learning

...to be selfish enough to take care of myself properly, but not become so self absorbed that I begin to act like, well, you probably wouldn't notice if I were making a comparison to you, now would you?

baby steps

Step One:
Don't falter. When you find yourself wanting to lie in his arms, send him home.

Step Two:
Continue to speak your truth. It is no accident your worlds collided. Make the damage matter.

mouse

To the little grey mouse under the kitchen sink:

I'm sorry that there isn't enough room in the house for all of us, and I'm sorry for what must have been a traumatic evening spent, at least in part, between my cat's teeth. She was only doing what kitties do, and, in truth, it's probably best that she did. I only wish she possessed a full set of teeth so that she could have finished you off more quickly. Finally, I am sorry that I didn't have the heart to finish you off when she eventually tired of toying with you. I know you must have been in pain, but I could neither bring myself to wring your tiny neck, nor scoop you into a plastic bag (where you would have suffocated-- surely a fouler alternative), and instead only turned you out into the tiered bed of flowers in the front yard. I hope you expired quickly and in peace, or that you made a quick snack for a wandering owl, and that you can forgive me.

crossroads

Well, the times, they are a-changin'...

I know that I am on the precipice of something new that is unfolding before me and I know that the decisions I make now, the boundaries I set now, will alter the course I am on and lead me down a different, and hopefully better, path. As is often the case when one is faced with a pattern or path altering decision, it is sometimes difficult to see clearly the right steps to take (and by right, I simply mean, right for me), but I am reasonably confident that I am making the appropriate choice to stand where I am and to let go of those things to which I cling, perhaps too dearly, and embrace the uncertainty, which is, after all, the only thing I can ever truly count on.

baby raccoon

Yesterday, we found a baby raccoon nesting under our porch. He'd come out and was burrowing in the grass by the side of our stairs and was so cute and peaceful looking... And then it started to seize and make terrible wheezing noises, puffing itself up all over, and then collapsing back into a peaceful, sleepy state. It was the saddest thing to watch. We had to call animal control to come pick it up and take it to be put down. It turns out there is an epidemic of distempter in the raccoon population right now and it wreaks havoc on the neurological system and there isn't much they can do, but put them out of their misery. The mama raccoon came back last night to find her nest empty and the space cleaned out. I don't know if she'll stick around or not, or whether she's healthy or not, but I can't stop thinking about both of them.

words and deeds

It occurs to me that I do not always place my trust in those who are deserving of it. I expect people to act in accordance with their better natures, with what they profess is important to them, with honesty and integrity in all dealings. But the reality is that most people, certainly not out of any maliciousness, rather in their fumbling attempts to be happy, are utterly self absorbed and act with little to no regard for anyone other than themselves.

I ask myself why, for instance, do I place my trust in someone who chooses to be dishonest in his closest dealings with others? I don't mean outright lies, but lies of omission, which is, to me, as dishonest. And is it too much to think that the people I am closest to, who say they love me, might consider, for a second, what it means to, say, pursue a course of action within a very small pool, that will leave me having to swim in their mess after they are long gone, and, perhaps choose to do otherwise? That all sounds very abstract, but I live and work within a very small community and it would be nice to think my long term lover and friend might choose not to make things more difficult for me, personally and professionally, especially when he'll be leaving the state soon.

I have to remind myself of the kinds of relationships I value, that I want to cultivate in my life, and remind myself to not be so attached to one that fails in such important ways. I say this without judgment, despite how it may appear. I would not invest such time and energy in one that I didn't feel was worth all of it, but I sometimes lose the essential perspective that reminds me just how fickle and unreliable most everyone is. People are not what they say, but what they do, and while everyone makes mistakes, or takes some course of action that causes another some grief or difficulty on occasion, again, not with any thought of malice, it is important to consider the pattern of action that presents itself and not become too attached to those whose words and lofty aspirations fly so high above and apart from the more consistent baseline of their deeds.

Most importantly, I have to remind myself that I keep choosing these situations and I am the only one who can change that. I wonder, when I am quick to love and prone to accepting others as they are, whether perhaps it wouldn't have been a good idea to keep all my defensive walls in place instead of systematically tearing them all down. There is no point in having the world's most open heart if there is no solid foundation upon which to rest it. I have a lot of work to do.

an open letter

Dear Mosquitoes:

I swear I am not snack food. I'm begging you: please, please dine elsewhere.

Also, if you would remind me again of what part of the ecosystem you are so vitally supporting, I would appreciate it ever so much.

~me

a quiet day

This is yet another entry about my experiences on the #15. This morning was marked by the loud and mostly vapid conversation of two girls (in their late teens, I'd guess, but possibly early twenties). Both were dressed as though ready to hit the clubs, even though it was barely 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, which was fine. They were headed to Seattle for an overnight trip. They carried suitcases large enough to block the aisle for this overnight trip. I mean comically large. I mean, two weeks worth of stuff for one night.

They were probably pretty, with fine young skin, though it's tough to say for certain, since I could have carved my initials into their cheeks through their makeup. The wafting power of their combined perfumes was enough to knock over a small army, but, actually, none of that was what I found so off putting.

Girl #1 sat talking on her cell phone in an excessively loud voice.

"Yeah, like, this whole week I get to go on trips. Uh huh. I'm going to Seattle and then I'm coming back tomorrow night. And then I'm going out again. And then I work on Friday. And then this weekend..."

You get the idea.

An older woman, who happened to be sitting next to me, leaned over and politely asked, "Miss? Would you mind speaking a little more quietly, please?"

And the girls ignored her, the one continuing her conversation, it seemed, even more loudly.

The woman spoke up again. The exchange went like this:

Woman: "Excuse me, but would you please keep it down a bit?"

Girl #2: "Um... can't you see she's talking on the phone?"

Woman: "I know. I talk on the phone but do so---"

Girl #1: "Good. I'm glad you talk on the phone."
then to her caller: "Yeah, whatever, there's this woman..."

Girl #2: "If you want quiet, don't take public transportation."
(Girl #1 continues to talk loudly)

random male passenger: "They should make a rule against that."

Woman: "There is a rule against that."

random male: "Oh, there is." (Points to sign on bus with obnoxious girl talking loudly on her cell phone next to the phrase "Do Not Disturb Other Passengers"

Girl #2: "If you wanted quiet, you should have gone to the library."

young guy with saggy pants who is standing behind the girls, obviously checking them out: "Yeah, totally."

(This guy was strange, because he was encouraging their rude behavior, it seemed, in an attempt to impress these girls, and yet not three minutes earlier, he'd politely given up his seat for a guy with an injured foot.)

Woman: turns back to her book, shaking her head a bit but saying nothing.

Girl #2: "I mean, it's a public place. It's PUBLIC transit. If you don't want people to talk don't be in public."

young guy: "I know what you mean, right?"

The bus pulls up to the stop. The girls are so busy being rude and talking on the phone, respectively, that they don't realize it's their stop. The bus starts to pull away from the stop.

Girls (shouting to bus driver from the back door): "Um, we're trying to get off."

Girls again: "UM, WE WANT TO GET OFF HERE!"

Driver opens the back door for them.

Girl #1 to woman: "I hope you have a quiet day."

Girl #2 to woman: "Yeah! I hope you have a QUIET DAY."

They exit. The doors close.

I laugh and say to the woman, "Well, the good news is that most people eventually grow up."

Woman: "That's true. Except for the odd few, most people do."

Me: "Looking back, I'm sure I was a terror as a teenager."

Woman: "Oh! I *know* I was!" She laughs.

And with that, it was clear she didn't have any ill-will toward the girls. She was just asking them to take it down a little. But, presumably, because she was old and white haired and looked a little prim and was reading her book, these girls took it as an attack and went out of their way to be rude to her.

I decided that perhaps, terror though I was, I was perhaps not anything like those girls. I can't speculate on the women they'll grow into, but I can say that I hope I still have a sense of humor like the older woman I sat next to clearly possessed.

tuneskip?

Is there a word for when, for some inexplicable reason, a song gets stuck in your head that you have not heard anywhere recently and for which you do not have any particular fondness? Is there a separate word for when this occurs and only a small segment of the lyrics loop through your mind endlessly? Is there yet another word for the special kind of hell it is to experience both of these things to the tune of Toto's "Africa?"

water and napkins

So, I've been nerding out on a particular astrologist who deals with astrology from a depth psychology perspective. Among the many interesting posts she makes are weekly posts that give a day by day explanation of what's happening with the planets that week. Friday's entry included the following:

"The first celestial shift of the day occurs at 3:32am when mercury moves out of Gemini and into Cancer. the conscious mind and intellect's shift from Gemini to Cancer is from air to water, intellect to emotion, Spirit to Soul. With Mercury moving into the mothering sign of Cancer, conversation and communication can take on more watery, emotional, nurturing undertones. Speaking from the heart is supported in the coming weeks- as is focusing on the home, family and inner life environment." (emphasis mine)

I note this simply because I had some weird ass dreams early Friday morning, so much so that I woke up and drafted text messages to myself to remember them. This happened at about half past three. I've outlined the dreams below, since this blog has become a bit of my own personal dream archive.

Dream #1

I was attempting to navigate class 5 rapids alone and narrowly avoided my own potential death. I don't know why I was there, or really what I was doing. There was some kind of chute that had been constructed in the waterway. It had two tiers, one dropping water into another that further opened onto a particularly rough patch of water. Then the river continued on to the rapids. I was floating across the water in the top of the first tier in a small, round inflatable raft. I remember running my hands along the edging, afraid that the chute might open, while at the same time not really understanding the danger.

A carload of strangers pulled up to the side of the waterway and shouted at me to get out of the water. They said it was the worst part of the season and explained high high tide and high low tide. They also told me that the Eel River, which is where I was, was notorious for its dangerous rapids. Apparently the chute is where adventurous tourists would drop in and then directly head toward the violent, churning whitewater. (Later, I checked into the Eel River and found it is an actual river, and the Dos Rios to Alderpoint section of Eel River in California is 47 miles long and is classified as a class II-IV section. Weird.)

The next thing I knew, I was standing on top of a platform on the first tier of the chute and an old friend of mine who I used to work with at Kepler's Books was saying that he didn't understand how the whole thing worked. He leaned on a lever that dropped the platform and sent me flying over the edge to the second tier. My bag, which had been on the platform with me, was tipped over and the contents emptied onto the second tier. Water began rushing on top of me and I knew that as soon as enough water had dumped on me the second tier would open and I'd be sent straight down the chute into the rapids without so much as a raft. My friend absent-mindedly pushed the lever again and the flow of water stopped. I was soaked. I picked up my bag to find that my cell phone was still in it and completely dry. I was injured and wet, but otherwise OK.

Dream #2
I was sitting down to dinner at an outside table with B, and also R's friend Ryan. There were other people there, but I don't recall whether I knew them or if they were with us. Then a girl I used to know (in the dream, though not actually in real life) sat down to the table and began complaining about the explosive arguments she regularly got into with the man she loves. I told her "I might almost prefer that to the back and forth of 'I'm in this, wait, no I'm not, I don't feel that way, except, I love you, and we should do this, but I'm scared, well, I'm something, and anyway I want to be with other people, only, I love you, so, maybe I should go' and me going, 'okay. eviscerate me. again.'" The girl said, "If it works for you it doesn't matter that nobody understands it."

The girl and I then walked to R's old apartment, which he'd recently moved out of, and we went inside where we found various items that R and other former tenants had left behind. Most of the things we found were not particularly noteworthy, but then I saw a partial set of my cloth napkins and place mats strewn about the apartment. I remember feeling really annoyed by this and then going around collecting my things and stuffing them into a plastic sack. I remember not knowing how or why R had these things in the first place.

dogs

Once again, I find that I often have more patience and fondness for dogs than I do their human owners. This is, perhaps, because good dogs are often nicer and better behaved than the human on the other end of the leash.

you look like sex

Walking down the street this morning, I was treated to these fine words, shouted by a gravelly voiced indigent fellow:

"You look like sex," he yelled as I passed him to cross the street. "What are you doing walking around with all that sex?"

Some days riding the bus practically pays for itself.

unconditional

It has taken me a long time, but I think I finally understand what it means to love unconditionally. It is not a matter of not having wishes or desires. I may desire to be with you, that you might love me as I love you, but such desire does not determine my relationship to you or how I treat you. My love for you extends beyond our interactions, in fact, extends far beyond whether my wishes and desires are ever fulfilled. I love you and your singular nature. I love you and your godlike being that shines from within. I love you and your absurd sense of humor. I love you in your moments of sadness, and weakness, and contradiction. I love you even if you do not love me. I love you even if you love someone else. I love you for all the things you are, which includes the ugly bits, the difficult bits, the occasionally unreasonable bits, in fact, I love you because all the aspects of your personality and behavior comprise your uniquely beautiful and beautifully human way of walking through the world. I love your strength and fragility. I love your fierceness and your stubbornness. I love your laughter and your perception and your process of discovery and growth. I love that you challenge me to be greater than I am and that you challenge yourself. I love that, despite observing all the crushing realities around you, still you possess a childlike wonder and a kind, loving heart, still see the sublime beauty of the world, and that this is not the result of ignorance, willful or otherwise, or a filtering of fact; you see all that is harsh, inconsistent, and cruel, and yet you still go on seeking truth and seeing beauty and growing every day more lovely. And yet I also love you independently of all this. I love you even as you stumble or fail, even when you don't make any sense to me. I love you when you are present and when you are gone and I will love you even if you become to me only a memory. I think I even understand now what it must mean to love as a mother loves her child, in that my love for you is full of such tenderness that even if I were to watch you grow distant from me and we were to eventually part ways, I would love you still more fiercely, so that whenever you felt low, or wanted a friend, or simply wished to look back to see where it was you had been, how far you'd traveled, you might be buoyed by my love and it might give you some measure of strength or peace or pleasure for all the rest of your journey in this space-time continuum or any other.

junkies

I think, perhaps, the only thing more depressing than an old junkie (of which there are few) is a pair of teenage junkies making up stories on the #10 about how "sleepy" they are to excuse the fact of their "falling asleep" on some old woman's shoulder.

richard

I met a delightfully spontaneous character at the reading I attended last night (where Matt Love and Cheryl Strayed both gave great performances at the Blackbird Wine Shop) when I accidentally shattered an empty wine glass after the penultimate song of the evening. This man, who I later learned was named Richard, says to me, "Blame it on me. Nobody's gonna mess with me."

I then ran into him and his friend at the bus stop, where he chatted me up all the way to the next bus transfer and the whole ride we shared. He was this strange blend of old school New Yorker with a penchant for old school gyms and a kooky west coast old school Dead Head. He provided a near endless stream of hilarious one-liners and story fragments. What he shared with me in the twenty or thirty minutes or so our paths were crossed included the following:

several Woody Allen film references; a story about Ox, the big guy at the gym (always make friends with the biggest guy in the room and the guy with the biggest heart-- if they happen to be one and the same then you're in real good shape); an offer to set me up with his Irish friend Patrick; stories about the old MacTarnahan's and before that Finn MacCool's; several Grateful Dead fragments, most often involving people that you wouldn't have first guessed might be into the Dead; jokes about misfiring synapses; meditation; yoga; the phrase "coat hanger shoulders" which came from a story about his grandfather's tailor; various passing drug cultures references; Timothy Leary; Ram Dass; more about Ox; zero points; "I am 'anonymous' Bosch"; moving from solitary exploration to making peace with journeying on the path with others ("I can party by myself all day long, but I've finally reached a point where I'm cool with hanging out with other people again"); good folks to have at your side while navigating the bardos; why he doesn't need fruity hair products; and a lesson in what he called the New York shmear, which involved palming a $10 bill off during a handshake to smooth things over with someone (I inferred that given when he learned the lesson, $10 went further than it might now).

He was one of those characters you know you may never meet again and sort of wish you could have recorded for posterity because the riffs he went off on were full of things you couldn't possibly script any better and you know you'd laugh just as often and hard listening to him for the tenth time as you would the first. At least I think so... His friend Lee kept saying, "Richard..." in such a way that she may have meant anything from "oh you!" to "are you drunk?" or "why are you bothering this woman" or "I've heard that story before and it gets more elaborate with each telling." In any case, I found both of them delightful and hilarious.

weird baby

I have recently had my third dream of being in a car that has crashed into water in (I think) the past year. In all three there was a moment of realization that we were traveling too fast, taking a turn too quickly, and that the vehicle (in two cases a car, in one a Volkswagen bus) was ultimately going to land underwater. I don't recall being particularly frightened in the first two and certainly wasn't in this last dream. I only recall being the driver on one occasion, and in that case, it was a fall from very high up on a very long and narrow passage (read: cartoonishly impossibly high and long and narrow) and in this last one, I was actually very casual about the whole affair. I simply unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out the window onto the hood where I hopped from the car to a dock that we'd aimed the car for when it hit water. The really strange part of this dream was that I carried a baby in my arms the whole time. It seemed like it was my baby, but at some point after I'd climbed off the car I began to remember that I didn't have any children. I looked at this tiny human and wondered, if he didn't belong to me, who did he belong to and why did I have him? It was a beautiful day and despite managing to get out of the car without getting wet (while holding an infant in one arm) I found myself sitting in the grass, damp, and wondering where on earth this baby came from.

thunderbird

I dreamed of oceans and birds last night. In the first dream I was living in a house by the beach. There was a door in my kitchen that led to another dwelling space next door. Two separate houses that could function as one. Apart from walking around the house, dragging my toes through the sand, I don't remember much about this dream.

There was another dream, perhaps an extension of the first, but the beaches here felt more tropical than the first. I felt imbued with more jungle energy, I suppose. There was a man. He wore a shirt made of thin strips of leather knotted together. They trailed out behind him as he walked. I stood on the shore, facing the ocean. I looked down to notice my hands had been bound with thin white rope. The man approached me, but the sunlight was such that I could never quite see his face. I knew only that he was no threat to me.

The man attached something to my bound wrists, then walked toward the water and retrieved a large, flat board. He began moving rhythmically, his hips slowly bucking. He raised the board and moved it through the air in a stylized fashion, like I imagine I might if I were working with a sword, or a fan. He was moving in the service of something. Then, the board seemed to become an extension of his arms. His movements took on a wave like quality and he lifted into the sky. His strength rippled through the air toward me and I realized that I, too, was lifted up. His hands directed the board and the full length of his body snapped to attention with each wave. Each wave transferred to me and my body moved in time with his, though I trailed behind him as we moved higher into the sky. My heart was full and I felt happy, bound, as I was, to this man.

Then I dreamed of a bird. It seemed this (part of the) dream was a return to my house-attached-to-house at the beach. I found this bird in the front yard. The sun was low in the sky. All the colors of light were reflected in this bird's eye as it looked back into my own. Something was wrong with its wings; they'd been bent back, so while they were not, technically, broken, the bird was unable to fly. I leaned in close and spoke to it softly. I don't remember what I said, but I know my intent was to let it know I was going to help and to trust that I was not aiming to cause pain, though pain was probable.

I placed the fingers of my left hand at the top of its spine, at the base of the skull. I ran the fingers of my other hand along either side of the spine, which grazed the injured part of the wings. The bird's body immediately went into spasm. I paused and took a deep breath. I whispered something, almost a kind of incantation, holding my face low to the bird's back, as though I were trying to infuse its body with my words, my breath. I felt the light on both of us. I used my fingers to elongate the bird's spine. I dug into the space beneath its shoulders, to lift the scapula away from the spine so that I could create enough space to reverse the direction. It continued to spasm and its eyes locked onto mine. I don't know how I knew what I was doing, but I knew it was necessary and right.

I can't describe the horrible sensations I picked up through my fingertips as I did this, but I was able to return the wings to their correct position. The bird went limp in my hands and for a moment my breath caught in my throat because I thought, perhaps, I had killed it. Then the bird began to vibrate, small movements, but more and more quickly, and as these vibrations increased, its body filled my hands with heat. The heat transferred between us and soon there was a ball of light between my hands and I could no longer see the bird. And then a bright flash, the sound of thunder, and my hands were empty. I looked into the sky and saw my bird was there, flying, fine. And it was only at that moment did I realize tears had been streaming down my cheeks for several minutes.

fear

I awoke this morning to a random feeling of fear. Sure, I could attach it to something specific. I have plenty of questions swimming around in my head (does it mean what I think it means? am I over-interpreting or interpreting incorrectly? should I be interpreting at all? how do I know? am I missing something? will he run away? will I? can I count on anything? am I being naive? and so on...) but as I sat with my fear this morning I found that it didn't matter whether I could answer any of those questions. My fear would have found something else to attach itself to and so it seemed perhaps better to simply acknowledge its existence and to thank it for what it was trying to do for me, even if what it was trying to do wasn't particularly useful or helpful, since, at one time, it probably served a real purpose. As I did this I found it gripped me less. I don't feel any more certain. Many questions still swim around in the back of my mind. But, somehow, I don't feel completely derailed by it. I didn't let that fear turn into certainty that something was horribly wrong and, as such, I'm still feeling pretty good about things. This seems like progress.

happiness

I haven't felt bad in days. Since Thursday, to be precise. I haven't spent a lot of time asking myself questions that I can't possibly answer. I haven't been second guessing everything. I haven't been waiting for the floor to drop out from under me or for disaster to strike. I've been pretty much happy. At some points, I've even felt ecstatic. I am so in love and so uncertain of everything, with one exception, which is that acting on and engaging that love feels very right. I feel like I should spend less time doing things that don't feel as right and more time engaging in things that do. I don't know what happens next. I don't even know that I want to speculate on it, because then I'll be forced to deal with those unanswered questions and it will take me away from the happiness I've been feeling, right here, right now, and, for some wonderful hours, in the arms of the man I love.

now

How does one know when something is truly over, when the old chapter is closing and a new one beginning? Is it a sign of strength, tenacity, and honesty to hold on to something, even in the face of its apparent loss, or is that simply stupidity, weakness, naivety, and denial? What does loving look like when it encompasses also continually letting go? How does one walk away from the deepest love ever known, especially when shared with one's best friend? I feel as though I know and understand less today than ever before. The only thing that is certain is that I am confused. The sun is high, my heart is broken open, and I have no idea what comes next.