Jealousy, posessiveness, fear, change, LOVE

Possessiveness, territoriality, the hoarding mentality -- those things have always been so difficult for me to handle in loving relationships. When I was a child, I learned that the harder I tried to hold onto something I feared losing, the more of a certainty that fear became. So I simultaneously arrived at two things: In recognizing that loss was inevitable, I stopped fearing it. And, perhaps fatalistically, I prepared for it. In my past three long term relationships, which ran from 1988 through 2004, I had the same conversations with each of them: That nothing lasts forever, that no one person can be all things to another, that attraction to others is inevitable, that if one of us meets someone else we will be happier with, we should give our blessings to them. The happiness and well-being of the ones I love is essential to my own.

And so I find myself in a relationship with a man whose love makes me a little bit giddy. Who says the sweetest, corniest things that lure my inner child to come out and play. Who has more kindness and constancy in him than I had thought possible in someone of our generation. A man who devilishly plays with my libido like it is a cross between a lute and a cat's toy. He delights in me, melts at my touch, makes me laugh, and supports me. But he also wants me all to himself. And therein lies the very heart of the problem.

I've asked him for 6 months. Give me 6 months. There is a lot going on in my life, my world, and choosing him--which something in me very much wants to do and at the same time is very afraid to do--would be a huge change in my life. Not just a change from polyamory to monogamy, but a change in place, which would mean leaving my community. But when I ask myself what I want, more and more, I find myself answering "him", and when I think about it, I recognize that if I do not choose "us", then I'll always wonder what might have been.

Where does the desire for personal freedom and self-expression find itself when two people merge their lives to form an exclusive partnership? I remember what happened to it when I was younger, less secure in myself, more eager to 'fix' others or to 'make them happy.' I am so far from that place, and yet , I know that it is my daily rituals, my affirmations of self and non-self, my me-time, the pure freedom to be spontaneous--that it is these things which maintain the self I know as 'me' me. And I have seen how easy it is to slide out of healthy habits and ways of being, to let things slip for love, and I find myself conflicted, clinging almost jealously to my current life and way of being in the face of... love. There is tremendous possibility there. I love him like I have never loved another, in ways I never thought possible for me, and I know myself for 10 kinds of a fool if I pass up those possibilities out of fear or possessiveness.

"Mine. I am mine. No one claims me. No one owns me," my inner child says while at the same time she reaches out to him, teases him, shares with him. Loves him.

I like things just the way they are, and yet I know that change is inevitable. He won't keep forever like a doll in a glass case. He's a person with his own needs and desires. I suppose I am faced with the choices we all are: shall I sit on the side of the path and wait for Life to happen and choose for me? Or shall I take action and choose for myself what I want from Life, even knowing the path I choose to walk may not lead where I wanted?

I am reminded of the final words of a poem by slam-poet Shane Koyczan that go something like this: "Its a game. You play, you win. You play, you lose. You play. The world is a window that holds a sign. There is 'help wanted' out there but if you are playing to win, the first thing you have to do is 'apply within'."

Six months. Six months to wrestle with my choices and then take a stand for my own happiness, for what I want for myself and my life. Six months. 180 days. So many days. Why does it feel like so little time?

Trading anger for peace

I used to be angry. Not an apparent anger--I wasn't irritable, abusive, bellicose or argumentative--but I could be stubbornly contrarian and there was this well of cold rage that sometimes surged upwards and radiated from me as a form of intensity that caused people to take a step (or two) backwards. I was told that I had this calm demeanor, but sometimes my eyes had flames in them, and I radiated an intensity that let people know I was displeased.

But I'm not angry anymore. And what is interesting is that the people who have come into my life the past few years don't believe that I've ever been anything but a very peaceful, loving person. I can tell them that I used to be introverted and angry and averse to attention and they don't believe me. One person, whom I've known just a year, even argued with me about my basic personality type etc. Eventually we agreed that I'm becoming what is possible for me, rather than being limited/stunted by the attitudes and expectations of the past.

I've gotten sexier, too. My appearance hasn't changed much. I don't have this great body or stunning good looks, but nonetheless, I'm more comfortable in my skin, more comfortable with honoring my feelings and being however I want to be in the moment, more peaceful and powerful, and somehow that makes me more attractive on a very fundamental basis. It is wonderful!

How did this happen? Therapy? Yes, but it only took me so far. Self-help books? A few, but there is a difference between reading a thing and 'getting' it. Self-help workshops and seminars? Just one three-course curriculum that transformed how I thought about life.

What happened was, I got a handle on the past and how it ran my life. I made my peace with it, which freed me to live in the present. But before I could do that, I had to understand the Power of Choice. That was the first major thing, and it was a moment of enlightenment. I suddenly understood that I carried the past around like a bundle of burdens and that it was my choice to carry it around or set it down. And I learned that I could set it down and walk away, or I could pick it back up and hump it around until I was ready to let it go. That was freeing, knowing I had the choice, that I wasn't losing anything by putting the past down and leaving it where it belonged--in the past. And suddenly, it all clicked, and I was at peace. Truly, deeply, at peace.

The second breakthrough was that I accepted responsibility for my life, for the choices I had made that brought me where I was, and in so doing recognized that I could create my future by intentionally choosing it--by making choices with my goals in mind. I found this very empowering and today I celebrate the small victories that reveal the incremental progress I am making toward the future I am creating for myself and my life.

The third was the breakthrough I had regarding 'fear'. I recognized that I was afraid. And I learned that everyone else is afraid, too, on a very basic level. And I learned that the difference between people who live ordinary lives and those who live extraordinary lives is that people living extraordinary lives acknowledge their fears and act anyway. They don't allow themselves to be stopped by fear or circumstance. They, to borrow Nike's trademark phrase, Just Do It. And so do I.

Fourth, I came to understand that mistakes happen, that mistakes themselves are often acts of creation, and that it really is ok to make mistakes. I am no longer paralyzed by the fear of making mistakes, and I no longer get angry with myself for making mistakes. I accept responsibility for them, do my best to clean up any messes and apologize where necessary, and then let it go and move on.

And lastly--I stopped taking Life personally. Life happens. It happens to everyone, not just me, and if I choose to take it personally-- if I'm always asking "Why does shit always happen to me?"-- then I'm choosing to see myself as a victim of life. And that will not do. When I stopped taking life personally I started living it fully and powerfully. I stopped feeling angry and helpless and stuck. I stopped sitting on the sidelines. I grabbed hold of Life with both hands and started taking big bites, started shaping it to meet my ends, and realized my own freedom. Today, I fully understand that my thoughts and attitudes are causal, creative forces in my life, and I get to choose what I think about my life and how I approach it. And as a woman thinketh, so she is.

Confessing an inauthenticity

I spent 12 hours in a workshop yesterday. Friday I was all jazzed about going there, about hearing about what everyone was up to. But Saturday morning I had this pall hanging over me. I felt down, suppressed, contained and constrained. When I tried to examine why I was feeling that way, I touched upon the issues of my mother's death 6 years ago and my sister's imminent death sometime in the next 6 months. I sat down and wrote the blog entry for September 8th, titled "Death, peace, and beauty" as an attempt to work through what I was thinking/feeling, but what I ended up doing was rationalizing and deciding how I should think and feel.

I was being completely inauthentic, because I was evading allowing myself to feel what I was feeling. For some reason I've always found intense emotions personally dangerous, and with regards to my mother and my sister, there is such a swell of emotion that if I even so much as crack the hatch on those feelings, tears well in my eyes. So I wrote up this elegant little lesson to myself about what was appropriate for me to think and feel about the situation, hopped into my car, and drove to the worshop. And the closer I got to this workshop that I had been looking forward to, the worse I felt. I was positively glum when I got there, and when someone asked me how I was, I said "I'm here, but I don't want to be."

The woman I sat next to asked me what was going on. I told her. She asked me how I was feeling. I told her I was feeling sad, angry, resentful that I had no choice but to accept that my sister was going to die. She said to go with those feelings. Tears filled my eyes. I was appalled as a couple slid down my cheeks. I rarely cry. I hate crying. I shook my head and said, "No." She asked, "Why not?" and I answered, "Because it won't make any difference." She said, "You're being inauthentic. You won't even honour those feelings. Be with them. Be present to them." And then we were interrupted, and I was grateful. The tears subsided, and I did my best to be present to what was going on in the workshop: a discussion about self-expression and leadership, about integrity and personal power, and creating successful community projects.

Early on, someone expressed that she had a real breakdown in progress on her project: she was stuck. So the leader of the workshop coached her by asking her some questions. And the questions resonated with me, and I answered the questions she asked in my mind, and as I did so, I made some powerful connections. I had not spoken to my mother in the five years before her death. It is one of the very few regrets in my life, and it had a profound impact on me--I told myself never again. Today, my sister is very sick, and she won't talk to me. Oh, she will say hello, and when I ask her how she is doing, she says fine, but that is it. If she cannot find someone else to hand the phone off to, she tells me she has to go. She doesn't want to talk to me because she is mad at me about what happened a year ago when I tried to have her involuntarily committed to medical care. She saw it as me trying to take over her life and humiliate her. I saw it as me trying to save her life, trying to prevent her from deteriorating to the point she is at now: the point of no return. So she is still angry with me and her illness comes with a form of psychosis when it reaches the advanced stages, and her periods of lucidity and connection with reality of her condition are fewer and farther between. And the overlap of the anniversary of our mother's death and the hopelessness of my sister's situation in conjunction with the life-coaching questions brought about a breakthrough.

A breakthrough in recognizing the inauthenticity in nearly everything I'd been thinking and feeling about the entire situation...

Yes, I was sad and angry and resentful--but not about her death. No. I could accept that she was dying, that she had made her choice a year ago. I was at peace with her choices and mine. No, what I was upset about was the fact that I was facing another situation in which someone I love is dying and because she won't talk to me, yet another person I love will die and there will be unresolved issues and bad feelings and no closure. I've made it about me, not her. I've made it about my loss and my frustration and my feelings of helplessness, instead of about her. And then to avoid being honest with myself, I wrapped it up in more acceptable packaging: my sister is dying and I'm terribly saddened by it.

Something clicked when I recognized this, and while I still have those feelings, and while I still feel stuck and unwilling to allow myself to really be present to how I am feeling and who I am being and the impact it is having on me and on her, I feel fairly certain that I'll connect with my real feelings and work it out soon, and be able to read yesterday's blog entry and honestly say "Yes! My sense of connectedness with myself and others is the measure by which I understand the the beauty of life and the beauty of death. I am at peace."

Death, peace, and beauty

So.... my mother died six years ago, just before the September 11th attack. I was struggling with grief and guilt and travel arrangements when the towers fell, and the national decent into an orgy of televised mourning and sabre-rattling derailed both my grieving process and my attempts to get to Hawaii to deal with my mother's remains. It was 10 days from her death before I successfully reached Hilo. It was 4 years from her death before I successfully grieved her.

Today I mark her death with surprising equanimity, considering all the 9/11 and Osama bin Ladin / al Qaeda media coverage. I've made my peace with myself, with her, with the past that came between us. I carry within me now a whole new sense of self-acceptance as a result of that peace-making: the roles of the unfit mother and the ungrateful daughter were not true to who we were, but they were real to us in the context in which we experienced each other. It is a powerful thing, being able to make such distinctions.

In laying her ghost to rest, I finally grew up.

I am applying the lessons learned the past two years toward dealing with my sister's situation. She will live to see her 38th birthday next month. Most likely, anyway. I am finding it difficult to live powerfully in the face of her suffering, but where I can, I am choosing not to focus on the helplessness which this situation is engendering in me. I am an adult now, truly adult in my emotions and thought processes and actions. I accept--no, I choose--What Is. And having chosen What Is, I am at peace with it. I am at peace with it, and that peace creates an opening to create a future in which I remember my sister as a vital woman who lived a full life, instead of one in which I continually mourn her as someone who died much too soon.

My relationships with others, my sense of connectedness, is the measure by which the beauty of life is understood. And the beauty of death.

The tides of life take another sandcastle

More sad news this weekend. One I love is on hospice. I will likely be attending her funeral before the end of the year. It is agony, knowing this, knowing this on the one year anniversary of my failed attempt to commit her to medical care involuntarily. She's lived longer that I expected, though I don't think few would consider her existence anything resembling 'living'. Ah well.

The nice thing is that I had someone at hand to hold me after I'd gotten the news about her condition. He lay with me on my bed and held me, and kissed my forehead and my eyelids, and soothed me with his hands and his mouth and his words. Genuine intimacy in combination with vulnerability has been a balm for the pain of loss. It has opened doors within us both.

Elie Wiesel said, "When a door closes, another opens. It is the same door." Life, pain, death, loss... None of it has any meaning except what I give it. What will I make her death mean about her life, my life, the world, the legal system, the medical establishment? What will I make the love I feel for him mean, I wonder. Even as something ends, there is a beginning. It is cyclical, ebbing and flowing like that tide, and the lives we're building are castles of sand. It means nothing, in and of itself--it means only what I make it mean. Soon the tides of life and death will claim another sandcastle, and in that clearing, something new will arise. Let it be Hope, I beg. Let it be Hope.

Rock in a sea of change

It is August, and yet I can feel autumn coming, I feel it in the crispness of the morning air. I see it in the tops of the vine-maples, whose green leaves are just starting to blush yellow-orange-red. Autumn brings change and usually I welcome it. But these days I feel like I am under siege with changes. I feel like a rock at sea and yet in sight of the shore, with waves rushing and splashing around me. I know I am a rock, and I know that it would take a lot to undermine me, but being an island of peace in a sea of change is challenging. Those I love are thrashing about, battling issues of health, relationships, work and finances. And I have my own battles, too. Change is coming. I'm not sure where I'll be a month from now. All I can do is choose what comes, whether it is what I would prefer or not. Choose it, and choose to live powerfully in the face of the uncertainty, absurdity, and breathtaking beauty that is life.

Dawning comprehension

I participated in the Landmark Forum this weekend hoping I would discover new tools for tackling those fears and problems that I felt were taking up too much of my energy. I wanted to free myself up to pursue a happier, more fulfilled life. I walked away with full and complete comprehension of three things: that I would always experience fear, that I would always have problems, and that the tools I wanted were too small, too specific. Instead of discovering the magic wand that would make fears and problems disappear, I now have something more important: the tools to live an extraordinary life despite these difficulties. Now all I need is practice!

One of the things that really hit home with me this weekend was the distinction between knowing a thing, and comprehending it. I have a tendency to collect knowledge, to learn as much as I can about something in hopes of finding the answer(s) to my questions. But answering my questions about a thing does not mean I comprehend it, that its mystery has unfolded for me, that I have truly 'gotten' it.

This weekend I learned how incomplete my understanding of what it means to be human is. How incomplete my understanding of the human condition is. A lifetime of empathy, two years of therapy, years of gathering information and evidence, of reading books like Tolle's The Power of Now and Heidegger's Being and Time and Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs--I learned much from these things, and I intuited some wisdom from them, but my understanding was (not surprisingly) incomplete.

My viewpoint was too fixed, too limited, too focused on questions and answers and meanings. I was asking questions and then neglecting to question the answers until the point of irreducibility. For example, the question at the heart of all human angst is: What is the meaning of life? And the answer I arrived at was: Life has whatever meaning I ascribe to it. And I was close, oh god I was so fucking close, but my understanding was incomplete. The answer to the question What is the meaning of life is, Life has no meaning in and of itself. Life is simply life. This is irreducible--it has been stripped of all romantic notions and religious interpretations. One might even think that this answer also strips life of all hope of meaning anything. However, (and this distinction is the most important part) our lives, individually, have whatever meaning and purpose we choose to create for our lives.

My life has whatever meaning and purpose I choose for it. Now that is a powerful statement. And arising out of the flowering of that powerful and empowering comprehension is a question far more powerful and pertinent than What is the meaning of life. It is, What meaning and purpose do I choose to create for my life? And the answer, right now, is, I don't know. Yet. I need to find a problem that I feel is worthy of my life, of dedicating my life to. For now, I choose to create the possibility of being consistently awake to the fact that I am perfect, complete and whole as I am, of passionate commitment to loving myself as I am right now, and being open to the possibilities that love brings into my life and the world. Baby steps, right?

(I enjoyed re-reading my blog entry from 9 days ago. I've taken 'choice' to the next level, I think.)

Meditation on Choice as Creation

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant (pt. I)

Spring in February! The winter daphne and primroses are in bloom. The bulbs are coming up! I've pots and pots of bulbs in front and back, and the ones in the flowerbed outside my bedroom window are blooming, seeing as they get plenty of morning light: crocus, japanese iris, hyacinth, tulips, primroses. Just outside my door the hyacinths are beginning to bloom, and their bold flowery scent is like a shaft of sunlight touching my soul.

The air, ah, how to describe the air? It is cool and heavy with mist that collected on my eyelashes as I walked along the river at 7 o'clock this morning. It smells of green and growing things, of leaf mold and humus and sweetness. As I walked through the forest I could hear the birds twittering, making their mating and territory calls: "Pick me, baby!"and "This is my tree, find your own!" I strolled over to the community garden. Some people were already there working the soil, preparing it for the next round of flowers, fruits, vegetables, and herbs, tending the bulbs coming up. My toes got wet and chilled in my Tevas, but I did not mind. It sure beats cold and sweaty in snow boots.

There is a shelter overlooking the river. It is a concrete pad with a roof, open on all four sides, with a picnic table in the center. I sat cross-legged on the table, pulled my jacket tighter about me, and focussed my awareness on my breath and body. My nose was cold. My ass was chilled from the table top. My nipples were hard. My Tevas were cutting into my thighs, just above my knees. The breeze was moving a lock of hair on my forehead, tickling the skin. My breath was rhythmic, lulling. I could feel my shirt brushing against my sternum as I breathed. Slower, deeper inhalation. I could feel the breath touching the cradle of my hips, stirring the source of sexual energy. Memory-echo of last night's expansive orgasm. Exhaling it.

The discomforts faded as my awareness shifted. I cast it outward, let myself become a sensory net, let the environmental sensations fill me, center me in a state of mindfulness. Here I am. I know my place in the world. I fill it, and it fills me. I am alone and yet not. I am one with everything I sense. And then the pure awareness, unthinking consciousness, just being. Suspended for a long moment of samadhi bliss. For how long, I do not know. A minute? Twenty minutes? Forever? I cannot express that timelessness in words.

I eased from that state and focussed my mind on the affirmation I had chosen for myself:

My experiences are the consequences of my choices.
Choosing is an act of Creation.
The most important choices I make involve how I see myself, Reality, and my relationship to Reality.
As a conscious act of Creation, I choose to see my life as meaningful and my self as a compassionate, powerful, sensual, and creative spirit.
Let the consequences continue!

As I walked back home, I repeated these phrases to myself, reminding myself of my own powers of creation and my responsibility for the consequences to myself and others. It is an amazing thing, that sense of awareness and empowerment, and the desire to share it with the world. If only everyone could feel this way. I am grateful that the gentle glow of it will remain with me for much of the day.

Word-choice nuances

What is the difference between childlike and childish, between impulsive and spontaneous, between sensual and sexual, nevermind sensual and sensuous? What is the difference between acceptance and passivity, between aggressive and assertive, between creative and inventive, between religious and spiritual, intelligent and intellectual?

And then there is love. In English we have just one word to use. Sure, we can add modifiers such as maternal, filial, erotic, romantic, and platonic to describe who we love or what love or how we love them -- but love is such a deep and yet broad-spectrum emotional state, how can we possibly find the words to describe how we feel, and if so, how can we be sure that the words we use mean to others what they mean to us?

I was asked by CW today how I felt about someone.
I said, " I love him."
He asked, "Could you be more specific?"
I said, "He's one of my dearest friends, the friend of my soul."
He said, "But he's your lover, too..."
I made a face at him. "Yes, sometimes, but that is not the focus of our relationship."
He said, "I know you say men and women can be friends, but then you break the rules by having sex with your friends. Isn't that confusing?"
I looked at him and smiled. "Sometimes."
"C'mon Kay, talk to me."
"What do you want to know that won't violate his privacy?"
"How can you be friends and lovers?"
"Look, its not romantic. There is none of that new relationship energy, none of that passionate 'oooh baby I want you' stuff. I love him. He loves me. Sometimes... sometimes being sexual is a natural extension of the intimacy and affection between us, a natural progression of sharing ourselves."
He thought about it. "If it is so natural, why doesn't it happen more often between friends?"
"That is a good question. I will answer it with a question: how often do you think friends want to make love to each other, but refrain?"
"I think quite a few. More than people would willingly admit... I know there are a few times I've been really curious."
"Ok. So..there is curiousity, and there is desire. And then there is trust and love and sharing. I've got friends that I would never have sex with--mainly because I'd worry one or both of us getting 'romantically' confused.... It happened to me a couple of times, and... well... I like to think I've learned enough from those experiences that I do not need to repeat them again."
"How do you decide then?"
"Decide?"
"Which friends to sleep with and which ones not to..."

I swear, the groan I let out came all the way from my hara. Why is it that so much boils down to sex? I don't get it. I will never get it. Sex itself is an act we are programmed to desire to repeat as often as possible, partly for reproductive purposes, and partly for pleasure. It alleviates a need, like any other, like eating alleviates hunger and pissing alleviates a full bladder. And yet, sex, with love, can be so much more. It is a gateway to the spiritual, I find, and that is what gives it significance beyond reproductive and pleasure drives.

"Its more a matter of spontaneity. If, in the moment, it feels right, and there are no reservations, I act on it," I tried to tell him.
He looked surprised. "You're not the impulsive type."
"Ah, but there is a difference between spontaneity and impulse. Impulses are internally motivated, often subconsciously. Impulsive is going shopping when one does not have the need or the funds. Spontaneity is responding naturally and appropriately to the present moment."

And so we went round and round about nuances and verbage and his insistence that I need to remember that though I may choose my words to express exactly what I mean, that those hearing me are catching the words through their own emotional filters, adding their own nuances. Since I've been told the same by others, I suppose I should give this point more thought. It doesn't help my efforts to communicate if other's are not understanding what I mean.

2006: The year of love and friendship

In the past year, especially, I've learned the value of open and honest communication, and more, of putting myself out there emotionally and being vulnerable. My awareness of the world and my inner life has deepened with both therapy and my meditation practice. I've had some insights and put into effect some changes in my life and I've found that my ability to relate with others has increased dramatically. Yes, in putting myself out there, I risk emotional pain, but life is as transient and uncertain as it is beautiful , and I've realized that if I'm unwilling to embrace the possibility of negative consequences, I'm not really living my life--I'm playing it safe.

These flowers are from a friend I've made this year. A wonderful man of intelligence, wisdom, and kindness whom I never would have met if it was not for the changes I've made in my life this year--of my choice to take risks, to be spontaneous, to follow my intuitions.

A retrospective of 2006:
I am, mostly, well. 2006 was a tough year--My sister spent January through September in and out of the hospital and I did a lot of travelling back and forth to Massachusetts. She seems to have stabilized, but the medical estabilishment says it will be another year before they know what the lasting effects of the illness will be, and if she will require convalescent care for the rest of her life. We did not think she would make it to her 37th birthday, but she is a stubborn wench and surprised us all. Work has been awful--so short-staffed that I was asked to stay on even after I offered to resign because I was having to leave for MA for weeks on end and at a moment's notice.

And yet, for all that, it has been a great year, too. I've been dating some amazing men, completed two years of counselling/therapy, seen friends and family, and done a fair bit of travelling. I am participating in an ecstatic dance group, have been exploring tantra and intimacy, and I've been developing my abilities as a writer and a photographer with the encouragement of professionals in both fields.

This year my friendships have deepened, and I've learned just how secure a support system I have. I've learned that I don't always have to be 'strong' and that it takes more courage to lean on others than it does to be the one others lean on. I've learned that I can feel fear without embodying it. As a consequence of my sister's illness, which was partly brought on by self-neglect, I've come to the realization that I need to learn to live in and with my body--to fully inhabit it--rather than driving it, or using it as a tool. The seat of my self-awareness and the source of my connection with reality are my flesh and my senses, and neglecting to care for my body means that there will likely come a day when it is unable to furnish my needs.

And so, while I am not the sort of person who participates in the New Year's Resolution ritual, I am committed to making 2007 the year I make peace with my body, learning to inhabit it fully, ceasing to use it as a shield between me and a world whose attentions I'd become so averse to.

I am off to the Coast for the weekend for a quiet retreat in a little 1920's cottage, where I can recuperate from 50 to 60 hour work weeks to the sound of wild surf and blustry winds. I expect to sit by the fire, read, watch movies, and enjoy the opportunity to write and photograph.

Absent the need for certainty: growing a friendship

Absent the need for certainty: growing a friendship. Enjoying being present. Facing and discussing what arose. Struggling to remain open and vulnverable. Allowing energy to flow.

I had an interesting evening with a friend-in-the-making who asked perceptive questions that made me think, and because I was open to him, often triggered emotional responses.

Opening to possibility (Me: One of the first things I tell some one when we get into a relationship is: "I promise I will hurt you. I also promise I will never hurt you intentionally." He: Wouldn't a better choice of words be "I may hurt you.." The way you word it you are guaranteeing it will happen instead of allowing for the possibility of it. Me: Its a certainty. Miscommunication happens. Things happen. No matter how hard we try, the ones we love still feel hurt by things we say and do. So, that choice of words is deliberate. He: But wouldn't you rather chose an option that allows for the possibiltiy of not hurting the ones you love? Me: That is possible, but improbable. He: Still, we're not talking about statisical probabilities here. We're talking about relationships and allowing for the possibility.. why do you feel it necessary to set those expectations? Me: I am pragmatic. Its a warning, an acknowledgement that at times I will hurt the ones I love unintentionally. And a reminder to myself that the ones I love will hurt me, as well. Hmm... I will consider what you are saying. You are right that such wording does negate the possibility of not hurting someone.)

Opening to fears (He: Are you afraid of connection? Me: Yes. He: Why? Me: *hesitation*. He: Don't think, just answer. Me: Some of it is that childish abandonment issue from my mother disappearing when I was 9 or 10. Some if it has to do with Love. Some people stop loving, and I don't. The relationship may change but the reasons I love people are still there. I still love them. I don't understand how people can just stop loving someone, loving me. And that hurts. But more than that, it confuses me, baffles me, rocks the foundation of my inner-reality (love). So I'm very cautious about who I build connections with.)

Opening to what we want or need from each other. Expectations of our relationship, or more suitably, lack thereof. What we sense can grow between us -- there is a sense of boundless intimacy. That question I have--will he become a friend of the soul? I would like that.

Talking about the difference between being terse and being succinct, and my tendancy at times to be the former in an attempt to be the latter. Discussed Polyamory and Monogamy. His desire to educate not only the monogamous masses, but those struggling to make polyamory work for them so they don't participate in a string of divorces or serial monogamy. Awareness that one person cannot be all things to another, and even if they are, that such a state is unsustainable. Jealousy, and my statement that I do not feel it or experience it, and how this hinders my ability to understand it in others.

My face pressed to his chest, hot tears for no real reason. Simultaneously knowing it was alright, and fearing this release would be too much for him. I fiercely hate crying. But he is far more comfortable with tears and emotions than I am, and he did all the right things. And in that moment, one of the petals of the lotus unfolded. And that first petal was trust.

Buddha and the Tree Spirit

Hawthorne District. Very granola, earthy, colourful. A garden, everyone a flower, some showy, some not. The sidewalks are crowded with humanity, the air redolent with the scents of food and people. Here I sit, alone by choice, last table, my back to the wall of the building, warmed by the heat it radiates. Dinner a romaine salad with curried chicken breast, almonds, dried cranberries, balsamic viniagrette, heavy on the rosemary. Terminator Stout, dark microbrew with a thick carmel-coloured head: I lick off the moustache after each swallow. Moleskine journal in hand, today a sepia ink, jotting down impressions, observations. A couple walks by, holding hands. Brightly coloured hair, tattoos, piercings, clunky Doc Martins. They are both wearing skirts: he has black leggings underneath, covering his knees. Next a couple, mid-thirties. He: Columbia Sportswear, Birkenstocks, pushing the stroller full of bright-eyed toddler. She: LL Bean, ancient denim jacket, Sketchers on her feet. They take the table next to mine, phone rings, the woman answers, stands up, walks to the edge of the sidewalk. She is a lawyer, or in the legal field, she speaks of briefs and cases and files. Flock of teenagers pass: skinny girls with hip-huggers, flashing belly-button piercings and tattoos around their ankles; lank-haired boys with knee-length baggy shorts and colourful t-shirts referencing some aspect of Pop-culture foreign to me. Young woman steps forward from the shelter of the building, into the center of the corner. Her voice soars: she sings opera, I recognize the aria "Un bel dì" from Madama Butterfly. A man limps toward me, holding a cane in his good hand, the other arm held close to his body. He stops and someone pushes past, jostling him nearly into the street. He hunches, tucks the cane under his good arm, pulls a bottle of water from under the other. He fumbles in his fanny-pack, I see two vials of medication. More people push past, jostling him some more. Observer role is broken, I rise, approach him. "May I help you?" I ask. "No," he grumbles. I move to stand behind him, waiting, putting myself between him and the foot-traffic pushing his way. More people press by, giving me frustrated looks for blocking their paths. They spill over onto the street to pass. I hear his fanny-pack zipper, turn around to look at him. He stuffs the bottle of water back under his bad arm, nods at me, and cane in hand, continues his slow progress down the street. As I watch, three others jostle him. How discouraging. Where are we going in such a hurry, that we cannot stop to help another? Returning to my table, I jot a few more notes, then close up the journal, snapping the elastic around it. Strolling west along the street until I reach Bread and Ink, then turning down the side street. Lovely neighborhood of old craftsman-style homes. Walking to my car I pass the head of Buddha, resting under a tree. A spontaneous altar has grown up here, an encouraging sign of community that lifts my spirits. As does the face they've made on the tree. Buddha and the Tree Spirit. The juxtaposition of reverence and whimsy pleases me. Yes. In this moment, Life is beautiful.

The transience of life

For years, I've been told that I have a very interesting perspective on life, that my sensualism and my intense enjoyment of the beauty--the everyday sensual immediacy--of life is, if not unique, then unusually well-expressed.

I started this blog with the intention of making public some of these deeply personal written and photographic expressions, because the media is so overwhelming in its attention to, and expression of, the current of negativity running through the world right now. I wanted it to be an antidote.

For all the deeply personal information I've put here, I've tried to address various topics in such a way that anyone could relate to what I was saying. I've been seeking to express what I have in common with others, what all of us have in common--the universality of the human experience. I wanted to show everyone who read this blog to the beauty of their own existence. Reality beauty.

Life is so very beautiful. So very beautiful and so terrifyingly transient.

It is this transience I am addressing today.

I have a sister who is ill. Very very ill. And as her illness has progressed from acute to chronic, as she faces the prospect of a life radically different from the one she had just 9 months ago, she has lost the will to live. She is slowly dying. She is allowing herself to die in a very slow and excruciating way--and she denies it.

And I... I am caught in an ethical dilemma. It is easy for me to say that Life is beautiful. My life is beautiful. My world is beautiful. And it is all the more so for all the suffering I have experienced and witnessed. It is easy for me to be outraged with her for giving up. It is easy for me to urge her to keep trying. But her life is not mine.

My ethical dilemma is this: It is her life, and her choice, I know. But she is not making the choice consciously. She is in denial, both of the seriousness of her condition, and her apathy. And I am torn between respecting her wish--respecting her right to die--and my horror of the death she has chosen. I am being urged to do something more than I have been, to take extreme measures, to intervene. To Intervene.

There is a fine line between interference and intervention. When I ask myself, intellectually, what the difference is, I know it is a gray area. But my heart, oh, my heart knows the difference.

And so, I have grabbed the horns of my dilemma, and committed myself to an intervention that will earn me more verbal abuse and rage from her. I prefer her anger to her apathy. I prefer that she live.

I'm girding my loins to go into battle with a woman for her life. I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again, but I did not want those who follow this blog to continue to be concerned by my sudden silence.

Namaste.

On population decline in First World countries

Robert J Samuelson posted an op-ed column in the Washington Post called "Behind the Birth Derth."
It is an intersting commentary on Putin's incentives to get Russian women to have more babies, as well as addressing the larger issue of plummeting birth rates in First World countries. This is not an issue I have given a lot of thought to, but as I read the article, a few thoughts percolated up.

That this is not a new issue. A hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt urged native-born Americans, especially those in New England, to make the sacrifices necessary to raise larger families, because (if I recall correctly) 'eugenics' was on the rise and there was a perception that the "superior" Northern European race would eventually die out as a result of low birthrates. And this, long before the widespread availablilty of birth-control devices and pharmaceuticals.

That, while he posited various possible reasons as to why the birthrates are so low in industrialized countries, Samuleson missed a few things, either becasue he did not think of them, or because they are too 'hot.' They are as follows:

One, education, particularly a socially liberal education, suppresses the desire to reproduce. In grade school we are educated on the causes of so much poverty and disease and infant death in Third World countries, the primary culprit being over-population. The same thing with envrionmental degradation: over-population--too many people and too few resources. People who are aware of the world and their responisiblities toward their fellow man are not going to go on a breeding binge. It is perceived as a very selfish thing to do. Additionally, the availability of education and career paths to women created options they did not have before. Women, particularly those who choose not to reproduce, are no longer economically dependent upon men, and are no longer pitied as 'spinsters' and 'bluestockings'.

Two, those religions which stress abstinence from sex until marriage, consider birth control a sin, and relegate women to child-bearing, child-rearing drudgery have been falling out of fashion the last couple of centuries, again, partly as a consequence of the growing liberalization of society and the increasing availablity of information across socio-economic levels. Religion, supersition, poverty and ignorance would appear to go hand-in-hand with a brood of runny-nosed kids who themselves are having children while their mothers are still pumping out their younger siblings.

Three, the rise of the "nuclear family" in Western culture has destroyed the incentive to reproduce which one would think that a higher standard of living might give. Really. Lets face it, It takes two people working full-time++ in order to support a First World household, with or without children. We like our high standard of living and want to maintain it, and we don't have the internal or external resources to earn our bacon, fry it, and serve it up to our children without feeling overwhelmed.

By this, I mean that raising children responsibly is time-intensive and financially expensive--health care, child care, the necessity to take time off work to care for them when they are ill, the cost of keeping them educated and participating in supervised and "age-appropriate" activities, the cost of keeping up with compulsive consumerism of the pop culture which is driven by children and teens who lack purpose and meaning in their lives... Until relatively recently, children were raised in a more communal/community environment--they lived in the same house, neighborhood, or town as their extended families, of whom grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles were the primary caretakers of young children. But with industrialisation and increased mobility, it is much more common for adults to live separated by hundreds of miles from their families--and raise their children themselves in a small, nuclear, family. This creates a lot of financial and emotional stress, and the observation of this stress by others who have not gone the 'child' route tends to raise doubts. I know this from personal experience: I am known to say that "I like other people's children" or that "I like being an auntie" far more than I would enjoy being a parent, myself.

Fourthly, there are social and environmental ills in the world that provoke people to refrain from reproducing, if they have a choice. The world is so full of murder and rape and molestation and extinction and pollution and scarcity and neglect--why pass that on to children? Many feel that we should first make the world a better place to live in, before bringing more people into it. Why add to the epidemic of suffering?

Lastly, those who do not examine history are doomed to repeat it. It is obvious to me why Europe's birth rate is much lower than that of the US. Sure, the US has a far more religious population, in general, than European countries, and thus more children (heck, religious states like Utah have birth rate that is something like triple that of states such as New Hampshire), but that's only part of it.

Europe is more crowded, it has fewer resources, and its people are still living with the consequences of World War I and II in ways that the US is not. Much of Germany's aggressiveness in the early 20th century was attributed to a growing population that was feeling crowded and resource hungry, a population that, having purged its country of most of the immigrant and non-Arian resource competitors, began looking at expanding their territory to give themselves more room to grow.

To quote Samuelson quoting Wattenberg:

"The forthcoming and dramatic depopulation of Europe and Japan will cause many problems," writes Ben Wattenberg in "Fewer," his excellent book on the subject. "Populations will age, the customer base (for businesses) will shrink, there will be labor shortages, the tax base will decline, pensions will be cut, retirement ages will increase." All plausible. In 2000, one in six people in Germany and Japan were 65 or older; by 2050 the projections are for one in three.

Is opening borders and allowing immigration from countries that cannot support their populations a solution to the above-mentioned consequences of de-population? Probably. But immigration is a real sore point in most First World countries, as illustrated by immigrant riots and demonstration in France and the US. And the reason (I think) is because we socially-enlightened First Worlders do not feel it is right to maintain a second-class of laborers supporing a social and cultural elite---and yet, as a whole, we do not want to comprise on our standards of living in order to help raise others up...

There. I'm done babbling. Really. Now that I've emptied my mind of such dark thoughts, I'm going to wash my hands, brush my teeth, and retire to my delicious bed with a yummy fantasy involving me, a man who knows how to use his mouth and fingers, and restraints. Mmm.... yes.... I feel much better already.

Feminist Rantifesto

[begin rant]
I was fortunate to attend one of the Seven Sisters Colleges, attendance at which would automatically enroll me in the "Feminist Club" in most minds. But when I was at college, I subscribed to Playboy, which raised a few eyebrows and prompted heated discussions on exploitation of women. I also argued long into the wee hours of the night various sides of issues like affirmative action, historically single-sex and single-race colleges, racism and reverse racism, (under)representation of women in technical fields, reproductive rights, sex education, rape awareness education, defamation of our gender in religions, etc etc.

And when I was a student at my alma mater, I was privileged to meet Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Camille Paglia, and Susie Bright. Four very different women, each of them feminists in my opinion. But perhaps the most radical extremist feminist of them all, Andrea Dworkin, I never had the opportunity to meet or hear speak. Mom was a big fan of hers--she embraced radical lesbian separatism and often quoted Dworkin to me. Their views were so extreme that my sweet young avidly-heterosexual self was appalled and repelled. My own experience of sexual violation by a woman made me dig my heels in--if all men were considered potential rapists because some men committed rape, did not the same 'logic' apply to women?

Andrea Dworkin, who died a year ago last month, did a lot for women--she dared to look at what polite society denied the existence of: pornography and the sexual degradation of women. She was a lightning rod and her thoughts and opinions attracted and repelled women for decades. She profoundly affected the feminist movement in the 60's, and even if she disapproved of the tangent that women like Susie Bright pursued under the feminist banner, I firmly believe that if it was not for her and her bellicose in-your-face self-expression, women today would be as out of touch with their sexuality and the politcs of sex as they were in the first half of the 20th century.

But Dworkin's activism and views chap my ass. In fact, I have issues with feminists, especially older ones, those of Andrea Dworkin's generation.

Just as I eschewed the label 'lesbian' when I was sleeping with women, I do not identify with the label 'feminist', even though many would consider me such. I consider myself more of a humanist, in the sense that I feel that every person should be treated with respect and be able to live lives unoppressed by another.

As such, I was considered a bad feminist by some because I questioned the anti-male attitudes of so many of the women I came into contact with. I asked if it was really necessary to emmasculate men in order to achive parity between the sexes. I had to argue my word-choice of parity instead of equality, calmly (and sometimes heatedly) stating that by parity I mean equivalency, rather than equality--a functional equivalence as opposed to the questionably achievable idealized equality (pertinent parity definitions from Wikipedia: In sports, parity refers to engineering an equal playing field in which all teams can compete, regardless of their economic circumstances [and] Potty parity attempts to equalize the waiting times of males and females in restroom queues by designating or building more womens' restrooms, giving them more facilities to use).

The humanist in me finds many feminists to be hypcritical. I do not like the superior attitudes of women toward men, especially those men who are genuinely trying to attenuate the effects of both socialization and biology on their interactions with, and attitudes toward, women. And I particularly dislike those women who have no problem with grinding a man underfoot, eviscerating and emmasculating him in order to get that equality she desires, to break through that glass ceiling, to blow the top off the sexist box. The problem with such behaviour is that all they are doing is bringing men down the the demoralizing levels they themselves feel they are at. And to what purpose? There is no dignity in such action. There is no respect for the humanity of another in that. Such acts and attitudes do not result in a truely lasting betterment of either gender, and certainly not in humanity as a whole.

No, of course men and women are not equal. They will never be equal. We are complimentary to each other. We are capable of relating in ways that enhance each other's strengths and nullify or reduce the effects of our weaknesses. We are capable of parity. And the sooner the ball-crushing feminists out there either understand this or die off, the better. Their attitudes are outdated, atavistic, and counterproductive. Its time to get on with our real work, which is improving the lot of men, women, and children, indeed, all of humanity, and not just the lots of those women who feel they have been unjustly denied recognition or power because of their gender.

As a result of my opinions I've been called a bad feminist and I've been called an enlightened feminist. I suppose both labels are accurate, but they also conveniently marginalize my views. Ah well. Some of us think. Some of us act. The rest of us are entertained.
[end rant]

Hetero Amity

What a painful thing it is to realize that I live in a world (or perhaps I should say, a society, since it really is hubris to use 'world' when my experience of it is so small) that devalues friendship. Friendship is a source of love and acceptance and communion. And yet, women are encouraged to see other women as mere competitors, and men as potential providers and mates. And men, they are encouraged to develop the same mindset. Their male friends are buddies with whom they jokingly compete, and women are objects to be desired. So it seems that friendships between men and women, even in this post-sexual revolution era, are awkward and easily discouraged. This, despite the fact that friendships between men and women provide amazing benefits. Men can express to women the thoughts and feelings that they would never express to other men, the thoughts and feelings that society considers weak and unmanly, and have them validated. And women, knowing economic independance and reproductive choice, can go to men with their thoughts and ideas, not as beggars and dependants, not merely tolerated as objects of sexual gratification, but appreciated as intellectual equals. Today, when a man and a woman meet in friendship, it is possible for us to meet as people, to touch the humanity in each other, to enjoy the exchange between different-yet-same that results in us receiving from each other something that could not have come from within us. And yet, conventional wisdom states that men and women cannot be friends, that sex gets in the way. What a sad thing that is. In my experience, the sexual tension only gets in the way if it goes unacknowledged. I am female, you are male, we are hetero. We could form a sexual union. Or not. But sex is not the root of our affinity, or is it? Ah, the power of a question that does not require an answer. It is enough simply for us to be aware, awake, open, perceptive, inquisitive. The answers, like the questions, come in their own time. One day, I hope the answer to the question "why can't men and women be friends?" will be moot.

Regardless, I'll continue with my hetero amity.