Category Archives: canadian artist

Metta View: I can’t see me.

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.As I was twisting around in the mirror, turning lights to reflect illumination on the upper quadrant of my back, I thought about the ideas of “seeing” and “flexibility.”

I was bitten by a brown recluse spider three weeks ago and part of my morning ritual is now to go stand with my back to the mirror holding my phone on camera and trying to set up a clear shot at the inflicted area.

Almost immediately after I was bitten, the two puncture wounds showed themselves but over time with strong antibiotics and tetracycline cream, it is down to a distinct area of red. However,  I am under compulsion to view it. It is “behind” me. I cannot reach it easily. I cannot see it clearly. The ritual of self-protection is built in the monitoring of my body.

The entire OCD driven idea of assessing how I am at this moment, how my past decisions and actions impact on my physical, emotional, spiritual energy, is the place I have landed in my life.

The bite is no longer spreading. The dark ring around it is no longer turning black. The center is beginning to collapse inward as the online information had predicted. But what about the rest of me?

I keep coming back to the idea of blind spots or black boxes. There is an obstruction in knowing the self and it is held in the steel-like neurons that form a spider’s web of concepts.
I know I cannot turn easily to look at my spider attack but that information goes into the basket: “Must do yoga- I hate yoga.” It is filed away.

I watched a video today by a 92-year-old weight lifter who began his self-improvement beyond the age of 80. As I watched, I felt the flush of the warmth of excitement and passion for what I in my secret most heart want for myself. And as time elapsed I filed the intention in the: “Must work out more but don’t feel like it now” basket.

The issue I explain to my patterned self, my toy train on a track self that goes round and round and reaches only the same train station as it ever reached, is that I have a bankruptcy of using time.

Time is energy. Time is optimism. Time is the ultimate expression of the physical. Since I have been retired in 1999 I was outer directed as an artist. I prepared for shows. I worked to deadlines. I spent money in the hopes of making money. I “was” something.

over view

And then I opened the Airbnb for eight very successful years. I was once again outer-directed. The customers coming in would trigger action. The six to eight hours a day spent making beds, doing laundry, wiping down surfaces was not negotiable.

Now, at 75, I have my debt paid down. I have all the time in the world. The Pandemic has turned off the switch of the impulse of action triggered by the outside world and I twist around attempting to see myself.
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And what I see is the problem with “float”. I float in time because “I deserve it.” They tell me that. The inability to look forward to appointments, to trivial meetings with others, to pleasurable strolls through thrift stores to buy things I have no use for and store in the dark peripheries of my house has left me bereft.

Issues such as age, the constant mirroring back to me of what I am expected to do or be as a senior, an inborn faulty setting due to years of being a workaholic and one who has trained herself to jump for the reward cookie held in someone else’s hand haunt me now.

But when I drift in the mornings, I do it listening to coaches, watching videos, reading teachers.

training the mind

I think of the trips I took to Europe and how I spent so much time buying maps when I could have been learning a new language.

Always, always, always my mind runs like a sheep dog herding up scattering thoughts. I come back to the knowing surety that I am a construct. The habits that I build create my choices.

So can we ever know ourselves? How can we twist around enough to get a clear view?

I can only register in my mirror the actions that I am taking. Some of them are shaky, unskilled, full of frustration. But some of them have removed countless moments of drama and struggle that used to occupy my ego.

The spider bite is healing because I followed doctor’s orders even though the antibiotic was very unpleasant. The food I eat is kind to my body and supports my health. The friends I have around me are loving and supportive.

Each day is another construction site. Each day is another laying down of more track for my train to go further, to explore more, to not be so tightly wound.

Ultimately it is a better use of my time to focus on the use of my time instead of looking behind me to see if there is any scarring from past poison. I see my mind grabbing at me for security and I understand the fear that drives that grasping.

Can I loving schedule my time so that I am being rewarded for each minor victory? I begin. I begin again. I begin each every now. Eyes forward.

Day 22. But who is counting?

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Through this 22 days of semi-isolation I watched myself cycle up and down in energy. One day I am out in the garden walking 10 kilometres while hauling dirt and cleaning out the beds. The next I awaken with a headache and am stiff and sore all over. I have no interest in engaging with this new day. There isn’t enough passion in me for the beginning.

The underlying use of energy to keep myself afloat is obviously syphoning off what I would normally be doing this time of year. But managing the body, the emotions, the spirit take monitoring.

To be able to scan the self and see , “No. You cannot push me today,” written on the gauge means I must respect how the entire system I call ‘myself’ is operating.

Today I sat with a Metta Practice video for 30 minutes and I could feel it clearing me. It felt the same way that sliding an overworked, muscle torn body feels sliding into hot water in the bathtub. There was the first recognition that, yes, I was listening. Then the relief as I could feel myself letting go of even that which I did not understand until that moment had been a weight I was carrying.

As I worked my way through the practice, selecting first those who are easiest to love and sending them my wishes and moved on to those who are more challenging, I was floating in a tub of hot water. Each breath, each thought caused more release from my body. I became lighter.

The spirit craves simplicity. The soul yearns to love openly without worrying about being hurt, or attacked or wronged. We all share the desire to drop the protective shield that we are taught is the only safety.

The conspiracy theories are now plastered all over social media at various angles, They are crisscrossing one another out. This statement is untrue, that statement is untrue. Only we in our cult of reality know what is really going on. We hold the tablets with God’s word.

I see the clinging to groups more and more as we are more and more isolated. Our childlike need for the protection of belonging is highly activated now when we are not allowed to sit face to face.

“Show me you belong to my structured belief system group by posting pictures of black chickens,” someone will demand. We are separated into our families in one isolation chamber or we are floating alone in our homes without pets or other people. We need to prove to ourselves that we still hold social power.

And so we cycle. We talk about how nothing is true; more is true than we will ever know; the monsters are no longer in the closet or under the bed. They are everywhere. They are on the TV screen daily.
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And so surrounded by shadows that we see because we are so frightened of being on our own, we now accumulate more and more conspiracy theories.

The way out of our own, internalized, lies to ourselves and our sense of an unsafe world is through a deep appreciation of the efficacy of self-calming.

return to self

We go back to the child. We go back to the bursting out of our chest desire to love. We go back to making it safe for ourselves to trust and be compassionate.

I got out of the bath and left behind all of the spider webs of sticky thread imprisonment. I came back to the truth of being human.

We want someone to tell us it is safe to love others. We want our martial arts master to say we don’t need the sword; we can take off the armour.

And then I felt so much more present in my own body as I recited , “May you be safe. May you find joy. May you be released from suffering.” I said it for others, and I said it for myself.

Let go. Trust. Be of good heart. Nothing needs to be true except this breath, this now. Come home. Remember to love.

 

Honoring the Writer

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I awoke and visualized myself writing lines as I lay coming up to consciousness in the bed. I remembered the lines that had appeared and held on to them tightly so as not to lose them.

I am starting to see the shape of a new book like a body curled under a tangle of thick blankets. When I put my hand out, I can make sense of its shape. It is about all the stoires of real things that happened to me, to others who passed me in the carnival of life and for that brief period of time that we intersected they explained what ride they had chosen to ride, why they had selected this particular apparatus to mount and to trust their bodies to.

A moment in time, a single anecdotal exchange can reveal everything about a person.

Since I gave myself permission to retrieve this collection of interchanges more and more appeared to me, these torn pages of others lives I still held in my memory. I had let the story fly past as if the person was on a merry go round riding a prancing tiger rhythmically undulated. I had asked, “Why the tiger?”

I had watched, turned my head in wonder and then walked away.

I am understanding, now, the next step is the step that I have been missing: A university professor said to me as a 20-year-old sitting in his classroom that the difference between a full-blooded, full-hearted writer and a whimsical will o the whisp was the act of honouring the writing.

“The notebook,” he said in a leather-bound gold foiled voice, “Is validation of our relationship to our own words, our own thoughts. Like a fish getting off of our line of dreams, we do not care enough to haul them in, so that we can edit, weight and measure them.”

He went on to explain that everything we do not think to honour in ourselves, that we do not help to grow in our lives results in a loss of confidence. The words, the images, the hidden code of who we are needs to be studied. We can break apart the words to see the very relationship we have with self. We alone can decipher the message.

It is in the deepening of the romance with words that the object of our desire becomes less shy. It disrobes for us and we see nakedly what words formed our thoughts. We see what truths about self we have overlooked.

We can say, “This person’s story does not interest me.”

And so by dismissing the words that ticker tape across the brain daily we refuse to be curious about the very nature of being alive. What is the scrolling translation of the foreign movie of our subconscious mind trying to say to us?

We fail to commit to the intense beauty of language. It becomes a casual if not abusive situation.

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We find out fluctuaring flirtation with the self to be deeply dissatisfying. Like a wife or husband who feels abandoned and lonely, our soul’s very power stays contained and weak.

We have no confidence in our music. We tell the ballerina of expression that she is too frail, she lacks technique, she is flawed and at best amateur. We have no time for her.

When the soul in its expressive power shows up, we ask, “What can you do for me? Can you heal my childhood? Can you be used for status or power?”

And so we train ourselves to be disloyal to our own psyche. The ferocious strength that keeps us alive when we are lost and the sky is obscured with only a gothic hiss of a sun above us is within. We are all muscle and sinew. We do not leave the field of battle but use our self talk to embolden us beyond despair.

A true writer trains like a warrior trains. The writer swears an oath upon the blade of language. A true oracle speaker knows that all visions are treasures. There are no greater or lesser lines of revelations.

Every word that appears to us is a word to be respected and kept in honor.

But to honor the words that scroll through the brain means to make a commitment to our own individual manner of making sense of the world. And as it is with every living thing, that which is observed with love, that which is nurtured thrives.

The words no longer appear to us quickly flitting like a gray squirrel running on a dead winter highway of stagnant branches. They are not so fast and so distant that we can’t make them out.

Like so many experiences in my life the message that the professor offered to me was not received when I was twenty.

Today I am 75 and I am full of stories. I collected them somewhere below my conscious knowing. I can see their shape obscured beneath a layer of inattention.

I feel full of excitement as I understand that I am being called to accept myself, my thoughts. I open my journal and write down the pictures I have seen. I respect the torn fragment of other’s revelations about their lived experiences and want to study them carefully.

I think I am ready now at last.

Art. Why?

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Art. Why?

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Posted on February 29, 2020
I have come to realize I have a relationship with art and with cultural events that is central to my sense of well being. As I do in all relationships, I step back and analyze the dynamic with a curious mind.
 
What I seek from art is a transformation of self. I stand before a painter that was looking at his concept reality in 1400 and I feel as if I have stepped into his very mind. This was the world he inhabited; these were the beauties of mundanity that surrounded him. What appears on the canvas are the objects limiting and expanding his very sense of his own humanity. And it deepens my understanding of what it means to be mortal beyond the boundaries of my own culture, current normative habits and constructs.
 
When I watch a choreography that is precise, unexpected and paced just beyond my ability to aperceive it, I feel more flexible. My understanding and ability to behold the eternity of the performance is being challenged. It wakes me up. I find myself holding my breath.
 
To hear poetry or a film script that is just beyond my capacity to follow the words, puts me in a state of alertness. I am panting after the patter, forced to keep up, to keep alert.
 
When I see a play and the acting, directing and intelligence of writing is so beautifully beyond that which I knew previously, it can shred my sense of confining comfort. The tightly locked up ideas of who I am are released. I am forced to the identity of the characters. I am that person. I inhabit that kind of grief. That particular rage is within me. I will have unanticipated tears flow. The sense of deep humanity and the fragility of living a life sweeps over me.
 
Perhaps, I am shocked or horrified or taken like a captive ripped out of my own repetitions of understanding. Good art over-takes who I am in normal life and drags me to a hilltop where I now have a greater purview of the entire landscape of being born into a body. This moment in front of a painting, or dissolving in music, or listening to an actor channel the narrative of slavery destroys me.
 
All that I have known is exploded and the intensity of something so much greater than myself floods through me.
 
I fall in love with the created piece of art. I fall in love with the artist who can hold and transform that electricity. It is such an act of bravery to grab the wire and allow the self to be used to transmit energy. I fall in love with the earth, my body, the shared humanity of all of us.
 
For me, great art is about connecting to passion. It is about allowing the small self to be reformulated through an experience. I am renewed. I understand now: To be human is an act of incalculable courage. An artist taught me that.

reconstructing self

 

Perception is Creation

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Since 2008 I have been writing about my work on my own perceptions. Mindfulness practice, being aware of what I think I am seeing and interceding to release the habitual ritual of reinstalling the same reality over and over, has taken me years of work.

I think in metaphors so at Christmas time I think of “reality” like a gingerbread dough that is rolled out flat on our counter. In an unseen split second, I push the cookie cutter into the dough and create the shape that I wield. My reality is a tree, or a snowman, or a snowflake. And then after I have cut away everything that is not what I realize as my truth I end up with the same shape again and again.

Life did not create the pattern of trees, or anxiety, or fear, or scacity. I did when I insisted the shape into the arising moment. Time is the element that I work within. This now I will be exactly as I have always been. This now I will carefully rearrange my situation exactly as it was in the past. And so I make an impression and push down hard. I cut away all that is what I do not believe. It is a process.

And when I yearn for more snowflakes and fewer trees I will give the casality to scarcity. Reality, the universe, the Greek Chorus of the massive shape of all is one called “them” made it happen.

The gifts that mindfulness practice have given me are multiple and unforseen. The challenge of watching my thoughts did not come about because I was seeking something. It was the result of my gift of creating tension, blame, loneliness, poverty, failed relationships.

When I was growing up there was a show called “Beat the Clock,” and I have come to understand that I have lived my life with the loud ticking of inevitable failure clicking in my ears. Hurry, grab it, make a list, do twenty-five things, prove yourself, measure yourself against everyone around you. Tick tick tick tick.

What I think I have come to understand is that I am the one who keeps recreating the perception that there is not enough: I am not enough; there is not enough money; there is not enough flow; there is not enough that I can possibly do in one life time so that others will see me as I want to be seen.
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Each day, each hour, each breath is everything. With mindfulness practice, I can sit calmly and not respond to the need to frenetically push the cookie cutter into the fabric of life to make something of it. Sometimes I just need to sit and see that the flat slab of what I think is reality is a misperception.

The distant view.

We are each in a frenetic race with our own minds. I am coming to see that existence is not about pushing as hard as we can to try to fill the hole inside. Constantly chasing a sense of being one of the anointed ones leaves us simply deepening our own sense of apprehended undeserving.

Running changes nothing.

The irony is that the harder I ran the more stuck in place I became.

Maybe there is no need for cookie cutters; or knowing; or pushing; or competition. Maybe there is just learning. Now that makes me feel really Christmasy.

What is Truth?

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I am run over by the stories in my mind like a person standing in a raging crowd which is pushing through to some scarcity prize..So many versions of my life clustering the aisle of truth.

But when I check this blog, I see actually. I wrote only one entry in July and it has been a full month to the day since I last posted.

Where did the time go? What was I doing? Why did my intentions dissolve like the smoke from my incense burning in front of my Buddha statue. My mind has constructed a narrative which I see converges in three directions easily running along the ground in different dimensions.

What have I done? I sit asking myself. Every day I have prepared my airbnb for new guests. I have worked out three to four times I week. I have walked building onto my habit of walking until one week I hit 66 Kilometers of travel on my feet.

But. But. I excuse myself with the heat. My productivity falls when the temperature crosses the border line of 30 celsius. I say to myself… you are old Mother Williams… yes that poem by Lewis Carroll.

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
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Why, I do it again and again.”

So I have no brain or mindfulness when I excuse myself from my dreams. I placate myself that it is enough what I do because… and then I wander into the garden of blooming rationalizations and pluck a multifarious bouquet.

People plaster the sides of my reality with their “fun” billboards. At least, you should have fun. The call to tomfoolery is like a jingle played repeatedly on TV. I am instructed to adhere to the behavior of others… the hot sand, the stasis of seeking, the grouping to make trivializing conversation. None of that has ever held joy for me. I have always know I am an outlier, an alien being.

I stand on my head again and again and keep returning to the pervasive sense that I have played small; that I have taken the easy route; that I have somehow starved my future self of the glory that should be.

I have worked a seven day week since April and the business unfolds in front of me until the last week in October. The two hour retreats from the heat under the fan watching netflix is “wasted” time, I natter into my skull. “What are you doing?” I crow caw to myself.

And then I skip out to the garden and pluck the blossom excuses to put in water in a single vase. Oh they are beautiful those mix of mitigations.

So I know that I can trust myself so far. I can trust myself to do a teensy bit more than I did. I can trust myself to take slightly greater risks than I have. I can trust myself to stick my neck out a considered inch or two more.

Is that enough? I have no way of knowing the truth because I have stood on my head so long. At least, I know that much. I seek meaning. Fuck Fun.

Question Everything: Question Nothing

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Inquiry, we are told, leads to clarity. We stand back and observe and ask the question: “Why am I thinking that thing?” And then we ask: “Why am I asking myself why I am thinking that thing?”

Yesterday, perhaps it was the blood moon pulling at me, I found myself in a deeply philosophical state. I was looking at the reality I have created in my current life. Somewhere between your feet construct the fit of the shoes and the shoes constrict the spread of your feet, I just stood still.

I have had a deep well of loneliness for as long as I have conscious memory. And probably extending back before the transition into clear thinking. Outlier. The one who has a finely honed antenna cannot expect validation for the impressions of energy received. The validation only comes in the future.

As I felt the gut punch of hearing about the aids epidemic for the first time in 1981.. I went into the teachers’ staffroom and shared my despair for what was about to come. I spoke about the plague, the wide swath of death. I spoke about the change of everything we had know about sexual contact since the early days of death from syphilis. And all around me told me to calm down.

But I was used to that response. In 1968 when Nixon was elected I stood in front of the television and wept. Others around me were unaware of the draconian evil that would become a part of the political life of the United States. I kept saying, “He is so evil.” And they kept drinking beer and dismissing me.

Separation and not expecting others to see what I see, or feel what I feel is a life long coping strategy for me. But being comfortable with not being comfortable, what has that cost me?

I look at my current life and ask the question: What do you need to feel supported? And I am as usual in a debate in my own mind. The old story of separation and protection arises. The old song lyrics of not expecting much from others croons in my mind.

At a viagra 25 mg http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/?buy=8760 time that was unthinkable, today, that is possible. What you should do before taking levitra online order for personal use. In doing so, we often end up losing our interest in intimacy. cheap levitra generic Prior taking the dose it would be purchasing viagra better if you consume the product daily. At one time I was terribly ill with pneumonia and lost 20 lbs in three weeks. No one called. No one asked after me. No one reached out to me. It was because my habit of being tough, of not expecting nurturance or support constructed that event. It has been a life long projection.

So the central question I am looking at in this mad strobe light flickering energy on the earth right now is , “what is real?”

Am I isolated because I have been isolated? Is it fear of others? Or is it because I have little or no experience of connecting with others who can receive messages and read energy?

What does connection look like to me? What does the warm effortless floating of support look like to me?

At issue is the entire question of how satisfied I have been to live without intellectual conversation, without quick, educated minds around me. I have denied myself sustenance because I am used to not having it.

I have grown comfortable with being uncomfortable.

And so I question everything. And what I keep hearing is, “Question nothing.” Just see what you have created and trust that you are ready to grow. Accept what is. Accept what is becoming. Find a way through that tangled forest of thought to a place of opening. And then, can you shut up and dance/

We are only Human after all

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The stint of long distance stamina cross country marathon working pumping my limbs toward my goal of paying down my $110,000 reverse dowry (paying for my freedom from marriage) has been a great success. I have buckled down, buckled in, sucked it up, muscled up, stayed the course and bent my back into my airbnb business. As one of the top ten airbnb places in Kelowna, I have been so very grateful for the guests who have stayed with me. Their reviews, their company, their sweet thank yous have filled my life with light.

almost done

I have in a six year period gone from $110,000 in debt from the single check that I had to write in order to buy myself free down to a paltry $6,000 currently. However, the seven days a week of work for 8 months straight , of cleaning, of laundry, of restricting my movements so that I could be available to my guests, of living abstemiously ; of putting as much back into the business and the debt as my adolescent screaming on the inside could manage, has been demanding. There were openings of respite. I have gone on trips; purchased the odd new to me pieces of clothing and allowed frivolous expenditures like flowers for my garden that were not absolutely “necessary.” The unrelenting focus on paying down the debt and keeping my reviews at the Super Host status level has been a success.

Since October 20th I worked seven days a week from February 1st without a day off. And then I remembered  last year in October when I was shaky all over from the daily effort to bend my will, to put on the harness of discipline daily when I said out loud, “I need a break.” And then I fell down the stairs and fractured my wrist.

This year, I said to myself, this year you will stop before you are on your last torn shred of nerve. And so I blocked out all of November. I felt rebellious. I felt naughty. I felt outrageously irresponsible. How could I do that when I had debt left? How could I just ruthlessly cross off the chance to make thousands of dollars before my debt was disappeared.

I see a counsellor once a month and use her as my life coach. I check in with her to articulate what behaviours I am instilling in myself and what areas of wounding still drive my life. She worked with me for three continuous months gently suggestion that I could “let up on myself” before I saw a row of zeros on the debt counter.  I finally said, “I will be free at $10,000 stilll owing.”

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Today, I sit with $6,000 left on my debt in the month of November. I created this space of time off when I wildly crossed out all the days on  November’s calendar. And with a few days impetuously blanked out in October,  now I am living into 6 continuous days off. It comes home to me exactly how used up I am. I have no urge to travel, to start a new project, to explore the world, or myself.

The focus has been on meditation, sleep, teaching myself how to be a social being in the outside world again. I work out 5 days a week building muscle mass and I wait. I wait for the feeling that some magical glowing pathway will shine up into the gray befogged landscape of the present. I wait for the sense of joy and curiosity to return. I am no longer an indentured slave. I am no longer straining to put down the burden I have incurred by making an unenlightened choice of a mate. I have been buying off my own freedom. But I am tired.

What I find strange is that I had no idea exactly how pervasively exhausting and engaging this last six years has been. Having a purpose and a carefully defined struggle is a wonderful anesthetic. There are few decisions to be made. There are fewer possibilities  of going wrong. The harness is restrictive and comforting.

restrictions

And now, I cool my heels while my body recovers. I abide while I gain confidence that I am ready to deal with the outside world and finally walk toward my bigger dreams. My focus is on opening myself up to possibilities. So many of my delusions around deserving, around the heart hardening concept of toil, the crazily distorted mirrors which have reflected back who I think I am  are about to shift into the sheer joy of taking chances. It is right there in front of me and I am patient with not being quite able to see quite yet.

Autumn: What is happening?

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Autumn is a high wire act. The peak performance summer with its heat, 600 forest fires and 4 new guests every day into my home is one end of the wire. The other end is deep winter with its muted sounds, its sentinel plants poking up through the snow, its folding in on itself like a blanket around a reluctant person. In between, there are days that bring motivation. The gray coolness will be cut open with a sun knife and the clouds parted. The heat from the sky available in certain spot light areas.

As people turn up their furnaces, change blankets on the beds, structure new types of exercise into their lives the focus is on preparation.

How fitting it is that in the USA preparation for November 6th is also under way. The tribal disparities in belief systems have never been more virulent. Each side is now in a viral anger against the other. The background orchestral anxiety music is now playing so loudly it is causing a visceral reaction. Something is happening…. but it is impossible to see what it is.

We wait for winter hoping it will not present itself according to the predictions of the Farmer’s Almanac… a fierce and memorable assault. We wait for the election results in the USA with breath held. We wait to see if the disaffection with politicians and governments will fuel the rise of the hard cold presence of the conservatives here in Canada.
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Around the world there is a sense that we are only just maintaining our balance in a confusing time.

The work is to know we, each of us, walk alone together. Only the individual can stay in compassion and thereby show others a way of extending kindness. Only the individual can remain committed to healthy practices and thus show others it is possible to disengage from the self destructive distractions presented to us. Trusting our bodies is central. Trusting our in born values is more important than ever. Staying in a “self re-set” state is what past traumatic situations can teach us. The road of history is strewn with the psyches of those who trembled in fear. But those who know how to trust, know we are simply walking between two structures. Autumn turns to winter. Civilizations self destruct. Failing system fail. And now we take a breath. And now we find our balance. We hold onto the balance pole of love and stay focused.

Each passage from one structure of shared reality to another is giving us lessons. We are here to learn. It is a journey. Keep your balance.

Learning my boundaries: country of self

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I am constantly bumping into my limitations. There were days on end when the heat and smoke and working seven days a week were teaching me my capacity. How long can you go in a state of optimistic, accepting calm, woman? Hey. Let us find out.

When I stepped on a mass of dry twigs and three (so far that is the number that shot out of the resultant infection in my foot) shards were embedded; when my right eye stopped seeing clearly; when I found it difficult to breathe, I slid into a deep down knowing that the world was a crap lined cave of granite imprisonment. I forced myself to do the hours of work to prepare for guests every day but I settled for a grim existence.

stressors teach us

It makes me think of the experiences of my ancestors. The city is a fortress but it is surrounded by the invading hoards that have cordoned it off. No relief is in site. So for generations (on both familial trees) stoicism and indifferent detachment from one’s own suffering was the key to survival. I shift into “lock down” mode. I shift into disassociating mode.

Evidence of this arises frequently. After, I couldn’t see… I allowed three days to elapse before I got to the opthamologist.  Because the thought that something was happening to my vision was terrifying me, a person who is highly visually acute; an artist; a gardener, I buried it deep. Because my foot had an infection and stepping on it was painful, I just sat more. It was two weeks later that I showed it to my daughter and she suggested I actually soak it in epsom salts to encourage it to eject the intruding darts of lavender formed into weapons.

It was only when I sat with my counselor and explained some of the symptoms I was experiencing in my body that I heard her say, “Do you think you could be disassociation?”
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When the number and type of stressors I am experiencing ramps up, I go into lock down. I tell myself that the way out is to simply work harder on meditation and not see the events as negative. And then all hell breaks out. The bottom gear in my humanity is always blaming myself for my humanity.

no air

I have soaked my foot until all three pointy stick weapons were released by my body. I have begun to eat more salt to make sure my heart pumps blood to my eyes. I have once again made an effort to reach out to others to connect and not shut myself into my tower of protection.

And as I hang the laundry, once again, on the line I think about how my intention to build habits needs to be reinstalled… like failing software. Shut down the entire system. Then reboot and reinstall.

It is not like a war. The ground I am conquering is not myself. I am not a foreign country that needs harrowing and rebuilding. I am a garden. And weeding frequently, with love and conscious attention is working. Softly on the ground. Softly, softly on the ground.