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.

 

Comments

[Bruce Meyer]

Hi Laura,
It's been something a year and a half since we last talked.

This is such a good posting.

Strange thing happened a few weeks ago. I was giving a final exam at a community college, and when I left, it was already dark and foggy out, and my car was all by itself. I think it was deer season too. As I approached my car, I heard a noise behind it. It was an adult deer, about four feet high at the shoulders. I spoke to it in my kittens-and-puppies voice, and it didn't bolt. I got out my cell phone to take a picture, but it's easier to talk to wild animals than it is to figure out these gadgets sometimes. By the time I was ready to take a picture, she had slowly trotted away.

Surely there's a metaphor there.

Some people I know that are spiritually alive, including myself, go through this time of transition. I think it's more than "stages of life" although surely it includes that. We set our sights somewhere, and by golly, that's not "it*. Or maybe it is *it* but times have changed. Or maybe we're looking for God and truth, and the best we can get is the right direction but everything concrete is never going to be *it*, by nature.

I've gone through some of these things, and currently my family is blooming with children and grandchildren and them all expanding, and me teaching classes, and writing lectures, and getting more used to my wife (after 35 years), and writing songs and performing songs. (I wrote a song lately about getting a loaned car from the dealer when my car needed work, based on a Canadian tune, and I call it "The Loaner." Thanx Neil Young! I'll send you an audio file if I get it recorded sometime, if you like.)

But ahh, ohh, yeah, this isn't what I expected when I signed up for life. The punchline comes next: Well, what are you going to do about it? AND yes, a new season is coming, like it or not, when the real is the ONLY thing. And if we stay the course, we can life in reality on this side of eternity. (I wrote a serious song about this called Truth Be Told.)

Laura, big hugs and best wishes. I'm so glad you're doing as well as you are, and that your photography and blogging is lively.
Bruce

[Laura]

Oh my goodness, you! Yes, it has been ages since we've connected. I loved the deer story. Such magical moments. I've had to learn when not to fiddle and when to just be in the moment, always wanting the photo but now realizing sometimes I'm actually supposed to be living the experience, not capturing it.
Such an interesting time...and not one that I can fully articulate (not even sure I want to try to). It's funny because it's shifting even since I wrote this post...less subtle, more profound, more evident. Things are flowing in ways that are a little mindblowing. Still might be subtle to an outside observer but it's like all kinds of internal resistance is just gone. Not even resistance really, as much as bracing...like "doing taxes is going to be a pain in the butt" ended up falling away completely and I did them in record time this year, very smoothly and even fit in time for tea with a neighbor. It sounds small but that's one of a million little examples that is having a cumulative effect on how my days go. I still have those periods of my mind getting worked up by trying to plan how I'm going to get all my to do list done but I've found this huge reset button (morning devotional time) and it's transforming everything completely. Not that I haven't tried this before but I think it was an effort I was making before in order to be good. Now I make it because I feel the way it feeds me...feel the way it transforms me. I haven't felt good in a couple weeks now with a bug, and have had poor sleep for several weeks but it really hasn't affected me much. I'm a little tired, but my mood and my spirit are absolutely unfazed by it. I have a resilience now that isn't accidental and it's quite remarkable to find at this point. A delightful way to start a new year.
You sound well, Bruce. I'm glad you connected here again.