Disabled in the Morning

I can walk. Normally, I manage an hour of limping around--enough to dress, water plants, feed the dog, and eat breakfast. While eating, I put my feet on ice to keep them from turning nasty. The rest of the day, I slump in a lift chair, legs elevated, feet touching nothing.

This morning, my feet got loud after only 30 minutes. That was it. No more walking. My hope for a quick trip to the farm market was gone.

Grief hit me hard, and I cried like a three-year-old who's pet just died.

I know grief is normal. After all, it's only been two years since I first tried on the label "disabled."

That was so-o-o-o liberating.

I'd been losing function for thirty years, but since I always found a way to get what I wanted--especially hiking alone in wilderness areas--the losses never registered as such. But the last three years of struggling to work had been h*ll. Giving up that struggle was a relief. A disability identity was comforting.

I can handle the pain--though, yes, I hate inspiration porn. The isolation is harder (among complaints, I have erythromelalgia which makes wearing shoes and socks excruciating--so no outside excursions in winter--while heat exacerbated pain keeps me inside in summer).


Walking has always been my main deal. Regular in-wild-ness time feels as necessary as food--in all seasons. (I can spend hours lying comfortably in a snow drift.)

Now, I usually can't sit on the deck.

Grief has it's own rhythm. It can become less suffocating while never going entirely away. But then when it hits, it can still hit hard.

Pitch Wars Bio

Pitch Wars is an amazing, fun, (and sometimes anxiety fraught) writing contest run by Brenda Drake. But it is more than a contest; it is a community--for both the mentee hopefulls and the mentors.

Mentors post a blog to help mentees make their submission choice. Some mentees do as well. (Mentee Blog Hop)

Here is mine:

I read and write kidlit from PBs to YA. I used to read and write grownup stuff, but not so much now--'though my pub credits are all for grownups. Wanna peek at the most grownup of my grownup pubs? I could never write like that now. Not that I want to. Ugh!

My Pitch Wars sub leans magical realism, but some might call it realistic fantasy. If you've read The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill, mine wanders nearby, 'though a bit more on the mr side.

The "magic" is pretty close to my experience with nature beings. In that sense it is completely realistic, but most modern Americans deny nature beings exist making the same things fantastical.

My inspiration was wondering what happens to the kid after her brief magical adventure is over. All she has is memory and practices that she desperately hopes will bring direct communion, but that never quite work. That is also entirely realistic.

If you like my pages or my query, I need to share credit with the fantastic Scribophile Ubergroup managed by the incomparable Jerry Quinn, also the Ubergroup members who gave me such great critiques on both.

Sankofa Bone

Enough about my sub, what about me?

I far, far prefer editing to writing a first draft. Editing is like carving, shearing away the dross until the emerging form sings. I've carved both wood and stone, but mostly wood.

I'd love a mentor who is a fearless cutter of unnecessary words (and paragraphs and sections).

Do that for me and I will work my butt off for you.

Some other facts of which I am inordinately proud:


I've lived in 5 countries on 4 continents, 3 and 3 before I hit puberty, also 6 states including Alaska.


I was kicked out of a monastery. You already knew that if you read the header on my blog, but I am very, very proud of it.

Moon Over Jon Oriental

I loved Chicago as a natural environment: the orange-red brick cliffs, the wind tunnels, and the great majesty of the lake shore, also living in a white-minority neighborhood.

I don't miss the petroleum-fume-laden air.


Gifs confuse me.


via GIPHY

Sweet Honey

My first animal companion was Daddy Rat. I was three. 

Honey is my present animal companion.

Between Daddy Rat and Honey have been Lady (a dog), numerous mice, George (a terrapin that I smuggled into England from Nigeria when I went to boarding school), and Aijde (a cat).


My family also shared Dab Dab (a duiker), Aku (a West African grey parrot), and Sir Robin (an ex-champion race horse).


I dropped out of high school. While working on a kibbutz, I discovered how woefully ignorant I was, and since the only efficient way to get an education was college, I went--all the way to a PhD in a useless-for-getting-a-job field. After, I abandoned science for education.

Creative writing was my PhD survival strategy. 

Fav reads are far to numerous to list. Here are some recent ones:

TALL TALES by Karen Day. If you like Sharon Creech and haven't read Karen Day, you must.

THE JUMBIES by Tracey Baptiste

THE SINISTER SWEETNESS OF SPLENDID ACADEMY by Nikki Loftin (although, really, anything by Nikki Loftin)

TIGER RISING by Kate DiCamillo

THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate

SPIRIT’S KEY by Edith Cohn  

BIGGER THAN A BREAD BOX by Laurel Snyder

BESWITCHED by Kate Saunders (a modern transport-into-the past story like Penelope Farmer's CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES that I loved growing up)

THE GREEN GLASS SEA by Ellen Klages

CURSE OF THE THIRTEENTH FEY by Jane Yolen 

WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebbeca Stead

ELEVEN by Patricia Reilly Giff

SUN AND MOON, ICE AND SNOW by Jessica Day George

And I am in love with Junie B Jones if for no other reason than the way Barbara Park writes emotional cues.

Rilke and Unemployment

I didn't get another job I wanted. If someone had taken all my greatest passions and all my skills, then designed a matching position, this one would have been it.

But no. I knew within two days of the interview, when they hadn't yet called my references.

I've made job application my priority for a long time now. Years. Yet, nada. Okay, that's an exaggeration. I have three part-time jobs, but even together, they aren't enough to live on. So...

The last time this happened was when I gave up on getting a research job in my science. I'd been on the job market for three years without an offer, although that wasn't a reflection on me. There were maybe five openings a year in the United States and 200 plus decent candidates. The average PhD spent ten years post-degree before landing a permanent job. I was actually doing better than most having had several interviews.

But it felt like I was running head-first into a brick wall expecting it to vanish. I'd slam my head, fall to the ground, then get up and do it again. Over and over and over. After three years, my bruised brain and butt had had it.

As soon as I turned away from research, I got every job I ever applied for. It seemed that the universe had other ideas for me than to use my degrees in the obvious way.

So is the universe sending me a message, now?

The only other direction available would be to put all my job search energy into writing and marketing my writing.

Big risk. Very scary.

So I think about Rilke who wrote in Letters to a Young Poet that writers need to decide if they must write to live. If yes, then they should stop whining about the difficulties and "build [their] life in accordance with this necessity."

I made a decision fifteen years ago to put my creative voice first - even if it meant giving up a tenure-track professor position. But somehow, I kept reneging on that commitment.

Perhaps, the universe has decided not to give me a choice.

Which leaves me to explore the difficulties.

Ps.97: Fire marches out in front and burns up all resistance.

My interpretation from the NIV, Vulgate in English, the Ancient Root Transliteration Bible, Masoretic Text, JPS 1917, & Young’s Literal 

Ready or Not in the Land of the Dying

I was sure he'd have died by now.

He was sliding fast last spring. I hoped he'd see his birthday in late June, but was positive he'd be gone by August.

Positive.

Come his birthday, and he rallied. I mean, really rallied. Not just ceasing to slide, but returning to a place he hadn't been in many, many months.

• He was awake for hours at a time.
• He looked people in the eye.
• He cracked his distinctive self-depreciating jokes.
• He laughed and sang.
• He thanked the caregivers for their help.

The visiting hospice nurse was shocked--pleased shocked. "Now I know why you all say he was such a great guy."

I couldn't help it. I began to fantasize.

• He isn't dying, at least not soon. We'll have years together, yet. Good years. Awake, aware, and happy years.

This went on for about a week. Then he rapidly slid further than he'd been before--barely opening his eyes for more than a few minutes--mostly staying distant and unfocused.

But the damage was done.

When we first approached hospice, I was not remotely ready. I only tried it because they evaluate you after three months. If you aren't clearly dying, hospice kicks you out again. I figured that would happen to us.

It didn't.

One evaluation. Two. He was certified dying--even if at slower than the proscribed, gone-in-six-month rate.

Since the beginning, I'd assumed that when the time came I'd say, "I'm fine. Don't hold on just for me. It's okay."

That would be a proper monk-like attitude.

Now the time was imminent, I found I couldn't do it.

I wasn't fine. It wasn't okay. I desperately wanted him to hang on for me.

My whole mind and body screamed, "Don't go. We were supposed to be together for many more years. Don't leave me."

Nine months passed. A third evaluation. Still, hospice kept us. And I changed. I began to feel that I could let go.

Listening to his cries of confused pain in response to the most benign bodily care--a wipe on the chin, for example--that helped. The stress of life with caregivers also helped --selfish as that may be.

Mostly, time helped. I just got used to the idea again.

Then came the day he said he was dying. Right then. I found myself saying, "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

It was true. With my whole heart and body, I knew I would be fine. I was finally ready. What a relief.

Until his birthday rally.

Now, that is a lie.

Five months and several hospice evaluations later, my only thought is: 

"Please, don't leave me. Not yet. I can't live without you."

*  *  *  *  *  *

Living with Strangers

For nine months, I barely tolerated my narcissistic weekend caregiver and his slovenly ways.

He never cleaned.

He broke my dining room chairs.

He wore his pants so low, he graced me with his bare butt when he bent over.

He grumbled, grumped and demanded that I meet his latest need.


Finally, I could no longer stand this man radiating bad temper through the house while my uncle was dying. Yet, the company who supplied my caregivers refused to replace him.

So, I decided to do what I should have done long ago: get my weekend caregiver from a different company. I'd put it off and put it off, not wanting to rock the delicate, care-giving boat.

I've gone through a lot of caregivers since my uncle has lived with me. I feel incredibly lucky to have a great person five days a week. What if I went to another company, yet got another dud?

      It's not easy being a live-in caregiver. It's much harder when
      a competent person is living right there. To succeed, my
      caregivers must do everything for my uncle - who can do
      nothing for himself - PLUS get along with me.

I sympathized that someone might find the situation stressful.  That didn't mean I should tolerate a resentful person skulking about.

Then, like a miracle, without my doing anything, the annoying caregiver disappeared. I was assigned an amazing man from Southwest Nigeria (the region Shell and BP have made into an environmental disaster area). Highly educated, experienced, and with an optimistic sense of humor - he was good with Milt and with me.

I couldn't believe my luck or blessing or whatever it was.

I felt more relaxed than practically since I started this gig.

Living with a dying man is an emotional wringer, but that is not so hard. Hard is sharing my house with an endless parade of well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning strangers while that emotional wringing is in progress.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Death Practice

I knew it was time for Milt to be in hospice last fall, but I still didn't like it. When I agreed to do this, I thought we'd have at least five years together, hopefully longer. Two and a half years? I couldn't make sense of it. I gave the hospice folks a lot of grief as I twisted and turned, pushed and pulled, unable to lie comfortably in this new bed.

I'd expected that when Milt was ready to let go, I wouldn't hold on. I didn't want him to linger just to take care of me. But the fact is, last fall, I could not honestly say that to him. However much I didn't want to, I clung to him, a desperate hunger in my throat. I needed him to live.

Luckily, he was not in a hurry, either. We coasted along, immensely helped by hospice, as Milt slid slowly toward the end. The change was so gradual, it was only obvious when it was time for his six months review.

To stay in hospice (at least paid for by medicare), you have to be in a steady decline. The expectation is that you'll be dead within six months. You can take longer - as long as you are making steady, downward progress.

When I made a list of Milt's losses over that six months, there were many. No question we could stay in hospice - thankfully, as we had grown dependent on their services - but it was a great reprieve. He might be dying, but he wasn't dying all that fast.

Then, about two months later, he suddenly said, "I'm dying." His voice was softly wondering, as if he was simply cataloging an interesting fact.

Now, Milt has not wanted to discuss his impending demise and had never previously said anything remotely like this. Not only was it a strange thing for him to say, his whole affect had changed. He was oddly blank and floating - lying back with his eyes rolled up to show the white.

"Are you dying right now, today," I asked.

It took awhile to get his attention, but he said yes.

"Your brother is visiting tomorrow. Will you still be here."

"No."

Nothing was hurting and he wasn't scared. He was simply ready to go and he was going. I held his hand and for the first time, was able to honestly say that it was okay for him to go. I would be fine.

Turned out to be a practice run. It seems it is not uncommon for people to dip into dying and then come back. Like they need a taste before committing to the real thing.

At ten months and counting, Milt has had two more hospice evaluations. He is still on a steady slide out. He's also had four more of these dying practice sessions. He had one today.

Am I still ready? Well...

* * * * * * * * *

Dying in Peace

My uncle lives with me. He is dying. With hospice at our sides,* his passing has a good chance of being gentle and sweet. He’s on the last stretch. I hope he makes it to his birthday in late June, but don't expect him to be here for long after.

Still, his body has a fair bit of letting go to do. He eats less and less, but still eats. (Those truly ready to go often stop eating altogether.) He mostly sleeps, but has short periods of wakefulness and engagement. For an entire day a couple weeks ago, he suddenly returned to the man he’d been – chatting and laughing and showing the astonished hospice folks why he’d been voted funniest professor year after year.

Although his actual slide out of here promises to be easy, in the meantime life has gotten very hard. The slightest touch brings on screaming, swearing, and pleas to stop. Dementia has eaten the part of him that would have let him steel himself through necessary pain, leaving only the moment of agony.

“They’re mean to me,” he replies to my morning greeting. "They tortured me."

In the U.S. with our lack of social services, my uncle is lucky. He can afford decent home help rather than being warehoused under the care of overworked, underpaid, demoralized “nursing” home employees. I’m there to make sure his care is as attentive and kind as possible.
After a year struggling through one comically inadequate live-in helper after another, we stumbled into the arms of a gracious, attentive CNA. A Sunni Muslim from India, he quietly prays when it is time - his devout observance, my uncle’s atheism, and my own eclectic spirituality coexisting without tension.

Finally, reliable care for my uncle. Respite from anxiety for me. 

Yes, we are lucky. For those poorer and less lucky, how much more traumatic dying must be. I expect I will be among the mass of poor and unlucky ones when it is my time. Having watched my uncle, I frankly don't know if I can let myself down into that well or not.

* Medicare presently pays for hospice home care visits during the last six months of life. This serves the caretakers of the dying as much as the dying person. We must not let greedy, corporate privatizers and their political henchmen take this rare benefit.

* * * * * * * *

Grief, Joy, Rest

I'm learning yoga nidra. This is the yoga of deep relaxation and complete self-acceptance - the exact
opposite of throwing your body into extreme poses - as "yoga" so often means in the US. Yoga nidra is deeply relaxing. Yet like meditation, the practice brings increased wakefulness and awareness through greater presence to the whole truth of your experience.

In order to accept yourself you have to be present to yourself. You have to let yourself feel.

The version of yoga nidra I'm learning is called Integrative Restoration or iRest. It relies on body sensing and includes the practice of experiencing opposites as they show up in your body: opposite physical sensations, opposite emotions, opposite messages about yourself.

I've found this practice really illuminating, especially when overwhelmed by one or another difficult emotion like, say, grief. Flooded by intense grief, my body wants to hunch over with shoulders curled in and head drawn down. Feeling joy, my head lifts, chest expands, and heart opens.

The cat yoga pose has the drawn in quality of grief while the cow pose has the opened up quality of joy. I was already doing the cat/cow progression regularly as it is great for low back pain, increasing flow and movement in the lower spine. You don't even have to get on your hands and knees, but can do a version standing or sitting in your office chair.

Prompted by my yoga nidra practice, I began to go through the poses while feeling the opposite emotions: cat/grief and cow/joy, cat/grief and cow/joy. I let myself fully feel each emotion while expressing how it showed up in my body. Some minutes into this practice and I would be able to be fully present to both feelings at the same time. Amazingly, the emotions then began to balance. Neither was as intense as before and I arrived at a state of rest. I didn't need to suppress the difficult emotions, deny them, or distract myself from them. I found rest while still feeling the feelings.

How amazing. Joy plus grief equals rest.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Ordinary Light

After my monastic experience, you'd think I'd be suspicious of any self-proclaimed purveyors of Truth. You'd think I'd look first for the man behind the curtain. Still, I thought Amma was different - what with her free-hug darshan and "all money for charities" cant. Besides, many of my friends were Amma followers

True, her idea of karma was kindergarten simplistic & opposed to my own perceptions (people as completely separate and individually responsible for all positive or negative acts - which are totted up like a bank account). And of course, I never thought her some perfect, ego-less, goddess-on-earth or expected her organizations to be of pristine spiritual quality. Still I thought her a worthy guru, someone who channeled the divine energy more clearly than most

I was so desperate for help cutting through the fog so I could resonate with the divine light within. The way I had done in the monastery. The way I so thirsted for, but could not find in the world. Amma's darshan was thick with that energy. It rose from the crowd to fill the hall. I felt I could happily swim in it forever.

Amma's darshans were equally thick with buyers and sellers. The first time I saw Amma, my desire not to own stuff prevailed. I spent little and the marketplace atmosphere slid by unremarked. The second time...

That it was for charity bolstered my prickling desire for acquisition. The demon avarice overwhelmed me. Oh, not just to buy objects. I spent much on various forms of pure donation. Still... By American standards, I am a poor person. Yet, I spent all my pitiful savings. ALL.

This hit after I came home. To help myself feel okay, I decided to listen to people helped by Amma's charities, people much poorer than me, a homeless person who'd gotten a home, someone who couldn't afford school fees who'd been given an education. I searched the internet for the blogs, posts, notes, letters of real people whose real lives had been changed. I found...

Nada. Ziltch. Zip. Nothing but the glittering ads of the Amma organization, itself.

Huh? Given the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people her charities had served, surely some should have an independent web presence. Nope. Instead, I found disillusioned ex-devotees eager to tell the other side of the story. They gave massive evidence that Amma was but one more victim of the Guru Effect.

sigh.

Maybe people who truly have a larger opening to the universal, spiritual energy generally start out well. Yet more often than not, they get caught in the snare of pride. Followers are desperate for a divine savior. They want to worship the person, hang on her every word, etc. Glitz, hype & the need to appear as more than she is soon become irresistible. Pride opens the door. Soon all the little demons - desire for ownership, for relationships and for consumption (aka avarice, lust and gluttony) - are holding a rave in her house.

The 4th century, desert Amma, Syncletica, advised against teaching or leading others, saying, "As wax melts when it is near fire, the soul disintegrates in the face of praise."

She went on, "Pride attacks subtly and secretly a soul that considers itself zealous and diligent in discipline... The soul imagines that it has grasped matters incomprehensible to the majority, that it is superior. It forgets all its sins and mistakes. The soul is deluded with positions of command - with teaching posts and displays of healing. Thus deceived, the soul perishes and is destroyed."

In other words: the Guru Effect - when the clay that every guru has for feet rises to consume her or his whole being.

Does that mean there is no divine light, that there are no legit teachers or practices that can help us find that light in ourselves? No.

I've literally seen that light: in myself and in others. I know it is there. Waiting. Loving. Gentle. Eternal. Non-judgmental. Self, yet no-self. Reality. Ordinary.

Yet, there are no magic leaders who can take us there miraculously, cleaning out all our gunk without effort.

The Dalai Lama is another exalted spiritual leader with his own clay feet. He repeatedly says, "I am an ordinary man." It is important to get the message:

We are all equally ordinary. We are also all equally divine. Some folks are born more aware of their spiritual being - with a larger open channel to the universal energy. Some are diligent in practices that open their hearts to that energy through humility and compassion. Yet clay remains part of each and every one of us.

Clay and spirit. The balance goes one way. The balance goes another way. And there we are, doing and being life as a body and a spirit, as ordinary and as light.

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Giver or Taker: Whose Generosity Is It Anyway?

In his Rule, Benedict says that monks do not bless the guests they receive and serve. It is the guests who bless the monks. This is especially true when the guest is poor, sick, or otherwise in need of care.

How un-capitalist! The one who "gives" - whether food, shelter, medicine, or instruction - is in actual fact the taker. The one who takes these things is the more generous giver. How our charity marketplace would be changed if givers gave in full knowledge that in doing so, they are the greater takers.

I was reminded of all this recently.

I don't see private clients much since I moved into the new house with my uncle. Not sure if it is the chronic pain and attendant lack of sleep, or that caring for my uncle absorbs so much energy and attention. But I will see an old client on occasion. A week ago one called.

Most of the time I perceive energy pulses in the body, or see colors and symbols that represent emotions & events. Once in a while, someone identifies what I see as a person or animal they know - living or dead.

For some reason, the visions flow freely with this client, and most of what I see are animals or people the client recognizes.

The client launched right in with little pause for centering breath. Soon my sixth chakra was buzzing and snapping - a sign that I've hooked into the larger, universal energy field. I think of it as my "spiritual reality check." It let's me know I'm in the presence of something spiritually true. 

Supposedly I was serving this person, but the greater service was the one I received.

My practice has been absolutely crappy lately. I'm swamped by the upwelling of old trauma. Insomnia scrambles my brain. I am lost in a choking miasma of longing for the spiritual connection I know is there, but can not feel.

A little nip at the spiritual source looms large to someone overwhelmed with thirst.

Yup. That guest definitely gave the blessing and this host received.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

More on Fear & Gratitude

There are lots of external reasons I might be having trouble finding a job - not least, Wisconsin's continued employment hemorrhage under Scott Walker that keeps us mired in the worst of the recession while other states begin recovery. And the one thing a writer must do to be published (or produced) is write & submit & write & submit & write & submit - letting the rejections wisp away like so much morning mist under the rising summer sun. So to greet job-seeking failure and play-submission failure with gratitude, as I talked about in my last post, does not mean I should stop applying for jobs or stop writing & submitting.

It is primarily a directive to release fear, be open to what is as it comes, and not to internalize social "failure" as a comment on the nature of the universe or my place in it.

Hard enough even without all the good reasons to fear. Such as being on the edge of not covering my bills. Or aging painfully in a country where, despite oodles of wealth, the only workers allowed access to good health care are fully employed professionals, politicians, and soldiers.

Still, fear is of no use. My conditions won't change if I greet them with fear. Worse, fear eats my creative energy while insisting I should quit.

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" is one of the more useful Jesus sayings. Great teachers from other traditions similarly say to let go of fear. Forget insurance. Forget living your life in order to amass enough fortune to protect you through old age.

There is no guarantee, here, that bad things won't happen to you if you do not fear. It is not a magic prayer bullet that can bring you money & cars & a hunky guy or curvacious gal. Your health may crash. Your home may burn. Your loved one may die. You may be exhausted day after day by the struggle to get just enough to go on. However it happens, you will experience loss and will need to morn. But moving through loss and grief without fear is one way to get on the road to the greatest good - directly perceiving the delicious, brilliant, flowing energy in which we swim and of which we are all made.

Whatever my pains and difficulties, on that road the only things that make any sense are joy and gratitude.

* * * * * * * *

Fear and Gratitude

Say we really, really want something and work very, very hard to get it and... fail. If our first response was, "Thank you. I didn't realize that thing I wanted was bad for me" how would the world be different?

That's what fills my thoughts as I ponder months of job application and play submission with no success in either department.

I lost my present house twice before finally getting it - once when it was listed as a short sale & once in the bidding after the foreclosure. But I WANTED it. So I kept going back - pushing, pushing, pushing. And then, the first buyer of the foreclosure fell through & it was offered to me.

"Yay!" I thought, "Look what dogged persistence (+ some earth energy manipulation) can do."

Now I think someone or something or the general synchronicity energy of the universe was trying to get a message to me, "This is not your house." I refused to listen and so here I am struggling along in an unduly difficult house.

Unemployment or massive underemployment (as is my case) can be miserable. Not to mention lack of access to medical care in the medically medieval United State. The future looms fearful. Time gets lost in a numb parade of unmarked days. Sense of self drifts into strange space. If only I could get up every day and do work wanted by someone who was willing to give me a paycheck for it!

But what if I just don't realize that, for reasons incomprehensible from my little, earthly, human point of view, this is bad for me?

Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear.

*******

Back to School Simply?

I left full-time academics in 1999. It took a year of exploring the idea before I handed in my resignation, and another year and a half before I finally left. Academic institutions have a year-long hiring cycle and so it was professional to hand in a year's notice. Yet also, when it came down to it, I didn't want to go. My dean would ask me to stay for another term and I'd say yes. I might still be there if I hadn't been scheduled to go to Siberia to look at schools and talk to teachers. I could ease myself out by moving right after my return.

That was my first step in simplicity. A three bedroom flat full of furniture, all full of stuff, got pared down to an 8x15 U-Haul's worth. I sold a few things, but gave most away - to friends and to a resale shop that supported people living with AIDS.

I didn't miss the professorial 60-80 hour work weeks, but I did miss the work, itself. I loved most aspects of academic life - even committee meetings. This was helped by the fact that I was in a collegial department with an interesting student population. But still, there is something about that life that suits me, no matter what the department or who the students.

Two years later, I was back in academics - working part-time on an education evaluation project. It was a temporary position and as it ended, I took the next great leap in simplicity. I got rid of my remaining stuff in order to go into a monastery. 

This was a physically and emotionally wrenching task. Most of the stuff I shucked on leaving DePaul was the unnecessary detritus of your typical middle-class life - like fancy, never-used dishes from Grandma. Now I was dumping stuff that mattered. There were my brother’s sculptures and my mother’s photographs, a closet full of colorful, eclectic clothes, gold earrings I bought in Ethiopia, an amber necklace from Siberia, and a string of ivory elephants my dad brought back from his first trip to Nigeria in 1963. There were read and re-read science fiction and children’s books, travel guides, world music CDs, the Madame Alexander doll my mom gave me for my fifth Christmas so I wouldn’t ask for a Barbie, and the so-o-o comfy, blue armchair I bought with my first paycheck from Arco Alaska.  My car, my computer, my blankets: the list was daunting. But of course, it wasn't really the giving up of objects that hurt. It was the releasing of what those objects symbolized - the self I had spent 50 years creating, getting to know, grieving over, and finally loving. Yet, I did it. I let go of the objects and the memories those objects represented.

When I left the monastery, I thought, "That was way too hard to do in the first place to turn around and undo it now. I'm not getting the job, the house, and the possessions back again."

Fast forward half a decade, and I want to do just that - if I can - well, not the objects, but the rest of it. I already have the house. Now I am applying for jobs. 

I still miss the dynamics of academic life. I miss going to an office and being part of a work group. I miss students. I miss tussling with intellectual challenges. I have all these skills that I rarely use. So I want to return. Maybe that is impossible after such a long hiatus... in this economy... in a town full of young, under-employed academics, but I am going to try.

So we'll see. In my semi-employed/self-employed state, it was a struggle not to accrue stuff. I wonder how that struggle will play out if (when) I get that academic position.

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Stuck in Trauma Thinking

"The voice of the perpetrator says it is all your fault and you should give up in despair because what you did was so awful," my spiritual counselor said, "Believing you are hopeless and stuck is trauma thinking."

"What would happen if you dismissed the voice listing all the things you've done wrong and just let yourself feel the feelings?" she asked. "Describe the feelings. Where in your body are they? What texture do they have? How old were you the first time you felt those feelings? Just stay with the feelings and see what emerges."

I tried that this morning. The voice started in on all the ways I've messed up: hiring a bad contractor who wrecked the floors - that I can not afford to fix, buying the wrong house, deciding it was a good idea to take my uncle out of the nursing home in the first place, not applying for a full-time job the minute I was out of the monastery, not doing whatever it took so the sisters would keep me in the monastery, throwing over my tenure-track position at DePaul, not...

You get the picture. Starting with the most recent, a long litany of every major decision I've ever made, or had made for me, marched accusingly through my brain. All bad. All wrong. All adding up to why I was now lost in a morass of despair.

All to say I wouldn't have these feelings if only I was good enough.

I let the list of bads go and watched what emerged.

A little girl was crying in wrenching, gasping hopelessness. She had just been shut behind the gates of Hell with no recourse and no way out. A little girl, no more than three. What was she doing there? How could she possibly have done anything worthy of eternal damnation? That makes no sense. My stomach hurt.

So I held her. She cuddled up on my breast until her sobs were exausted.

"I love you, sweetheart. You are wonderful. It wasn't your fault. I love you," I said.

It still took me awhile to get my taking-refuge-in-freeze-response body out of bed, but my sense of upwelling trauma went from an 8 to a 3 (on a 1 to 10 scale).

"Just be with the feelings" is the most common thing my spiritual adviser says. "They've come for a reason, to bring you information. Let yourself receive the information. The only way out is through."

Not sure if I went very far through today, but at least I opened the door and went in.

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Simplicity is a Struggle-some Dance

I don't like buying & owning & taking care of excess property, but go where things are sold & I get the twitchy desire to buy something. Anything. Even in the monastery, avarice constantly whispered in my ear, just like it does with everyone everywhere else. It really helped to have a tiny, monastic allowance to cover all my personal care products, clothes, etc (I entered seriously lacking in black garments and we were required to dress well). My desire might twitch, but my purse, being empty, could not answer.

Of course, one of the big disjunctions between the older sisters' words & deeds was their attachment to property. It was easy to dismiss, though. We were all there to struggle with our ego issues, I thought. If that was theirs, it was none of my business. Eventually, I understood that they were not kidding when calling themselves "free of ego" (to quote the oldest sister). Being "free of ego" they had no issues to struggle with. Their love of property was, therefore, a monastic value - as was every other personality foible & ego-attachment. Still, I could swim in the freedom of not owning stuff - 'though it  was a grind that we were required to pour our life energy into care of the monastery's excess property.

Now I am poor-ish, but have some cash, not to mention the need to fill the material needs of myself & my dependent uncle. Buying & owning still feel uggy, but not feeding the desire to buy is a bigger problem.

sigh.

Seven years post monastery, I constantly struggle to find balance. It is necessary to own some stuff - in & out of the monastery. It is convenient to own other stuff. 

An incessant, judgmental, inner dialog creates just as much mental fog as being pulled hither & yon by freewheeling indulgence in desire. Clarity lets the light in. Space for breath lets the wind blow through. Taking things easy opens a silence where still, small voices can be heard. So where is the balance? Not attaching is one thing. Not attaching to the desire not to attach is another.

double sigh.

What if this struggle for balance is all that our job entails? What if we are not here to achieve some angelic freedom from ego so we can coast through earthly life until our spirit is ready to give this body up?  Perhaps instead, our job is only to knowingly engage in the struggle. I hope this is so 'cause "engage in the struggle" is the one thing I can actually do.

Namaste

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No Need to Fear Being Dead

I don't relish the pain of dying, but I don't fear being dead. Because I remember being dead. Well, only that first, exhilarating, upward rush of release - that feels like all the graduations, birthdays, and weddings rolled into a single microsecond burst of joy. After that, I get nothing - as if an impenetrable lead curtain lies between me and further knowledge.

It is enough.

The deaths I remember (and yes, there are several) were mostly violent, only I don't remember the trauma as traumatic, or any pain.

Each death carried important insight about life and the leaving of it.

Once I was burnt to death as I slept. A big bed, hangings, furniture, my body: all went up in a great whoosh of flame, smoke, and all-consuming joy.

What I learned? Wow, death feels good.

Another life ended with beheading by guillotine. Forget the French Revolution. This was the normal round of executions of petty criminals in some smallish town. I was a poor, nondescript woman. Stole a loaf of bread or something.

Not the first in line for the guillotine, I stood on a platform looking over the heads of spectators and the roofs of houses to the deep, deep sky. I breathed in the sense of life, becoming lighter and happier. Then it was my turn. I knelt, feeling the curved wood under my neck and looking into a basket placed to catch the heads. The basket was wet. Each flat, woven reed glistened. I heard a bit of drum roll as the blade was lifted and counted, breathing in life until I was as alive as it was possible to be. I realized I could live longer, but I could not live more. If I didn't die then, I would soon slip back into a physical and emotional roil that blanked out any sense of aliveness. So I would gain more days, but not more life. Better to live fully for a few seconds and welcome the death that followed. I felt so calm, so alive, so happy. On ten, a strange shlick! Then black.

I don't have any memory of that after-death.

What I learned? More time does not bring more life. Living fully is possible, but has nothing to do with resisting the passing of a particular body. In fact, just the opposite. The more a person is caught up in resisting and bemoaning death, the less alive she becomes.

I don't generally share these memories, but hey, with economic meltdown in the U.S.'s immediate future, how else live than by risk?

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