better today

started one tutoring job today - no kids yet, just training.

one of my former colleagues quit his job at our old school, and i wrote/called everyone begging them to give me his job (teaching sixth grade). severe anxiety last night about whether i can do it or not if i get it - the classroom management piece is the toughie. well, we'll see what happens.

in the meantime things are much improved with wifey. so... one foot in front of the other.

missing you

Lonely today. Thinking about other times in my life when I have had more friends, love, companionship. Recent times and back to college, to high school... I've been blessed with extraordinary friendships and extraordinary people in my life...

Read over some old emails I probably should have left alone, and then, thanks to Facebook and a reminiscence about going to Emack & Bolio's with Amy for oreo ice cream in an oreo cone ;-) , I got back in touch with Peter M (!) and reminisced a little... just wish I had a circle of good friends now like the ones I had in college, like that day a bunch of us hung out at Peter's house and invented weird dances, or remember the "Amy Appreciation Party" with strips of printer paper as streamers?

Ah, I catch myself: this sounds like 'poverty mind.' I worked with this on retreat - the delusion of not having enough, even though the world around me is filled with incredible richness.

The instruction was to sit with the feelings instead of trying to fill up the holes with stuff. And to do tonglen for all those who, like me, experience this sense of basic neediness, this loneliness - for all those who wish that other people could take away the fundamental human condition of alone-ness.

I've also worked with this same mentality in my psych program - the focus on loss, instead of on what I still have. There, the solution is different - join groups, take classes, make friends. My life in the last two years has been painfully narrowed by an all-consuming focus on work. For better or for worse, I'm liberated from that, and can try to meet more people.

I'm already doing that through my meditation activities. I hung out with two of my retreat buddies this past week, and met the roommate of one of them, who is hooking me into the campaign for universal healthcare.

I'm also going to take salsa and print-making classes, so I'm excited about that. And today is the first meeting of an artists' group I'm starting, so that's cool too.

So... pulling myself together, getting off the couch, going on with my day. With my life. I think if I can enlarge my life, the marriage stuff may fall into place as well, one way or the other - I will see it with more perspective and I will also be better equipped to fully live whatever solution ensues.

boiling II

Or does it boil down to this: can a crazy person live with a sane person, without the former getting worse and the latter getting crazy?

Just how crazy am I? Is this problem inside my own head? Why can't I be who she needs me to be? Why can't I keep from hurting her? Why can't it be enough - the tremendous love and bounty that I am lucky enough to be blessed with?

What's wrong with me?

Is there something wrong with me? Am I sabotaging something amazing and wonderful, or is there some fundamental flaw that is breaking this apart? Or both?

Those are just rhetorical questions.

My heart is just breaking.

We both want there to be a way through this but we can't see it.

Mirror maze, bramble path, cliffs of fall.

What compass, what north star, what god, what divination can we scrounge out of our scrambled guts?

I keep hoping...

So yeah. Happy anniversary.

boiling

So it all boils down to: can a person who easily gets hurt, live with a person who easily gets angry, and for how long before they're just... done.

But, perhaps that's a gross over-simplification. When there's enough love, none of that matters.

That's a cliché.

Mirror maze.

approaching anniversary

As you might have guessed, I went ahead to that Buddhist meditation retreat last week. It was really, really good in a lot of ways. More on that tomorrow.

Instead, I bring you a conversation from the bus last night, the aftermath of an honest but painful therapy session. But, honesty is a good thing. Really. It is. It felt good to be honest - like a fresh start.

Anyway:

Me: So what are we doing for our anniversary [Wednesday]?

Loopy: What do you want to do?

Me: I don't know, we could go to dinner... [discussion of dinner plans ensues]

Me: So, are we exchanging cards?

Loopy: Do you want to exchange cards?

Me: I always like cards.

Loopy: OK, I'll give you a card.

(...pause...)

Me: It might be hard to find one that says what we'd like to say.

Loopy: You mean, "I love you/hate you"?

Me: "I love you, you make me unhappy, don't ever leave me"?

(...pause...)

Me: So maybe no cards then.



As long as we can laugh at ourselves, I think we're gonna be ok.

working out

When people say, of a marriage, "things just didn't work out," is that something that happens because of a lack of willpower? or a lack of commitment? or is it something that just... happens to you? something beyond your control?

I guess you'll say it could be either one. That's no help at all.

When I asked her this question, Loopy was no help either. She said no one could know, and we can't tell the future.

Rats.

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.