A few months ago my ex-husband found my blog and became angry because I had implied he was 'abusive' without reason. He, as a reaction to my 'defiance', decided to take our dog, Chulo, away from me and our son . We had an unwritten agreement that that dog goes wherever our son goes. Our son has grown up with Chulo. It all seemed rational at the time. When our son stays with me, Chulo would come, and that had brought comfort to our son, adjusting to a new arrangement. But based upon some irrelevant reaction, my ex decided that was no longer a valid arrangement.
Before, when we'd open the door, the first thing our son would say would be, "Chulo?!" with surprise and delight. And yet, now, without him to answer the door, he seemed, to be quite frank, dismayed. This has caused some confusion and consternation for our son. He doesn't like having Chulo away from him for long periods of time. He asks about him a lot. I asked my ex to reconsider his position but he told me to in so many words, to "fuck off", and not discuss it with him any more.
The whole experience has left me sad and feeling like a victim all over again. What RIGHT does he have to TAKE anything away from me?
And, I realize that my very resistance to his antagonism is, in a way, pacifism. I shut down and he wins. And yet, his antagonism, is a form of pacifism; because by afflicting fear in me, he doesn't have to actually "deal" with reality. We are, in short, mirrors.
The way that I react to his aggression is only a measure of my amount of work I have left to do. The idea of sitting back and allowing him to do this again seems fruitless and unfair, but the idea of fighting with a soul that is as bruised and damaged as he is, seems pointless. I guess I believe that all I can do is express love. Love Chulo from afar and love our son as he begs for his companion and furthermore, love my ex for his misunderstanding of the Truth of the Law of the Universe.
It got me to thinking about my last project for a recent VCSL class where we learned about our inner sanctuaries; our "castles" we build around our stories. We build walls around each story. We create fortresses for our entire lives. Once built, we acquire some kind of certainty, to which others can only respond in acquiescence. We, in short, build entire castles around our stories, which, should we want to live in wholeness and freedom, must be broken down, in order to live a fuller life. It takes a lot of effort to build a castle, let alone the amount of work required to consciously tear it down.
During the class, each of us was given a quote for which we were asked to reflect upon during the remaining weeks. At first, I did not like my quote, as which, many of the other students had also expressed. But, as I sat with it; the quote became relevant to me, as quite perfect for this very period of my life. Had it appeared at any other time, it would have not made the impact that it did for me.
It was: "Life is the dancer and you are the dance." by Eckhert Tolle. It's not very magnificent nor magical. It is sort of, "huh??" And that is precisely why I both, at first loathed it and then, after time, fell in love with it.
Eckhert also said, "I am not just a person floating around aimlessly, nor am I just a person. (unattached ??) I am not IN the Universe; but rather I AM the Universe which is in me, is awakening, experiencing, having its being in ME." He goes on to say that every expression of "ME" is fleeting. And then loses me in all his verbosity.
Although, the word fleeting stuck with me. It, in itself is a wonderful word. A dear friend recently relayed a quote from a book he was reading, (Busting Lose from the Money Game), that basically said, "remember that days are not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but are only food for the fires of the heart". Edmund Wilson. That whole Castle class now seems frivolous when I read this quote.
I replied to him that, in life, everything seems consumed and not permanent. And he remained attached to the idea that these "experiences" are food for the heart and what a beautiful expression that was. And it is, but then I emphasized to him the difference between food and fuel. One is meant to nourish and the other is meant to be consumed. Both are necessity, which is the most necessary? And then I reminded him again, that everything in this life is fleeting. Nothing is permanent. Life is, unfortunately, a paradox.
And then, as if by some guided force, our Reverend gave her last message about the paradox of reality. She reminisced when, as a child, she'd hang upside-down and what a glorious view it gave of the world. And then she questioned, which reality is the real one? Upside down or right-side up? She reasoned, as did, Ernest Holmes, that the "reality" we choose is the reality we experience. So. there is no "wrong" and no "right" but there only "IS".
Should I believe that my ex-husband's angry words are simply "his life" and I am my own dancer? I can choose to dance his dance or chose my own music? Can I see that life is fleeting and the thoughts we have and actions we choose, lay the bricks of our lives (castles) ( i.e. bearing a child together) and yet see that this is not a house with which to lay a foundation, but rather, just bricks, as they were laid, with no real other meaning beyond their very existence? Maybe, in fact, strewn upon the ground aimlessly?
Is this child, shared between us nourishment or something to be consumed? Is he nothing more than a necessity? I think he is a divine gift.
Nourishment and consumption is based upon the degree to which a soul lacks or serves. A soul that is fed and nourished gives back. A soul that is hungry and in lack, takes. Our son does nothing but gives, freely and innocently, but we, as broken humans in this crazy world, seem to place other values on his very existence.
Anything, that brings joy to a child, which is then taken away out of spite and anger, is a tool used for oppression by those who are hungry and malnourished in Spirit. And you know, Karma is a bitch. I've said that before.
I don't mean to judge, really, I don't, but after beating this dog for mistakes that are well beyond the understanding of a dog's responsibility, this man was himself bitten by the very animal he abused. Tell me Karma wasn't present in that moment? It's fleeting, not built in stones of actions or words. It comes and goes... this presence of Spirit. There is no hard and fast rule for how Spirit retaliates, because It never retaliates, but simply answers, like for like. Spirit's only response, in the LAW of God is YES. What you put in, comes out. It's a mirror. And mirrors are easily shattered.
The sad fact is that I lived a long time in FEAR. And what I received was fearful things. Now, as I step across the threshold from fear to trust. From deception to love, I see that life can be so much more than the reality that Ego or society or controlling, manipulating empty souls paint for us. God has a pallet of colors so magnificent we are shamed by our smallness as we approach the opening from the unreal to the real believing that we are not worthy of the greatness of God. But no matter, God loves us just the same.
When I open the door to my dog today, I open the door to a new reality. One that answers, YES to life and love. One that exists in the reality of fleeting trust and ambivalence of this human reality and duality. This doorway is the the very crossroads between that which is built by humans and that which is the life of God. Thank God I have the gift of crossing it. Thank God it exists to teach me the difference between the two. Thank God for this dance; even though I feel uncertain, I see that I am not in control and things are not permanent, no matter how real they seem at the time. And the fleetingness is a precious gift, not a prison, not built like walls of old stories that hold us in the past.
Monday, January 27, 2014
First Draft - I'm dreaming of a series of short stories.....
If I had to describe my life so far in one word, I would use unplanned. I don't believe I was part of my mother's plan any more than my son was part of mine. Looking back on the last 40 years, I wonder whether a plan would have had me end up in some other place with some other set of circumstances. As a teenager, I struggled to fit in as much as I struggled to abate my sadness over my mother having left. Equally consuming for a girl just experiencing puberty, each guided me down a path, which has led to extreme self-loathing. Had I naturally felt a sense of belonging and had good self esteem, perhaps I would not have allowed so many people take advantage of me. Nor would I have likely been so dammed confused about my role in relationships.
The snow was falling all around me as I wept. The flakes flitted here and then there. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I felt as if God was here with me right at the moment. Yet, I also felt so totally all alone. Abandoned. Rejected. Forlorn. Here I was, 40 years old, alone, afraid and searching for meaning in the woods I used to frequent as a child. It made me think about my life in terms of not just memories but building blocks for who I was yet to become.
~~~
It was fall in Morgantown. The brilliant stands of robust hardwoods; maples, oaks, sweet gums and cherries were ablaze. I slumped myself down between a tree trunk and the rock lined wall circling Woodman Hall. It was about 10 pm. I had been drinking. A local bar that notoriously turned the other cheek for freelance freshman ID's had provided ample opportunity for me to drown my thoughts with $0.10 pints. Tears ran down my cheek. Wallowing in self pity, I picked at the wet leaves around my feet. I inhaled deeply and smelled the scent of rich, decomposing earth. It had rained the night before and the ground was still wet. Autumn in West Virginia was a melancholic time. It was by far my favorite time of year. The forest unconditionally celebrated autumn's annual return with magical, colorful, and captivating displays for all to see. It marked another season for change, but not like the others. No, Autumn was about death and going into hibernation and darkness and shedding that which is no longer needed. It was just this time of year, about seven years prior when my mother left my father, me and my brother to find herself.
I was about 12 years old. My mother and I had just returned from a grocery shopping trip. I say trip because I grew up in a home about 40 miles from everywhere. We had gone to the Tops Friendly Market in Olean because they were honoring double coupons and because we had gone to visit my mother's 'friend' in the hospital. He had had a heart attack a few weeks earlier. My mother was a home health nurse for the regional to hospital system. She cared for elderly and home-bound ill patients who had no one else to care for them. Frank, her friend, was a 70- some year old man she knew from when she was an intern at Sylvania back in the 1960's when the town was actually a town and Frank wasn't an invalid but a handsome engineer. Frank had since grown old, and for some unknown reason to me at the time, his family had abandoned him. She had had a crush on him back then, yet now, it seemed to me that things had evolved. I wasn't the only one who thought so as well. My father, now home too confronted my mother in the kitchen.
"Where the hell have you been?" He asked in a perturbed tone.
"Shopping at Tops" she retorted.
I am uncertain how the conversation progressed, the details are hazy, but at one point he asked her, "do you plan on being a wife or do you want out?"
Grocery bags and various toiletry products lay scattered across the floor; yet to be placed in their respective places. My mother dropped the bag she was folding and simply walked back to her bedroom. The silence was palpable.
She soon appeared with a few items and then walked out the front door. And that was it. She was gone. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the end of my parent's marriage.
~~~
My butt was getting wet and I noticed I was shivering. The tears had stopped and I was hungry. I got up and crossed the street. The lights of the student union seemed overly luminescent and gave off a slight hissing noise. Clanking of doors opening and closing caught my attention. There were about ten doors on the front the building and it always seemed as though someone was walking through each one of them at any given moment. It was a threshold crossed by hundreds of young people every day. Some rushed, some languidly savoring the free time college life afforded them. Some sad. Some happy. Some older. Some quite young. All of us moving independently yet as one collective, the student body. As if we were one body, one flesh, one soul on this campus for a short time with a collective purpose.
I opened a door, crossed the threshold as a sucking wind whooshed over me and I went from the chilly fall evening into the vast, florescent, fabricated living room for 20,000 20-somethings. Taco Bell seemed like a good choice. And the savory, salty, fatty goodness served up for a mere $.99/taco was too good to pass up at this hour.
I had never eaten at a fast food restaurant, other than McDonald's prior to arriving to Morgantown. I lived in rural Pennsylvania in a county of less than 3,000 located in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest. It was a hunting and fishing Mecca. As a young girl growing up, outside my bedroom door was a gun cabinet, which was always left unlocked. A few antlers and stuffed fowl decorated the basement walls where we kept jars of canned vegetables, sauces and fruits from our garden. I fed chickens at 6 am before the bus came to carry me the 30 minutes into town to our school. For fun, as teenagers, we'd steal beer left in the back of trucks parked outside the various "hunting camps". It was a very wild and safe place to explore the limits of rules for community. My grandfather had been born, spent his whole life and died in this town. My father would too. I would not.
The juicy, salty, fattening burrito filled up my belly and cleared away a bit of the drunken haze. But my heart still felt burdened. Just as I was getting up to leave, a hand grabbed my shoulder. "Bean! We were looking all over for you!" Yelled my 5’ 2” tall roommate. Pickles, as we all called her, was a brave and sturdy blonde from an Polish heritage out of Pittsburgh. She had crystal blue eyes and a contagious laugh. She was, in short, the only person I trusted at that time in my life.
“Why do you do that?” she asked, mothering as she emphasized the word ‘do’ emphatically. “Do what?” I casually asked, pretending not to understand her question. I had a habit of leaving bars, social gatherings, parties alone, and wander off, to cry. It was sort of the way I was. Damaged. Sad. Wounded to the core. I was not sure how else to behave.
All these young kids that attended our university came from all over the country; some even from Europe, Asia or Latin America on student exchanges. All over campus you could see dark skinned boys with thick dark hair and glasses just as thick. Or thin, exotic Asian girls laughing boisterously. There were the jocks, the ‘sciency’ nerds, the fraternity guys and sorority girls. They all seemed to have a plan. They all seemed to know what they were doing here. They all seemed to fit in. But I was different. I didn’t have a plan, nor did I know what I was doing here. And certainly, I didn’t fit in anywhere.
I was my mother’s daughter and she was my grandmother's daughter. My grandmother was an orphan. My mother was a child of neglect. Unwanted. Unloved. Given away. Shuffled away. I was abandoned. Left to figure out life without the guidance of a mother's love. An heirloom handed down to each of us as young woman. A badge to wear that marked us as such. But we had nothing to do with it’s presentation. We didn’t necessarily want it. We didn’t know what to do with it. But it was ours nonetheless.
The snow was falling all around me as I wept. The flakes flitted here and then there. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I felt as if God was here with me right at the moment. Yet, I also felt so totally all alone. Abandoned. Rejected. Forlorn. Here I was, 40 years old, alone, afraid and searching for meaning in the woods I used to frequent as a child. It made me think about my life in terms of not just memories but building blocks for who I was yet to become.
~~~
It was fall in Morgantown. The brilliant stands of robust hardwoods; maples, oaks, sweet gums and cherries were ablaze. I slumped myself down between a tree trunk and the rock lined wall circling Woodman Hall. It was about 10 pm. I had been drinking. A local bar that notoriously turned the other cheek for freelance freshman ID's had provided ample opportunity for me to drown my thoughts with $0.10 pints. Tears ran down my cheek. Wallowing in self pity, I picked at the wet leaves around my feet. I inhaled deeply and smelled the scent of rich, decomposing earth. It had rained the night before and the ground was still wet. Autumn in West Virginia was a melancholic time. It was by far my favorite time of year. The forest unconditionally celebrated autumn's annual return with magical, colorful, and captivating displays for all to see. It marked another season for change, but not like the others. No, Autumn was about death and going into hibernation and darkness and shedding that which is no longer needed. It was just this time of year, about seven years prior when my mother left my father, me and my brother to find herself.
I was about 12 years old. My mother and I had just returned from a grocery shopping trip. I say trip because I grew up in a home about 40 miles from everywhere. We had gone to the Tops Friendly Market in Olean because they were honoring double coupons and because we had gone to visit my mother's 'friend' in the hospital. He had had a heart attack a few weeks earlier. My mother was a home health nurse for the regional to hospital system. She cared for elderly and home-bound ill patients who had no one else to care for them. Frank, her friend, was a 70- some year old man she knew from when she was an intern at Sylvania back in the 1960's when the town was actually a town and Frank wasn't an invalid but a handsome engineer. Frank had since grown old, and for some unknown reason to me at the time, his family had abandoned him. She had had a crush on him back then, yet now, it seemed to me that things had evolved. I wasn't the only one who thought so as well. My father, now home too confronted my mother in the kitchen.
"Where the hell have you been?" He asked in a perturbed tone.
"Shopping at Tops" she retorted.
I am uncertain how the conversation progressed, the details are hazy, but at one point he asked her, "do you plan on being a wife or do you want out?"
Grocery bags and various toiletry products lay scattered across the floor; yet to be placed in their respective places. My mother dropped the bag she was folding and simply walked back to her bedroom. The silence was palpable.
She soon appeared with a few items and then walked out the front door. And that was it. She was gone. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the end of my parent's marriage.
~~~
My butt was getting wet and I noticed I was shivering. The tears had stopped and I was hungry. I got up and crossed the street. The lights of the student union seemed overly luminescent and gave off a slight hissing noise. Clanking of doors opening and closing caught my attention. There were about ten doors on the front the building and it always seemed as though someone was walking through each one of them at any given moment. It was a threshold crossed by hundreds of young people every day. Some rushed, some languidly savoring the free time college life afforded them. Some sad. Some happy. Some older. Some quite young. All of us moving independently yet as one collective, the student body. As if we were one body, one flesh, one soul on this campus for a short time with a collective purpose.
I opened a door, crossed the threshold as a sucking wind whooshed over me and I went from the chilly fall evening into the vast, florescent, fabricated living room for 20,000 20-somethings. Taco Bell seemed like a good choice. And the savory, salty, fatty goodness served up for a mere $.99/taco was too good to pass up at this hour.
I had never eaten at a fast food restaurant, other than McDonald's prior to arriving to Morgantown. I lived in rural Pennsylvania in a county of less than 3,000 located in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest. It was a hunting and fishing Mecca. As a young girl growing up, outside my bedroom door was a gun cabinet, which was always left unlocked. A few antlers and stuffed fowl decorated the basement walls where we kept jars of canned vegetables, sauces and fruits from our garden. I fed chickens at 6 am before the bus came to carry me the 30 minutes into town to our school. For fun, as teenagers, we'd steal beer left in the back of trucks parked outside the various "hunting camps". It was a very wild and safe place to explore the limits of rules for community. My grandfather had been born, spent his whole life and died in this town. My father would too. I would not.
The juicy, salty, fattening burrito filled up my belly and cleared away a bit of the drunken haze. But my heart still felt burdened. Just as I was getting up to leave, a hand grabbed my shoulder. "Bean! We were looking all over for you!" Yelled my 5’ 2” tall roommate. Pickles, as we all called her, was a brave and sturdy blonde from an Polish heritage out of Pittsburgh. She had crystal blue eyes and a contagious laugh. She was, in short, the only person I trusted at that time in my life.
“Why do you do that?” she asked, mothering as she emphasized the word ‘do’ emphatically. “Do what?” I casually asked, pretending not to understand her question. I had a habit of leaving bars, social gatherings, parties alone, and wander off, to cry. It was sort of the way I was. Damaged. Sad. Wounded to the core. I was not sure how else to behave.
All these young kids that attended our university came from all over the country; some even from Europe, Asia or Latin America on student exchanges. All over campus you could see dark skinned boys with thick dark hair and glasses just as thick. Or thin, exotic Asian girls laughing boisterously. There were the jocks, the ‘sciency’ nerds, the fraternity guys and sorority girls. They all seemed to have a plan. They all seemed to know what they were doing here. They all seemed to fit in. But I was different. I didn’t have a plan, nor did I know what I was doing here. And certainly, I didn’t fit in anywhere.
I was my mother’s daughter and she was my grandmother's daughter. My grandmother was an orphan. My mother was a child of neglect. Unwanted. Unloved. Given away. Shuffled away. I was abandoned. Left to figure out life without the guidance of a mother's love. An heirloom handed down to each of us as young woman. A badge to wear that marked us as such. But we had nothing to do with it’s presentation. We didn’t necessarily want it. We didn’t know what to do with it. But it was ours nonetheless.
A skirt's chaotic revelation of reality
I guess Christian Bale is quoted as saying that he learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. He rationalized, that, if you are okay with that, then there isn’t much else that can bother you. I agree.
The other day, I was headed to church, as usual, on my bike, in a skirt. It is normal for me to ride to church all dressed up but abnormal to “do it” under general population’s definition of “going to church”. Yet I do, each week, arriving in some kind of fashionable arrangement of dress, heels and bicycle that for me, makes absolute sense, since parking is an issue and I like the health benefits of riding a bicycle whenever I can. But to others, I know, it seems odd. And, well, last week, I had one of those moments that verifies the “other’s” perspective.
Here I was, innocently riding along to church in my skit; long, red, new, pretty. I am usually able to stuff the length up underneath my seat to sufficiently arrive at church unscathed. But this day, for some reason, the skirt, unknowingly to me, fell and suddenly I was stopped short, abruptly with basically 2/3 of my skirt now devoured within the rear brakes and wheel of my bicycle.
First, I looked around me to make sure no one had seen the “incident”. Then, I tried to loosen the skirt from the unwavering grasps of the brakes. No luck. My skirt began to tear. So, I slowly peeled my leg off of the bike, onto the street, so that I am now facing the bike, two feet on one side, skirt tightly and securely fastened within the rear brakes and wheel.
I bend over and release the “quick-release” (Oh Thank God for Quick Release Wheels!!!) and remove the rear wheel, thereby relieving the pressure on my ass and the skirt. It was free from the rear brakes, but not from grease stains and small tears; essentially ruined. And what was I gonna do? Go to church as such?
The thing is, I am not so afraid to admit defeat in such matters. Shit happens. And, in fact, when one is pushing the bounds of society’s accepted norms of behavior, so be it! Allow the chaos to ensue!! And I will graciously deal with it. Actually, I almost say, bring it on!!
But it brings about a thought about chaos in general. I simply do not accept it in my life. I retreat, retaliate, relinquish, and seek to relieve myself in every instance where chaos appears from outside sources. Yet, when it comes from a pure and honest circumstance of my being me, I fully accept it. Does that mean I am selfish? Does it mean I am weak?
Henry Miller said that chaos is the score upon which reality is written. And I love that so much because we all talk about what’s REAL for ourselves but, in my humble opinion, there really is only one TRUTH. And in light of laws and love in this Universe, we are but mere specs upon the windshield, snowflakes in the blizzard, drops of water in the ocean…. Give chaos a name and place in your life and sure, it becomes alive, big, and dominate. Believe that it is simply a part of the greater whole, then you minimize your damage. You remain in stillness. You go with the flow. You are, in short, as Christian Bale said, in bliss, because you don’t really know anything else.
The other day, I was headed to church, as usual, on my bike, in a skirt. It is normal for me to ride to church all dressed up but abnormal to “do it” under general population’s definition of “going to church”. Yet I do, each week, arriving in some kind of fashionable arrangement of dress, heels and bicycle that for me, makes absolute sense, since parking is an issue and I like the health benefits of riding a bicycle whenever I can. But to others, I know, it seems odd. And, well, last week, I had one of those moments that verifies the “other’s” perspective.
Here I was, innocently riding along to church in my skit; long, red, new, pretty. I am usually able to stuff the length up underneath my seat to sufficiently arrive at church unscathed. But this day, for some reason, the skirt, unknowingly to me, fell and suddenly I was stopped short, abruptly with basically 2/3 of my skirt now devoured within the rear brakes and wheel of my bicycle.
First, I looked around me to make sure no one had seen the “incident”. Then, I tried to loosen the skirt from the unwavering grasps of the brakes. No luck. My skirt began to tear. So, I slowly peeled my leg off of the bike, onto the street, so that I am now facing the bike, two feet on one side, skirt tightly and securely fastened within the rear brakes and wheel.
I bend over and release the “quick-release” (Oh Thank God for Quick Release Wheels!!!) and remove the rear wheel, thereby relieving the pressure on my ass and the skirt. It was free from the rear brakes, but not from grease stains and small tears; essentially ruined. And what was I gonna do? Go to church as such?
The thing is, I am not so afraid to admit defeat in such matters. Shit happens. And, in fact, when one is pushing the bounds of society’s accepted norms of behavior, so be it! Allow the chaos to ensue!! And I will graciously deal with it. Actually, I almost say, bring it on!!
But it brings about a thought about chaos in general. I simply do not accept it in my life. I retreat, retaliate, relinquish, and seek to relieve myself in every instance where chaos appears from outside sources. Yet, when it comes from a pure and honest circumstance of my being me, I fully accept it. Does that mean I am selfish? Does it mean I am weak?
Henry Miller said that chaos is the score upon which reality is written. And I love that so much because we all talk about what’s REAL for ourselves but, in my humble opinion, there really is only one TRUTH. And in light of laws and love in this Universe, we are but mere specs upon the windshield, snowflakes in the blizzard, drops of water in the ocean…. Give chaos a name and place in your life and sure, it becomes alive, big, and dominate. Believe that it is simply a part of the greater whole, then you minimize your damage. You remain in stillness. You go with the flow. You are, in short, as Christian Bale said, in bliss, because you don’t really know anything else.
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