Poetry Break

This past weekend I engaged in a writing workshop that triggered much synchronicity. The focus was on the somatic.  The bodily.  Writing in the solid grounded world to reflect common human experiences.  Synchronistic because I have been trying to say with the body through this past season.  Meditating, working, existing in my body and not just in my mind.  Not at all easy for me.

Since I did not have time to write a formal blog, I will post some of the poems that emerged from that workshop.

Winding Dusty Path
Fuzzy sweet crunchy peaches.
Sharp rough leaves.
Dreamy jagged rustling trees.
Brittle fragile shivering trees.
Damp
and brittle silence.
Dank squishy startling silence

Hopper: Hotel Room, 1931

Slumped on a bed
waiting.
Pretending to read,
to pass the time.
Waiting.
Alone in a room. Her love,
late.
She wonders if she'll have enough
money to eat, survive.
She tries to read,
alone in the city.
She waits.
Not much longer.
He promised.




In the meantime, she waits.
She sits in the room, filled
with dreams, promises of a
new life.
A better life.
Red lingerie doesn't feel like
enough.
The book doesn't feel like enough.
She waits.
Alone. The room feeling smaller and
smaller around her.

Playlists...Sounds...Music...Words... Finding Clarity: Vein of Songs

Playlist.

45 Songs... 3 hours, 24 minutes.  Probably a longer playlist than Julia Cameron had in mind.  How could I narrow it down?  Why would I want to? As an exercise in clarity, perhaps.  So my goal?  To narrow down 45 songs to 20 songs. From 3 hours, 24 minutes to approximately 2 hours.

Where do start?

Well, I have...

• 5 Tori Amos songs
• 9 Pearl Jam songs
• 4 Doors songs
• 4 Dan Bern songs
• 4 Bob Dylan songs
• 4 Ani DiFranco songs

...the remaining songs consists of two or less of any single artist.  

Clearly I need to eliminate at least one Pearl Jam song. Probably more. 

Just Breathe? 

...maybe...

I Got Id?

..hmmm...

Yellow Ledbetter?

Definitely not.  That is a song that opens the door to too many important memories.  Memories of Seattle and Buffalo.

In My Tree?

..perhaps..  It's not as big of a marker in my life.

Alive?

No way.  It brings back the start of everything for me.  The start of my voice.  It symbolizes independence, hope... everything.

Porch?

I just can't. Although it is a song from the same album as "Alive" and so there would be some redundancy in era and the memories it evokes.

Corduroy?

No.  No.  It's not a song that has the deeper past in my memory, but it is one that wakes me up.  It's one I can get lost within

Reviewmirror?

No way.  This one is an immediate trigger and takes me to some deeper places that I forget about until I hear this song.

Given to Fly?

I can't do it.  It's just an open and liberating song.  Something in it takes me out of my body and into the world of imagination. 

So what about Tori Amos?  I need to eliminate at least one of her songs.  Looking them over, I just can't: "Hey Jupiter," "Little Earthquakes," "Upside Down," "Kinda Sorta Fairytale"... "Silent All These Years"??  No. Each of these songs bring me back to the places of transition, growth, coming into my own sense of self. 

Right now I've been needing songs that help me tap into voice, transition, growth, openness, darkness, contradiction...  The songs are these beautiful contradictions that I need to feel and hear flowing through my body.  This is also why I can't get rid of Jenny Lewis' "Head Underwater."  It takes me into something newer, yet holds the space for memory.  The water metaphor seems important.

What about Bob Dylan? He's unexpectedly on this list.  But there is something in his voice in "Idiot Wind" and "Rainy Day Women."  I can't let those go.  I think I can let go of "Tangled in Blue, but not "Like a Rolling Stone."  So, that releases about 17 minutes and 4 songs, including the songs from Pearl Jam.  This is not an easy cut.

I am listening to Florence and the Machine. I can't get rid of "The Dog Days are Over."  That is such an empowering and awakening song.  I can't do it.  It takes me back to the summer I first met Matt.  

What about the Ani DiFranco songs?  I'm not sure how that will happen.  All those songs speak to me in such important ways.   I can't.  "Garden of Simple" is just one of my favorites because it stops me in my tracks. If that song comes on and I'm working, I have to listen completely and then go back to working.  And the others are staying. "Gravel" and "Out of Range"?  They can't leave the list.  I just feel so energized with those songs.  And  "Both Hands"?  I can't not listen carefully to those words.  The beat take me off kilter too.  I love it. 

So Dan Bern is another dominant artist on the list.  But those songs are all amazing.  They have memories for me.  "New American Language" is just the right amount of philosophy and lyricism that I can't eliminate. That is the case with all of his songs.  I know "Estelle" is 7:30 minutes, but I love that story. The bond and song about relationship is nothing short of lovely.  {"Collette" is too much of a sister song, so Langhorne Slim must stay as well.} "Black Tornado" and "Rolling Away" must also stay. 

The Doors probably feel the most out of place, but they are important to the trajectory of my musical love story.  The veins of sound running to (or is it from) my heart.  But I think I can let go of "Break on Through." The song is the most recognizable and familiar, but it is not one of my favorites.  The others must stay, especially "Horse Latitudes." I need that level of darkness, distortion, contradiction. 

So, one more song and 2:26 more minutes.   That puts me at 5 songs and 19:26 minutes removed.  Nowhere close to my goal.

Heart I alway love and is part of the memories of my teens.  I remember listening to "Magic Man" in the back of my parents car as a child, but I took that song with me and more vividly remember playing that song loudly in my 1978 Dodge Aspen.  Both the car and song were from a decade earlier, but there was something dangerous in that song that I love--and that still draws me in.  It was everything I was not, but carried a level of danger that was a part of my daily life back then.  But I think I can get rid of "Crazy on You." 

One more song and 4:53 minutes. 

I don't think I can get rid of Regina Spektor.  In fact, I had to refrain from adding even more of her songs.  It's her voice and how it engages with the music.  I am too attached to those songs to let them go. 

What about Suzanne Vega?  I think for me, "Luka" is one of those songs I loved for so long and for so many reasons. I can't remove that one.  And "Tom's Diner" is another wonderful song.  Introspective, playful. Wonderful storytelling. That stays too.

"The Concept" is a great song.  It takes me back to the 1990s, summers in Santa Cruz, and the era of mix tapes.  There's just too much nostalgia to let go. 

Martha Wainwright is just lovely.  Her voice.  Her songs.  I love the contradiction of her sweet voice and the anger.  There is something so beautiful about that.  Neither of those songs will go--especially since I jus finished listening to "Bleeding All Over You."

Janis Joplin and Bruno Mars. I can't let them go either.  The songs may appear uneven, but that seems to work in my veins of sound.

So how close am I to my goal?  I'm down 7 songs now and about 24 minutes.  

Playlist...

38 songs and about 2 hours and 56 minutes.

Retreat

"to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state through geography." -Rebecca Solnit

This weekend I made time for retreat.  A day to go inward.  When I think of the word retreat, what immediately comes to mind are Mirriam-Webster's main definitions:  

• "the act of withdrawing from what is difficult"
• "the process of receding from a position"

Given the past few weeks, I one might assume this is the form of retreat I was taking.  Battles at work have been taking my time and there is nothing I have wanted to do more than withdrawal.  

But that was not the retreat I had endeavored to take. This retreat was closer to Mirriam-Webster's other definitions. "A place of privacy and safety." "A period of withdrawal for meditation."  

It is interesting to think that the same word that means privacy and safety also means withdrawing, giving in, surrendering.  Because another way I think about retreat is that it gives me a chance to reconnect with myself.  And that is usually some of the most difficult work that I can do.  But it does require surrender.  It is one thing to stand up to a bully at work; it is entirely different to take a good hard look at your own self and sit with all the aches and discomforts that arise once all the distractions are gone.  That chosen surrender is anything but easy. Withdrawal can take you on some pretty deep journeys.

"The problem is not the amount of things you have in your life, it's the attitude. It's your fear of space. Busy-ness in the Tibetan tradition is considered the most extreme form of laziness. Because when you are busy you can turn your brain off."  -Reginald Ray 

Retreat becomes a way to turn your brain back on. It is is turning away from the things that alienate me and moving into the life I want to live.  But it requires getting lost in those deeper spaces within.

When it's a conscious choice, getting lost, in Solnit's assertion, is its own form of retreat. It is a surrender. 

 

Practice Imperfectly into Deep Winter

This is the last day of the juncture into deep winter.   The juncture has taken me into some unexpected places and helped me see that depth is not always what I think it's going to be.  

What do I mean by this? In my mind I had envisioned this juncture to be one in which I would meditate more, journal in solitude, stick to mindful cooking and eating, and revel in the quiet of the coming deep winter. It was anything but that.  I did increase my meditation practice.  And I have been consistently journaling.  I have also included some additional meditative practices, like walking each day.  I had some great days of mindful cooking and eating.  Wonderful days of making curries and soups and kitchari.  But it has been anything but a peaceful journey into deep winter. And I have had to fight for these practices.

Having done this work with clear dedication for about 3 and 1/2 years, I think that some of this work had turned into habit. And this juncture was hell-bent on getting me to feel that. And I mean feel it. 

[Honestly, I was starting to reach the point of boredom in these practices.]

Things were no longer feeling new and exciting and, although my attention span is pretty good, when I hit a repetitive wall, I usually am ready to jump into the next thing. During this juncture I have been presented with a number of intrusions and challenges that reminded me that cyclical processes are not boring if you approach them with fresh eyes.

[A week ago, when I lamented that my journaling was feeling repetitious and boring, a fellow practitioner said to me, "when things start to feel boring and you grow tired of your internal dialogues, that is when you know a true transformation is about to happen."]

In particular, I have had numerous work and personal challenges that have taken my time and challenged me to find new ways to keep my practices alive. I have had to work hard to keep my personal time for my juncture practices, and oftentimes, it has limited how much time I can spend in meditation, cook dinner, and do my journaling.  In all that time, I felt like I was not staying true to my practices, but as I reflect back over the past couple of weeks, I see how frequently I have been bringing the practices into the challenging spaces of work. How frequently I have been creatively making time to do the work that means so much to me.  Sometimes it means I take five minutes after a terrible meeting to listen to an intentionality recording. Or it means I leave for my class 20 minutes early and sneak in a walk before class.  Or it means that I journal and read with Matt watching television. 

How I understand this work as I look back, is that I am learning to understand what following ayurvedic tenets feels like in real time.  I cannot practice perfect in real time.  In the reality of a semester and in the constant deluge of drama that keeps on emerging around me, the practice is imperfect. That is the practice. Practicing imperfection.  What has become clear to me is that practice does not make perfect. And that is exactly what it means to live a whole holistic life. Practice is always imperfect.  As imperfect as a human being like me. 

In my moments of frustration, I return to a practice that requires me to look at my shadow self. It requires me to take those darker parts of my being that I fear and learn how they help produce the complicated and complex and complete human life I live. Practicing everyday to be imperfect.  Practicing imperfectly into deep winter.  

[A transformation has started to happen. I am seeing those dark spaces with a degree of compassion that I have never felt before.  I can see how I'm ready to delve into something new in myself.  I have my work cut out for me in this deep winter season.]

Vein of Gold

"All actors have a certain territory, a certain range, they are born to play. I call that range their 'vein of gold.' If you cast an actor within that vein, he will always give you a brilliant performance." -Martin Ritt

I think of it as the creative flow. The space where you feel yourself moving with the ocean in harmony and equilibrium.  Effortlessly, yet doing the real work of the heart. 

But the mountain that bleeds gold in its veins also carries something that required breakage.  Breaking to open the flow. To find the flow.  This reminds me of a form of pottery I attached to nearly a year ago: kintsukuroi.  

The veins of gold are not unlike the fusion between broken parts of pottery.  The place where several things came back together to form something newer, stronger, and perhaps in my own assumptions, closer to its true form. Perhaps finding my vein of gold will help me embrace a deeper relationship with my real self.

More to the point, it is in those broken spaces that I will find my vein of gold flowing, alive, ready to be seen.

"I feel that Art is a way for each of us to discover your intuitive power and source of inspiration. It can provide a basis for understanding our own humanity and that responsible role we have as caretakers of the natural world." -Richard Newman

Synchronicity

Gnome Home-Pier One-Procrastination
I'll start with the most recent and most tangible synchronicity I've had this month.  This came with my new gnome home that Matt had made for me.  I was looking for a way to display this beautiful work of art.  I wanted it to be seen, but I wanted it to be safe.  So Matt and I decided to get a shelf for it. We both kept procrastinating, though. We finally went to Menards and found a board that I would stain and we would brace it to the wall so the gnome home could sit safely.  I stained the wood and then Matt began to second guess if this was the best way to display the gnome home. When we went to hang it up, we couldn't find a stud to hang it securely.  This solidified Matt's assertion that hanging was not the best idea. We needed a stand.  I was growing frustrated. I wanted it displayed. I was feeling hurried and impatient.

So I procrastinated more.  I couldn't really find a stand that worked.  Finally I decided we just needed to go to Pier One--just for a quick look. To get some ideas.

There is was. The perfect stand.  I walked around and suddenly I saw it.  The stand is metal with a glass top.  It has three thin metal legs. The legs were fashioned into tree branches with metal leaves and a metal bird perched on one of the branches.  It was perfect.  Matt was not sure it would be secure enough with the three-legged set up.  But I knew I wanted it.  Then he thought about it and realized that the round wood I had stained would be a perfect platform for the stand. He could place braces on it and secure the stand to the wood, so it would sit securely.  I found this a synchronistic moment in which patience payed off in the form of a beautiful and perfect moment of collaboration.



Defiance-Veiled Prophet-Family
My family research has been heavily concentrated on my maternal side.  For good reason.  My mother's side has been the one with the greatest support and influence.  My maternal grandparents were almost like a second set of parents. I lived with them off and on over the time I was growing up.  They were there when I really needed them.  They came to my graduations and would visit me often when I moved away from California.  As I often call them, they were the grounding posts of what I considered my family.  This isn't to say that my paternal family is unimportant.  They are very important.  And synchronicity reminded me of that.

About a month ago I stopped by Matt's house and he was watching a television show called Defiance.  A futuristic show on the SyFy network.  When he told me the title, I paused and said, "that's the name of the town where I lived.  It's where the farmhouse of my childhood was located."  He went on to tell me it was a post-apocalypse show that's set in St. Louis. I started watching and the Arch factored into many scenes. All I kept saying as I watched was, "whoever created this show has to be familiar with the area to know the town of Defiance." Missouri was not done with me yet, though.

My dad's family are largely from Missouri. St. Louis to be precise.  I remember one summer in particular, my maternal grandparents took my sister and I to Knoxville, Tennessee for the World's Fair.  I was pretty young, but it was the first time I remember going on a summer vacation.  Most of our vacations were moves from the west to the midwest.  Back and forth between Missouri and California.  This time was different. I'd get to stay in a hotel for the first time I could remember.  No camping or sleeping in the back of the truck. An actual hotel. It felt luxurious.

While we were gone, my parents went to the Veiled Prophet Fair. At the time, I knew it as the VP Fair.  It was that summer, while we were all gone from the old farmhouse, that somebody attempted to steal my beautiful doberman, Ussay.  When we returned from Tennessee, we heard the story of my parents partying at the St. Louis waterfront. Ussay soon returned with a tar scraped face from what I can only guess was him jumping out of a truck to return home.   To me, the VP Fair was a crazy Fourth of July party that nearly ended with the loss of my dog.

Then a few weeks ago, Matt and I were watching the show, Masters of Sex.  This is a show about Masters and Johnson, early sex researchers.  I've been intrigued by the show because it touches on many taboo topics from sexuality to race to gender in the 1950s. Also, it references parts of the St. Louis area that were familiar to my childhood. Forrest Park.  University of Missouri.  Everything that seemed so big and overwhelming to me as a child.  It brought St. Louis back to me.  Anyway, this particular episode focused on the Veiled Prophet Fair. Something I hadn't heard referenced since I was a child. A lost memory that started to reemerge as I watched the show and started to understand the deeper history behind this event I only knew as a Fourth of July party that nearly ended with the loss of my dog.  From the show, I realized the fair was something altogether different than I knew.  So I Googled the fair to see if I could find out more about its history.

I stumbled upon this article in The Atlantic Monthly:  http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/fair-st-louis-and-the-veiled-prophet/379460/

Talk about a wellspring of material.  There were so many linkages to the history of Victor, Colorado, that I could finally see how Missouri and Colorado are a tangled history-beyond just the history of me.  This could only be called synchronicity. Inspiring further thought.  Deeper thought.  Opening my eyes to new and exciting journeys.

Meditating-Veins of Gold-Mountains-Creativity
Entering into my reading of Julia Cameron's Veins of Gold, I have been hit over and over again with the metaphor of mountains and mining.  The symbolic meaning of mining for gold is more about tapping into the creative spirit in Cameron's book. My creative spirit. Yet, the reality of my journey into creativity is through the literal mountains of my grandmother's childhood.  It is interesting to think about how important mountains are to me when I'm currently living in the flattest of flatland.  But what that means to me at this moment is that it requires a deeper symbolic journey into the mountains of my life. The mountains holding fire, heat, and incredible resources.  Why do people strip mine?  To exploit all those beautiful resources.  I don't want to exploit.  I want to mine to revel in those resources. What became clear is that this deep winter season is very much about diving in.  Going deep into those veins, finding the larger source of energy and creative fire.  Golden fire.

My recent meditation reminded me of that.  I was meditating on Kali.  And she didn't hold back. She dragged me deeper into my inner landscape.  Pulling me down, down, down.  After 20 minutes of meditation, she was still dragging me down.  The next day in meditation, my visualization went right back to the downward sailing until I landed on a strange beach.  The beach had an organic structure that looked like a large furnace that funneled upward--from where I came.  She was building the fire and I walked to be beach and saw an infinite ocean.  Water and fire together in this place.  And as I stood there taking it all in, I realized how it was the place I have been, but have been too afraid to allow myself to consciously address. I was no longer afraid and I knew this place was exactly where I needed to be. No longer afraid.  I know it sounds a bit trippy, but meditation is often a waking dream for me.  More vivid than most of my dreams.

And it is in this space that I begin the juncture into deep winter.

Ancestral Memories; Total Abandon

The new year is supposed to bring in reflection, but I had an early start on that reflection.  I finally read through the ancestral journal practice that Maya Tiwari outlines in her book, The Path of Practice (see December 15th entry). I was met with a variety of emotions: anger, desolation, exhaustion, sadness, boredom, furiousness, and a smattering of hope.

Anger was dominant because my childhood memories are filled with loss.  My anger was pointed at my mother and father, but it was most severely pointed at myself.  I was angry at how little I really knew my parents back then. But then I started to realize how deep that sadness trailed, because I know even less about them now.  I thought about how much I miss out.  I miss out on not knowing my parents.  Honestly, what emerged was the growing realization that I don't really have parents anymore.  Anger turned to desolation.  Bleak and barren.  That is exactly what I feared would happen when I entered back into those ancestral journals.  The reality that there was nothing alive about my relationship with my parents.  All I had were memories and the memories I have are so filled with torment that left me dry, like a desert.

Soon the desolation turned to exhaustion.  I was just tired of reading the same things over and over again in my journal.  Just plain tired of the same stories to tell and the stories didn't really open up a door to something alive or new.  It all just left me with incredible sadness. The reality that my parents are strangers to me. The reality that my strong emotions toward them were no more.  They were more like dried leaves in the fall--just blowing, blowing, blowing away. I couldn't figure out where to go with what I was feeling. I kept sitting and drifting with the feelings, however faint, yet relentless they were.  And then the boredom came.  I was so tired of the words.  Reading the same narrative over and over again.  The victim narrative. The disempowered narrative.  I became so furious at myself. I could see how the memories of my parents are drenched with the shame I hold for them and the desire to be something, anything, other than them.  I didn't learn any deep life lesson from my parents, except how to survive.  Perhaps that is not such a little thing.  I have learned to survive.  I am a survivor.  But I never learned what it meant to thrive.  I never learned what it meant to experience unbridled joy. I never knew what it meant to be totally loved and totally safe in the world. I never learned what it was like to embrace an empowered sense of myself.  I must do that now. But to do that, much to my horror,  I need to let go of anything and everything I think I know about my parents.

I'd like to say that I learned something from the ancestral practice that left me alive and full of love for my parents, but I did not. I had growing anger toward Tiwari.  I kept thinking to myself, "I don't have your wonderful father, who held so many rich traditions and practices to pass on to you, his daughter. I have emotionally bankrupt parents, who can barely take care of themselves. I have to fashion my own practices and traditions.  I have to find something meaningful out of the rubble my parents handed off to me."  I was honestly pissed off at her as much as I was my parents, because she exposed another level of rememory in my life that I thought was resolved.

Not resolved.

"The pain of unresolved memories causes part of our psyche to engage in constantly blocking out the ancestral secret, even as another part is trying to unmask it. This doesn't make things easy for us.  But try to think of this paradox as similar to the opposing forces at work when we try to break a bad habit or go on a diet: part of us still wants the forbidden food or behavior while the other part wants to be free. With an ancestral memory, it's good for you to break through to the forbidden memory." -Tiwari, p. 197

What is the forbidden memory?  What is the ancestral secret? I have yet to figure these things out.  I want to be free of my parents and the incredible sadness that is enmeshed with them.  The idea of being free of what I know of them scares me.  It feels so finite. It feels cruel. What surfaced, though, is that I hold on to the hope that something grandiose and meaningful will emerge out of that shitty past.  I hold out hope for that beautiful pearl in the mud.  And the more I keep writing here, but more I start to wonder if the secret is that there isn't a pearl to be found there, in that relationship. In that past. Similar to Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved, there is a time when a person must let go of that memory before it totally consumes.  Sethe started to see how much life she gave that past and how little life she gave her present existence. Perhaps it's time to find the pearl of the present instead of grasping to refashion a faux pearl that blinds me from who I am here. Now.


I just finished the book Wild and at the end Cheryl Strayed writes,

"To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface was enough. That it was everything. It was my life--like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me." (p. 311)

I think for me, I'm holding on to whatever that was in the past, because I want to write about it. I want to touch it, rewrite it, make it more beautiful than it really was. Refashion that faux pearl. But I realize now that to write about that past, I need to fully let it go, so I can see it as it emerges, not as I want it be seen. I need to see it as the past imperfect. Imperfectly passed, but imperfectly present and so very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

The very last line of Wild knocked me out: "How wild it was, to let it be."