Multiple personalities

 I let go of daily writing so I could allow something that I’d really like to write about to emerge,  and  …..crickets.   Oh well.  I did come up with a couple of essay topics that I certainly love to think and talk about,   But no “urge to write”.    

What has been interesting in this last month and a half is noticing bits and pieces of myself in various incarnations that I don’t particularly like.  But for whatever reason, I don’t feel ashamed or bad about them, just curious.  They’re sort of like dream images,   They feel like my soul tapping me on the shoulder and saying, you could work on this if you want.

One was an awareness that when I’m stressed, I don’t relax and listen as well as I can. That and trying to Tell, and Organize and Plan  can perhaps leave those around me feeling like they don’t matter.   

Another is when I’m SO Full of ideas to share that I talk over people don’t give them a chance to ping pong with their own ideas.  This talking too much, interrupting, talking over people has been a life long issue    Sometimes it’s a problem in the relationship sometimes not.    I think living alone exacerbates it.  I have so much of my inner ruminations stored up that there’s pressure as it all comes through the narrow orifice  of my mouth 

My inner “sage on the stage” rather than my “guide on the side”  pontificates sometimes.   My inner Know it All, And I roll my eyes.    I know better, I’ve contained the urge most of my life.  Why the heck do I still do it now, and what feels like more often?  It’s hand and glove with the need to give whenever I notice an unmet Need I could fill. A lifelong issue   Perhaps this lifetime still has time to untangle myself from the habitual stickiness of these behaviors    Though I will say I haven’t been possessed by the urge to “give away the farm” so to speak as much as of late. 

Ah but am I catching sight of my magic moment self  much lately?   My magic sauce is noticing. And being able to put into words some very hard to pin down feelings and awarenesses.    I can be a conduit for the Universe sometimes, when I leave the need to be the one doing the giving    Which to be honest has never been a big need for me, having to Be the One who is wise.   I just like to help the wisdom of life roll along when I can, no acknowledgement needed.     

I see myself less attached to Doing anything, but feel the restlessness of not having a focus for my life force.  I say that being bored and restless will help me be open to discovering what I want to focus on for this last phase of my life.  But there’s the danger of just drifting into the doldrums and never again feeling the winds of Spirit filling my sails  

Perhaps of all my magic moments I value most when I can feel Spirit using me.  But it’s nothing I can make happen or demand. Like in Quaker meeting, I need to listen and allow it when it happens.  And accept it when it doesn’t.      “They also serve who only stand and wait”   

Reality. IS

  My new life has a few new healthy habits  and a lot of the old shit that I’d hoped to shed. Little things like making my bed into a couch every morning as the water heats up for my shower, 100%.   The walking is settling down but still at least 4-5 times a week, ‘twill do.  The writing has faltered;  it’s hard writing when I feel I have nothing to say.    One prompt I’ve thought of is write to my great grandchild. What would I like her to know about me?    Perhaps that may lubricate the flow but I still need to overcome my resistance.  I see Adam, busy busy Adam somehow defending the boundaries of his writing time.     I wonder if a class would help but I don’t like writing for others approval 

The reality is that having shed a lifetime of belongings and moving into a completely different world,   here I still am.   I’m still the me who watches tv and compulsively eats  late at night.  I am indeed feeling bored and restless but fear it could slide into just doing the minimal for comfort and falling back asleep.  

David is struggling with kratom, weed and his addictive nature    It breaks my heart but there’s not much I can do but be present for him    That doesn’t stop my unsolicited advise    “I wouldn’t have to be so bossy if you’d just DO what I said”    Yeah that’s me  despite knowing better 

So  this is my reality   This and all the shit in the world, Trumps destruction and the climate’s looming disasters     Moving was no magic bullet    I need to do “the next right thing” each day and see if I can find a new path emerging under my feet

David and the Dancing Rats

 David lives in Northern California. He lives in a house which he almost completely remodeled. The urine soaked carpet had to be pulled up and then the underlayment sanded and Natures Miracled.  He painted ALL surfaces, ceilings, walls and the underlayment. He removed the roof, repaired rot and replaced it with metal roofing. The attic got new insulation and the gutters and vents were repaired or replaced.  After new flooring and a revamped kitchen, appliances and lighting he moved on to installing solar panels and an air source heat pump hot water heater.  Ta Da! A beautiful new sweet smelling house with modern energy!  

And then the rats moved in.  David lives on a mountain side which is for all practical purposes, a nature preserve. There are turkey and deer and raccoons and elk, yes ELK which just roam around the homes and eat flowers from his front porch.    It’s both open and wooded   Despite its filth there were no Rats in the house when he moved in. But  while David had the old roof off,  before the new metal one went on,  the Rats figured out how to get in. He started hearing them in the walls  He  crawled under the house (about 2 ft clearance) and put foam and wire mesh anywhere he thought they could get in.    The Rats were silent for a while.  And then they returned. They particularly like to tap dance   It’s never clear; is it the ceiling? In the walls? or underneath? He put cameras under the house and found new places to seal up    They’d pause then return. He put snap traps with peanut butter in the crawl space, kill rats  even caught one who left his tail behind when he escaped.   But they kept dancing!! He put the camera in the attic.  No sign of them. Ahh but could they be dancing under the new insulation!?!    After the last inspection under the house in the crawl space he concluded there was NO WAY they could get in down below.  There MUST be a roof level spot they get in and then come down to their ballroom.   

To be continued (unfortunately)

David is nothing if not persistent    But of course so are the Rats.  But I’d put my money on David figuring out their  entrance and eventually putting an end to their dancing

Speaking in Quaker Meeting

 At meeting this morning: “Since moving from the farm into town I’ve been hoping for a new purpose, a project, a cause.  In this morning’s silence  I am reminded that simply the way we live our lives sets a tone a reverberation through the world.  The way we breathe, the way we frame our stories, our openness to new ideas, people, perspectives, and how we notice the Divine in everything around us and in ourselves. The way we live sets a tone that ripples out into the world.    Rilke quote. “Spirit wants only that there BE SINGING; as to who does it? in that He has only a passing interest”.  And Blake  “they also serve who only stand and wait”

I have such ambivalence re speaking in meeting.  Of course I love the ideas that pop into my mind and feel like of course Everyone would want to hear them!  But I also am aware that I can tend to be a “sage on the stage rather than a guide on the side” which I am slightly embarrassed about.    

The silence in Quaker meeting has a quality that is different than everyday silence when alone.  There is the suppressed energy of a room full of people with clear hearts and minds listening for The Divine, almost a hum.    It is a particularly delicious Silence and hard to break.  

 So when I feel moved to speak in the silence I go through several levels.  First I note the impulse but then move back into the silence. I ask myself is this insight for me alone or the whole meeting?  If it comes again, I distill it,  what exactly is the essence of the idea?  And then I let it go again. If it rises again I face the fact that it wants to be spoken but I still don’t stand  I may distill it some more. And then wait for the urge to overcome the surface tension of the silence and almost make me stand.  Having been propelled into the air I’m sort of obligated to follow through.  The whole sensation is oddly like needing to have a bowel movement.  There’s the initial sensation and then if suppressed many times it subsides and goes away.  But if it keeps coming back i need to face the fact that its going to come out so lets make it as short and nondistruptive as I can.    The few times that I haven’t done the final step of speaking , there is a definite uncomfortable almost constipated feeling.        

Today’s meeting needed to remind me that though I’m not doing anything dramatic to further the action of the world, that my being does set a tone that contributes to The Song, whether or not I ever know it. 

Pain

 Pain is a background hum of so many lives these days.  There is so much pain out there and a hopeless sense that there’s nothing to be done.   It can feel overwhelming  

 I have an ambivalent feeling about low level pain.  It’s an annoyance, an energy drain but also a motivator to do what I can to relieve it.   I think it’s a fool’s goal to eradicate it; won’t happen while I’m in a body.  And as long as I can escape in sleep or a good story, I can attenuate to it most of the time.  I’m not clear if chronic shoulder pain led Bob to take an overdose of Lorazepam yesterday, or boredom.   I think of people with intractable pain and wonder how they can stay engaged with their lives.  I think of Freda Kahlo  how did she turn her pain into art?  Was it the escape drug of creativity?   How do I find that?  I think getting back in the harness of new habits, walking, writing and now the touch typing app,  may eventually bear fruit    

I remember a bolt of awareness when I was a teenager  that “comfort addiction” was the great danger   I feel it playing out now when I “don’t wanna” take a walk or wash my floor.   I see Bob’s situation as exacerbated by that and want to learn from his pain not waste it

This isn’t working

 Somehow leaving the writing til the end of the day ISN’T working.    I’m relying on late night, half asleep ruminations where what I really want is to built a scaffolding of habit.  For all of my going on about not wanting to be driven by the need to accomplish, I do need to feel like I’m building something in this new life    I know I’m hanging open but it can’t all be just what’s  easy and no stress.   A little daily discipline, for no other reason than because I said so, would be good for my soul.     

So I’m going to recommit to 24 days in a row of writing. And I’d like to build it into my morning. And it isn’t going to be easy,

My bro in law may have tried to commit suicide tonight   It doesn’t appear that he will die from it  but in so many ways he’d already chosen to let go of his life, to avoid effort, discomfort, engagement    I love him; he reminds me so much of Gil   But that is Not how I want to live this end phase of my life   So perhaps a little more effort, discomfort, engagement is what I can try to commit to as a response to what he is choosing     It’ll be hard perhaps, but I may feel more alive because of it

Crises

 I noticed years ago how during a crisis I feel more alive.  Slightly embarrassing, when I was 9 I remember saying to my mom that I wish I’d been alive during WW11   She shushed me, said I didn’t know what I was talking about (true) but what I was getting at was the clarity of good and bad that comes with crises and the energy, the urgency.  I definitely had a long stretch of never ending crises with Gils health, David’s prison, Adam’s GB and others at work and building the house.  And they did indeed clarify thought and add (and drain) energy.  They also gave me an intense experience of “there’s More going on than meets the eye” a feeling of spiritual closeness.   I said once that era ended with Gil’s death, that I’d become a crisis addict   Not only did they make me feel intensely alive they also gave me permission to only deal with the challenge in front of me not the day to day slog of keeping floors clean and paying bills.   

I am not in crisis mode now.  I’m rewatching  A Gentleman from Moscow  and as I watch the way life and death War time informs the characters, I wonder is it possible to have that without all the fear and pain?  I’m listening to a podcast about someone who with a devastating cancer diagnosis, is blown open with feeling connected to LIFE, with loving even the mundane day to day of it.     I’ve been there.   Can I experience that without feeling on the edge of disaster?

Many years ago when Adam was about a year+ old, Tom wasn’t sure that he wanted to stay married to me.  We were living in a trailer as we were trying to build our house and during the day Tom would take our one vehicle over to spend time “working” with his new sweetie.   I was 24 with no marketable skills and I was terrified.    I remember one night lying in Bed with Tom who didn’t want me to touch him, feeling like I was falling into a black hole.   And then.  There was a feeling (I don’t think I actually saw anything) of a bright light at the end of a tunnel. And a voice said  “ You will survive. There will an other slide of this experience and you will be stronger and wiser for what you’ve gone through. You are not alone”.  In my memory It was such an intense feeling    And it was the beginning of my experience of crises as a potential gift.  And a reawakening of my spiritual curiosity.      

Lord only knows there are plenty of crises in our world right now.  But the portal is not wallowing in the awfulness.  It’s using the fear, and….?  to feel the intensity of life,   See the beauty and possibilities.   I’m not sure the way in.  I think I thought the challenge of the downsizing and the move might do it.  Not yet.  I want to find the way in without disaster at my back.   But how? (A common refrain in my life these days)

I call BS

 Hmmm what I wrote last night has a strand of BS and perhaps some truth. Being alive in a body IS all potential energy and not doing things which feed, cloth repair and grow our lives , is a waste.   I DO like to move through my lists, checking off calls, bill paying and floor cleaning without anguishing about whether I want to or not.    Just DO It, don’t think about has been a long held mantra.

So what was I dithering about last night…?   I think it’s about balance and a gentleness of self admonitions    Some days I barely start my list (or never make one!), other days I cross off everything.   Yes it feels good but the balance for me is finding equal enjoyment from letting the list go.   And not becoming too attached to my worth being tied to my level of accomplishment as my mom did.    

I’m starting to tire of navel gazing.   I’m hungry for doing (yes accomplishing) something of value,  to me or those I love or better yet the World.  But what?

So the bored and restless phase is hitting me.   I think my chewing on the idea of doing something of?worth?meaning?usefullness? Is the start of the discomfort of no longer having a role defined by my Doing.  So I should expect BS to come out of my fingers. I am trying to shed many years’ identity as a farmer, a counselor, a crafter.    I am grasping at straws of what else I have in me.   And do I have the energy to become it?

Accomplishment

 I remember mom saying that she didn’t feel good about herself if she wasn’t accomplishing something.  It made me feel a little sad for her.  But I know the heady sense of power that comes from making and tweaking and jarring 29 quarts of Minestrone AND dispersing them to various freezers and fridges!   I DO like the feeling of crossing things off my lists, but I fear the busyness which distracts me from asking what do I want, to do, to be, to contemplate; ?  I don’t think accomplishing needs to be mutually incompatible with Being, but it def can be misleading, pointing to what was done rather than why and to what end?  

My fear is with all the silence and lack of demands or responsibilities,    that there will be Nothing, crickets, pointlessness.   But I think that’s what I need to face and find out.    “It wouldn’t be the Hero’s Journey if the outcome was safe and certain”

But having a body and breath and hands means having potential.   Potential energy is to be used.   I can scribble nonsense and crumple it up and throw it away.   Or I can try to Further the Action, make my spot in the world a better place, more kindness and order and gladness for the miracle of being alive.  Perhaps accomplishment in the service of being alive is sufficient      Blah blah blah.   Is this just pointless bullshit ruminating or am I actually pursuing something important?    Maybe both

Minestrone

 I’m making my vat of soup (only one flavor this year)(maybe). It’s my annual favorite and I truly throw every vegetable I grow into it plus bone broth. This year most all of it is from my freezer, spinning frozen vegis into gold and making room in the freezer too hopefully.  Which perhaps is a metaphor for these blogs.

I sit down to write and root around for some image or sensation, some memory or feeling that seems to have  hmmm  some potential nutritional value for my life.   I keep hoping for some order, some organizing principle to emerge, (and hopefully some improvement in writing skills) but it stays, at least so far, sort of a minestrone of thought.   I read about writers who just force themselves to write even when they have no conscious “thing to say” but I find myself wondering what’s the point?   What does it accomplish?  I assume foremost is developing the habit of writing, that seems worth having. But truly would writing nonsense syllables do the same thing?  No.   I think it might allow for something to slip out of my mind,  And I may not see the patterns til I have a vat of them simmering in my unconscious     

I am finishing the initial adjustment to The Change.  The habits are there but not strong enough to be neglected.  I’m making little adjustments to my living space and routines (have started dressing in front of the gas fireplace in the morn, surprisingly reminiscent of my fire at the farm). I gather ideas from folk I see about what’s on the menu, like cruises and traveling.  Thinking about traveling to see people I’ve lost touch with who live in foreign lands.   I contemplate finding a Cause to promote  but fear it being performative, like trying to fall in love.   If something grabs me, I’m willing to be swept up but I’m not going to fake it.    So now I really am Face to Face with the Second Step, as I’ve beaten that expression into the ground these last months.   But I think I am.  The move is done.  I’m here.   Now what??

Family

 It’s odd this feeling an underlying connection yet not really having any current involvement. I went to a family wedding, saw many1st 2nd cousins of all sorts of remove.  We share dna and certain prolivities but not much day to day connection.   What am I trying to say??? I feel a connection which is deeper than liking.   It’s an idea I’d like to explore 

I wouldn’t pick any of my family out of a line up of potential best friends.  But I’d put my life on the line for them.   What the hey?  Is it some biological thing, like the way my own baby’s poop doesn’t really smell bad to me?   Or is it the stories I tell myself?   I read a lot of turn of the century kids books when I was young, Five Little Peppers, 5 Children and IT by Nesbit,  the Little House books, the Narnia Books  They all have a very strong Given, that siblings stand up for each other, put up with phases of shit behavior, but always remain connected.    That story is deeply ingrained in me.   When I see folks who don’t have that ethos, I always wonder what went wrong?   Did they just not read the books?!? 

These cousins I saw at the wedding, some of them who were very different ages than me, I never really had a relationship with, but I look at them and know they have a lot of the same dna as me.   I don’t feel as close to them as I do to the ones I played with as kids, but I feel curious about how they used the building blocks they were given which had a lot in common with mine, how did they become who they are?  

It’s why I’m so curious about my biological grandparents.   I look at my granddaughters and see the curly hair, the ADD, and book/word addiction. All of which I feel they inherited from me via their dad.  And I wonder what I inherited from mine?   I know mom’s mom was theatrical, and creative, and she  made grapefruit candy and chocolates    What else do I have from her? Mom’s dad was a theoretical physicist, not sure I have any of that gift, but I do ruminate.  A lot.   I do try to find patterns   I think metaphorically  seeing patterns and relationships in one domain that seem to explain and predict relationships in some completely other domain.    Is that part of what my grandfather Page did in his “thinking chair” which I now sit in?   (Mom was a late child in her parents’ lives, and pretty ADHD. When she was little her mom told her that though it might look like her dad was sitting in a chair doing nothing, that he was Thinking, and that whenever he was in his Thinking Chair he was to be left alone) (I love that image).   

I know others who are not close to family so I suspect it may be less genetic and more the stories.  Which lines up with my current interest in how the stories we tell ourselves shape our experience of life and then how we act.  But genetics clearly play some role.      I told Piper that I’m writing these ruminations for her children to know some of their roots. In a way doing it for them, eases a little of my longing for some message in a bottle from my grands, and finding my dad’s parents’ origin stories

Walking in the Dark continued

 One of the most powerful perspective shakeups this lifetime was years ago when I lived on the farm in Bell Center.  Our chickens were free range and the chicken house was down a ways on our dark driveway.  I needed to go down and shut the door after the chickens went in at night.  I  remember noticing my fear walking in the dark and asked myself what was I scared of? I heard myself respond “the wild things”.  A beat and then I heard a voice in my head say “but You are a wild thing too.  You have tools and a brain to  plan with and they have tooth and claw.  You are a wild thing amongst wild things”.    Boom!

And I have never been afraid of walking in the dark since then.  In fact I prefer walking in the dark. I feel like i sense things , hear things better, even see things outside better without the blinding quality of a flashlight.    That insight produced such a dramatic change in my life experience, I would so love to have something equally powerful now      Obviously I can’t stomp my foot and demand a Damascus moment,  but I can chose to walk into discomfort and ask myself what’s going on.    Comfort addiction, safe and warm is wonderful but it does not feed the potential of  Boom!

Walking in the Dark

 I’ve been reading an article re can you trust the future you will still have the same values and beliefs and ideals as you do now.    And though I follow the logic of the author and have heard this question before, I feel a through line in my evolution this lifetime.    I was a teenager when I came up with “you’re always growing but you don’t know what to, but if you pay attention you can sense when you’re on the path or off. The point is to pay attention to that ability to sense the “furthering the action”  of a life choice  rather than the content.   The content will change but my ability to sense my Magnetic True North has been my  goal and gift throughout my life     

So, yes I do trust Future me   I don’t know what she’ll be doing or feeling or even valuing , but she will still be searching for a way to be in the world which feels honest, real and expanding what is good in the world     not sure if that is pretentious? don’t think so.  When I think back on my “stringing pearls” moments of deep awareness, all of them feel like they still come from the deepest part of a consistent me.    Content will change; I may invest energy in fruitless or even destructive ventures, but nothing is wasted if I learn that No, that’s not for me.   I don’t even hope that all my choices during these next years are perfectly fruitful and satisfying.  I just want to be fully engaged with whatever I do and keep my nose to the air re is it the next right step?   I’m walking in the dark. Sometimes it’s easier to sense things in the dark

Cleaning House

 I’ve been sloppy, letting things go.  Dishes in the sink a dirty flour, not writing as regularly as I committed to, or walking.  I’ve been feeling more pain, feeling at loose ends.  

Time to clean house.  Yes the floors, but also my head.  “Pull up your socks Ms Page”. I know what to do. One foot in front of the other.  

Swept the floor 15 mins. Vacuumed rug 5 mins. Washed the floor and started the stairs, 15 mins.   Clean floors.  Took a walk only a mile.  Writing this now then I’ll do the dishes.  Tomorrow I will feel better. Letting things slide isn’t being nice to myself   (Though it’s hard to believe at the time)  Gently 

I don’t need to be militant about things, just gently, persistently leaning toward what my being knows is Good

Random Thoughts over several days

“I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.”  Annie Dillard

At Quaker mtg today “you can chose  to be Compassionate or you can chose to be Right” Dahlai Lama

Or perhaps you can chose to be Curious? Compassionate about what IS?  Tuning into the music of What Happens to sense the next step you can take which will (hopefully) Further the Action of the Universe’s bending toward Justice?    Or  maybe just notice that there is potential in pain and loss for some growth whether or not tiny believe in evolution?   And learn and expand your compassion from the pain, not waste it.    

I feel slightly mired, more pain, less energy.  It’s easy to feel a whiff of despair , easy to want a steady upward climb in my new life.  But if I’ve learned anything from dark times I’ve lived through, it is that life loops, orbits around experiences until there is familiarity and acceptance which allows the struggle to move on to a new way of expressing itself.   Increased pain and decreased energy is the background hum of aging .    Like Dillard’s quote about living as she should, noticing, accepting. I am choosing to be present to what IS rather than focused on what I’d like or feel should be.   

Which brings me to echos of the question of purpose or mission or quest  that have been popping up in strange places of late.  I keep waiting to be tapped on the shoulder by life to go DO some valuable service as I was in my youth     But I keep coming around to noticing.  It seems my bedrock skill, character gift or flaw?     As I’ve said often to young folk “you’re always growing but you don’t know what to.  But if you pay attention you can sense when you’re “on\ the path” or “off the path”.  The point is not the content of the next right step, it’s the ability to sense what’s right or not for you?   

And I guess that’s what I’m doing now.   Moving was the next right step.   I need to wait til I sense what’s next

Appreciation

 My neighbors gave me a going away party last night.  It was an odd sensation. Off the top -of my head I think the only other time a group of people gathered to celebrate me was the baby shower when I was pregnant with Adam.  I’ve had birthday parties of course. Not sure why those felt less personal sort of obligatory.  But last night felt different  It was just the local friends that have been part of our house parties for years  and at one point the hosts asked everyone to share a Kathleen memory.  It was fascinating the things they remembered that had touched them.    

I have very ambivalent feelings about being complimented   Fear that folks are “just saying that” to be nice or feel they have to come up with something to say. Yet I feel that I am an “artist of appreciation”, am able to notice and savor aspects of people, or art or some experience that other people might either ignore or not feel meets their standards.  If I have that art to appreciate perhaps I should acknowledge that some people may indeed see who I am and what I do and value it.   

The vulnerability for me is I don’t want to need their valuing, to expect it,  to alter myself to get it.  Somehow it feels safer to avoid feeling particularly appreciated.   76 years old and still insulated from others approval.  Maybe it’s time to melt a little into the fact that some people see some of me and it truly touches them. That Quaker spark of the divine is able to be seen in everyone, even in me.  Appreciate it

Bread Crumbs

 I’ve been waiting to feel some restless desire for …..something?  Something that would lend itself to researching opportunities, taking some action.    Crickets.   But I am noticing a few odds and ends of attractions which might be bread crumbs toward  something?

I’m enjoying playing with the idea of how our stories alter our experience of reality   I’m wondering if Story Corp (I believe there is such a thing?) might be something to look into.  Though in truth it’s the psychological impact of the story frame we chose  that interests me more than the story content.

I watched a movie where a group of disparate women developed a comraderie as they took on a challenge together.  There is some attraction to that idea though my years in the public school system largely drove any of hope of that away.  Still it’s a bread crumb of interest.  Not enough to discern a route forward  but still  perhaps the beginning of a beginning?  Bread crumbs may be a dream fragment or a psychological raised eyebrow     I think I need to gather many of them before I can find a theme plot a course

Making It Work

 Everything is frictionful.   “Blah” said Toad.  I could say face to face with the second step, but it isn’t.  It feels like every step.   Like doors that won’t shut and no good place for laundry,  it feels like all the daily tasks that I did unconsciously and comfortably out at the farm, are now all friction.                                             But there’s no going back.     The farm is rented, my stuff dispersed or stowed  (another problem is stuff moved toward the end, I have no memory Where it is!)   I am here and need to make it work.   It’s a slog

So what story do I tell myself about this moment ?  I think tapping into the experience of friction and little irritating rough patches suggests the image of sanding and refitting a wood working project to work well and glow with an aesthetically pleasing functionality.  That story suggests getting down into the weeds and  making  everything Work, fixing, reworking, replacing each irritant until the smooth working and familiarity allow me to move through this space, with ease , no alert caution needed.  

Or I could just be annoyed and ask myself What was I thinking!?!     I think I’ll make it work

Disorientation

 I’ve returned from my travels and have sort of fallen thru the cracks in what I call home.  Before I left I had started daily routines, the embryos of new habits  that anchored me to a new home base.  But then I joined a family reunion on a pond in Maine that has such ancient memory resonance that it’s part of my psyche’s ABC’s. And I was there with all my sibs, talking about stories and images from when Home first became a  reality.   Then I spent more time in Hanover my home from age 4-7. Also full of old magnetic images and memories.    I feel sort of like a force field of ancient memories has distorted my barely beginning roots of this being my here and now Home.    

I like to think about my thinking, and this disorientation gives me a little vertigoish sense of seeing the backside of my own head.  It won’t last; soon I’ll become engaged  (or mired) in the here and now, which is how it should be.  But seeing my new Life in a little room above a garage in the context of all my other homes, especially the farm, gives the new Home more moment, more symbolism more story potential.   

I have dream images from our house on Spinney rd and the cabin on Otter Pond.  My first apartment in Chicago has been a powerful dreamscape.  The farm in Bell Center hasn’t appeared for years  though it’s particularly  powerful when it does.  It’s the farm that Gil and I shared a dream of and created which of course figures most current images in the back of my mind.    What stories will it take to make this new space like the inside of my head, where I shed my persona  as I come up the stairs and discover  another deeper older me  waiting to be lived?

Loving with all my intelligence

 I’m alone with Ed, my brother whom I love , who is only a shadow of himself anymore.   It’s hard.  Partly from the constant vigilance needed to catch him before he wanders.  Partly because he’s there and not really there.  In some ways it’d be easier if he was all gone and then my heart wouldn’t be caught by old Ed playfulness or occasional astute remark.

And David made a careless error with his car which is going to cost him a lot of money.   I know how shame and self anger can be so destructive .   Another man I love and cannot help with his internal struggles    It makes me eat ice cream.  Somehow I feel the need for self soothing.   I wish I could come up with healthier coping mechanisms.      How can I face my own demons and self care?   It’s easier to anguish over those I love than to love myself “with all my intelligence”

That quote is from a poem by Adrienne Rich which I read years ago. It struck me at the time because love is so often thought of as immune to rationality and thinking.   I believe that Love is tied to the stories we tell ourselves.  And we can influence and choose our stories.  Choosing to love with all my intelligence means choosing stories which offer possibility, hope,  salvation.    

I love my son  He’s 46 yrs old and struggling.  I could fit all his info into a story of addiction, mental illness and character flaws.  Or I can frame it as a hero’s journey, with obstacles and personal demons which throw him into pits of despair but which again and again he rises from and tries again.  He lubricates his efforts with a preternatural generosity of spirit which he has had since early childhood and with a kindness toward those who are struggling or in pain.   I love that Hero though I know the outcome of his journey is anything but certain. I am choosing the story I tell because I know it is a story which allows growth, change evolution.  My intelligence says  this story is a gift my love can hold him in.  And I chose to love him as much as loving him chooses me.

I love my brother who is fading into dreamlike fogginess from his Alzheimer’s    I can tell myself the story that the  real “Eddie” is gone and that once he no longer recognizes me (not yet thank God) I can write off having a relationship with him.  Or I can chose to tell myself  that he is retreating into dream worlds but that they are His dreamworlds and so still a piece of the real Him.  I can chose to play with him in those strange stories , still playing with our mutual love of language and witty repartee  his somewhat caustic humor can still annoy me but it’s part of his charm too; he definitely hasn’t lost his charm!  The story my love says about him is that we will be in relationship til he dies, (and who knows maybe even after that??)  this story keeps me engages and connected to him  even at his most frustrating.   I choose to Love because seeing the positive, the marvelous, the touching keeps my soul moist and I believe the act of seeing that “goodness” feeds it, calls it into Being in the world. Not unlike teachers who see their students positives help them rise to that good.    Using my ability to see the power of the stories I tell myself and using them to further the Love in the world is my gift.   And I’m glad for it