Loneliness
Loneliness is, really, such a sad affair.
I feel it in my bones,
creeping in, under my skin.
I hate the blueness of it.
The bluntness of it.
Bearing the brunt of a loss must be nearly
impossible.
I slip into an abyss
at a simple separation.
I feel I've lost my wits.
Loneliness has a virtuous side,
it's main ocupation is
anticipation
and only the softest
anguish.
The difference between living and surviving life
Is a yawning, black chasm that swallows optimism like a
Fine meal.
The difference between living and surviving life
Is measured by the freshness of the food you feed
Your children.
It is bacon on a Sunday morning, and buying diapers
Before they run out.
It is walking into a bank without cold fear at your throat.
It is knowing that when something breaks, it can be fixed;
When it runs out, it can be replenished.
To know how much is enough is a virtue earned by having want and need
As companions.
My Brother
At times, I see you, my brother,
We are one,
And our souls smile at one another.
On other occasions
The space that separates
You from me
Is as wide, as powerful,
As devastating and beautiful,
As the ocean.
Shimmering in the moon’s light,
You call me like the sea.
You are the very tide that pulls me under.
The sun passes over me-
Sometimes dim and weak,
Sometimes brilliant and warm,
sometimes burning and blinding-
Turning my hours into days,
My weeks into years.
At times, I see you, my strange brother,
In my air, under my skin,
Like a burr that every time it pricks you
Reminds you of caves and playthings,
And sticks and words,
And smiles that shine like sunlight.
Day in and day out,
In fields and in cars, even on wet shoes,
Outside, yet inside my life,
All at the same time.
At times, I see you, my lost brother,
I hear your voice on the other side,
Or the absence of that voice,
And I wonder how it all shakes down.
What part of the wall did I, myself, build?
How much was built by
Something bigger than all of us?
Pleasure
The words that breathe from within
separate my soul from insanity
and I'm comforted by the tactile sensation
of pen on paper, specifically.
The smooth, steady flow of my brain,
my hand, the ink on paper,
soothing me, smoothing me,
making me feel safer.
Insulating me from any of life's
unavoidable bumps and bruises,
better than anything else I've got.
Alone in my writing, with no excuses,
I am if I choose it, and my wish
is my own command to realize.
As hours roll by in my cottony womb,
my butterfly cocoon, I fantasize.
I frolic and dream and meander,
no map, I'm the treasure.
I write for the sake of release,
for the sake of beauty and art,
and I write for my own
pleasure. 03/09/98
Hourglass
Like a camel
Between
Sand and sky
I stand
Unadorned,
Unadorned.
Amazing balance
Between
Brutality and passivity.
Breathing,
Living,
Organic stone.
Tunnel between
Birth and death,
I am.
Woman,
Born alive and dying.
I am consumed with
Filling this space.
Hourglass of sliding sand
I do not know
How big I am.
How many seconds
Do I hold within me?
Child
"I’m this many."
This many particles spun together,
This many thoughts, feelings,
Capabilities, dreams,
Fears.
This many grains of sand
Funneled into this one
Hourglass
Who likens herself to
A camel.
I believe I can
Sustain myself
Through this
Desert in my mind.
I’m sitting on my loveseat, listening to License To Ill and drinking a blend of spearmint and Morning Thunder teas. I’ve got my bible, my journal, my netbook, my blackberry, and the book I’m currently reading, ‘The Third Jesus’ by Deepak Chopra. Plus a pen, a hilighter and a lap quilt. The mood lighting, the kids asleep, and I’m lovin’ me. This is how Friday nights are meant to be spent.
Today John, kids and me went to see ‘Bye Bye, Birdie’ at Sparta High School. We had free tickets through Circles, including a free snack and drink, and a tour of the backstage area, which we missed as I could have predicted, due to my uncanny ability to get lost in the state of New Jersey. Funny thing is we were in the right place, got on the freeway, drove three miles, then three miles back and arrived at our starting point. Hard not to laugh at yourself at that point.
I was complaining earlier about my mental state, saying that I don’t want to work at it anymore, I’m tired of trying to get better. It’s hard work, and if you work with a therapist, it gets expensive. I want to just be OK like I am. But that isn’t life, and I’m so grateful for the friendship and wise counsel of the people in my life. I am so lucky to have so many people to run things by. It’s good for me and it helps me to see the lesson that I might otherwise miss.
I’ve got a lot to say, but nothing to say at the same time. Life is hard, but also very easy right now. I feel very calm, but also anxious. I’m happy, but more than a bit melancholy. I can’t put my finger on it. I know what homesick feels like, and this isn’t it. I can’t quite figure it out. I guess it’s the change of jobs, change of seasons, change of consciousness. I feel overwhelmed, but also very capable. I’m just going to try and work with the skills I have, and stay aware of what’s going on. It’s the only way I know how to deal with the strange feelings I’ve been having lately.
I’m in love with my life, I’m fitting myself into things nicely here in New Jersey. It’s good to feel like the move has turned out to be a good one. I will continue to be more and more prosperous here. I am going to start school in the summer. I’m really excited about that. And maybe that is one aspect of the strange feelings I’ve been having lately. Somehow I don’t doubt that they’re attached to that event as much as any other, even though the semester doesn’t start until July.
As I grow, or some would say, ‘age’, I begin to see things differently than I did in the past. I prefer to call this growth. I’m not just getting wrinkles and gray hair. I can see how a person might put a negative slant on getting older. If I felt that the only thing that was changing was my body, my eyesight, my reaction time, my metabolism, I might feel slighted by life.
As it is though, I feel every day just a bit more alive. I rest squarely within myself, I don’t feel as though I’m pushed too close to any of my borders. Or boarders. (Heh heh. As a writer, I sometimes cannot resist the opportunity to use homonyms.)
It’s true, though. I used to feel, when I was younger, that I was ‘guilty by association’, or that if someone around me, a friend or a lover, did something good, that I was owed some small amount of the praise. I now see that we are much more intimately joined, and much less connected, at the same time.
In a family, John Bradshaw says we are like a mobile. Lift one piece and the rest of the pieces swing wildly. Please, take a moment and picture it in your mind. Pull one down, the others are elevated. Tell me you don’t see the purpose of each family having a scapegoat, then.
We are not responsible for the behavior of others. “You’re making me crazy,” or “She made me lie to you.” As much as we may wish for a back door out of our mistakes, there isn’t one. When we lose our tempers, it’s not because our kids make us. It’s because we were already at the end of our proverbial ropes, and we didn’t reach out for help, we didn’t choose to slow down with some yoga or a fifteen minute walk.
We choose and choose and choose. If we choose Burger King, Newports and Mountain Dew, Law and Order and Fox News, and texting while driving, we are going to reap what those seeds sown will bring. It’s not rocket science. I’m not spending Saturday mornings with the Dali Lama to get this information. Likewise, it’s not simply age that allows me to learn this stuff. It’s a slow, laborious process, akin to shaping a bonsai tree. I meditate on the basic, fundamental principles brought to us by Christ. I spend time among people, and I don’t try to ‘like’ them all. I strive toward greater consciousness whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Jesus told us a few things that cannot be disputed. Can not be refuted. There are a million fine points in the Bible, and many contradict one another. But Jesus, who Christians identify as our Lord and Savior, only really got emphatic about a few points. He was most interested in social justice. Kindness. How to treat one another, who to love. And by the way, the answer to that last one, treat everyone the same, exclude no one. Not ‘as soon as you use your JUDGEMENT to discern the character of a man (as in hu-man, for future reference) then you can decide whether or not that person is worthy of your love and compassion. No, no, no Christians. No where did Jesus say judge them, and decide. He simply instructed us to love our fellow man.
This is a huge part of what keeps me centered. If I start to get off track, self-righteously instructing another driver on how to be a better driver, I am reminded that no one died and made me the boss of the road, and even if I am right, it doesn’t excuse my attitude. It’s instrumental in us all getting along, that we learn to let go of the idea that right matters. It doesn’t. It’s a fallacy we were fed somewhere along the way. Power breeds corruption. Isn’t that what power is? Ultimate rightness?? I don’t need to worry about what anyone else should or shouldn’t be doing. Only what I should be doing. And if I run out of things to do that directly pertain to myself, there’s always helping. This brings me to my next point.
When we extend ourselves to others, it sets us squarely in the middle of life. We are interacting with our fellow man. Sometimes we see people more graciously endowed than us. Maybe physically, they have more ability. Maybe financially, they have more money. Maybe they seem surrounded by more loving friends and family than we have. Or maybe they have less. Maybe they struggle just to put food on the table. Or they have less education than we have. Or they’re feeling alone. Either way, every turn presents us with the opportunity to connect their struggle to our own, their choices and their circumstances to our own, their humanity to our own. We are all one. We are all struggling, laughing, eating, working, choosing, loving, hurtling through life like meteorites, our destinations not quite evident yet. We receive the greatest gift we are able to, as humans, by simply interacting with our fellow man. We gain conscious insight into ourselves.
Consciousness baffles many people. It doesn’t require that much energy to be conscious. In truth, it’s almost effortless compared to the energy it takes to be unconscious. There’s a word we all know and love. You may not have a firm grasp of the meaning of living consciously, but don’t we all know what unconsciousness is? Sleep. Not having the awareness of some facet of our lives. Some of us take it to the extreme of drunkenness with regularity. We all know someone, whether casually or intimately, who drinks daily. Who drinks to the point that it’s obviously hindering their ability to be fully human. Why? Do you ever ask yourself why people become heroin addicts? Career alcoholics? Compulsive spenders? Why what seems so easy and obvious to you and I, we couldn’t pound into them with a mallet?
Now, suspend your thought about ‘them’ and how troubled ‘they’ are, and replace them with yourself. It’s all of us. We all have something going on in our lives that we aren’t looking at, aren’t seeing. How do I know? Because things have come into focus over the years. Out of the mists and into my personal space. All up in my grill, if you will permit me the use of the vernacular. So it stands to reason that there are more things out there. I don’t delude myself that at the ripe old age of 34 I’ve got it all sewn up. That means that the things that I didn’t have awareness of before, but do now, are just some of the things I participate in without consciousness.
My head is spinning. How about yours?
So here’s my personal application of the subject matter. I meditate and pray whenever I think of it. It’s a small, simple thing. It is saying, ‘Thank you God for this moment.’ Or it is as profound as, well, spending my Saturday afternoon writing this blog. It is, as a dear friend and role model once said, ‘Don’t prescribe, don’t direct.’ Ouch. That one took the wind out of my sails. And as I close this blog, I check my e-mail. Thank you Zelda McRae for your message entitled. ‘Acknowledging Your Evolution.’ Pretty good, I haven’t even posted it yet, and already I get an acknowledgement!
Ah, my good friends, do you remember the feeling that first very warm day of the year? This year it will be celebrated extensively, the onset of spring. It’s been a fun winter, but also a trying one for many people, in many ways. Being snowed in a few times has led us to a little bit of cabin fever. And the sun feels good on my face. The kids all got new bikes from grandpa Bob, and they cannot wait to get on them. I think I’m going to get a bike, being the only member of the family without one. I enjoy biking, still, even at my old age.
That last bit was a joke. I am turning 35 this year, though, and my life is changing dramatically. I’m a firm believer in the seven year cycle. I think every seven years we experience a ‘level up’. I’m speaking to the Gen X’ers there, I think. Video game terminology. That’s something that people over the age of 45 don’t usually get, excepting those guys. You know who they are. They fight with their wives about their video game playing, or they live in their parents’ basement. Still.
I feel it. I feel the slipping away of the things that don’t really matter, I feel myself not giving a wooden nickel what anyone but my family thinks of me. And there’s a very limited amount of caring going on there. What other people think of me is none of my business. I love everyone just a little bit more, and I judge myself just a little bit less. I hold myself a bit more accountable, but not in the ‘I shoulda….’ way, rather in the Buddhist way. The Buddhists say the more responsibility you take the more power you have, or something akin to that. I feel it. I love that feeling now, whereas before I was terrified of it. It’s not like the bad genie in Aladdin kind of power, but rather the ‘I just finished my whole to-do list, and it’s only 2:30, so I can (fill in the blanks with something pleasurable)’ variety.
I see and hear things that used to depress me, frighten me, or at the very least, rain on my parade. I felt I had to just avert my eyes. That if I ignored it, didn’t give the sickness of our world my attention that I was sparing myself something. I see now that I was denying myself something. I now recognize that the way we achieve joy is by allowing ourselves to be hollowed out by grief, therefore becoming vessels. Some of us fill that hollow with more misery, for sure. Out of fear, in pain, we throw drink, drug, food, bad relationships, PTA, exercise, shopping, cigarettes, and anything else that’s not nailed down in there to try and feel whole again. But it’s in resting in the emptiness, listening and waiting for that small, still voice of God to speak to us, that we are filled with joy, with peace.
Joy means something totally different to me now than it did in my twenties. In my addled state of being I let other people state my reality, I measured myself against their yardsticks and always felt that I was falling short.
Joy isn’t another word describing happiness. It’s living wonderful and full of the spirit, the spark of life realized and fed accordingly. Hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism speaks to a set of favorable circumstances, chips falling in our favor. Hope is the idea that no matter what happens, we’ll all be OK. Whatever the hell OK is. It’s being equipped to deal with whatever comes along. An earthquake or an earthworm. The long straw or the long road. Whatever it is, we’ll have all the tools, all the strength, all the support, the means. That we believe we’re worthy, we’re protected, we’re to be provided for. Totally.
As a parent this makes sense to me. I love my kids. I’d do anything for them, to provide them with hope, and with a real sense of themselves. I want them to have a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong. Blah blah blah. I have no control over any of that. Really. I can lead a good life, set a good example. What does that mean, really? If what I said about grief and joy is true, then in trying to shield them from pain I actually steal their opportunity for joy. To make myself more comfortable.
Now don’t get me wrong. We’re not keeping them in the basement and feeding them moldy scraps. They’re living a good life. We try to be fair and honest. We spoil them just enough, we lecture, we put them to the test at times with our baggage. But in truth, when I see one of them is pursuing someone who will likely reject them and hurt them like a blister on a long walk, I have to let it go. Rejection rubs at us, irritates and sometimes ulcerates. It has us questioning ourselves. Questioning our very self! Why didn’t I get the love, the favor, that I sought? Why doesn’t she want to be my friend? It often has us jumping through hoops. Sometimes flaming ones. But without that feeling of discord, how would we ever feel the rush of (key up Ray LaMontagne singing You Are The Best Thing) exhilaration when the right one shows up? The one who gets you. Who accepts you, salutes you, rejoices in your you-ness.
And that’s where faith comes in. Love, love, love. Wherever you go, there’ll be love, love, love. I’m on shuffle, but my writing has a soundtrack tonight. First Noah and the Whale, singing ‘love, love, love’ as I write this, then Van Morrison sings about Crazy Love. How can we not see that there is only love waiting for us, if we can brave the journey. Baptized by fire, we find our way. Grace abounds.
In fact, it’s all there is. As humans, it can be hard to see it for many of us. Try to imagine explaining a hot air balloon in flight to an ant on the ground. The ant, if it could speak, would probably declare you mad. ‘Madness!,’ he’d proclaim, and off he’d go on his pheromone trail.
But no one will ever convince me we don’t yearn. I feel it. The thirst for knowledge, the need for connection. The slamming feeling of isolation, the bitter, grinding edge of a stone ledge on the soft palm of your hand as you hang on, wanting, but not receiving something. At the time, it seems literally unbearable.
What a perfect word. Yearning. It reminds me of earnest, and needy, with a side of keening. It is the feeling of one’s soul being kneaded. Like dough, the substance of our soul is worked. Allowed to rise. Put into an oven. Some would say by the Lord. Others aren’t sure who or what they think is doing it, but we all feel it. Standing on the beach, staring out into the ocean. On the bank of a clear trout stream in northern Michigan, looking at a young child being berated by someone they obviously adore, seeing true economic poverty, the glory of a mountain range, viewed at a distance. I could go on and on, the things that I’ve encountered in this brief and sheltered existence I’ve led, that I feel that yearning because of. I used to be fearful. As a child I fretted. I was overcome with anxiety. I remember clearly the feeling that at any given second, the world could open up and swallow me like Jonah was swallowed by that whale.
Now, as an adult, I know it wasn’t a whale, but rather a large fish. Furthermore, I believe it was a parable. That it was the blunt tool with which my ancestors painted a picture. In addition I believe that the same God who I thank constantly for everything has given me the ability to discern a story from a fact. Also, to see, without judging, that there will always be people who cannot let go of the whale.
I tell you now, none of that changes my truth. The real story is love. Unconditional love. Wasteful love, as Spong put it, in his talk, Jesus for the Non-Religious. He said to think of it as water. Living water. If you plug up the drain in a laundry tub in a basement, and turn the taps full on, the water will overflow, pouring out onto the floor. That water will fill every crevice, ever filthy crack in the cement. No question about whether that floor is dirty or clean, whether that floor is worthy of the water. It just is, it abounds. That is how we should love. Carelessly, wantonly love one another and ourselves. It’s what Jesus teaches. His primary message. Love. I strive to make it mine, too.
What’s good? What’s healthy? What’s normal? I have to wonder about all this stuff because I didn’t learn it at home. Most of us don’t, as a matter of fact. Sad, but absolutely true. Normal is a setting on the washer. Normal wear and tear on a lease car if you’re meticulous and mostly ride in the car alone. Me and my husband and three kids, completely different pictures come to mind about what would be the normal amount of wear for one of our vehicles in a year.
And good. Come on, now. What’s good for me (‘Hey, I found three thousand bucks in a wallet with no ID!) and what’s good for you (‘I lost my wallet and it had three thousand dollars in it.’) You get the idea. You having cancer is bad for you, but in a manner of speaking, good for the staff at the cancer center where you receive treatment, right? Bleh. That one I don’t even like thinking about.
My best friend and I used to play this game of devil’s advocate, we called it fortunately/unfortunately, where one of us would begin a statement with fortunately… and the other one would follow up with UNfortunately… It amused us at 14. Then we grew up. Sometime we still play it. Sometimes it’s amusing. Other times it’s depressing.
Today if I were talking to her I’d say fortunately, I’m accustomed to this type of weather, and so this snowstorm doesn’t seem as bad to me as it does to the longtime residents of New Jersey. According to them, this is the worst winter many of them have ever seen. We got a couple feet of snow over the course of the last couple days. Maybe even two and a half feet. Since Tuesday, and it’s Friday. I hear they declared a state of emergency, but that just might be fictitious small town gossip. Hard to say. Small town life is what I’m not accustomed to. Fortunately, I’m adapting quickly.
