happy spring...

happy again... my new meds (well, new a year ago now) have really turned me into a different person... mostly i'm happy, most days - almost all days - i'm glad to be alive. Pema Chödrön says,

“I’m glad to be alive to agreeable, I’m glad to be alive to disagreeable. And I’m glad to be alive to sour and sweet and tingly and itchy, and refreshing and cold and hot and the whole thing. And it doesn’t matter that there is this voice that says I don’t like this, or I do like this, that’s fine, you know, that’s also fine, but somehow open and at home, with your body, your mind, and your world, and meditation is actually the means or, the tools that we need… It actually is that the present moment is the doorway to liberation, vastness, unobstructed quality of our mind. And we could experience the world that way.”

and just because of the meds i do begin to feel glad to be alive to different experiences, interested in what's around the corner... i know my world is still small and cramped compared to the "liberation, vastness, unobstructed quality of our mind" that i experience when i do meditate regularly (haven't been, due to the falling-asleep issue)............but i open my arms to the wind and the sunlight and i tip my head back to blue sky or rainy.... and laugh or smile and just feel glad. i love the trees blooming right now - i've taken photos - wait let me upload them...




and i love the blossoms falling so sweet and fluttery, flowing and eddying like powdery snow in the wake of cars... i love the tulips so red and the tulips falling apart... this morning i walked out in the park and i loved the birdsong and the sound of wind in the trees, the sweet smell and feel of dewy grass... spring is in full swing and summer's coming... i have so much to cover in my classes and so much joy to be able to have so much to teach.

looking ahead to the summer, i'm gonna quote (with some editing) from an email i sent to Nadine... i'm laughing as i note somewhat more anxiety and somewhat less 'glad to be alive' than what i'm expressing now... that's ok... glad to be alive to anxious and glad to be alive to peace.

"have a trip planned to Montana and Wyoming (wild beautiful country like in Brokeback Mountain) to see a bunch of cousins - but it's me and mom in the car for 10 days - what was i thinking? ? panic setting in. wondering how to fix that - but her whole trip depends on me chauffeuring. well, i'm gonna ask her how i can shorten it - there may be some days at the beginning and end where the cousins can drive her places.

i mean... i know the scenery is beautiful but... TEN DAYS???? damn...

on top of that i just accepted a job from the boss's boss's boss, writing curriculum in the summer... which wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't already accepted another job writing curriculum for my own boss (the principal) and a third (well that was foisted upon me) working with an outside program to design and provide select services to specific students.

I don't know what all these jobs entail and how much of my time they'll take up, but I'm starting to worry that I won't get any summer break, and come fall I'll feel like I was at school all during my break. I'm told curriculum writing involves taking all the materials away and coming back later, not being at school all the time, but i'm suspicious. anyway i took the jobs for the sake of the serious banking of brownie points... so i think i should just focus on that and consider this summer an investment... frontload the brownie points... hopefully the investment will pay off in the long term and not just be a stupid move in a game i was bound to lose.

so i have this wyoming-montana trip lined up at the end of june/beginning of july, and a week-long queer buddhist retreat in august (same one i went to last year) and id like to get something else in, a trip to new york maybe - i'd like to see the cousins in Boston and Colin and Joel in NYC... and just be in NYC for a day or two... i miss it and i love being there when i get the chance... i've also thought about going overseas somewhere but i don't think i really have time for that... and i'd like to go somewhere with R (she is not interested in the NY-Boston trip). She can't really get any time off work for various reasons... so a quick trip to England to see our friends there is out. A quick trip to Minneapolis is more appealing to her... but that's frustrating cuz it's in driving distance but we'd have to fly because R doesn't have any time. So all this adds up in terms of time and money. I'd have to choose between my east-coast trip and our couple trip to MN, and R doesn't seem to care but I don't know if she does or not, or if I do or not ("I can spend time with you at home," she says). So anyway. Lots to think about. Lots of balancing acts... between what i want to do if i could do anything, and what's in the realm of the possible, and commitments i've made that i am reconsidering too late...

(end of email to Nadine)

so that's my news, my life, my state of mind. long post... my 800th, incidentally. yay me, yay blog. blog is 6 years old, born on May 18, 2004. Weird. May 3 is another anniversary, a good one - first contact with a friend. Recently met a new potential friend - translator of classical poetry in Persian, Latin, Chinese, etc etc... speaks every language, it seems... he knows more than i do about a lot of things, which makes it fun to learn from him but also makes me feel stupid, so i can't take too many hours of conversation with him... he also talks a lot... so you know, like any friend, good and bad mixed together. trying to make more friends here in Chicago... settle in and make it home. still doesn't feel like home and when i think about it i'd still rather be in NYC, but Chicago is so much cheaper and really has many charms, so i need to reconcile myself to being here.

babbling now.

love to all.

fear to fearlessness

Last night I saw a new friend at meditation - one of the people I met on retreat. Some good friendships are coming out of that and I am really happy about that.

This friend talked about how he was trying to be fully present in all his relationships, not hold back at all, not even the smallest part of himself. We particularly talked about it in relation to family.

He's so earnest - he's only 24 - and I felt the need to protect him, to tell him to protect himself - that he was going to get hurt, that this was unsafe, that bad things would happen to him. He seemed so fearless and yet so vulnerable.

I thought more about it today, thinking surely I could quote him some teachings about being sensible, about self-defense - essentially, that I could justify how I behave toward my mother - I keep 98% of my true self out of our interactions, which I know hurts her, but I feel that I need to protect myself from her somehow.

Instead of finding teachings to defend myself I found only the revelation that everything in the teachings supports what he is doing. I wrote him the following email just now:

"Thanks for the conversation last night - it was good to spend time with you and catch up a little. I'm really glad that we met.

I especially wanted to thank you for the insight about not holding back. Again it triggered a lot of alarms in me and I wanted to ask (maybe I did ask) "is that really safe?" I felt the need to protect myself more than that.

This morning on my walk (I try to walk the dog an hour in the mornings - one of the best parts of my day!) I was thinking about it again and again thought, surely that's not what the teachings are talking about - surely that's unsafe. But I started to think about teachers and teachings and I realized - that's exactly what the teachings mean.

Pema talks about "fully enlightened" meaning "absolutely fearless." It doesn't mean that nothing bad will happen to you - it's the confidence that you can face it and be able to relate with it directly, be present with it, and not be undone.

There's also the teaching about "hope and fear," that they are two sides of the same coin - as long as you have one you have the other - and that the opposite of these is "fearlessness and confidence."

They also talk about "the path of the brave ones," and about how running away from the present moment is always about "not wanting to see something, not wanting to feel something." The opposite, of course, is being present, being willing to see, willing to feel. And that's - as far as I can tell - the whole point.

So thank you for kind of cracking open a hard place inside me. I'm grateful, though resisting the challenge at the moment. I'm not ready to come out of that shell yet, but I see it for what it is now, and that's the first step.

I really have to get you [the Pema Chödrön CD] "From Fear to Fearlessness." I believe it really speaks to where you are right now.

your friend
v

[end quote]

Dangit. Do I have to follow the teaching in this regard? Can't I just not do this part? Can't I stay closed off?

Dangit.

daily Dharma: hope and fear

I've always loved this teaching... excerpted from Pema Chödrön's When Things Fall Apart. I won't put it in blockquotes cuz there's so much... blockquote it in your mind ;) .

The idea of "giving up hope" is weird to us... think of it as giving up aggression toward yourself... well, see how she defines it. I interpret hope as a sort of tension, being at odds with reality, harboring aggression toward oneself and toward life; hopelessness means relaxing, accepting oneself, seeing what's really happening and being present to it so that one can respond calmly and intelligently. I wouldn't call it hopelessness but I get what she means.

I excised so much in the hope that it would be short enough to be read, that it may seem a little jerky; you can read the whole thing here or here. Also, I didn't always use ellipses or brackets because they seem distracting... again, read the real thing at these links.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"[C]ompletely giving up hope... is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope that there is somewhere better to be, that there is someone better to be, we will never relax with where we are or who we are.

"We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us.

"The difference between theism and non-theism is not whether one does or does not believe in God... Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there is some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us... Non-theism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment.

"The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it is happening because we personally made the wrong move.

"Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there is one, there is always the other. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.

"Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

"[Instead,] we can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better "me" who one day will emerge. We [can] renounce the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.

"Giving up hope is encouragement to stick with yourself, to make friends with yourself, to not run away from yourself, to return to the bare bones, no matter what is going on.

"If we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores reality."

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Where does meditation come into this? Meditation is simply (and difficult-ly) the practice of continually letting go of hope and fear and relaxing into the present moment...

That doesn't make me any less nervous as I try to get ready to go on my meditation retreat... which I still might panic and back out of...

On a lighter note, last night I had this whole complicated dream about looking for cookies with Loopy... there were many adventures on the road to cookies, and then the cookies were misplaced, and we got separated, and then I found the cookies, and then I was told not to eat those, that my cookies were somewhere else......... I don't know how to interpret this dream except to say that I like cookies.

fresh air

Listening to my Buddhist tapes again this morning... ahh... starting to want it again... to emerge from the hell I've created in my mind, and breathe some clear air. Starting to remember that saṃsāra is unendurable...

It's like I had locked an iron bar around my chest and now I can get glimpses of what it would be like to expand my lungs and really breathe again.

Not that I'm there. But I'm wanting it now.

And knowing it's the only way to stop hurting others.

forgive

After a long hiatus, listening to my Buddhist teaching recordings. In the car they make me go to sleep, but while walking I have no such excuse.

"How we usually proceed is like heaping suffering on top of suffering." ~Pema Chödrön

They say what we practice is what we get better at. What have I been practicing?

Selfishness. Self-loathing.

I am eager to give up the self-loathing. It destroys everything. I compulsively destroy what I want, what I love. I make it impossible for others to allow what I enjoy.

So. Self-loathing. Bad. Kill it.

But selfishness? I've been enjoying selfishness, haven't I? I grasp it to my heart, curling over it like a dog over a bone, growling; like a child over a toy when threatened with sharing. I love my selfishness. It has brought me untold joys. Hasn't it?

Reluctantly I have to see a glimmer of truth: selfishness and self-loathing are the same thing, aren't they. Grabbing, grasping, not thinking, not caring. That's how I destroy. That's how I lose what I love.

"If you can just make a little pinpoint in the narrowness of your heart and mind, by doing [compassion] practices, you can really trust that you can begin to go from frozen to begin to melt...of its own accord...But if you don't want it to happen, it won't." ~Pema Chödrön

Not yet exactly wanting it to happen. Maybe having a glimmer of possibly thinking about wanting to maybe want it to happen.

Dimly I remember what it felt like when I did these practices every day. Open and fresh. Or is that my imagination? Just a few moments perhaps? Amid a bleakness?

Part of me feels like letting go is a loss. A terrible loss. Must clutch. Must grasp. Must scramble to hold on. Must curl around what's left like a dog, like a child.

Part of me struggles to remember what it was like to practice regularly and feel clearer. Buddhist paintings arise in my mind: the people burning in the hell of their own minds; meditators among peaceful clouds.

I don't even know what's in my heart anymore. I don't even know all my feelings. Sadness, anger, I guess. It's a hard lump, compacted. Like a piece of dog shit after the dog's been constipated. What a terrible image for one's own heart and mind...

I think before I go any further... I need to sort this out... try to calm my own mind first. So that as I gingerly try to rebuild, I don't end up destroying everything again, don't hurt everyone around me again.

up next: saṃsāra

so i have been reluctant to move on to the fourth of the "Four Reminders" that i planned to spend time contemplating.

i edited Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's poetic version of the fourth reminder to this: "saṃsāra is unendurable, unbearably intense; all beings suffer."

karma was a stern lesson. but saṃsāra is harder somehow. saṃsāra is the suffering created when we run in the hamster wheel: the pain of always reaching, never obtaining (or not for long), the pain of always fleeing, never escaping (or not for long).

it's hard to accept that all that striving just ends in creating pain. the shiny apple dangles just beyond our fingertips... surely if we run faster... the wolf is at our heels... maybe we can escape.

but pleasure ends and death comes. just as pleasure comes again and birth comes. this has remarkably little to do with our striving. and the striving causes pain not just to ourselves but to everyone else.

i am acutely conscious of this right now. that the striving, the reaching, the desperation creates collateral damage. those we love are hurt as much as we are.

maybe that's why i didn't want to consider this one. (ya think?)

but always, the balm to my soul: "would that the emotions of sentient beings could just calm down, and they could experience comfort and ease." just calm down. just relax. just stop this endless struggle!

it's so simple really. heh.

more on karma! and my purpose in life

Coincidentally (cuz I don't believe in anything else, having grown up with parents who saw signs from God everywhere all the time...)

...the talk at yoga this week was on karma. The teacher told a story illustrating that cause and effect are as inevitable as pebbles sinking in water or oil floating on top of it...

In other words, it's just how things are, it's not someone doing something to you. You dig your hole, you climb out of it. Step by daily step.........

But enough about that. So, one of the activities at "day camp" (my psychiatric outpatient program) yesterday was to think about all the ways we self-sabotage. Well, I can write a whole separate post about that. But one of the things we were asked to do (since self-sabotage is about self-hatred) is think about the ways we add value to the world, and think about a statement/decision/goal about our purpose in life.

I thought nothing expressed my purpose better than the "prayer of St. Francis," which I used to say fervently every night when I was a true believer (also believed he wrote it, which turns out also not to be true). The original was in French, which I like better, because the subjunctive ("que je mette la paix") seems more like a wish/aspiration than "let" in English ("let me bring peace"), which seems more like a prayer/request. So... nonetheless we can cut god out of it and it could maybe say this...

May I be an instrument of peace.
Where there is hatred, may I sow love;
where there is injury, reconciliation;
where there is fear, confidence;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
May I bring consolation for myself and others;
understanding for myself and others;
love for myself and others,
for it is in giving that we receive,
in forgiving that we experience forgiveness,
and in bringing peace, that we experience peace in our own hearts.

OK so it's a lil christian still. Hm.

My main mantra for a long time has been:

From the ocean of samsara may I free all beings.

And when I can't manage to wish such a noble wish, I say this quote from Longchenpa:

Would that the emotions of sentient beings calm down, and they could experience comfort and ease.

This touches the heart of my own turmoil and calms it, as well as extending that wish to all others.

So overall... purpose... may I help everyone, including myself, run more slowly in our hamster wheels, our karma wheels... help us all calm down, and get closer to the goal of liberation from them altogether.

I think that's ok for a purpose in life. It's good to remember that... helps me want to get out of that hole and look into the long distance, the big picture...

in the previous post, the second picture is engraved in my mind, one of those perfect moments, the beautiful sky and the sound of the grass, the clouds moving over the forest, the lake in the distance, and the wonder of standing on top of a volcano... I want to be there...

Hold that thought.

karma is inescapable

"Unalterable are the laws of karma; cause and effect cannot be escaped."

Karma is not what people think, at least in the tradition I (sort of) follow. It is not meted out like reward and punishment by some deity. It is simply the fact that everything we do has results, good and bad. It's not really a belief - more of an observation, a description.

Karma is a wheel, like a hamster wheel. The faster we run the more we feel desperate - this even applies to obtaining good things and escaping bad things.

Enjoying wonderful events and beloved people and objects is not a problem. It's when we chase them, run after them, hunger for them, feel desperate without them. It's all about the running, the need, the desire, the attachment.

So. Karma. That's what I had decided to contemplate this week.

It seems kind of appropriate. I feel like I dug this big deep hole and I have to slog my way out of it. It was a long way in and it's a long way out.

I did it myself, 100%. I dug and dug and dug.

There are a lot of "what ifs" but I try to drop them. I couldn't stop digging: this is just a fact, easily observable. I couldn't stop, even when it was obvious that I was destroying so much.

I was digging my way away from all stability and peace - I dug and dug and dug, more and more into my own mind, my own fears, disappeared into them. I chased and begged for things I already had in plenty - causing so much suffering - until the only thing anyone could do was cut my ropes and leave me alone at the bottom of the hole to come to my senses.

So. The climb back out. Razor rocks and loneliness.

I dug the hole. I caused it.

But at the end of writing this, some compassion. The description helps me see: my obsession, my compulsive digging... not to be hated or disdained but... feel sorry for that person, that me, caught up in pain, creating more pain for everyone I care about, creating more pain for me.

I feel compassion for that me and I comfort me. Just keep climbing. Keep climbing. The hole can't go on forever. It's ok. It's ok. You're not alone, and you can do it.

frothy mix

Mix of events, emotions, everything.

Bad, very bad: Dog is sick. She has pneumonia and can hardly walk from arthritis. It is incredibly sad to hear her gasping for breath. She literally sounds like a saw sawing wood. Then there's the choking. That's fun too (not).

Good: I made it to the "next level" in my application for the position teaching Chinese at a charter high school.

Bad: Now I have to learn Chinese. The whole idea I could learn it in a summer seems to have sprung from some manic over-enthusiasm.

Good: But I do have a plan: walk on the treadmill every day and listen to one lesson. Twofer, eh?

Bad: a... what would you call it... not a falling out but a... difficulty with a friend. not sure what to say to her.

Good: crazy camp is going well. I find it very supportive and have hopes that it will be helpful in giving me tools to act and be sane. The doctor and staff have pointed out that I'm angry. Not sure why or what to do with the anger, but I realize they're right. Conjecture is that I'm angry because I was supposed to be a prodigy, a star, and all I did was fall from the sky.

Good-bad-good-bad-good-bad, eh? Then there's this:

"The fundamental idea of Buddhism is to pass beyond the world of opposites..."
D.T. Suzuki

And this:

"...dissolving the dualistic tension between ... good and bad, by inviting in what we usually avoid."
- Pema Chödrön

Uh, yeah. I'm still feeling it as good and bad. So... yeah.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

comprehensive update...

Loopy and i had a fabulous, spectacular, delicious, delightful vacation in Mexico... i am going thru the photos and when I have some on Flickr i'll blog about it too...

but for now, back to real life: while procrastinating on aspects of the job search, i wrote two long, rambling emails to a new friend... may be info you already know, since the only people still checking out this blog are old friends :) and thank you for that :) :) ... hell, it may be too long for anyone to slog through... no obligation... god knows i've fallen far, far behind on reading anyone else's blogs! i'll try to post something light, cute and witty soon...

but anyway since it was a fairly comprehensive (as the title says) update on my life recently, I thought it would be good to reprint them here...

#1: Indecision ...
i don't know about my interview [yesterday]... staying up most of the night before it was not good... also not good that i had not been taking my ADD meds... i was scattered, talked too fast, didn't connect with the interviewers, got sidetracked without finishing answering their questions... and i felt that i came across way too harvard, and not enough southside-Chicago. i didn't fit.

still haven't finished the [21-page online] application... screwing around, procrastinating... one thing that's interfering is mixed feelings about the whole thing... i don't want to have another hellish year like last year, and it's hard to go all-out to get a job when i'm afraid that it's just going to be more of the same. it's hard, too, that in the whole process, i have to present myself as a successful teacher when i feel that i failed a lot... not sure what to do...

i know i still want to teach, it's all i want to do... it's exciting, it's interesting, it engages my whole being in the most fascinating problem-solving exercises imaginable... and it can be very rewarding... you mentioned yesterday how you enjoy reading professional journals etc. - that's how i feel about teaching - i never felt that way about web development! i always want to learn more, get better... i'm tired after this year, but still, in spite of everything, when i get discouraged, i just recall the faces of my students, the few moments of success that made them light up.... and past students... finding their own strengths and discovering that they are smarter than they thought.....

so i know i will teach, but there are a lot of options about how to do that, and i'm not sure which direction to pursue.... *sigh* work always has its challenges but it should not have to be such hell.

* * * * *

email #2 - a lot of stuff you probably already know lol

i used to be a much more driven person, but have in recent years been seeking more balance... tried to stop punishing myself with work... i have a younger friend who's still driven, never sleeps, always taking classes and getting higher and higher levels of certification... i can't think that that is what human life is supposed to be... having a goal (like the cum laude diploma :) ) is a good thing, but how much is good/appropriate to sacrifice for the goal, and when does it start to just shorten your life and make it more miserable? i guess we all weigh those things..

yes, i was a corporate exec in web development....almost by accident... i was just in the right place at the right time... i was a print graphic designer when the internet appeared in the business world, so we were just naturally expected to do the web design too, so i taught myself, and then for a brief time, 1-2 years' web experience was all ANYONE had, and i shot up the career ladder far above my actual capacity lol. i was basically a project manager - it was a good niche for me because i was science-geeky enuf (i did learn basic and pascal a million years ago - like, 1984, 1985! - and i understand databases, and i can often figure out web app coding and tinker with it if someone else has written it...) so yes i was geeky enuf to talk to the programmers and understand the possibilities and limitations they would explain to me (that was my favorite part! helping to plan the functionality and architecture without actually having to do the coding! lol), ........AND i was also business-savvy enough to understand what the bosses wanted and even anticipate their needs, so i could translate between geek and boss and help bring their ideas together to create something better than either one of them had imagined ... then my own strongest skills were in design, just for icing on the cake.

Only problem: my ADD was not yet medicated so i was a terrible manager. Couldn't manage time, people, the pieces of a project - couldn't keep it all in my head, couldn't prioritize, couldn't organize. (Looking back, I should have been some kind of communications liaison rather than a manager). Once i got medicated (several years after i got out of that business) I was very angry and bitter for a couple months, about all the ways I had failed, that wouldn't have happened if I had just had those little pills earlier! (I went through that again at the end of this year, because in like March or April I finally got into the medical system here and the doctor increased my ADD meds and my antidepressants, and I got so much more productive and positive and energetic... again, wish I'd had that at the beginning of the year, instead of spending months where i just barely got out of bed...)

After a while I stopped being bitter, because my own failures and struggles *do* give me a *huge* amount of insight and empathy when I work with struggling students... I know they are not just failing on purpose to annoy me, even though they try to act like they are (because who wouldn't rather be "bad" than "stupid"?)... They would succeed if they could. So it helps me commit to finding out how to help them, find out their obstacle, help them learn to overcome it... then they just go, full speed ahead, shining...

So, while I don't believe in fate, if I did, I might think it was meant to happen that way.... a statement more in line with my worldview would be, "Every step you take is on the path." This has just been my path. This is how it happened for me. This is life. Life is hard, for everyone. This is what I have to work with.

So I do try to accept it all, and I think I do mostly, but, as I try to get going in the teaching field, I am also fighting the psychological effects of many years of pre-medication failure... I am fighting hard not to conclude that I can't do anything. I feel cynicism and giving-up creeping up on me and I have to fight it off continuously. The only reason I can keep fighting it is that I think, if I lose hope, what point is there to life? (Although Buddhism counsels us to release both hope and fear, because they are the same........ I need to think about that some more and how it applies). And I struggle to figure out whether and how to accept and work within my limitations, and whether and how to keep fighting those limitations and trying to overcome them...

* * * * * * *

and i say again... i'll try to post something light and witty soon...

oh yeah

A few days after the previous post, a comforting quote floated into my head...

"The universe in which things turned out differently exists only in your head, and it exists primarily to torment you." (Zen teacher Cheri Huber; approximate quote)

Somehow that helped.

big changes...

Just finished putting away all the kitchen stuff we brought home from the apt., as well as the last of the groceries (the larder was pretty much bare, my friends!)--I also bleached all the countertops b/c there was mouse poop scattered about. (Hands need lotion...) Did some organizing too. But organizing is weird now because...

... we decided to strongly & seriously consider moving to Chicago this spring.

The lease on the Chicago apt. is up in May, and Loopy has a lot more work to do, and not much stamina at the moment for a lot of driving back & forth, never mind the pain involved in climbing two flights of stairs to the Chicago apartment--and don't forget the two flights of stairs here at home. The total handicap-inaccessibility of our house is a very strong "push" factor.

Besides, it doesn't look like I'm ever gonna get a job around here... there's just too much of a glut of experienced teachers on the market, plus (perhaps?) not much appetite for non-traditional teachers? Who knows about the latter, can't assume too much. Whereas in Chicago I could prob'ly have a job tomorrow, if I weren't too picky.

So that's just on the agenda to be explored... wanted to tell y'all about it...

The other thing the title is referring to is something Loopy said today... she was looking at old photos and it really struck her how limited her mobility still is, how she may never get it all back and how she "may never be just standing there again," without help. This struck me some months ago at the gym... that she may never again just come bustling around the corner suddenly. Of course, she may make a complete recovery, but she doesn't feel very optimistic at the moment.

I looked at some old photos to illustrate this and the ones from Montreal struck me the most. Jesus, that just feels like a short time ago--it is just a short time ago--just two months before the surgery.

Damn it damn it damn it, I get so angry thinking about how everything would have been different if they had just found the fucking tumor two months earlier!!!

I know, I know--we did our best, the doctors did their best, nobody's to blame, we can never know what all the alternatives might have been. As we discussed the other day, if they'd done the surgery two months earlier who knows--maybe we wouldn't have had the same surgeon or the same anaesthesiologist or something and maybe something bad woulda happened. Buddhism encourages us to realize that we don't know, for certain, if anything is "good" or "bad." To keep an open mind and not be too certain of anything.

But...



Damn, damn, damn.

i did feel sort of gibbousy

...[W]e also change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We do that, and there's no reason to resist it. If we resist it, the reality and vitality of life become misery, a hell.

--Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape & the Path of Loving-Kindness

Miri has pointed out to me that I often say that last week (or last month or last year) I had achieved (or avoided) a particular state or habit, but now I've backtracked and fallen into my old bad ways.

Since she pointed it out I hear myself saying it, but find it hard to think differently--first to let go of trying so hard to fix myself, to change, to be better--and second to let go of thinking that last week (or month or year) I had it, but now I've lost it again.

What if I could see these changes as weather, waxing and waning, ebbing and flowing? What if I weren't constantly monitoring my changes and labeling them as getting better and getting worse, being bad and being good? I believe it would... well, from this exact point and place in time, I believe it would make me better.

Round and round we go.



p.s. Bloglines readers, the image is worth clicking to... ;-)

discipline

in reference to the whole thing I discussed in the previous post about swinging from one extreme to another--from compulsively avoiding work to compulsively doing work--I've been thinking that this is because I lack some kind of solid interior compass or, what would you call it, lodestone, something that I can come back to.

One word that came to mind as I was thinking about this was "discipline"--I lack discipline--the discipline to work at appropriate times and the discipline to rest at appropriate times. I feel lost and unmoored all the time, trapped and confused.

And, a phrase came into my head from When Things Fall Apart: "What we discipline is not our 'badness'..." but I couldn't remember the rest. All I can think of is disciplining (punishing) my badness, my failures... So I looked up the full quote. Here it is, though I'd be lying if I said I had fully assimilated it...

To dissolve the causes of aggression takes discipline, gentle yet precise discipline. Without discipline, we simply don't have the support we need to evolve. What we discipline is not our "badness" or our "wrongness". What we discipline is any form of potential escape from reality. In other words, discipline allows us to be right here and connect with the richness of the moment.

...

Within this structure, we proceed with compassion...[T]he discipline is to return to gentleness, to honesty, to letting go. At the inner level, the discipline is to find the balance between not too tight and not too loose — between not too laid-back and not too rigid.

Discipline provides the support to slow down enough, and be present enough, so that we can live our lives without making a big mess. It provides the encouragement to step further into groundlessness.

--Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart (found here)

Hmmmmm....