where the action is

It's raining in Santa Monica. Were I in Atlanta I would call this a drizzle but here anything that's wet and falls from the sky qualifies as rain. It makes for an interesting mix of odors - of asphalt and atmosphere, potted lavender in one doorway, a homeless person sleeping in the next.

I'm not complaining, but too much sunshine lends an invisibility to things after a while. Weather changes can inspire us to look at the same things differently, or look somewhere else entirely. Driven indoors I remember that, while California is endowed with great weather and an abundance of natural beauty, not everything worthwhile happens outside. 

stone soup

I forget I have a choice, always, to be present and engage with others. I don't have to wait for them. Intimacy is a food. Sometimes it comes easily and naturally, sometimes it gets lost in the constant onslaught of day-to-day preoccupations. Sometimes I'm so hungry for it I lose perspective and, in my impatience, begin to blame others. But there is one thing I've learned and keep learning: you cannot wait for others to give, to be brave, to initiate, to move towards you - you must step forward yourself, and do it again and do it again. It's not a matter of taking what you need, people fall into that, but quite the opposite. It is stone soup. It is all of us in the kitchen together, giving from who and what we are, present to what it is we all essentially need - each other. 

good and right

"Doesn't it feel good? I mean, doesn't it feel right?" Someone said this to me not too long ago. While it was more a suggestion than a question, I took the time to consider it. The assumption is that the answer to one will be the answer to both. It's convenient to lump these two together indiscriminately. It is decidedly inconvenient to lump these two together indiscriminately. The unnecessary is costly. Not everything that feels good is right. Conversely, not everything that is right feels good. 

with a view

Today I woke slowly. It's summer and for the first time since I've lived here I'm enjoying having the curtains drawn and my windows open. At this time of night you can hear grasshoppers and sounds from the 405. In the morning you can still hear the 405, but the grasshoppers are replaced by crows and occasionally a scream or two from the macaw that lives in the house behind ours. My view is of our neighbor's roof and the tops of the trees that line our street. The way the trees move is lovely and when you're beneath them you get the sense that their branches, similar to a weeping willow's, are reaching gently for you.

My room, having these last few days been slowly relieved of its mess, seems so large to me now.  Lately I've been too busy to pay it much mind. Now it feels strangely large. Large and quiet, as though it accepts me and I, in seeing, accept it. Perhaps these last days are the first I've really felt at home here. At home I'm allowed to feel simple and plain. I haven't felt this way, this strongly, in a while. It's wonderful. It occurs to me that simplicity and plainness are virtues, or can be, and I realize that I want to feel them more often. 

driving home

I saw the sun rise today. It's pink hues backlit the San Gabriel Mountains. I remember mornings when I was younger, laying in bed and watching the light (the miracle of light) gradually give shape, color and texture to the objects around me. How strangely they emerged from obscurity, carved out of darkness.

There's something beautiful about the world at rest, before the house stirs and the mechanics of our daily lives are set in motion. The streets are empty and the birds have not yet begun their chirruping. It was like that this morning. Driving home with the windows down I could feel the moisture in the air. Cool and clingy, it was dew settling on every still-calm or sleeping thing.

flowers from the Faire

Yesterday I had a hard time. I was having a hard time and it was looking like I might not find support. But support arrived. It arrived bearing gifts of affirmation. It arrived and didn't shun me for being a mess. It arrived drinking Pellegrino and smoking cigarettes. It arrived. It looked me in the eyes and told me I was worthy of love. And when, at these words, I began to cry, it kissed me. The kiss of kindness and understanding. So much so that today I am still tempted to believe.

picking up the tab

Yesterday's rejection was the realization of one of my worst fears. So much so I have to ask myself if I didn't somehow make it happen. But, once I begin searching my faults for answers, I never seem to stop. There are too many to keep account and besides, on our own it is nearly impossible to have the full story.

But it's true that what we don't know about ourselves can hurt others. Avoiding putting people we care about through unnecessary pain is not the only reason for deep introspection and soul-searching, but it's not a bad one either. No one else should be asked to pick up the tab for our troubled histories or the agendas of our never-quite-satisfied personalities. 

delirium tremens

To "pick your own poison" usually refers to choice of alcohol. I would take this a bit further and assert we literally pick that which poisons us mentally, emotionally and physically. Most of our problems do not land arbitrarily on us like some cosmic roulette wheel, but are stepped into again and again as a natural result of us following our already well-established tastes, habits, and personal histories. The path of least resistance is as inviting and familiar as a comfy couch, but even harder to get out of.

Today I encountered one of these. Why has so-and-so decided not to like me? How unjust. Who do they think they are? Especially when they're the jerk? What a hypocrite, etc. Ok, so my feelings got hurt. Perhaps there's no way around that. But, the occasion granted me an unusual opportunity not only to observe myself reacting to a strong emotional stimulus, but to step outside of it and see the whole thing for what it is - one big energy leak. The fact of the matter is my friendship with so-and-so, in its best moments, still constituted a drip drip drip of energy ultimately never used in support of my Aim.

We give power to things. We give things power over us. We do this to ourselves. No one else. I could choose to give so-and-so the power to create negativity in my life or I could take responsibility for myself. Strange and amazing that such an uncomfortable turn of events has resulted in one of the most important insights I've had about my own personal interference with the work to date. This, practically gift-wrapped with a solution to the problem. I am thankful for this. Don't get me wrong, I hope the situation gets rectified, and soon, but there's no longer any bite in it. I've sobered up. I remember who I am. 

more love lessons

I should not take from others more than I am willing to give.

said the needle

"Sorry I interrupted your quest for hay."

roar

My heart,
once so easily defeated
by loneliness,
could be the heart
of a lioness.

risky business

I find that the April 14th weekend seminar on the G.I. Gurdieff and J.G. Bennett Fourth Way teachings presented by Ben, Cindy, George and Ana Bennett - who, along with planning it from a distance, so generously flew out here all the way from Massachusetts - has left me with much to write. Where to begin?

One thing it made me reflect on is risk. The potential latent in risk, as well as hazard. I never personally met Mr. Bennett but imagine if I were him the temptation to rest on my laurels, with so many students looking on, would be high. But he never stopped pushing forward. He never stopped learning regardless of what he already knew or what status he had attained. This alone garners the greatest respect from me. It speaks of his commitment to life and all that is alive, to his humility and his humanity. That, though he may have had something to say about it, he never shunned even the weakest of us and never seemed to forget himself or his origins.

Accepting risk into one's life is accepting the challenge of the outside world and circumstances against your beliefs - also accepting that, as a consequence, you might have to revise them. The moment you drift away from this willingness to be challenged and be changed, to be found out, to be found wrong, you die. It may happen in increments as the decisions you make to avoid risk multiply, but it's death just the same. And it is observable. It is as instantaneous as it is slow because when it happens our world contracts. We are sometimes, as a result, made more comfortable for it. But this is akin to the blessing of a person who dies quietly in their sleep. If I am to die, I want to go kicking and screaming. It's not the death of the physical body I am referring to. That is quite apart.

rolling with the punches

"Fig. to absorb the force of a blow"

March is almost over. Given the last three months I'd say 2012 is shaping up to be a year fraught with personal difficulty. I'm certainly not shaking my fist at the sky, taunting God to bring it on, but perhaps I can accept this as a challenge all the same. Can I hold the center? Find my place within the flux of everything changing. Do I have any stability with me? Can I feel loss, can I suffer and yet hold fast to the knowledge that these are impersonal - these are natural, they are bodily, they pass. 

Prevention is a pretty word. It's a word you seldom hear in Western medicine. Over here you don't worry about a thing until it hurts. This is not how we treat our hearts though. I can't make time for my yearly physical, but I'll make damn sure no one has an opportunity to break my heart again. You lose something or someone and it becomes easy to wall up, to begin viewing your attachments with suspicion. Which one of you will leave me next? We demand an answer and when one doesn't come sometimes we make one come. 

In my experience, energy spent obsessing over prevention and protection is energy wasted or worse. Pain and loss and suffering happen and will always happen. They are part of the deal. If we try too hard to protect ourselves from these inevitabilities we run the risk of shutting not only the bad, but also the good out of our lives. And, though it may make us feel a little safer or a little more in control how effective is it, really?

Most of what I don't see I don't see because I don't want to. 

True compassion doesn't cherry-pick.

Or, put another way, compassion that cherry-picks is just another word for prejudice. 

Matthew 5:44

I've been thinking lately on forgiveness and the prescription of loving our enemies. I don't have many enemies to love, but there are those whose actions in one way or another have caused me to feel unfairly treated. This ranges from the absurd (that asshole who cut me off in traffic) to repeated acts of insensitivity or hurtfulness. I have been lucky. There is not much in my personal history which cannot or has not been forgiven. But I've found it helps if I am able to understand, even a little bit, the underlying cause of the action or miscommunication. Why did so and so do x, y & z? How have I interpreted it (because it is an interpretation, not fact) and why? There is often some sort of ailment at the root of it. Mine or someone else's previous hurt working itself out in the present. This is ok. Even when it's not ok. I have more trouble coming to terms with what I fail to understand, especially after exerting some mental and emotional effort at working the problem out. 

I am, however, at least as frequently incomprehensible to myself as others are to me. Today in class I noticed a willful interference with my own experience of physical freedom. I can honestly say I didn't want to feel better. I wanted to pull down on my lousy body. Perhaps I wanted to punish it. This flies in the face of some assumptions. Love your enemies, heh? As though our enemies seek our demise while we, on the other hand, are perfect purveyors of our own health and good intentions. Perhaps there is some personal dimension to this biblical saying. This afternoon I was my own adversity, my own antagonist. Maybe the practice of loving our enemies can work directly in our favor - not in some mysteriously altruistic way - but because we are often our own worst enemies. Should we not then love ourselves? I can see how, practically speaking, adherence to this golden rule might give a person (me) more patience and flexibility dealing with their own frustratingly complicated and unhelpful selves.

helplessness blues

I nannied on Saturday. One twin commenced to hit the other. The victim of this abuse appealed to their mother. Whereby J. replied with a question, "Then why don't you move away." This doesn't mean to imply J. was un-empathetic to the abuse; she was merely pointing out that the aggressed-upon twin had the power to remove themselves from the noxious and hurtful behavior of the other without her intervention. I found this bit of wisdom totally rational and wish for myself that I could follow the same advice. Acknowledging as well, were I to follow it and distance myself from those who hurt me I also would not, like the twin of my story, be as tempted to hit back. 

Sitting at Library Alehouse, drinking a Rochefort. On the television a Red Sox game is on. The score is 2/2 and it's the top of the third, but none of this really matters; I came in to distract myself. I only glance up at the screen because that's what you do at a bar. But I realize all of a sudden, from a previous text, that my sister (who recently moved to Boston) is waiting outside this game to get in. Although I am far more comfortable on my bar stool than she is in line, that we are in some way sharing this moment is the first truly happy thought I've had all miserable day. My thoughts return to last night and how A.L. told me he was and is still with me. My God how we are always, always, all with each other.

people hurt

Sometimes I wish people's ability to hurt me would finally outweigh my capacity for forgiveness. Then I realize how stupid that is.

The bravest thing I've ever done was make it through childhood. It is also the bravest thing I continue to do, when I do it. This is a blessing for me and not a little bit of a curse. But, after spending time working with a family I think embodies loving support, intelligent direction and total dedication, I think it's fair to say even in the best of circumstances, it is the same for everyone.