved in Obama's healthcare campaign.
2. yoga - i tried going to a qi gong class yesterday and it was perfect, but it's hard to find a good teacher and yoga's just everywhere by comparison. Loopy said she'll do it too!
3. monthly miksang photography meetups with Chicago-area miksang peeps. either join it or make it! yay!

So that's the plan.

If I'm bipolar, I'm defo going manic.

more flowers/Buddhism rambling. hey, what can i say, they go together

Just planted white geraniums in my pots where my nasturtium and morning-glory seedlings are juuuuust beginning to appear. I'm so excited about them! (the seedlings)

I'm also gleefully anticipating how the pots - which look just like plain white geraniums - pretty but nothing special - will graaaaaadually generate these amaaaazing multicolored flower vines that will slowwwwwly creep out of them and crawl and climb and clamber along the fence.... they will gradually impinge on people's consciousness until one day they're a double-take... and by fall there will be this color explosion with the white geraniums just as a bright and brilliant foil.

But my meditation training reminds me to stop with all the anticipation - not that it's bad, but if i get too hung up on it i forget to enjoy the moment. the shining white beauty of the geraniums. the exciting and - trite but true - miraculous emergence of seed from soil...

so speaking of dropping extra "story" and returning to the moment...... with all the peonies blooming i have realized how, whenever i see peonies, i feel pangs of missing the peonies in our yard, back in Wisconsin. they were so glorious... but. but. what about the peonies i keep seeing here in Chicago? i'm totally forgetting to enjoy them because i'm all "oh my lost peonies." seriously, wtf?

i didn't realize this was going to lead here so naturally, but i wanted to clarify the meaning of the two flowers in the last post. i realized after the fact that they could be interpreted different ways so i wanted to clarify that the forget-me-not is an emblem of happy memories; the hearts-ease symbolized how those memories no longer trouble me, that thanks to either Abilify® or the passage of time, i now feel at peace with them... enriched rather than pained, acceptance replacing need and regret.

don't get me wrong, i haven't achieved enlightenment since my last post, but my troubles are returning to the usual anxiety, mood swings, etc.

speaking of enlightenment, have i mentioned that i've been thinking of actually drinking the kool-aid - actually taking refuge vows, i.e., becoming an actual Buddhist.

This does not involve getting religious, exactly, according to the particular brand of Buddhism i've stumbled into.... it's more about accepting that everything changes and there's nothing to hold onto, everything will be lost, so all we can hold onto is the three jewels:

1. The Buddha - both his historical example, and the "buddha nature" within us, our own innermost good and wise mind;
2. The Dharma - the teachings of Buddhism and meditation;
3. The Sangha - the community - other people trying to follow these teachings too

What makes sense about this is that all three of those things are like flotsam on water - even though everything shifts and rearranges and is never still, there is always the flotsam in some formation and we can always find it one way or another.

Post too long; stopping for now. These are the random thoughts that occupy my mind.

Arp.

Was grading last night while Loopy watched The World According to Garp. Never my favorite movie, though it does have some good moments (the airplane crashing into the house, for example - and Garp's comment - "it's been pre-disastered.")

But it did get me thinking about why I like those birth-to-death sagas and multi-generational epics (preferably set in another time and/or place, with plenty of history and/or politics stirred in, but that's not the point). Before falling asleep (with Loopy still watching the movie in the background) I wrote in my journal:

	[These types of books/films] chronicle how we lose things, pieces, along the way. How our assumptions, beliefs, unshakable truths give way to compromises, uncertainties, resignations. And how, somehow, at the end, perversely, we feel - or sometimes glimpse - ourselves richer for all these exchanges.
forget-me-not by randihausken		hearts-ease by JG Schou

"shut up and line up!"

Five of my six classes are still bearable. Some humor, some affection, some order, still remain after all this time.

The one that is totally out-of-their-minds impossible is my friggin homeroom.



They run around the room. The boys tackle and hit each other; the girls giggle and even shriek with laughter.

They change seats. They won't work. They won't shut up.

In general, they dramatically and flamboyantly flout my instructions.

Much of the time I roll my eyes at them and do some grading. Sometimes (in the name of total and utter inconsistency, which as we all know, is the way to make sure that dogs and children pay no attention to anything you say) I really get pissed and I call a bunch of parents, which I did this afternoon. Nine or ten of them I think. Several girls ran out of the room crying.

Ah, the little darlings.

beautiful

The lake was so, so beautiful this afternoon. All day we'd had storms and sunshine alternating, and this afternoon the lake was a gorgeous deep teal blue color, scattered with constantly moving whitecaps, and shadowed with darker deeper teal in the hollows of the waves. I refrained from taking any photos out of the window of the moving car, so at left is a photo I found on Flickr that somewhat approximates the colors of what I was seeing today... it was just breathtakingly gorgeous.

Another beautiful thing: last year with all the wild abandon of the pre-crash economy we bought a bunch of expensive annuals and stuck them in our outside pots. This year I planted seeds, though I think I'll round them out with a couple of cheap geraniums, if such are still to be found at this late date. So I planted - just a few days ago - some nasturtiums (left)(a mix of orange, red, yellow that should be gorgeous), and some Grandpa Ott's morning glories (right).

Last year I had my favorite Heavenly Blue morning glories (below left)—and I do see two of those coming up this year (yay for self-seeding!) so I've been careful not to disturb them—but I thought I'd try a different color...

So anyway it's only been a couple of days and the Grandpa Ott's are already coming up!!! wow! they're just popping up ploink-ploink-ploink like the plants in the Totoro video I posted in April.

I do also see a few little sprouts coming that might be the nasturtiums; we'll see. I'll be lucky if the nasturtiums even bloom - they don't do well with over-fertilized soil, and I'm sure that's what I've got.

I was gonna write about some of the dogs we saw Sunday and online that we might get but I'm falling asleep at the keyboard so I'll leave it at this for now...

Except to just say that either my anti-depressants are working and/or I'm starting to regain my footing after the unspeakably awful last two weeks in April. Loopy and I have been doing a lot of fun things together, like last Friday we had a whirlwind trip to Milwaukee to hear a band she was really excited about. We have a lot of fun together just as we always have... Heartache doesn't heal overnight but... time is, as others have found, a remarkably soothing balm. So things begin to return to normal - although of course, there's never any "return to normal," there is always only a new normal. But new normal is shaping up quite well.

Not everything is redeemed: my Aunt's life is still flickering, possibly still ending, and even if not, she does not appear to be regaining any of her intellectual capacities.

And there's still a giant hole in our bathroom ceiling.

So yeah. Some things aren't beautiful no matter how you look at them... but beauty is around us still, and in our connections with those closest to us... very grateful as always...

Gotta sleep...