waxing crescent

Saw a king snake, a crescent moon, a giant bat (really, like, pizza size), three Harris hawks, four or five families of quail, endless doves, a squashed 'horny toad,' assorted non-squished lizards, miscellaneous jackrabbits... it's only very recently that jackrabbits have started to look long-eared to me. and "regular" rabbits still look small-eared. heh.

i've treasured my time in the desert, in my grandmother's old house where i came hundreds of times over the years... the house has been gutted but the view out each window is the same, aside from the new houses that have sprouted up all over - but the patio and the sky and the mountains are the same. The windows and doors are in the same places.

Many of my childhood memories are uneasy, but there are some that are utterly content. Being up here, the sweet-smelling wind off the mountains (still smells the same - more creosotey than it does in Tucson), clouds in the sky... very carefree. Heart floating on the breeze, tethered to my wrist... I remember standing on the patio with Petra on New Year's Eve, almost 1985. It was so cold and we were trying to watch the fireworks all around the valley... can't see the valley anymore, there's a house in the way... my grandmother used to love to watch the storms come and go across the wide expanse of flat land ringed by mountains, really much wider than a 'valley'... i don't mind that the house is in the way. things change. i don't mind any of the changes here. but i remember. i remember mornings and breakfasts and evenings and starlight and changing seasons and my grandmother. i remember.

it's also been great to spend time with my cousin and his wife... lots of good discussion, politics, family, life... good food... and love.

i spent the day at the hospital today but... my aunt is basically already gone. she looks up with huge, uncomprehending, infantile eyes when spoken to, or mutters without enough thread to grasp any gist, half in French at times. today my cousins decided to discontinue any further treatment and just provide palliative care (reduce pain).

the mix of emotions that all this engenders is... not impossible to put into words but... i don't really feel like trying.

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.

pulling out

So I just wrote an email to cancel my candidacy for the Chinese job.

I'm terrified I did the wrong thing: I have no other prospects. I was awake half the night worrying that I did the wrong thing.

But I know I didn't. This job would be so painful...

Except that sometimes I think, no, I could have done it, and I shouldn't have let fear get in the way. The response to that is, it wasn't fear, it was good sense.

I struggle: every Disney movie says you should climb every mountain, fight impossible odds, tilt at windmills. My last two years say that doing so leads to failure and suicidal thoughts.

... agh...

Well, it's too late now. I had an interview this morning and there's no way I would have been ready for it. They required a lot of documentation and work. So... done.

Sigh.

happy.....?

I've been feeling good the last couple days (course, before that, I was feeling awful, so ... but...)

I wonder if it's the exercise. For as long as I've been any kind of crazy, "they" (doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, well-meaning friends, wives - ok only one wife - and assorted random passers-by) have been suggesting that regular exercise would lift my mood. Maybe all those Mr. Pickles walks have helped.

Or yoga?

Or is this positive mood because of the collage I did? I did a collage - which, I'm learning, is better for me than journaling, which tends to make me spiral down into my own craziness - about our marriage. I expressed a lot of bottled-up emotion and sorted things out, figured out how I was feeling, how we were feeling, where we are right now...

Or maybe it's both... both of them helping me let go of things...

Mr. Pickles is lying contentedly near me, looking up at me. He's really a great dog.

If you think I'm over-analyzing the good mood, well... I just want to know what caused it so I can keep it going or get it back. Clinging? Yes, guilty.

If I were just meditating and doing art, my life would be, like, perfect.

Oh. Wait. There's that job search thing.

Amazing how my good moods correlate with NOT doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

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.

tired of being crazy

The thing that exhausts me most is that I can't trust my own thoughts. They come in sometimes ridiculously quick succession... opposite ideas... e.g. first that I am utterly alone; 30 minutes later, that wifey loves me and I'm safe with her. Often enough, no provocation for either thought. No outer change. And both feel like revelations - "oh now I see the truth."

It's exhausting and leaves me bewildered. I feel like my thoughts are pointless, since they're obviously meaningless, and yet they keep coming. And, just because they seem pointless doesn't mean they don't make me cry.

Yesterday and today I couldn't stand to be alive so I went to sleep. It's like death but less permanent. I'm tired of feeling that way too.

I don't know what to do about the job situation. Put in for my special ed certificate, but totally unsure about that too.

Why am I awake? Orange street light... wifey, doggie snoring.

the dog is dead, long live the dog!

Dear sweet Gracie died on Friday... so both our babies are gone...

Good-bye sweet sweet babies!

But... we couldn't stand the dogless house so we got a new dog on Saturday... his name is Mr. Pickles and he's a big goof.



*sigh*

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.

death is certain, and the timing of death is uncertain, so what is the most important?

Thursday was a very bad day. That "no" post (previous) came out of a slide back into a very difficult place, paranoia, despair, nothing good. But I took my evening meds a few hours early and after a half hour or so I was fine.

I am grateful for the meds and more resigned to my diagnosis.

Last night too was bad. Black despairing loneliness. Up most of the night crying. That turned out to be largely PMS.

Maybe the meds aren't catching everything but most of the time I feel so much better. Not to be depressed after years of being depressed is such a gift.

Anyway, the title of the post refers to two things... the second of the four reminders that I was going to be meditating upon these weeks, and the fact that my aunt's health is failing.

It may seem morbid, but the phrase puts a lot of things in perspective.

And as my aunt gets ready to enter Hospice, I feel that feeling coming over me, the hospice feeling... the end of life, the slowing down, the rasping breath that stops.
Familiar. Very familiar by this time. Makes life seem more awake, more piquant, to know that you will walk on and this person who has come with you this far, they will stop. You'll walk on without them.

When death comes near to someone, it fills me with an odd peace. Death is just so real. It's the real-est thing in the world. It's inescapable and absolute. Everything else is relative, depends on how you look at it, shifting and confused. Death - well you can think different things about it, say different things about it - but it ultimately is incontrovertible, un-interpretable, it's just the end. And it comes to everyone. It could come to me before my aunt.

And... that's the way it is.

no.

Awhile back I was angry on a photo shoot, n didn't want to do the assigned topic. I saw a particularly good "no," and started seeing more... the first batch were lost but I have these...



The "no" phase lasted about a month... as I worked through my fury at fate... It finally abated n I had no more urge to shoot "no"s. I could still do so but it would feel like cheating or forcing the issue... Too bad "yes" isn't posted nearly as often, nor "please," at least not in giant photographable letters."

I feel like that again today. Everything makes me feel cranky if not enraged. I resist the world! I refuse! I don't want to go one more step! I want to crawl under the covers and punch anyone who tries to come after me!

Think this has to do with my first day at crazy day camp?

Ya think?

well.

My Dad always used to say, "Well...... it's a deep subject." And then his eyes would crinkle up and he'd just - almost giggle - chortle - something like that - he loved his own corny jokes.

So anyway. Kinda doing well. By some measures.

I've gotten more job search stuff done in the last couple days than I did the whole summer last year or the year before.

That's really something to be proud of. I'm trying to be.

So why do I feel anxiety off the charts?

Could be because of the demoralizing, depressing job fair yesterday. But I did a good job of writing follow-up letters today. Could just be life...

Cried quite a bit today, haven't done that in ages. Feel destabilized.

Heh. So what else is new? Me? Destabilized?

Mostly, things are much smoother now than, say, 3-4 months ago, largely because of finally - FINALLY!!!!!!! - finding effective meds., but also because of the perspective brought by the diagnosis - that I am gonna have these moods and they don't necessarily mean something is wrong.

But when it comes to anxiety like some creature trying to claw its way out of my innards, I don't have to believe it to hate it.

I guess this is why I avoided stuff for so long: cuz it's so damn miserable to actually face it. Yeah, it's more miserable to not face it. But it's a pretty close competition.

So tomorrow, I'm going to start attending this outpatient program - it's like being in the psych ward except you're only there a few hours a day. Supposed to help you get stabilized and give you coping skills. I'm a little scared but since I'm starting to unravel with all this unstructured time, I'm more scared of losing it over the summer and starting back to school just as crazy as ever.

What does it mean to be well? Are we all really well even if we're crazy, crazy and well just arbitrary binary definitions? (kum-ba-yahhhhh) Or is being well something to strive for? Or something you can't get to and just have to give up on?

I'm confused. But what else is new?