No Safe Distance

From Neutral to New Trail

Just a couple weeks ago or so I said I was feeling a little "eh" about life...neutral...could take it or leave it.

That's not true any more.

I know it seems like a fast change, but that's only because I haven't been blogging very regularly. It's a change that has been months in the making, I think, as the entire experience of being with Michael in life and seeing him through his death is being incorporated into my psyche.

And as I noted in my last post, I'm in a new life now. A life that I am finding I DO have enthusiasm for, and not only when people have enthusiasm for me (though that surely does delight me when it happens).

I had to do a fair amount of pushing to get myself going with my new venture against the grief-induced inertia of the past year and more. I have certainly learned a great deal in the process (about grief and photography both). I've learned much in regard to the technical aspects of what I do, but even more importantly I've become aware that there is no such thing as going back to some prior state of "normalcy" after you lose someone as significant as Michael was to me. And you don't get over that loss, either. At least that is my experience. The impact of that relationship is becoming incorporated, an inherent part of my own makeup now.

In an odd way, I feeling more like 'me' than I've ever felt before...a truer version of me, a more authentically expressed version, a freer version.

Things I've wanted to do forever, like being disciplined about my daily contemplative practices, are now happening without much effort. And while I don't feel much the effort of discipline, I do feel the import of holding close to my values and living them, in a devoted and conscious fashion.

Sounds really heavy, or maybe just esoteric when I say it like that, but it's a lot more simple than that. There isn't anything cumbersome or dramatic about it. I just promised myself that I would put my centering time first, without compromise and without a quick check on my phone for messages and emails when starting my morning. I've gone back to drinking tea after drinking coffee in the morning most of this past year. I light a candle. I sit and wait for my mind to stop urging me to quickly check my messages and when I'm a little bit more settled in my chair I do some centering readings.

You'd be amazed at what a difference reading a single page of inspiration and guidance can do for a day. Or maybe you wouldn't. I am though. I know what I was like without that one simple action and I know what I am like with it. It's a practice Michael himself kept to. He used to tell me to cling to my practices as though my life depended on it. For the first time I'm really feeling why.

It took Michael not being here for me to get to this point.

I used to think he was superhuman in his discipline. Actually, he was, but only because what he was doing worked so well. I can't imagine starting a day any other way now, simply for all of the cold hard evidence I am amassing that it is making me a better person just for dedicating those 15 or 20 minutes of focus.

When he was here, I admit I used Michael as a spiritual crutch. I would race around like a nut all week and he would fix me every Friday just by his very presence. I felt, many times, as though my cells were actually being rearranged in his presence. I'd feel myself let go in ways I didn't even know I had been holding on.

And then he left and I had to face the fact that I wasn't nearly as good as I was trying to lead everyone to believe. Before you knew it, I was snapping at people, irritable, isolating, and sad sad sad. I was deeply grieving and even saw that as a failure because I could not have been more prepared for the loss of him.

Now I still cry, but I no longer see it as a failure. There are times when I deeply miss the man. I loved him in a way that I don't think I'll ever find the words to express.

But there are also times that I don't miss him.

In fact, there are times when I am grateful he is no longer here. That is not the same as being glad he is not here. Not by a long shot.

I keep recalling Ram Dass saying he became closer to his teacher after his teacher died.

I'm learning more and more these days in ways I can tell you with certainty I would not be learning if Michael were still here. The day to day concerns of his life, and all my focus on that, were keeping me locked in to a certain vantage point. Without that, I can see more than I did before.

My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.

So, that last post, about being in a new life where people don't know Michael, or know about him...there is a level where that isn't true at all. I am an expression of everything I have experienced in this life and the influence of the last many years is so interwoven I see evidence of it everywhere I turn.

He's gone, but not really.

Michael was so complete when he left that it's impossible for me to wish for his return, even for a second. His suffering was so great but to say I'm glad for his suffering to be over is too simplistic. He was 100% ready to go. What I saw in him spiritually in his final months was so astounding...to be with someone who was complete in that sense and full in the knowledge that he had done what he came here to do...I'm hard pressed to find words to describe it. It simply isn't necessary for him to be here anymore.

And despite my missing his earthly companionship, I do feel like Ram Dass in that earlier comment. That sounds so crazy but it's true. I understand more about Michael and how he achieved that sense of completion that I did when he was here, in no small part because he isn't here any more. And I also have a very strong feeling that I'm only at the early stages of this deeper understanding. Michael said when I am in a wheelchair someday (since so many people do end up that way in old age), that I would learn even more. He, himself, knew that he would be teaching me long after his earthly existence was done. His surety and confidence in that was another aspect of this completion I saw him reach. He just didn't see his body as too necessary to his work any more. It sounds so wrong to say that I agree with him because we are supposed to want people we love to be with us forever and ever. Nonetheless, I can't deny what I'm learning to be true. His passing has put me at a different vantage point, out of the day to day worrying about him and into that curious space of my own life without him, or my father, as the focus of my daily activities. I'm evolving past where I could have otherwise. Or maybe it's more accurate to say I'm evolving through...not past.

That "now what?" period of neutrality I was in for quite a while was fascinating. Of course, there was a level where it wasn't hard...the level of "okay, I'll start working on my photography". But there was an entirely different level that was much less anchored. I was learning so much from both Michael and through my caregiving experience with my father that when they ended it just felt like there was nothing else to do. I just didn't see the point.

It wasn't that I was suicidal or didn't want to live. It was simply that, for someone who is so enamored of what life is teaching her, having all the apparent lessons being over made me wonder what the point was of life...kind of like graduating from college but finding yourself still living in the dorm. It just didn't make any sense.

Just hanging around being alive didn't seem too interesting to me. I could make dinner, do the laundry, see to the needs of my delicate canine companion, hang out with my loving husband, take in a hockey game or a concert, have lunch with friends...and there is nothing wrong with that in the least. It's a very nice life, actually. But it just didn't seem to be growing me. I didn't want to just be here comfortable and entertained.

Getting involved in my photography helped, but it still didn't feel like it had the juice for me. One one hand, I've now had the satisfaction of seeing my work in print and I feel complete with that. However, there are a few shots that...well, they haunt me. Summer's End is one of them.

I've had stirrings that told me there was more to the story...that this wasn't about being done and finding pleasant ways to fill my time until my heart gives out and I breathe my last breath. There IS more. It's just that for the first time my head isn't in charge of it.

Very new territory for me.

And even as I feel the grief continue I can also tell you, and Michael told me this would happen for me, that there has been tremendous grace in his leaving. It's not bad to lose a crutch. Losing Michael was painful. Losing the crutch he provided has started to change my life in ways that would not be happening if he were still here. And the ways I see myself deepening are ways that I know are necessary. I thought I was the best person I could be while he was here and that I'd be less than that with him gone. I was wrong. All of those parts of me that I saw emerging with him, and while caring for my father, are still there and still developing. And without them here for me to focus my energies on those parts of me are finding themselves extending in new directions. I'm still evolving. There's something reassuring in that.

Shazam

"Are you Laura? There is a woman who said she has to meet you."

And that is how my evening at the Oak Park Art League began, me introducing myself to a woman who found herself seeing my name next to each print she found herself drawn to. And if I hadn't worked so hard on so many levels to be where I find myself now, I would tell you it's a little disorienting.

Shazam! I'm an artist at an opening reception, and there is Peter, and we're clinking paper cups of wine while recalling when he told me he I should show my work, and that he'd come to the reception, and he'd be in a black turtle neck with trendy eyewear, and I'd be actually doing it, this 'photography thing" I kept saying I'd try to "do something with" someday.

It's a new life.

I'm meeting people who don't know anything about me, other than I'm an artist. That just seems to be an accepted fact of my existence. I don't need to draw any bridges. As far as the people who are meeting me are concerned, I could have sprung from Zeus' head. No past careers. No blog posts. No anything but the work on the wall.

And no Michael.

It's just me and the work on the wall.

This is why I keep poets around...

I've had some more thoughts brewing but I haven't slept through the night in a few weeks now and with the holidays and hot flashes and a cold and tons of travel I'm feeling a little low key. But still I've got that urge to write and to nestle in with thoughts of the New Year's pending arrival.

I've been in a funny relationship with Life for the last year and a half. I just don't seem to be able to find the words to describe it in a way that is as nuanced as it feels. I feel a little "eh" about Life. A little "I could take it or leave it" about it. I just don't have much of a spark but I'm not really feeling depressed either. Just kind of neutral and I've been wondering if that should concern me.

But it's not always that way, and this is where it gets hard to understand. We were at friends' for the holidays and I had a blast on the karaoke stage. I used to be TERRIFIED of karaoke. Now I just belt out whatever they throw at me, with whoever wants me to join them. I'll sing anytime, anywhere now.

And it's kind of because I don't care.

And that's kind of awesome. But it also feels weird to not care. An odd mix of freedom and apathy. I could sing or not sing for hours.

And I noticed over the holidays that I really enjoyed everyone. I enjoyed everyone so much that little things that used to make me crazy didn't even register with me anymore. It isn't important that you know what used to bug me...every family has it's stuff, so just imagine a pet peeve that always hooks you and has done so for years no matter what your Higher Self tried to do about it. And now imagine that *poof* you just stopped caring about it and it got completely...completely...deactivated.

I used to get so passionately annoyed. And passion is passion and feels like zest for living even when it's negatively induced. And that's the thing that is so weird.  I feel oddly passionless but I'm somehow enjoying myself. I'm like happy tofu. You want to mix me with teriyaki vegetables I'll fall in line. You want to hide me in a cheesecake, no problem.

Does that mean I really don't care what I do?

Not really. I mean, there are some things I definitely don't want to do, like go to a football game, learn how to play the tuba or go to check out post holiday sales at a shopping mall. I'm still selective.

It might be more fair to say that the 'not caring' is really an uncoupling of me from any particular investment in the outcome of a lot of things I used to care about...like what people thought about me, or how much money I was making, or...well...everything I want to write here is some version of caring what people thing about me, or my brain, or my face, or my voice, or my figure, or my apparent success, or my wit, or my whatever.

And that passion I had was usually about me trying to protect some part of me or, perhaps even more importantly, trying to assert some part of me that I thought simply must be seen, or acknowledged, or admired or desired by some one or some group out there.

And because I feel like I've had a really good life...already complete...well, I just don't feel like I have anything else I need to prove.

And it's weird to be 49 and feel that way because, um, what am I supposed to do now? 

And it isn't that I don't have things I want to do. I just don't care if I do them. I've never felt like that before....this complete lack of investment.

I know I will still take out my camera because of what my camera does for ME. I will still write. Still garden. Still do a lot of things. But that part of me that thinks about what I will do with it past that...I've really let go of feeling overly concerned about that.  I DO want to do some photo exhibits with some very specific pieces, for specific reasons, but I won't feel incomplete if I don't get to for some reason.

Maybe it's that I've already got the PRIMARY experience of being the one to take the photo. It's as though the dive is all there is for me. Almost like the revelation of whatever I am learning, or finding revealed, is so personal and so intimate and so compelling that all those little annoyances that used to get me riled have become entirely inconsequential to me. Sharing with you guys is secondary to me. And it isn't that I don't care about you and don't want to share. It's just that I've shifted from this focus of feeling like I am supposed to be teaching you something (an honest fallout from 20 years of being a helping professional), to being much more interested in being a student. It's the learning, not the teaching, that is calling to me now.

And that is kind of cool.

I remember after we buried Michael's father. He was cremated and his urn was buried over his wife's coffin. The sod was laid over the hole, but being an urn it only measured maybe 10x18 inches, that patch of grass...maybe less.

And I would sit there and look at that little postage stamp of grass and think about those 93 years he lived and all he did, the house he built, the family he raised, the work he did...all funneled into a postage stamp sized nook in the ground.

I have been trying to make sense of it all ever since.

Some of my Dad is in a Hobby Lobby urn waiting to be disbursed. Some of him already has been.

Right before the holiday his best friend from 1st grade was buried. I looked at this man in his coffin, whom I've known my entire life...the remaining friends from "Back of the Yards" who came to pay their respects. I'm watching a generation leave bit by bit.

And maybe what feels like a lack of passion is simply perspective. It's just that it seems to be happening from the inside out and usually I've been one to decide on a course of action so that my head could be in charge. That was my comfort zone.

So I'm not in my comfort zone...have changed up my modus operandi and yet I'm not uncomfortable, just oddly altered.

So the poet part...I read David Whyte's most recent newsletter and while he can sometimes seem to work a little to hard to be poet-y in his missives for my taste he did say somethings that resonated with me. There was this:

"Having lived with and understood the privilege and gift of the art, I would write and read and even recite poetry out loud to myself whether I had a single reader or even listener in the world, I would follow the discipline and its attendant triumphs and humiliations whether my name was known or not in any circle large or small, and I would write in the cold of an unheated room and in poor rags just to warm myself by the hearth of revelation and to re-clothe myself in the beauty of self understanding."

And despite my rather lackluster feeling about Life in general, I could very much relate to what he said. I will always read poetry. Will always want the company of spiritual mentors. Will always want my camera with me when I find a dead butterfly on a beach. Will always return to the cemetery for reasons I'll never be able to put into words for you. Can never leave it until I've heard the chiming of the bells before they close the gates.

I'm very much here. And like David says, I could be in a cold room in poor rags but my focus would be the same. Maybe that's it. I used to care about the room more. Used to care about the rags.

David ends his letter thus:

"In the end, we all come to live in the very humble abode of our own making, and in the end everything has to be given away so that what is real can return. This letter, I realize, is an attempt give away the many manifest gifts that have been given to me over the years, not least by you, a reader and perhaps a listener, to clear the ground for a new season and to have what is real in the work returned again, in a yet to be imagined summer, out of the pale hard ground of this winter's day."

I've been giving things away left and right with so many physical items falling my way after the deaths of recent years. Clearing space was all I wanted to do...clear...cleanse...bring in space and breathing room to my life. It seems as I've been disbursing the physical, some of the psychological bags I was carrying fell away as well. And it does feel very much as David said, that a new season is coming, when what is real will return again, unencumbered and more pure. I'm looking forward to that. I can feel it already close upon me.

And that feeling is exciting...or it would be if it wasn't so subtle. It's good. It's deeply, deeply, good. It's just not passionate. It's not a fire in my belly. It's like a spring bulb growing fat within me under the subtle warmth of the winter sun. It's a feeling that we don't have a word for in English, I'm sure of that.

And THAT is why I keep poets around.

 

Life After Fear

If you would have asked me, I would have insisted I was goal-oriented. No bar was too high. No task couldn't be 'multi-ed". There wasn't any ideal I thought I could not reach with just a little more effort, better time management and sheer will power. I remember when I first read that humans are believed to have an obtainable lifespan of 120 years. That immediately became my goal.

And it was going to take at least that long for me to accomplish everything I wanted to do with this life. I wanted to learn so many things, and by "learning" I really think I expected mastery. I took classes continually...Latin ballroom dance, American Sign Language, massage, martial arts, cooking, wine tasting...I planted 28 separate garden plots in a condo we were renting. Most of those plants I started from seed. I wanted to grow every kind of basil I could find and when I went into the woods and picked wild berries I learned to make jelly, and that led to canning tomatoes, and that brought me back to my basil. And then basil and wild black raspberries brought me to infused balsamic vinegar. And that brought me to making my own hand stamped labels. 

Pick any path I ventured on and the same thing happened. My husband once said that living with me was like living with a monkey with a gun.

And while I often enjoyed what I was doing, I usually felt guilty that I wasn't giving my newfound skills, talents and knowledge enough attention. I was so busy canning tomatoes that I wasn't taking out my camera. While I was biking I wasn't giving massages or dancing the tango. I hated being " one of those" martial artists who got her black belt (or two) and then quit. And when to fit in reading all those books when I was busy training to be a yoga instructor?  And, of course, there were the blue bird boxes I was monitoring for the Audubon Society and the monthly parties at our house.

Those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. Monkey with a machine gun.

I was so intent on living life to it's fullest. I thought it was passion that drove me.

I'm thinking now that it might have been fear.

I just didn't want to fail at this life. I didn't want to be less than I could have been. Didn't want to do less than I could have done. Didn't want to fail in my appreciation of every day and all the myriad ways one could spend it.

I'm not afraid any more.

If I never grow another basil plant from seed, it's okay with me. I can't remember the tango steps and I've given away boxes of books I never did open up. Seasons of wild berries have ripened and fallen to the ground without me to catch them. Living to 120 isn't even relevant to me any more. However long I have left, its going to go fast. That's all I need to know.

I used to respond to my sense of time speeding up by trying to outrace it. Multitasking, shaving a couple hours off of my night's sleep so I could fit in meditation and predawn walks in the woods or journalling or reading...I responded to feeling like I had less time with more activity, more attempts to manage my time, more ways to trick it into expanding for me.

It didn't work.

Time has only sped up.

I had a professor once say that he thought the sense of time speeding up as we age was a phenomenon due to the decreasing percent of our lives that each day represents.  For a one day old baby, the second day is a full half of her life. That's a big chunk. Half a life time can feel like forever.  A day to a one year old is 1/365th of his life.  I just turned 49. A day for me is getting close to being an impossibly tiny fraction at 1/17,885 (I didn't count leap years). That's a blink of an eye and it feels like it, especially in the winter when the days are shorter anyway.

I used to wonder how I could fit in 25 things in a 24 hour day (26 if I decided to count sleep). Now I'm more interested in how I can limit what I do to maybe 3 things because even as I type this there is a squirrel who is defying several laws of physics and common sense in its attempt to break into yet another bird feeder and it's too good a show to miss. I need space for those moments without feeling like that squirrel is coming between me and my goals for the day.  

I have to laugh as I type this, and Erin can attest to this...my animals have always been slow, very deliberate. I have no idea why.  My cat, Luigi, could take a good ten minutes to decide just where to put his paw to begin the process of laying down in just the right spot. The actual laying down process was drawn out from there in such a way as to almost require time lapse photography to discern it. Penny can turn herself 17 times in one direction before deciding she really needs to spin 12 times in the other direction to make her nest just right. Sometimes by turn 11 she abandons the notion all together and starts over in a new spot. Laying down properly has always been a task of some significance to my animal friends. Eating is approached in much the same fashion.

So, it is "Quad Time" or Dad Time, Luigi Time, or Penny Time I have been learning to live in? Maybe I've actually had an entire team of teachers sent to get me to realize that the way to make time slow down is to make each moment count, not in the way it is crammed full, but in the way it is savored.

With each pet, I have become more patient. I can stand with Penny for as long as her twitching nose wants us to stand, staring into the dark woods at night. I can tell by her stance that she is reading novels in the dark. I can't see a thing but the Moon. The only sound I can hear is the owl in the distance.

Where else on earth would I need to be?

New Year's Resolutions or Reaffirmations?

I was having lunch with the lovely and talented Antonia Ruppert last Friday and she asked me what my typical Friday was like. 

I couldn't really answer her because I haven't had any typical days for almost two years now.  It's funny, because it wasn't even until writing that very first line that I realized that Friday used to be my ONLY typical day for quite a while. That was my Michael day.

And there were many, many Fridays after he passed that I was very aware of the day, and of the loss, and of how unanchored I was feeling without our weekly visits.

I don't know when Friday stopped being the marker of one more week without him and became simply "Friday".

And it isn't that Michael has slipped from my consciousness. There isn't a day he isn't with me. Maybe that's it...he isn't tied to a corporeal existence anymore so not being tied to a weekday isn't really that surprising. He's not with me less on Fridays now, he's just with me in a more pervasive, if ethereal, way all through the week.

But back to Toni's question...

I told her a bit about a way I structure my life so that I do keep myself moving...it's a way I travel through the various parts of my house and grounds to attend to my living space and possessions. It's not that important for the discussion here, other than to say having some kind of structure, even a self-imposed one, does help when the rest of life becomes dramatically restructured. There is something very grounding in "laundry day" and "errand day" and "clean out the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets day". It sounds so simple, almost trivial, but those activities are part of normal daily life and when normal daily life has been blown apart, suddenly "trivial" can feel an awful lot like the only thing between you and one helluva depression.  It worked. I'm here. And somewhere along the line Friday stopped bringing me to tears for simply being Friday.

As I sit here now looking forward to the year ahead, and reflecting on where I have been, I have an answer that is much more true to the question that Toni, because I know Toni, had hidden underneath the one she asked...

Because it isn't about what one does in a day that really matters, it's about the principles that guide what you do.

When Toni got her food, she stopped me mid sentence for a brief few seconds and closed her eyes. Toni's spirituality guides her life. I knew she was saying grace.

Now if I asked Toni what her typical day was, she may never, ever have mentioned "and I always say grace before I eat" but THAT is who Toni is. I doubt anyone in the coffeehouse even noticed she did that, but that's the glue that holds her life together.

Michael and I talked a lot about the importance of having guiding principles and the added importance of writing them down, life having it's tendency to pull us away from our principles if we don't exercise a little discipline and consciousness. He wrote about his "4 P's" in his book but a few years ago I gleaned from all my endless lists of goals and resolutions and plans and whatnot that I could cook down my life in to 4 S's and those are the principles that are absolutely foundational to my life.

They are:

• Study (reading, listening to, reflecting on inspirational and spiritually resonant works)
• Service (working for the benefit of others, in whatever form that takes)
• Solitude (an active time of contemplation and reflection that can take many forms, like long hikes, gardening, reading, meditating, sitting in the cemetery...this is NOT simply escaping and zoning out, never involved the TV and rarely involves music, I need tons of it)
• Stewardship (right use of resources, caring for what I have and what is in my care, such as my land, sharing what I have with others and being conscious of my relationship with money)

I used to write resolutions. I wrote them in December every year so I could get a headstart on achieving them, because I want to be an A student in whatever classroom this is.  I skipped last year. It was enough for me to survive turning the page of a calendar knowing the Michael was going to be part of "last year". New Year's was one of the hardest events of the last year. I was going to say I resolved to survive it, but I don't think I even had that much gumption about it. I just got through it. That's all I can really say. Or it got through me. It's hard to say.

But this year, after a sometimes trying, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes crushing, sometimes oddly peaceful twelve months I find myself pen in hand back to my annual reflections.

I did write some resolutions...but not really.

I wrote down some things that I really would like to see myself do as expressions of my guiding principles.

And it isn't so much about what I want to do as HOW I want to do it.

I blasted myself in to getting my photos going (because I needed to blast in order to move at all). And there were some real highs and real lows because of it. I don't need to blast now.  What I need, and I do say need, is to bring the way I do this in alignment with my principles. My photos are part solitude, part service...my 'communion' with the natural world and my offering it to you for you to share in whatever images resonate with you for whatever reasons they do. So, some of my "resolutions" have to do with the direction of my photography. I also would like to complete my book. I'd like to be more regular to this blog, also, because it's good for me to write and just this week I got an email from a woman I don't know telling me it's been good for her, too, to read my words. That makes me want to be here more. It's a service.

And just knowing that...that this blog is part of my service...helps me understand it more. It's been a labor of love for years (whichever blog it was, as I've had many). When I was a coach I used to think that somehow it was supposed to be a mechanism to make a living. I've had people want to advertise on it. I've always turned them down. I used to get irritated at myself for spending insane hours writing for no apparent benefit to myself, just one more free service of the self-employed to keep the doors open.

But I closed my doors and still wanted to blog. Came back to this one because I missed it. Enjoy it most when I don't have any other reason to be here but to write. And knowing, explicitly, what my guiding principles are, and reading the emails I get from people I know and from those I don't, I have no confusion about why this is worth the time. I am devoted to service. It's a love, not an obligation. This is one of the ways that is manifested in my life. It's good to know that. I think my clarity on that will make this a better blog. It certainly makes it easier to write.

Let me just back to one point...I say need in regards to my doing things according to my guiding principles because it's a need for me to be an integrated person (think high up on Maslow's Hierarchy) but I know the word need can feel like "should" and "have to" and can just be creepy so I'll also say I want to be in alignment. My life feels so beautiful when I am in alignment, even if the outer stuff isn't so great. If I can take care of the inner stuff, the outer stuff is less relevant. And when that is true I am lighter, kinder, funnier, happier, more generous and more relaxed.  I want to be those things. Living according to my principles has demonstrated to me, in real terms, over and over again, that they are THE keys to me being who I am when I am at my best. Being me can be a lot of fun. It can also bite. Just depends on who I let steer the bus. Me, or my evil (or simply somewhat confused twin) me.

So, in very stark contrast to the coming of a new year last year, I'm actually looking forward to this one. In some ways, while I felt like I was leaving Michael behind last year, I feel like he didn't go very far (he told me he wouldn't), so I've lost him as much as I'm going to lose him, which is surprisingly less than I originally thought. Of course, I can still cry at the drop of a hat for not physically seeing him, but his role in my life, and influence on me went so far beyond those few hours together every week that to suggest that was all there was to our friendship does it a great disservice.

So, I find myself in this odd state of recognition...that's what the reaffirmation is...it's that "Oh! There you are!", finding myself still the same, and maybe even richer for the last couple years, in knowing who I am, what I live for, what guides me...Michael's death didn't impact me nearly as much as his life did and I came with a lot of my own stuff, too, that I had been cultivating in myself since I was 18 and put on my first karate uniform. I've been at this a long time.

And that's all I have to say for now. I see good in the year ahead. I have some things I'd like to share with you and enthusiasm for sharing them. I don't take that for granted. Enthusiasm can sometimes be in such short supply when we've all been going through such tough times. Thanks for taking the time to hang out here for a while. Funny how even that can sound cliche, but seriously, I know I write long drawn out posts. Thanks for sticking with this one. Nice to be back in the mode here...

 

The Trouble with Consistency...or Something Like That...

So, there you are, blogging your life and then a bunch of stuff goes down and it makes all that blogging stuff fall right off the plate for quite a long time. And while you aren't blogging you are finding yourself on the other side of a whole crazy litany of events that have changed you in all kinds of ways, some big and some little.

And then the dust settles just enough that you want to start to write again but you realize that you just don't have it in you to try and build a bunch of bridges and fill in a bunch of gaps and...well...you just don't know how to be cohesive.

That's a problem with blogs. It's like a novel that never ends but maybe it's really supposed to be five novels, or 1 novel, a comic strip, a tv mini series, a folk song and a couple op ed pieces for your local paper. But it's a blog and what does that mean? I've already mused as an Antwatcher, slayed a few Dragons, let my inner snark play with the Daily Dope Slap (forgot about that one, didn't you?), nudged Michael along on the mostly dormant Rolling Rishi...do I start all over again? New chapter, new blog?

And what about all those old posts that I take down when I do that and those emails that come from people years later asking if I can tell them how to find those writings (which sometimes don't exist anymore)? What loyalty do I have to have for my writings and my readers? How tied to the past does one become when you write your life for the world on the blog? Very? Not at all? Yesterday's news?

Not easy questions and I don't think there is anyone who really can answer them completely.

Well, one thing the blogging life has meant for me is that sometimes I imagine that I have a certain (possibly valid) understanding of your idea of who I am. That's kind of funny because I'm not even sure what you all are thinking at this point or who you even are unless you are Kate, Erin or Peter. It's just that I have this rather amorphous reader in my mind and I sometimes feel this odd sense of needing to at least be defineable enough so that amorphous anonymous reader's perspective on me or opinions about me might make sense and carry a certain validity (especially if they have a positive opinion about me).

I know that sounds kind of whacked but I also submit to you that I  have done some darn personal writing on my blogs over the years so that feeling of being a little naked and insecure about which direction to go and why is one I think it makes sense to have.

So, I tossed out a question, or a series of them, in the last post...a little "helloooo...anyone out there?  Should I keep at this? Pick it up again?" And I got a "yes".  And that's kind of helpful and kind of not. Yes what? Yes why? Yes for whom?

But what Kate said at FB helped a bit more. She reminded me that my audience may well change over time. The people who were with me back when I was a coach and ranting about marketing are likely a VERY different bunch than those who stuck with me through my Dad's illness. Those who were with me through my anticipatory grief writings when I was really in the thick of existential angst with Michael may have grown weary of my actual grief and left months ago.

But Kate also reminded me that there are those people who might be a little curious about what I have to say at this point. People who fantasize about running off to join monasteries or live in caves and just leave all this crap behind but somehow find themselves still here making mortgage payments and going to the grocery store on Saturdays and maybe spending a little more time than they would like to admit on Facebook. Sometimes they might even fall asleep in front of the TV like we swore we would never do when we watched our parents fall into that pattern.

And THAT is the rub, isn't it?

What is consistency? What is a cohesive life? How do you honor the sensitivities you have while living in a harsh world? What does that kind of balance look like?

So, maybe the truth is that I haven't been consistent. Sometimes I am very much in the world and sometimes I am an inch from running away to a monastery (and likely would have done that if not for having a wonderful husband). Some days I worry about money and the debt I've accumulated this past year and some days I feel like I am sitting in the king's storehouse reaping embarrassing good fortune. Somedays I feel very grounded and some days I have felt like a little lost lamb.

Those days are the hardest because those are also the days that I feel like I must be one sad disappointment to Michael. That's what Imposter Syndrome looks like on me now. A spiritual flunky.

I was SO joyful at Michael's funeral. Geniunely over the moon happy for him. He made it out without having to go into a hospital. No more surgeries. No return to a sip-and-puff chair (he mentioned his fear of that several times to me). No more winter. No more pneumonia. No more worries about how he was going to fix the Starship again. No more costly wheelchair repairs. No new helpers to train. No need to find someone to put him to bed if his scheduled attendant got the flu.

I have never, ever felt anything but good about the end of Michael's life. And I can tell you without the least hesistation that he is still with me. The problem, I realize, as I am writing this, isn't really about Michael. It's about the world.

I changed in one direction while the world seems to have been speeding off in another. I could try to run to rejoin it but there really isn't much tempting me. Even going out for dinner...going to a movie...a play...I am so aware of the costs of making money that I'd rather give all that up than let go of the freedoms of my life.

That's one of the reasons that last post was significant. If I can feel like a queen just having a $3 root beer float, why do I need a $50 dinner? What I would have to do to go back to eating out like that would mean giving up things like being home when Scott finds a praying mantis in the garden. It used to nearly kill me, working in a basement office where I never ever saw the sun. Now I can see it AND go step out into it.

Maybe I'm a lot like my Dad (actually, I am, no question). Not having money may mean I don't have access to health care that I might benefit from some day. Not working right now could actually be shortening my lifespan.

And I am okay with that because I know the value of today.

I am not saying that lightly or with any naivete.  My family was, and is, poor, for the most part. Scott came from nothing as well. They didn't even have consistent indoor plumbing.

I actually could live in a monastery. But the thing is, as much as I have stepped away from what is a typical life here in Chicagoland, this is still me home.

I'm not Ram Dass. I'm not going to go off to India. I don't want to sit in a train station and have dysentary. I am a suburban married woman with a highly sensitive chow chow. I'm neither famous enough, nor infamous enough to have any kind of safety net in life...no secret stash of money, no job, no anything really except that wonderful husband and the dog I love beyond reason, and a house that I miss the minute I leave it and sometimes a moment with a praying mantis or a buck in the marsh or some other insane moment that makes me feel like the luckiest woman who has ever lived.

So I'm the luckiest out-of-place person I know. My finaces would give most people ulcers. My daily events would bore most people to tears. Our (one) TV isn't HD. I don't have an ipod. My Mom sent me imported butter for my birthday and I am in heaven for having good butter. I've had buttered toast with sea salt every day since it arrived. It makes me feel like I did when I was a kid and tasted REAL butter for the first time. I'd rather have real butter than diamonds and that is the absolute truth.

Part of my task now is just living with the mind and perspective and sensitivities I have in the world as it is and doing that without having my guruji here to make me laugh at the folly every week. It's about my coming to some kind of terms with the pace of the world. The addiction to technology (starting with the Sony Walkman, which put us on a downward spiral we have never recovered from...), our removal from the natural world, the way our kids are getting poisoned in every possible manner...it's hard to be here, especially as a sensitive person who doesn't get out much...it's just so assaultive, the way we treat each other. And I'm as capable of being assaultive as anyone. As confused as anyone. As self-righteous as anyone.

I just don't want to be those things and Michael showed me I don't have to be. It just was so much easier when he was here to ram into me with his chair when I got too far off track.

So, consistency, maybe you don't get that here. Honesty. You'll get honesty here. That's about all I can say.

 

 

Living "On Quad Time"

That was the phrase Michael and I often used to describe his pace of life and that is what I found myself remembering when I was sitting behind net at the Hawks v. Sharks game last night.

It's one of the gifts he gave me and one of the things I am realizing I particularly miss in his physical absense. It is so rare for an able-bodied person to have the experience of having to (getting to) live life so slowly. It took a lot of getting used to for me, but some of the most wonderful experiences of my life came directly from that enforced slowing down. My entire ability to care for my father in the way I did at the end of his life, and the friendship he and I developed, came directly from the way Michael influenced my life.

As I walked through the packed United Center last night, I found myself reliving little moments, like glimpses in my periphery, of times I would go to games with Michael. Being with him was like living in a parallel universe right in the middle of this one. "In the world, but not of it." We would enter through the player entrance, wheel through the bowels of the United Center's lower level (he would wheel extra slowly when we passed the Hawks locker room...comically slowly...to increase my chances of "seeing something good") and then we'd make our way through the empty UC halls to the vendors just as they were opening for a slice of pizza before the game.

And as we took our first bites, the gates would open and the sea of people would enter.

People don't look for wheelchairs, as a rule, so maneuvering through and around crowds does become a safety issue. As a result, we found little islands of space where we could and stayed put until the crowds moved on. This gave us a lot of time to just sit and observe.

Observe.

Michael did a lot of that in his life. Remember, he was a hockey player and his powers of observation were very well honed. Anyone who can read hockey plays on the ice like he did doesn't miss much. Put a man like that in a chair with nothing else to do but observe and you would be amazed at what he picked up on.

So at the game last night, I was IN the crowd. In the middle of a row. In the middle of lines. In the thick of it.

But the whole time I could remember that other level of existence...the parallel universe I used to share with Michael on quad time.

And I'm just now starting to realize that I still have a quad-time consciousness. That may be why it's felt so disorienting to be in life without him here. I just don't know how to re-enter "normal" society, so mostly I haven't. I  haven't even wanted to because a lot of it just doesn't look that appealing to me, if I can be honest with you about it.  Michael's being a quadriplegic taught me to be slow, to observe, to digest and appreciate so much of life in a way that I didn't know how to before. And what had to be learned ultimately became a way of being that I preferred. It's a way most healthy, able-bodied people never get to experience and I think they are all the worse off because of it.

After Michael died, I had a rough go of it without the weekly permission he gave me via his disability to simply catch my breath and reflect on what was happening in my life. I used his presence in my life as my opportunity to live, if even for just a few hours, in a mental space that did me a world of good.

But it wasn't that it was easy. Even going to the games was a huge endeavor. Michael had to monitor every single bodily function and it was such a blessing when things went well. What goes in, what comes out...nothing could be taken for granted. Was it going to be okay to have that piece of pizza? Would sharing a beer be okay? I used to bring digestive enzyme tablets to the games just so the next day would be a little easier for him.

And while his way of life was incredibly hard and so cumbersome, there is something to be said for having to be so deliberate and conscious of every choice one makes.

I read some time ago about an order of monks and how some of them were getting upset because there seemed to be too many cereal choices at the monastery and the excess was a concern as a potential distraction and a temptation for the newer monks.

It made me laugh but I totally understood it. And while I used to be one who wanted infinite choices, I've come to see the folly in that. I'm becoming like the old monks. In many ways I'm becoming like Michael.

Due to his disability, Michael mostly had the life choices of an ascetic monk, when he had choices at all. But rather than staying bitter about it (although he did have to pass through that stage), he incorporated that into his spiritual growth and used it as a means to gain freedom.

He used his limitations as a path to freedom.

Keep that in your mind from here on out because if you are living in a human body you are going to have more, not fewer limits over time. Just consider finding freedom in that.

That is what I was getting schooled in for the past several years.

Michael and I spent an afternoon with him trapped in his van when the ramp jammed. It was one of our most fun afternoons but the truth is he was trapped in his van on a hot summer day. Quads can't regulate their body temperature very well. We take sweating and shivering for granted. Being trapped in a hot van was a very real problem that could have been life threatening. Had he gone into shock I have no idea what we would have done. And yet, I don't remember anything but us having fun that afternoon. And that night, waiting in the rain for the mechanic to come back when the ramp stuck again and kept him out of the van...still we sat and laughed.

Michael had a plaque in his room that said, "Live in your cell as though you were in paradise."

He did that.

So when we would go out for a root beer float on a hot day and that was THE event of the afternoon for us and I say it was heaven to do that one simple thing, I mean that in a way that I know a lot of people aren't REALLY going to understand. What went in to making that root beer float possible...that afternoon out of bed and out of the house possible...it elevated everything to levels I am still trying to comprehend.

There simply were no ordinary moments with him.

And that doesn't mean that everything was amazing every second or that we never fought, or got bored, or irritable, or tired, or any of that. But it means that when you are forced to slow down that much it gives you the opportunity to remember that you are sitting next to someone who couldn't even feed himself for two years and here you are with him sharing ice cream in a place he could actually enter because they have ramps to buildings now. And if you can't recognize a miracle when you are sitting there eating ice cream with one then the guy with quadriplegia isn't the one with the biggest problems.

But to the outside world, having THE event of the day being getting an ice cream float in a run down deserted Greek diner...well, it's kind of lame, isn't it? For most people it would be torture. And neither of us ever, ever pulled out a cell phone, or engaged in anything other than enjoying that root beer float. We didn't multitask together.

And that's probably why I don't blog a lot any more. I think I've become pretty boring. My life, too simple. My thoughts too...too estoteric maybe? I don't have that much to report. 

Michael's quadriplegia gave me the opportunity, the outward excuse, to live very, very simply. Having so few choices was a path to freedom, not just for Michael and I as individuals, but for our friendship. There was nothing to do but BE together most of the time. We rarely went to stores together, we went to ONE movie in 20 years, almost never had a tv on. The cost of doing a lot of things was simply too high so we mostly listened and observed. And when his father was alive we would go to the nursing home and we'd sit with him. Those were some of the most tender hours of my life.

And that's what it was. Tender freedom, right there in the middle of life...sitting off to the side with a piece of pizza and knowing that you had absolutely everything you needed and more.

He changed my life. He changed me in ways I am still coming to understand. I'm just not sure what it means for you and I, reader of these words...do I have relevance for you...is there anything of value that was given to me that also has significance for you, even vicariously...I don't know. I really don't know.  It's weird to be out of a mutual conversation and just here with a keyboard...is this life of mine and all the things I went through these past few years just one woman's history, for herself alone, for her quiet times in reflection as she goes along her monkish way or is there more...something to pass on...and what...and to whom...

Do we pick this up again, blog writer to blog reader...is there somewhere you would like to go?

Everything Old is New Again

When I was a very young girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I had a recurring nightmare every time we had a thunderstorm. Last night it dawned on me for the first time who the multi-armed image was that would chase me, surrounded by flames.

It was none other than Kali.

Score one: Jung.

And it's funny because even though it was definitely a nightmare there was something...familar enough?...about it that kept me from being terrified or waking my parents to get me through it. Kali was definitely trying to catch me, presumably to destroy me, and I knew she was going to annihilate me if she caught me but part of me was fascinated by her so I almost liked it when she showed up.

That may not be exactly the right way to say it but I don't have better words for it. It was like we had a special relationship...like hero and arch villian maybe...I needed her chasing me in some weird way...like it tested me in a way I wanted to be tested...or maybe not so much wanted to be as had to be tested.

Now that is some pretty sophisticated stuff for a second grader so you have my permission to have your doubts. I'm just trying to describe for you what was all non-verbal stuff for me. There was never dialogue in these dreams...just this blue multi-armed-being chasing me surrounded by flame and just before she caught me thunder seemed to inevitably wake me up...a big clap. Or maybe it was the blinding flash of lightening that preceded the thunder and coincided with the flash of light so bright as Kali was just about to reach me that woke me. At any rate, I woke up with an adrenaline rush and because the dream was recurring (and maybe because I always escaped) I kind of started to look for her. I remember being disappointed when over time I started to be woken by thunder and realized that the dream didn't accompany the storm.

What does that have to do with me now, forty years later?

I think everything.

My arch nemesis is and always has been my discriminating, over active, hyper critical mind. That's Kali...the destroyer. I get that from my mother and I don't like it any better in her, believe me. And because I have a healthy dose of that which I resent in my mother (and she got it from hers), the ability to always find the flaw, or that one little thing that would make things better, and the compulsion to point it out, I find myself in the terribly demoralizing place of realizing that I still have "mother issues".

Score one: Freud.

The good news is that Kali is intent on destroying what I already know is my biggest problem, (every human's biggest problem): my own ego. Pick a belief system and you will find it's the only work to do really, Buddha knew it, Christ knew it...all the saints in every tradition. We and our desires and our attempts to spend our lives building temples to ourselves are the fundamental problem. ("Witness my beautiful body, beautiful mind, beautiful personality, beautiful clothes, beautiful financial success, beautiful accomplishments...don't you wish you had them too?" we say to each other in one form or another. Don't agree? What do you think all those self-help authors are doing? And if we weren't buying into the game they wouldn't so often be best sellers. Or we say to ourselves, "When I have a beautiful body, mind, personality, bank account...then I'll really be something and I'll attract the right mate, job, award, adoration..." so we buckle down with our eye on the prize.)

And there is Kali ripping it down and eating it for lunch as soon as we think we are close to being somebody. "Oh yeah? Well, you and I both know you are a big faker...you can run but you can't hide this (and she rips off your offending arm and shakes your own finger at some fatal flaw or other)...now who do you think you are?!"

It's not a lot of fun, having someone dogging you who knows all your shit.

It's not much fun having someone who always seems to confirm that you are, in fact, a big imposter.

But there is that other part...the birthing part...Kali being female and all.  And there is that part of you deep down inside that knows that all that shit is just shit and you are really the pony underneath it all. And ponies grow into horses. Who doesn't love horses? My father-in-law had a name for horses. He called them "Eat and Shit" because that was pretty much what they did.

So do you reject the pony? It's just being a pony.

Are you going to reject yourself just because you are never going to reach perfection?

That's what I've been holding on to for far too long. I'm always the kid in the back seat riding home from my grandmother's house with my mother turning around with that deep breath before she starts, "Well, Laura, let me tell you what Grandma said. She thinks you are wearing too much make up...she thought you were a little mouthy...that shirt is too tight...that's a wrong color for you..." Every time I write an email or a blog post I know not a single typo will escape my mother's notice. Not one.

I'm not blaming my mother. She probably said a lot of nice things that I don't remember. For whatever reason I internalized the critical mother. And while my mother is an earthly symbol for this it isn't really about her. I internalized Kali's discriminating destroying aspect and that's why she doesn't appear to me in thunderstorms anymore. I can't see her because she's with me all the time. It's not a special event anymore. We live together now.

And in the end, Kali, not my mother, holds the keys to my salvation. Fire can annhilate or it can purify. It all depends on how attached I am to preserving who I think I'm supposed to be.

It's a paradox. As long as I am attached to perfection I'll never reach it...as long as I notice every typo and hear my mother's voice pointing it out I'll reactivate all the negativity associated with that. If I spend my life trying to reach my internalized view of my mother's internalized view of perfection I'm doomed. I'll never make it. I already know that. I'm trying to win approval from my own belief about someone else's view of me.

Goofy, right?

Score one: Ellis

As long as I feel like I have failed as a person because I have felt anger when I would rather feel compassion...judgement when I have longed to feel understanding...every time I fail to give myself compassion for being a human Kali is going to singe me. And she's going to keep on burning until I drop whatever it is I am holding on to.

No wonder I missed her.

And the fact that Kali started chasing me around when I was seven years old is a good thing in my opinion. I got on this path a long time ago, or maybe the path chose me, I have not idea how it works...but here we are after all these years and that helps me know that there is no falling off the path. I may sit for a while. I may step in a pothole and twist my ankle. I may envy people on horseback who seem like they are zipping by me. I may long for a jet plane. But in the end that doesn't matter. There isn't any race. Every road can take me exactly where I want to go. It's all the same road.

Miller Beach Arts District to Host 2nd Pop Up Night Oct 29th

"Pop-Up Art 2011" - Once again, Miller Beach Arts & Creative District transforms Lake Street storefronts into an exceptional evening of art and entertainment.

 

Miller Beach - Gary, Indiana - For several months local artists, musicians and "creative types" from this bohemian lakefront community have been working together with area restaurateurs and business owners, to redevelop their sleepy downtown into a dynamic destination for arts and entertainment. Their endeavors have produced The Miller Beach Arts & Creative District, which is hosting its second "Pop-Up Art" event October 29th between 6:00 and 9:00 pm in Downtown Miller Beach.

 

The District's first "Pop-Up" night in September was a huge success, displaying the work of several prominent local artists and attracting scores of art lovers to an enjoyable evening in Downtown Miller. This month's event aims to be even bigger.   Nine venues along Lake Street will showcase the work of local photographers, painters and sculptors. Visitors will also enjoy theatrical and dance performances along with live music and refreshments. As part of the event, The National Lakeshore's Douglas Center for Environmental Education will display the artwork of 16 area high school students along with pieces done by their teachers. In addition to the student/teacher exhibits at the Douglas Center, the work of over twenty local artists will be on display in several venues up and down Lake Street. The South Shore Centre for the Arts will host a two-person theatrical performance along with dance renditions by the South Shore Dance Alliance. Lake Street Gallery, a long time anchor of the arts in Miller, will also be hosting an opening and reception for their featured artist, Jean Bargeron of Ogden Dunes. "Pop Up Night" is an amazing opportunity for art enthusiasts to forge connections with local artists and experience firsthand the creativity and energy happening in the Miller Beach community.

 

 The Miller Beach Arts & Creative District is transforming downtown Miller and the adjacent residential areas into a diverse and vibrant cultural destination for the visual, performing and culinary arts. Arts districts have been used in various cities nationwide as a catalyst for community regeneration and future plans for the new district in Miller Beach include an assortment of art galleries, live/work spaces for artists, boutiques, and dance studios, mixed together with restaurants, retail options and venues for live entertainment.

 

For more information about the Miller Beach Arts & Creative District or "Pop Up Night" visit www.millerbeacharts.org.

PRESS CONTACT Eric Reaves ericereaves@aol.com

Beautiful Canvases at Beautiful Prices: I'm Having a Sale!

If you haven't checked out my photography yet, today would be a good day to head over to check out my work because I am having my first sale and it is a rocking cool one. Canvas prints, both gallery wrapped (1 1/2" wrap, black edged, ready to hang) and teak framed large prints like the one you see me holding here, are marked 30-40% off. You can see them in this gallery.

You can also read more about my work by visiting my sister blog, Laura Young Photography.

Have fun! And thanks for helping spread the word...