Snippets

1. Snippet # 1:  Reunion

I spent my Christmas break in Petaluma, CA, visiting E.  She was 101 in July, 2016, and it had been close to 2 years since I had seen her.   Although there are signs of deterioration, she is still able to go on road trips and enjoy them.  So, in the course of my 5-day visit, we went to the top of Mt. Tam,  into the Muir Redwoods, over to the Sonoma Coast, through the Sonoma Valley,  into cheese factories and wineries.  The weather was perfect:  blue skies, crisp air, clear light.  

She fell the first night, splitting open the thin skin on her left forearm.  Her daughter took care of the ER visit, and I wasn't aware of the incident until the next morning, but the rest of the visit I started each day changing the bandages and examining the arm for radiating red or pus.  She was disoriented, convinced that she was at her aunt's house in Bakersfield, instead of her sister's house in Petaluma.  But otherwise, she was her own wonderful self, delighted to see me and to be with her family.  "Oh I'm so glad you are here, did anyone tell me you were coming?  It almost makes up for that great disappointment."   She was referring to the visit I had planned in October, that was canceled the morning of the flight because of the violent attack of vertigo.  So, her memory is intact for some things.

It was a special time, a renewal of a special bond.  It was possibly the last time I would see her, probably the last time I would see her able to go out and about.  I ached as she said "when will you come back, why don't you move to California," as I replied, "I'd like to."  Her niece drove us to the airport on that last day, and the conversation consisted of telling E that she was going to her home in El Cerrito, and I was going to my home in Taos.  That we were separating again.  That I was not staying with her.  A final hug, and I walked into the airport.  I had a cold, but that's not why I was sniffing.

2.  Snippet 2:  Politics

I delivered my rent check and he said, "So, it's 2017 and the world hasn't come to an end."  I nodded, "Not yet."  "Give him a chance," he said.  I mentioned the new Cabinet appointees, and the denial rocked me.  "He's not a racist....I don't believe in Climate Change either."  I walked away.  This is the other side of it.  I'd like to believe that Trump supporters are thoughtful, that they voted him in because they don't like the status quo and they don't believe he is a sociopath (or that it matters in terms of what he can do).  But, some of his supporters, maybe most of them, are like my landlord.  I am frightened.  I read my Daily Action text and call the number to protest the first action of the new Congress:  a breathtakingly cynical attempt to do away with ethical oversight.  And then the Sociopath tweets "no, no, no" and the media says, "ain't he great."  I feel played.

How can we be proactive instead of reactive?  How can we stop playing the Sociopath's game?  A friend says, it's just the pendulum swinging.  It's what we do, why do you get so upset about it?  But I find it impossible to be philosophical about it, and I cannot be comforted by the thought of the pendulum swinging back.  So much evil will be done on this side of the swing.

3.  Snippet 3: Friendship

In the laser music room at Meow Wolf

She spent her 70th birthday with me in Santa Fe.  We walked the Rio Grande Nature Center, we went to Meow Wolf, we checked out the Indian Fair, we froze in the Glow at the Santa Fe Botannic Garden.  We had a lovely meal at the Compound, and the busser who shared the birthday brought us free desserts.  

She is the only friend from Portland to visit me here, and has done so faithfully every year.  We have explored Chimayo, Taos, the Agnes Martin room at the Harwood, Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, Jemez Springs, Bosque del Apache, the VLA, and Albuquerque Luminaria tours.  We have talked, she has analyzed.   In the 30+ years we have been friends, we have traveled together, eaten memorable meals, drunk memorable wines, listened to wonderful music, and....talked.  She is argumentative in the best sense of the word:  she observes, questions, and thinks.  No offhand comments allowed:  you have to defend your position.

She claims to be organic in her approach to travel, to life.  "You'll retire when you want to stop working, when it's time" she says, dismissing my agonizing over budgets, health care,  and What Will I Do?  She says live in the moment, be content with what you have.  Or words to that effect.  

G says similar things.  "You're a dreamer," he said today.  I'm not so sure about that.  I know I'm tired, tired of being sick, of having no energy, of having no focus, no reason for existing.  Today, as I stood in his shower, enjoying the feeling of the hot water on my back, I thought about living in the moment.  Yes, this moment is good, but is it enough?  Am I enough?

When I was visiting with E, I overheard her talking about me with her niece.  "She's so kind, so genuine," they agreed.  I smiled at the time, almost saying "You know I can hear you, right?" but instead letting the eulogy run its course.  Now I wonder....is a life of friendships enough?  Lord knows I am a careless friend.  "You never call, you never write...."  

And it's true enough.   I think about C, my freshman year Resident Advisor who passed 3 days before Christmas, leaving behind a teenaged son and a coterie of heartbroken friends and family.  I learned about it through a text, the texter having learned about it through Facebook.  What a world we live in, where friendships are created or maintained through social media, where you learn the most heart-rending news browsing through your iPhone.  And where your grief is shared and assuaged through the pixellated pictures and memories and anguish posted through the special Friends Of group on Facebook.   

Through the shock, I process.  Why am I so upset?  She was important to my life 40 years ago, but I haven't talked to her since.  Some of my fellow advisees have seen her, talked to her, written to her, but not I.  I friended her on Facebook after the 2nd Spider reunion, and I've followed her posts, and she has responded to mine, but that does not a friendship make.  Or does it?  What comes through, shiningly, as I read the posts of fellow mourners, is what a friend she was.  She was kind, she was genuine, she was thoughtful, she was present, she was incisive, she was supportive, she was creative.  She was beloved.  And she is gone, leaving behind her beautiful poems, her unfinished book, her teenaged son, her husband, her friends, her family, the pictures and gifts and memories and love.  Is it enough?

Will it be enough for me?  I do not have her gift of friendship or creativity, I have not changed the world one iota for the better.  Is it enough that I have, outside of my carbon footprint, not changed it for the worse?  Is it enough that, occasionally, I give back to those who so unstintingly give to me? 

4.  Snippet #4:  Rituals

My friend sent me a picture of my Portland house, as it now appears.  My aching heart is soothed:  the outside shell looks good, and I have hopes that the garden will have roses in the future.  They didn't cut down the walnut or destroy the shed.  

I think about the years I spent there, and the rituals that I no longer follow.  I no longer throw parties to mark the annual holidays:  Halloween pumpkin carving,  Thanksgiving turkey from Otto's, Christmas cookie baking, New Years Day jigsaws and mulled wine, Bastille Day wines on the deck.  I used to make lefse and julecaga every Christmas and decorate the house.  I'd harvest pussy willows every spring.  I'd make winter wreaths from the red dogwood clippings and the Oregon grape,  summer wreaths from the my friend's lavender and my old-fashioned hydrangea.  I'd make paper from the junk mail and send out holiday greeting cards made from the homemade paper and origami. Every month I would respond to the changing environment:  certain hikes fit certain seasons, and every August I'd take the basil harvest and make ice-cube trays filled with pesto.  Every birthday was celebrated by a trip or a hike or a special dinner:  the common denominator being the celebration with a beloved friend.

Now my rituals are sharply curtailed.  I go out at sunset and take a picture of the sky, of the light on the mountain.  It gets posted to facebook, along with a haiku.  I make popcorn with garlic and brewers' yeast instead of cooking a dinner.  There is no pesto in the freezer, no yeast for baking bread, no oven in which to bake the bread.  I made no lefse, and the julecaga I made in Petaluma was dry. My friends don't drink, and the wine deliveries from my wine club get turned  back by UPS because there's no one to sign for them.  While I do harvest sage from my landlord's garden for sauteed buttered sage, the garden yields no other food or craft material.  I spent my 57th birthday alone.  Now I sit in the evening, knitting and listening to audio books.  And time passes, unmarked.  I am not comforted by the quiet assurance of ritual. The future does not beckon, it leers.  

Snippet #5.  What now?

I've spent the last year working a reduced work schedule:  30 hours a week, 10 hours unpaid FMLA.  The idea was that, instead of quitting my job, I'd keep the health insurance and figure out what's wrong with my health.  I've been tested and drugged and overhauled, and the net result is....nothing is wrong?  But, I still get migraines and nausea, and now I've started my annual winter cold with attendant cough.  Is it just the way my body ages?  The areas of weakness just get weaker?  What do I do?  

I have so much I'd like to do, so much I'd like to write about:  Meow Wolf, the changing seasons, the sculpture at UNM Taos, the future.  But all I seem to be able to manage are these snippets, and now it's time to make a salad for a late lunch.  I guess that's a reasonable outlet for my creativity.  It's at least a moment worth living in, if not enough for a life.

Two poems

Spring Declaration
They line the road, stark and graceful,
Black or silver against a hazy blue sky.
Outlined in green, their shadows curve along the adobe.
I did not see this yesterday.

When did this happen?

It seems this is the day the tree sap rose up, saying,
"Let the leaves burst open their tight buds and rejoice in the sun.
I will course through their veins, the heart of spring will beat
As I slowly climb the trunk."

Or perhaps this is the day I finally opened my eyes.

The change is swift:  one must be vigilant to catch
That soft subtle moment between winter and spring.

If I listen carefully, I too can hear the sap.


A Farewell
On Easter morning, I write to my friends:
"Meet me at the Kosmos, we'll listen to Pergolesi and rejoice."

Silence, both expected and deserved.  It is a last-minute thought,
Born of a conjunction of time and space.  Here am I, there is the music.
I write out of my lethargy: if they say "yes," I'll have to go.

They do not say yes, and I find my concert in the Bosque,
In the call and response of the birds' sweet and  liquid warbles.

But then I come home to the message, heart-stopping, unexpected, and undeserved.
She had died four days before, on April 1st.

Cruel fool, senseless prankster:  why did you come?

I am not angry, I cannot rail against the unfairness, the wrongness.
All I can see is those deep-set bright eagle's eyes, the hawk nose, the salt-and pepper crest.
Is this what the ravens have been telling me?

I have been too complacent. 
I thought I had all the time in the world
To grow a nascent friendship. 
I forgot that every moment is precious, never to be retrieved.

As I drive home, I see the electronic road signs:
"Watch for pedestrians...Pilgrims on the road,"
And again, "Watch for Walkers."

Shall I park my car, walk down that ramp, make my pilgrimage to the Sanctuario?
Whom would I petition, and how?

The sandstone cliffs gleam ochre and red in the late afternoon light.
I watch the raven soar,
And I can't help myself. I smile.

Loving more?

Many years ago, I was introduced to the concept of polyamory, which seemed to involve open multiple loving/intimate relationships.  I respect and love the people involved, so I listened to their explanations with my inner skeptic firmly throttled down.  It seemed to work for them, but the operative word was WORK.  Lots of communication, lots of checking in, lots of loving negotiation.  Also, lots of people who really didn't get the concept, but just wanted to sleep around without repercussions.

I decided that it wasn't for me.

Fast forward to 2012, when I moved to New Mexico.  I met a gent who invited D and me to a potluck with "unconventionally-thinking people."  After we accepted, he expanded the description:  it was the Santa Fe Poly group.  As he described it, it was a way of including sex in the friendship mix.  Friends fulfill your social, financial, cultural, and sexual needs, but not usually all four at once.  So, you have a friend with whom you go to plays, and you have sex afterwards.  You have another friend who is a domestic partner (shared finances and sex implied.)  You have other friends with whom you are social, and maybe sexual.  In some cases, there is no sex at all.   Etc etc.  The common denominator is that everyone knows about everyone else.  And, there are discussions about that.

I was a bit confused:  it sounded to me like he was describing the basic rule of thumb:  you can't get every need met by a single person.  But, how is polyamory different from having a lot of different friends and sleeping around?

It was the beginning of a whole new exploration of the phenomenon.  There's the vocabulary:  metamour, compersion, primary partner, unicorn hunters, cuddle parties, solo Poly.  There's the etiquette: asking if it's okay to hug, for example.  I discovered that there are groups that meet to discuss issues (what do you tell the kids?, how do you handle jealousy?  what do you do if your primary partner does not want to meet your other partners?)  Afterwards there's a potluck.  It's surprisingly innocent.  Of course, some of the groups are loosely-veiled swinger clubs, but most differentiate between swinging and Poly.  There's a book that describes the various forms of Poly (a W is five people, whose connections form a W, a V is 3 people, etc etc).  The author is the doyenne of the movement, and is also a couples counselor.  I'd say she has lots of business amongst the Poly crowd.

Being fresh from a disastrous stint of monogamy, I was open to the possibilities.  I wanted a loving relationship that would allow me to pursue my own interests and friendships, with none of the control and claustrophobia that characterized my failed marriage. My OKCupid profile indicated that, and I began finding that my best matches were Poly.  I checked in with them, and discovered that Poly means different things to different people.  One man wanted nothing to do with the negotiation and communication (one might say over-communication) of the Poly community.  He didn't attend meetings or meet his partners' other partners.  He wanted the openness of dating and sleeping with a number of women, but didn't want any of the other connections.  He was totally open to basic non-sexual friendship, too, which was what we had for many months. Another wanted the connection (triple dates, for example), but his form of Poly was hampered by his inability to honestly connect, and I don't think he really liked independent, thinking women. Certainly, he did not like discussion or compromise.  Any confrontation was met with, "I don't feed the drama lama."  There was a kink element too, which is often the case with failed Poly attempts.  For example, I chatted with another gent who was mostly interested in finding a "slave."  Loving relationships were not what he was looking for.

There's the more insidious type.  This man discusses the whole thing up front and is very much into meeting other partners, but he doesn't know how to handle ex-intimates. Part of his problem is the hierarchy of primary and secondary partners.  People who emphasize the hierarchy are suspiciously like non-monogamous marriage partners: you can sleep with other people, but the real caring and commitment is with the primary.  There's a truly gag-producing term for one aspect of this:  fluid bonding.  Basically, it means non-protected sex.

I met a woman who exemplified the hierarchy gone wrong:  she got involved with a couple and then tried to detach the woman of the pair.  It ended badly:  she said the male partner was a chauvinistic misogynist with control issues, and he said she went into a screaming fit when he and his partner confronted her about her divisive behaviors.  I'd guess the honeymoon was over, and they had not been honestly Poly from the get-go.

I only met one person who seems to actually walk the talk.  He attends conferences and potlucks and discussion groups, mans booths at festivals, and is generally immersed in the lifestyle.  I think he is an anomaly, though.  He sincerely wants loving relationships, not just sex, and he wants the same for his partners, whom he thinks are awesome women (he is not bi.)

The awesome people don't, for the most part, seem to be Poly, though.  I met a Colorado group and I've attended two sessions of the Santa Fe Poly, and it seemed to me that a disproportionate number of the attendees were misfits.  They were breathtakingly homely, or exceedingly obese, or socially awkward or all three.  There were a large number of sexual deviants, aka kinksters. Trans-gendered and bi individuals were the norm.  Those who were most conventionally attractive seemed to be Poly-curious, not actually Poly.  One man in Santa Fe had fantasies of a fivesome:  3 women and 2 men.  He was very specific about that.  So, there was a lot of variety in motivation and understanding.  However, the common denominator and saving grace was an attitude of  inclusiveness.  Members were truly kind and thoughtful of each other. They had interesting jobs or obsessions, they liked to discuss many of the things I like to discuss.   They seemed, despite some personal unawareness, to be genuine in their desire to create community. Surprisingly, there was a reasonably even distribution of gender and age, and hooking up did not seem to be the main emphasis of the get-togethers.  I get the impression that other Poly groups are not like that, however.  The groups I attended are organized under the umbrella of Loving More, which is a political and convention-planning entity.  I found the leader in Colorado to be thoughtful and even-handed in her approach, and, if she has demons of her own, they are not in evidence. The leader probably sets the tone:  there was some discussion of a gent in Denver who seemed to use the group as his personal dating pool.

Anyway, I was comfortable spending time with them, but I was not attracted.  Community for the sake of community is not enough for me.  And sex without commitment isn't either.  There is an inevitable emotional connection that comes with the physical connection, and people who deny that are lying to themselves and their partners.  I don't know the answer to my desire for connection, but polyamory is not it. The recent encounters with Poly folk netted some friendships and an insight into the ways other people deal with the inherent loneliness of the human condition.  But that's it, even though  I like the honesty and the sincerity exhibited by many of the pilgrims, and I do believe that people should be free to pursue love and friendship in a variety of ways.  Diversity should not be a buzz word, applicable only to the politically correct few.

Still,  friendships are not soul mates, and increasingly I find that's what I want.  Do I seek for one, or do I table that longing and attend to living a meaningful life?  Can I do both?

Praying without ceasing

A few weeks ago, a friend asked for prayers for the safe recovery of her seriously ill father.  My knee jerk reaction was to pass the request along to my more religious friends.  I don't do prayers, being an agnostic.  I don't believe I have a direct line to a spiritual boon-granting entity, and I'm not even sure that I believe in the power of positive thinking.  I treat these matters in a very pragmatic way:  if events seem dire, and I am unable to do anything concrete to assist, I send good thoughts out to the Universe and hope there is something  that can use them.  And, I contact people who seem to have that direct line that I lack.

It's sad to be adrift in a dangerous and painful world.  I want to believe that there is more to my life than a carbon footprint and fleeting connections to beings as ephemeral as myself.  My therapist says that every day is a gift, and that people enter into my life to provide an opportunity to learn and grow.  It's hard for me to believe that, despite the collective wisdom of the world's spiritualists, who all say similar things.  I wish I had the comfort of KNOWING that there is a purpose to my being here, and that my task was clear and worthy of the gift.

So, I think about prayer.  Why do people ask for prayers?  Why do we offer them?  My sister, whom I contacted in the emergency described above, does not believe in prayer as an answer to a petition.  She will pray if asked, because she does believe in the power of caring.  But to her, prayer is a communication with God, and her prayers are those of intent and focus.  She believes in St. Paul's concept of "praying without ceasing," which means, do your work with integrity, as a response to God's gifts.  In other words, have a clear intent and connection with the higher power as you complete your daily tasks.  The humblest actions can be imbued with the spiritual, if your focus is there.  Or, as Gustav Uyterhoeven says (in The Chess Garden), God is not hidden from us, He is very obvious, He's just waiting for you to pay attention.

Pay attention.  Be Here Now.  Live with intent.  It's all the same thing, and it's so very difficult to do. I analyze and question and kvetch.  If I am in a quiet space, I start thinking of things I could or should be doing. I want a product, and the product has to be measurable.  That is, it must have mass, an appeal to the senses, or an obvious effect.  It can be as subtle as an improved mood or as obvious as a photograph of the sunset.  But, it has to be something tangible in order for me to validate its worth.

My therapist asked me to find a practice that could silence the over-analyzing, because it leads to negativity which I embrace so hard it becomes real.  Thus, I'm lonely and rejected because there's something wrong with me.  I'm unproductive because there's something wrong with me.  I can't move back to Portland because there's something wrong with me.  She suggests that I question the premises:  am I really being rejected, am I really unproductive, is moving back to Portland really not an option?  But above all, she suggests that I stop with the kvetching, stop giving power to the negative self-talk, and live in the moment that is the gift to me.

I remember my sister telling me that she believes my prayers are those of joy and thanksgiving.  When I rejoice in the New Mexico skies or dance on the beach, I am praying.  And it is true, at those moments, I am not analyzing, not asking for anything:  I am joyful. But those moments don't happen often enough, and when I am faced with a rejection, I revert to my default negative self-talk.  I stop praying.

S once told me that what first attracted him was that I was clear about my needs.  Now, it turns out that this clarity is also what has repelled him.  I need friendship, I ask for it, and I don't get it.  So, perhaps this is another reason that prayer should not just be a statement of wants and needs.  While being clear about your needs is good when communicating with business partners, the more intimate relationships (with lovers, with friends and family, with God) require something else.  The connection needs to be more about joy in the gift, in this case the gift of friendship.  And one cannot petition for it.  One can only rejoice when one has it.

On the other hand, my friend's father is much better, and she thinks it's because of the prayers.  Perhaps knowing that people cared was a source of thanksgiving, which in turn was a source of strength and ultimate recovery.  Perhaps it was just the way things were supposed to be, the way they were always going to be.  Or perhaps prayers of petition do work.

Whatever is the truth, I'm sending up prayers of thanksgiving for the well-being of those I love.

Introverts

I was talking with an introvert friend the other day.  My understanding is that the term is all about where you get your energy:  from solitude or from other people.   Or, conversely, it's all about what drains your energy.

Is it possible to be  part introvert, part extrovert?  On my OkCupid profile, I claim to be a closet introvert.  Most people think of me as an extrovert, but years of working with the public drained my energy, and I needed vast amounts of alone time to replenish.  Now, however, I have all the alone time I could ask for, and I still seem to be fatigued, and I still want to hole up in my room.  I'm trying to figure out if it's a mental or physical issue.  

I am looking up

Symptoms of diabetes.

I have half of them.

We were talking about this because I'm very lonely, and I don't know what to do with that.  Yes, I know I've written about this a LOT, but it's still rearing its ugly head.  People don't have time for me and I feel rejected, but I can't blame them. I feel unattractive and unnecessary.  I don't want to force my unhappy self on other people, but I don't want to be alone either.  I have heard all my life that, to be attractive or lovable, you have to love yourself. I still don't know what that means.  It's almost like blaming the victim:  it's your own damn fault no one wants to be around you.  Well, gee, that makes me feel a whole lot better.  So....all I have to do is take my unlovable self and be confident that my unlovable self is really lovable?  How does that alchemy work?

So, I started thinking about personality traits. What is it about me that can be attractive?  What makes me want to get up in the morning and live in my skin?  How do I build self-confidence?  Is it something innate, or something that can be created?  And thus, back to the question of extroversion vs introversion.

One would think that confidence is part of being an extrovert, but lovability is clearly not restricted to the extroverts.  My friend is very lovable, after all.  And extroverts can just be annoying sometimes.  They seem to be all about self.  In fact,  I remember editing an article by an introvert customer service person.  It was illuminating:  the thesis was that you often provide better service if you are an introvert, because you take yourself out of the equation and really focus on the other person.  There is no bigger attractant than someone's undivided attention.

However, that doesn't seem to be the answer, either.  Here's what thesaurus.com has to say about introverts:
noun:  person who retreats mentally

• wallflower
• brooder
• egoist
• egotist
• loner
• narcissist
• solitary

Wow.  How do you go from being solitary to being a narcissist?  I would never have thought an introvert was an egotist.  On the other hand, a brooder does have that tendency.

Quietly watching

Clouds rolling in, birds flitting.

Am I brooding?

Extroverts don't sound great, either, though:

noun:   sociable person  (okay, that's nice) but.....

• character
• exhibitionist
• show-off
• showboat
• gregarious person
• life of the party

There seem to be some similar traits in the two lists:  egotism and showing-off for example.  Both are exceedingly unattractive.  However, the synonyms certainly point out the bias in favor of extroverts.  I think most people would find a sociable person to be more attractive than one who retreats mentally.  And there just isn't much in the introvert list that you'd want to be around.

And now I think I understand my problem.  I AM an introvert.  I need to be solitary, to think (brood if you will), to figure things out.  And that is unattractive to a large part of our culture. So, my game face is that of an extrovert.  And that is unattractive to me.

It's time to turn my back on the whole thing and remember what my friend A said, in the aftermath of her divorce to a charismatic, arrogantly brilliant scholar.  The very things that attracted her to him were the things that made him unlivable, not to mention unlovable.  And she retreated to a Henry James quote:  "Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind."

And the kindness has to be to myself, as well.

Musings on Friendship

Last Sunday, E and I visited the First Unitarian Church in Santa Fe.  The service was about friendship. I was delighted to see Munro Sickafoose, from PDX.  He's the intern minister, and he gave the children's sermon.  Friends were compared to various vegetables.  The kids pulled vegetables out of a huge basket, to the accompanying descriptions:  eggplants are elegant and beautiful, Jerusalem artichokes are quirky and funny.  I wouldn't say an onion is complex, myself, but you get the picture.

We sang "Lean on Me."  The readings included the ever-popular "A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet."  There was nothing earth shattering about any of it, but it fit my current thoughts very well.  E found the service lively and the congregation welcoming, but the sermon a bit long and repetitive. I would agree with that, but I spent most of the time knitting and thinking, so the sermon was a reasonable counterpoint for me.

I'm curious about the human need to codify things, and I'm also intrigued by the theory that we are genetically coded for friendship.  The minister put friendship in four layered categories:  public (those people we keep running into at concerts and dog parks and libraries); social (those people with whom we make dates or to whom we gravitate during large gatherings); personal (those who listen to us kvetch and know some of our deep secrets); intimate (those with whom we build a life, share tears, share silence.)    While we need all of these to create community, and we need community to live a meaningful life, we cannot manage more than a few intimate or personal friends in a lifetime, and people move from one category to the other as we grow and change.

As I said, this was nothing earth-shaking, but I found myself thinking about my current situation.  E and I are both isolated from our long-term friends, and we are both coming to terms with that.  The difference is that she is 98 and I am 54.  She is mourning the loss of her community, but she is not really looking to build a new one here.  The cooperative and some people at church will probably suffice.  I, on the other hand, am still mourning the loss of Portland friendships, and now I have left my new Albuquerque friends.  In addition, I am trying to figure out just what my friendship was with D, and where I go from there, and I am still trying to maintain connections with my musical and personal/intimate friends.

When I began this gig, the initial idea was to pretend I'm on a retreat or a journey:  I'm living up in these hills, learning the geography, becoming acquainted with flora and fauna, taking things slowly.  I spend the morning practicing tai chi chih, doing the crossword, drinking coffee.  I plan to spend the afternoon practicing, drawing, writing, learning Spanish, walking, reading, doing the creative and soul-building things I have not had time to do, healing from the past 10 years of loss and difficulty.  I tell myself I haven't lost my friends, I'm just on a private adventure, and I'll get back to them later.

That's all very well, but there's that darn genetic coding to contend with.  I need people.  I need to feel needed.  I miss seeing and talking and cooking and hugging and sleeping with my friends.   I miss Monday morning yoga with M, Sunday hikes with G, duets and trios with C and M, UCC choir with A, early morning walks with J, the occasional sleepover with S and N, lunch with T.  And that's just the Albuquerque contingent.  There are the Scrabble games with M, the dinner parties, the walks and hikes, the trips, the wine-tasting, the plays and movies, the yoga at B's, the family gatherings, the music, the work, the knitting group....so many friendships built up through the years, so many activities.  All fading in memory.

So, I've been brooding.  And then I listened to the sermon and I thought, yes, it's okay that my friendships are moving from more intimate and personal to social to maybe just memories.  It's what happens in life.  It's not physically possible to maintain tight connections with all the wonderful people who have crossed my path.

It is, however, possible to pick up where you left off, as I discovered a few weeks ago, when 3 of my advisee group from college came for a visit.  B was the only person whom I have seen regularly:  we have traveled together several times since our first big Europe trip after we graduated, and we see each other regularly when I visit my family at Christmas.  She writes excellent long letters, shares her photographs and her thoughts, and responds to mine.  I was not surprised to feel connected with her.  It was different with G and C.  I haven't seen them in 30+ years, and the letters and phone calls have been spotty to say the least.  And yet....there they were.  Lovable, quirky, fun, caring, trustworthy.  Friends.

There was a lot to catch up on, but that's different from re-learning the friendship.

So....old friends.  They are a treasure.  They cannot be replaced; and, it seems, they cannot be lost.

But, they also aren't here.  And I'm back to where I was before.  Brooding, lonely.  Mourning my lost friends and activities.  Envious that they are continuing to build their friendships without me. Wondering what life holds for me in this next adventure.  Wondering if these fledgling friendships will stand the test of time.  Hoping so, but doubting it.  T, for example....we met a year ago, and he rapidly moved up the friendship ladder from social to personal to intimate for a short time.  Then he quickly ran back down the ladder....personal, then social, now...absent.  He was there when I really needed someone, and I think I'll always love him for that.   I don't need him now, but I miss him, and I don't know why he left.  Where does that fit in the friendship category?

It's hard to not take the loss of a friendship personally.  I always wonder what I did to drive a friend away.  Currently it's obvious:  I've physically left friends old and friends new, and I have not maintained the virtual connection.  But that doesn't cover all the losses.  In my past, I assumed that the closer people got, the more likely they were to find out how very unlovable and irritating and just plain burdensome I am.  And,  just when I felt comfortable enough to say, "this is a friend, this is a lover, this is a trusted other," the gods (bored angels, if you will) would hear it and take the friend away. I still have that fear niggling in the background.  I am afraid to ask for time or caring, afraid that I will appear needy.  I'm still a twelve-year-old, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the loss, prepared for it, but always hurt when it comes.

Simultaneously, the rationale mind is chiding me:  this is not a personal thing.  The Other has his/her own demons, problems, needs.  You have very little to do with his/her decisions and actions.  Your job is to be a friend to yourself, to grow, to become a trustworthy, likable person.  Loss comes with the territory, and not everyone you need will need you back.  In fact neediness is not something to foster on either side.

That being said, I realize one reason why I miss D.  He was the only person whose need for me was boundless, who would never leave.  It wasn't good for either of us, of course, and I'm not even sure he liked me, but he certainly cared.  Oh how he cared.  And for the first time, I was the one doing the leaving.

I thought about this the other day, and then the whole concept was brought into sharp focus when my friend S lost his ex-wife.  She was his D:  needy, charismatic, demanding.  "If you really loved me you would...." But she was also his best friend, the love of his life.  They never stopped communicating after the divorce, and he fully expected to be there for all the important passages of of her life.  So, her sudden death in another country left him full of guilt and grief.  He wasn't there.  It was not right.

How does one let one's friends know they matter?  How does one maintain connections through separate lives, duties, and distances?  How does one continue to grow friendships while fostering the old ones? How does one grieve the loss of a friend without feeling guilty about the sins of omission and commission?

I listened to S talk, held him while he cried, cried with him.  I didn't have any wisdom or emotional salve for his grief.   I was present, and that was enough.  And that's when I finally come to recognize why I am still brooding about D, and about my absent friends.  I cannot be present for them, and I want to be.

That day he woke up
In a world that did not have
His best friend in it.

Bell Jar times

I was reading a new book, The Man in the Empty Suit.  In it, the protagonist/narrator is a time traveler who returns to the same dissolving hotel in the same empty city every year to celebrate his birthday with his former and future selves.  The Youngsters and Oldsters are in a perpetual game to learn the future and protect the past, and none of them like where they've been and where they are going.  It's funny, and I hope the author's attempt to play with paradoxes doesn't get too annoying.  But that's not what I want to write about....

In one toss-off comment about the future, he refers to spending time with "sad and lovely Sylvia."  Plath, of course.  Serendipitously, she is mentioned in another new book I am reading, Forty-one False Starts, a book of essays about artists and writers (very fun to read, btw.  I got sucked in by the essay entitled "Salinger's cigarettes" and stayed for the rest.)

So, when I was looking in my brain for a metaphor for my current emotions, I thought of The Bell Jar. Of course, that was Plath's metaphor for madness, but I don't have to descend that deeply to resonate to it.  The sense of being cut off from the world around you, observing but unconnected, numb and alone, surrounded by stale uncirculating air....that still fits.  Another metaphor that fits is Christopher Isherwood's, "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."  Except, he plans to take all these images and DO something with them.  Develop them, fix them.

The images work, but I'm neither mad nor creative.  I'm....disconnected.  For example, I was driving to work yesterday after visiting my bank, and I took a wrong turning.  I found myself going west for a few blocks, then making a break south for the Lead/Coal Corridor, only to be stuck in the dead-end maze of the University.  Circle back, go west a few more blocks, go south, get mazed.  And on and on, for a good 20 minutes.  A normal person would either be annoyed or pull over to check a map.  Or both.

I continued my dysfunctional process, watching the cars, the wind-blown trees, the dusty horizon.  Feeling the sun heating the air around the car while the a/c blew cool on my arms. Listening to the rock on the radio, sometimes even singing along.  I was aware of everything, but none of it was reaching my thinking, feeling, functioning brain.  It was all sensory input that seemed to have no connection with the person inside.  In fact, I wasn't sure there was a person inside.  The mere act of noticing the disconnect does not a person make.

It's an old problem.  Be here now, check.  Move forward, check.  Live authentically, check.  But how?  Rambling about my feelings doesn't make them real.  Scheduling things with friends doesn't make me connected to anyone.  Learning and doing new things doesn't add up to a life.

I think about my relationships.  I have left the friends who know and accept me for the flawed, annoying person I am.  It is easy to call them, to do things with them, to not do things with them.  It's comfortable.  There's no implied rejection, no feeling that I am importuning them.  That is not the case with the nascent relationships here, all less than a year old.  I am not important to any of these people;  if I moved tomorrow they would not care.  I initiate activities, and feel like they are just humoring me:  they don't reciprocate, they just go along.  Of course, that's not totally true:  just yesterday I received 4 invitations to do things in the upcoming week.  But it's what I feel.  The ease of familiarity is lacking.  I'm still feeling them out, still not sure they want me around, still not comfortably connected.  I can't expect otherwise, of course. One year is not time enough for those bonds to form, especially when I'm going through traumatic change and am buried in my sorry self.  Who wants to be around that?  Not me.

When I married D,  I vowed to delight in his quirks.  Subtext, he'd damned well better delight in mine.  He didn't and most people don't.  Except, maybe, family.  After my father's passing, I wrote a paean of loss.  That tribute has disappeared (where?  on a thumb drive or CD back in Portland?), but I remember one sentence clearly, "I will never again have a person in my life who delights in me so wholeheartedly."

On Father's Day I found myself reading Dad's old WWII journal from his time on the USS Navarro.  My sister E had transcribed it years ago.  It was full of one-sentence entries, cryptic abbreviations, and repetition.  "Listened to Radio Tokyo.  Japs in the hills.  Still in harbor.  Went to the canteen for ice cream and coke."  But, laconic as the journal was, I heard my Dad's voice.  He never wrote long letters, and they were mainly a series of bald statements:  no description, no commentary.  And somehow, they were interesting, probably because Dad was interesting, and whatever he chose to mention was worth paying attention to.  You don't need to prattle on endlessly to make your point...a lesson I have yet to put to use.

I miss sharing my life with him, I miss having a life worth sharing.  And I'm tired of that friggin' bell jar.

Endings and Beginnings

A few weeks ago my landlady invited me to an "endings" ritual, to punctuate my divorce, to honor the feelings and the past, and to look to the future.

It was very kind of her to recognize the anti-climax and emptiness I was feeling, and to offer me a way to deal with it.  I accepted, not knowing what she had in mind, but trusting in the intent.  It was a night after work, so we planned for 7 pm.  I got home and decided to bake some chocolate chip cookies as thank you offering.  Or rather, a cooky:  the toaster oven doesn't really accommodate cookies, so I put the whole batch in a pie plate.  It doesn't cook evenly, so the bottom was burned.  But you can't really go wrong with butter, chocolate, pine nuts, and brown sugar, right?

M's house is a lovely adobe, with a fireplace and wood floors.  We sat in the living room, on a two-person couch, facing the western windows into the garden.  She had a tri-fold votive screen, which held 12 votive candles, and it was on a table about 5 feet away from us.  We each had a glass of water, and a box of kleenex nearby.

She started with a short meditation:  close your eyes, think of a joy, focus on that sensation.  I can't remember what joy I thought of:  friendship?  snorkeling?  waking by the ocean?  chocolate chip cooky?  but it was actually hard to choose and focus on it, which was a nice revelation.

Then we opened our eyes and thought of an ending or a loss that we wanted to honor.  We took turns, speaking of the event or the thought or the person, and then going to light a candle.  Speak, rise, strike the match, light the candle, sit back down.  In my case, grab a kleenex.  When the candles were all lit, we blew them out, and those endings were sent upward with the smoke.  We continued to speak more thoughts, light more candles.  We talked about joyful losses:  loss of weight, loss of anger, loss of unreasonable expectations.  We talked about grief:  loss of husband, loss of father, loss of self, loss of home.  We talked about endings:  end of a job, of a lifestyle, of youth, of middle age.  All of which leads to beginnings.

She usually does this ritual during the dark of the moon, to help honor the past time and look forward to the new beginnings.  I was reminded of the solstice celebration at T's, 2 years ago back in Portland.  There, we started in darkness and lit each others candles and spoke a word for winter.  The growing light and the sense of community were equally palpable.  This was a more intimate ritual, with just the two of us, and it went deeper in a way.  It began the process of letting go. I have been talking about losses in this blog, but I haven't been letting them go.  I've been stuck in the grieving process.

Today, I came right up against the perils of being stuck.  I have feared that I didn't have the wherewithal to find myself again, and I have feared losing my friends in the process.  I have feared that I am not worth the time or the stress, that the more I reached out, the more I would drive away the help. And that is coming to pass.

It's probably a good thing to realize, viscerally, that the healing has to come from myself, and that others can do little to help.  You can't replace 30 years of connection in a few months, and while those distant connections are real and deep and strong, they can't be there for you every day, or even every week.  And neither can the new connections.  Their support is of a different nature, and the trust and depth are embryonic, maybe stillborn.  For the daily bread, I have to grow my own yeast, bake my own loaves.  I have to do it alone.

And crying is bad for my sinuses.  

Yesterday I walked in the hills with a new friend.  We talked, we were silent.  I touched the amazing rocks, I sniffed the piny juniper and the spicy woody willows, I watched the white fluffy clouds in the brilliant blue sky, I listened to the wind in the junipers, with the deep silence behind the sound.  As ee cummings said, "how could tasting, touching, seeing, hearing, breathing, any -lifted from the no of all nothing- human merely being, doubt unimaginable You."  I spread my arms to the soft cool breeze, I was full of joy, full of the moment.  And that is as real as my grief and my tears.

I just wish I experienced it more often.

To honor Easter
I resurrected two joys:
Hiking and Thai food.

Regrets, I've had a few

I don't even like Sinatra, or the song.  But when a Facebook (and old school) friend posted a Guardian article about the five top dying regrets, I found myself quoting "My Way."  As with many things, it was a serendipitous posting, fitting in with my current thoughts.

Minor Geminid digression:
I once heard that the reason you notice things is because of the filtering part of your brain.  (Gotta get something out of those management classes!) Without the filter, you'd go into sensory overload.  But, once you've created a pathway, the filter lets things through.  Agatha Christie mentions this phenomenon in They Came to Baghdad.  It's universal:  once something grabs your attention, you see it everywhere.

So, I'm thinking about regrets?  Yes.  This is not the same as regretting things. It fits into my personal work:  I've been going over my assignment from my therapist.  What do I want, need, deserve?  It is significant, I think, that in my previous post I turned Deserve into Desire.  Apparently, I don't want to think about what I deserve.  Desire is need, so is want, and I turned the exercise into a puzzle:  how do I differentiate?   I spun my wheels, trying to fit my list into increasingly abstruse categories.  Is healthy food a need or a want?  What about love? Clearly a desire....but is it also a need?  What about meaningful work?  friends? safety?

Here's the list I dictated into the phone while sitting on a bench outside during a long break:  food, lodging, meaningful work, safety, security, goals, creativity, love, friends, serenity, connections, music, writing, books, exercise, amusement, sleep, healthy food, wine, sweetness, laughter, joy, fun, a lover, purpose, stability, money, peace, someone to take care of me, strength, competence, self-confidence, time, adventure, activity, health, wisdom.

Then I started spinning my wheels further, analyzing the order in which I thought of things.  Does it indicate my priorities?  Or something deeper?  I observed that I started with the concrete, included a lot of my Shoulds, and smuggled in only a few emotional needs.  And that I followed "someone to take care of me" with a bunch of self-sufficient qualities.  It's a disjointed, contradictory list.

Even when I'm trying to figure out how I got into this emotional pickle, even when I'm trying to dig my way out, I seem unable to focus on the sweet, joyous things in life:  love, friends, happiness.   It's no accident that the Declaration of Independence does not talk about basic needs (food, lodging, work).  It talks about life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.  It does not attempt to define happiness or the way it is pursued.   Why can't my own declaration go in that direction?

And this is where regret comes in.  There I was, sitting on a bench outside the Balloon Museum, facing my beloved Sandias, watching the play of New Mexican light over the mountain, following the clouds in the endless sky.  Why wasn't I walking, taking photos, basking in the beauty around me and rejoicing in the health of my body?  Why was I focusing inward instead of outward?  Why didn't I do something useful with my life, the little bits and pieces that I have to work with?

The big regret is waste:  waste of time, opportunity, talent.  And I think the real waste is only slowly coming to me.  I am wasting my joy.  When something wonderful happens to me, I transmogrify it into a problem.  When someone tells me I am loved, I question it.  When I try to think of what I deserve, I dodge the question.

Now, this is who I am.  I think too much.  In the long run, what does that accomplish?  What seems like a waste could be seen as the necessary part of the whole, neither good nor bad.  The yin and the yang, as it were.  However you see it, the waste is inseparable from the procession of events that make up a life.  It's a product.  And so is regret.  It's what thinking humans do.  You get a result and you rejoice, but you also regret.  So sue me.

After all this musing, I end up with the Declaration of Independence. I have the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  Looking to my list, I find that it's easy to categorize from this point. I deserve these rights.  I need the basics to use my rights:  food and shelter, work and play.  I want the things that enhance these needs: security, stability, creativity, meaning//purpose, health, money, amusement, aesthetics, exercise of mind and body.  Coming full circle, I deserve the intangibles that inform these wants and needs:  love, laughter, joy, friendship.  Where does regret fit in?  It probably shouldn't come into this at all.  But  I  do regret the time and energy I waste in the pursuit of unhappiness.

However, I don't fucking need, want, or deserve someone to take care of me.  Let's make that perfectly clear.