Love in the Old, Love in the New

And so ends a year that was both the worst and the best in my life so far.

Three cancer diagnoses, two deaths, surgeries, illnesses, and a near-death experience for me -- in ways it felt as though we were the Children of Job, a family cursed. For the most part, we chose not to make it mean that. Life Happens, I reminded everyone, And while we often don't get to choose what happens, we always get to choose what we make it mean.

I miss my sister, but at least I am missing only one, and not three out of the four. The long nights sitting at Caro's bedside whispering to her to get up, to get out of bed, to live the rest of her life, how ever long that was -- those nights paid off. She got out of bed, she did her chemo, and she is living her life. The hours and hours with Tess on the phone, urging her to choose life, to choose mental and physical well-being, to choose herself and get out of an abusive marriage -- those hours paid off. She will be flying home to California on January 1. And the hours spent with Granddad, loving him, caring for him, telling him it is ok to go home -- those hours, too, paid off. He died peacefully, before the pain from the cancer grew too great.

And through all this, I discovered that I was not alone. I was not alone in my loss, my pain, or my suffering. The world is full of it. Nor was I alone in getting through this year. I've been truly blessed with friends who are compassionate and loving. I learned a lot from them and through them this year. A breakdown in my health brought a breakthrough in Living. I learned that my own vulnerability brought out the best in people. I learned that people are inherently good. That people want to help, to give back, to contribute. I learned about the intimacy of suffering *with* others rather than suffering alone. And I learned that I am enough. That I am enough for myself, and my family, and my friends, and where I grow thin or tired or worn, someone will provide the energy I need to continue.

I have friends who held me the night my sister died. They offered no comforting platitudes, only the comfort of their bodies, warm and loving, pressed against mine. The antidote to grief is love, and they were fountains of it.

I have a friend who took care of me when I was sick, 500 miles from home. So sick I didn't recognize the seriousness of my illness, so sick that I spent three weeks on home health care after two weeks in the hospital. He was there for me in a way that I never thought anyone would be, in a way I've always tried to be there for others, and his willingness to do whatever it took to see me healthy again was a lesson in the power of my own vulnerability to move others to be better people.

I have friends who gave of themselves and enriched my life and I am grateful, so grateful, for the joy and laughter and the openness and the tears. They made this year a great year for me, one I will never forget.

Soon this year ends. Soon I go to the airport to retrieve the man I love, and spend the remaining hours of this year doing those things and feeling those things which I intend to carry forward into the New Year. And foremost of it all, is Love.

Gratitude

(Thank you PS for the gift of your breast.)

Tears blur my vision, dripping onto the keyboard. My heart is filled with Gratitude. So much Gratitude for so much Love in my life.

Two years ago I created for myself the possibility of being fully self-expressed. And as I manifested that in my life, I found myself struggling with freedom, with feeling truly free to be myself, to be whatever I wanted to be. And then something happened. I had a breakthrough in 'being' and found that I was free to fully express myself as Love. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "be the change you want to see in the world." And this freedom to be the change I want to see in the world, to Be Love, has enriched my life and the lives of those I touch, and the lives they touch. It is a wonderful thing, to know love and to be love, and to feel its presence in my life when it comes back to me, manifold.

In my heart there is sadness and longing and anticipation and joy and... so many things simple and complex. But gratitude and love are foremost. It seems that every day I've been in Portland this year, an extraordinary person has come into my life. And there has been such a sense of urgency to bond with these people, to make that connection that will withstand distance. I'm trying not to mourn the loss of easy access to my friends new and old. At times I am more successful than others, but I am comforted by experience: I know I can maintain deep and meaningful relationships over long distances. And I do plan to come back to Portland often. The sense of community here is so amazing. There is so much going on, so many people committed to doing good things, great things. People committed to helping others and growing and being and sharing and co-creating a livable world.

The pain and loss this year have broken me open in a way that I always feared. These feelings are at times so intense that I find myself unable to breathe, unable to stop the tears. This is what love feels like--the other side we don't want to think about--the side that keeps many of us from being open to love, and to Life. Everything superfluous and unreal, every barrier and mask and inauthenticity was burned away from me and I am standing naked to the world, exposed, pink and new and vulnerable and terrified and people have responded with unanticipated love and tenderness and kindness. Who knew there was so much lovingkindness in the world?

It has been a whirlwind week. Work during the days, play during the evenings, repeat as necessary to satisfy myself and my friends. I have hugged, kissed, nuzzled, danced, wined and dined, tried butter shots, licked chocolate off of body parts, slept snuggled up to a wonderfully curvacious bottom, wandered the halls of a hotel during Orycon in my pajamas, enjoyed an impromptu cleavage convention, watched lap dances, fire dances, and asses dancing under floggers. And that's just the PG to R-rated stuff ;)

And as it hits home that I am leaving this wonderfully expressive, connected, touch-positive community this week, I know gratitude, and love, and grief. But my world is not ending. I am embracing what life brings next, and I will carry this community in my heart and mind, and I will create it anywhere I go, because I am Love.

Kahlil Gibran wrote:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your
understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the
sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always
accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Winter is coming, and soon the Spring. I will sow the seeds of a new life in a new place and find joy in discovering what grows out of my efforts. Thank you, my friends, for letting me love you. And thank you, so very much, for returning it ten-fold and more. Truly, I am blessed.

Certainty Is....

Certainty is an illusion. So is control.

Life happens, and it just so happens that life is taking me where I was certain I would never go again: home.

In leaving my life in Portland, I leave behind partners who have sat at the banquet of sensuality with me. Some see this as an ending. Some see this as a hiatus. Some see this as a reason to work harder to keep in touch. Some see this as a source of regret. Some see this as a reason to cling. Some see this as an opportunity -- my partner in California, for one. I am looking forward to seeing him more frequently, and to sharing more of myself and my life with him. I'm uncertain about what will happen next, and I am ok with that. If there is one thing I have learned this year, it is that there is nothing I cannot handle with a little help from my loved ones. I can choose for myself a specific destination in life, and I while I have control over myself and the work I do to achieve my goals, I am achingly aware that I have no control over the curves life throws at me, or over others. Life is uncertain, control is an illusion, and I -- I am adaptable. Besides, its not the destination that matters (which, ultimately, is the certainty of death) -- its what I get up to along the way.

The Luxury of Time

So last weekend was a long weekend spent at the Oregon Coast. A friend was celebrating her 40th birthday and rented this gorgeous villa overlooking a huge stretch of beach. I somehow lucked out in that I arrived before her family-contingent left and the friends-contingent joined us, so not only got to meet her family, but I got her mostly to myself for part of an evening and a day. She's a wonderful woman and I'm sad that I'm moving away just when I was looking forward to getting to know her well.

We talked about polyamory, and how she was doing in a relationship of hers. I made some recommendations based on experience and observation, mostly based on communicating clearly about her wants and needs, and giving her partner(s) the opportunity to decide for themselves what it is that they can and cannot do. From there, it is a lot easier to work out a future that has minimal angst.

The next morning was spent curled up on a loveseat looking at the ocean, reading, and chatting, and trying to recover from a sniffly cold. Early in the afternoon we went on a quest for live crab -- and found them! We brought 5 back and I boiled them up. Yum! By the time we got back with the crab, pretty much everyone was there -- a dozen of us, all interesting people connected to her in a variety of ways.

One of the guests is an excellent chef, and he created a salad to die for. We sat around and ate and drank copious amounts of wine and champagne. Then we soaked in the hot tub. Then we danced. Then the warm oil and the massage table came out. Then we rubbed. Yes... it was a delicious weekend in many ways.

Sunday I went back to Portland for a snuggle party I was facilitating. I'd say that 30 people showed up, and so many of them came to wish me well in my move down to California, that my heart was full of love and sadness. I was on the verge of tears for much of the night, and that is ok. I had the luxury of spending time snuggled up with a couple dozen people, and there is not much in life that beats that.

Life goes forward. My heart beats out the seconds between now and the end of my days, whenever that is. I nearly died this year--I know what a luxury the concept of 'spending time' is. There is no better time to do what I want than now. Right Now. Because tomorrow will come, but it may not come for me. Living for tomorrow is not a thing I can do anymore. Life is meant to be lived fully and powerfully, each and every moment.

God I love my life!

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.

Apologies

So I had a conversation with a client of mine this morning. He called me to tell me that a fix I'd done for him wasn't fully complete, which shocked me, because I knew I'd done exactly what he'd requested. It turned out I'd heard him literally and thus misunderstood what he meant. I'm usually better at listening and clarifying.

I apologized to him, and he responded gruffly with "Don't ever apologize, its a sign of weakness."
Without thinking about it, I responded, "No, John, an apology is a gift."
"A gift?" he sounded incredulous.
"Yes. A genuine, heartfelt apology is my gift to you, and if you accept it, it is your gift to me."
He was silent and for a moment there I was concerned that I had crossed a line with him, but I also felt good about what I said. I'd been true to myself and spoken from the heart. John can be very stern and demanding, so much so that he normally refused to deal with anyone else in my department, and his refusal had created some difficulty for him and my office while I was out on medical leave.
Finally, he stammered, "You're right, Kay. I didn't mean to imply that you are weak. And thank you."
I smiled. Somehow I'd managed to avert disaster, and he'd actually thanked me for, well, for correcting him or for the gift of my apology, or maybe even both.

The person who had transferred him to me had been standing anxiously at my desk. When I hung up, she asked "How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"He was being a real prick 10 minutes ago."
"I just told him that I was sorry."
"Well, so did I. I even offered to help resolve the problem."
I thought about it for a moment.
"Yes, but I really meant it, and he got that."
"Got what?"
"Got the gift."
She just shook her head a little. "Unbelievable. I could never get away with saying some of the things you say."
"Or..." I pondered... "Or..." I spoke in an exaggeratedly breathy tone, "it could be that I just give really good phone."
I gave her a wicked grin and she laughed.
"That, too."

Open letter to a former lover

We ended our romantic relationship 15 years ago, but we stay in touch. He has been married for a dozen years now, has children, a high-pressure high-paying NYC job, inherited a butt-load of old Massachusetts family wealth--and is miserable. He emailed saying his problems must seem like nothing compared to my own. I responded with:

"If your shoes pinch or you have no shoes at all, your feet still hurt, don't they?" Suffering is suffering, and if I had my way, it would be eliminated from the spirit of every person on the planet. Imagine what we could accomplish as a species if we were not carrying around so much pain!?

Am I too impossibly positive? I am one of those people who can lose a sister, have another going through terminal illness, and nearly die herself, and still lay in a hospital bed and laugh at the absurdity of Life. The nurses and docs who took care of me just marveled at the positive energy that I put out, day after day, for 15 days of pain and needles and drugs.

I had a lot of time to think, laying in that bed, because I refused to numb my mind with TV. And laying there, I was reminded that I have no control over Life. I have no control over how I feel about what Life comes at me with. I only have control over what I think about it and how I act/respond to it. Thoughts and attitudes are causal forces in life. We create our lives, the circumstances of our lives. Have you heard of the quotation "As a man thinketh, so he is?" A few years ago, I finally got what it meant ;)

I know what it is to be happy, every day, to be happy more than I am not happy. I know what it is to be powerful in living my life, to be free and at peace, and to feel fully self-expressed, rather than bottled-up and repressed. I am responsible for my own happiness, and for the circumstances of my life, and when I made that realization, and put that realization to work for myself, my life transformed immediately. I choose happiness and freedom every day, every conscious moment. I choose health and fitness and vitality every conscious moment. I make these choices with varying degrees of success, but I am not discouraged, and I do not give up. I simply remind myself: Choose it. Be it. Do it. And then you will have it.

Life is beautiful, love. Its achingly, terribly, terrifyingly beautiful. It is short, transient, uncertain -- and that makes the beauty of it even more poignant. I hope you find what you need to be happy, even if we do not have the conversation on it that I hope to have some day. I'd love for you to know what it is to feel the way I feel every day -- but you have to choose it for yourself.

Gravity, Energy, and Spankings

I saw my doc on Monday. "Do you understand the gravity of the situation you were in? The illness you had has a 60% mortality rate," she said. "You are fortunate to be alive."

MR's response: "I went too easy on you for that spanking."
The Dutchman's response: "I'll keep that in mind when I deliver my spanking."
CW's response: "I'm tempted to tie you to the mast of the boat and
give you a good whipping."

In cahoots with each other, the Dutchman kept egging MR on with regards to spanking me. One swat for each day I was in the hospital (15) as punishment for not taking proper care of myself. In response, I'd told him "Hey, deliver your own spanking!" So now I've got another one coming. *sigh*

I have learned that just as there are drawbacks to having a high pain tolerance (ie, landing myself in the hospital), there are also drawbacks to knowing the love of a few good men. Like spankings. Which is hysterical, since I'm oh-so-NOT the submissive type. Yet, I found myself obediently (and apprehensively) laying down at the foot of MR's bed and letting him paddle me pink, counting out the swats aloud. He was concerned I would 'enjoy' it. I didn't. It could be because I'm not into pain, or it could be because my libido still hasn't recovered.

I know my libido hasn't recovered because I had actually forgotten about my sybian until I stubbed my toe on it. And while my mind is stimulated by the memories of its use, my body is not following. Ah well.

There is an irony to this and that is that while I feel that my sexual energy is in a lull, others have commented on how being around me makes them think things that are embarassing in public. Heh.

It is going to be very warm today, so I'm wearing my favorite white muslin sundress and flip-flops to show off my new pedicure. Bright pink toenails!

Next week is the Portland Blues Fest, Independance Day, J's going away party, B's chocolate tasting, and B's game night. I hope I have the energy to indulge.

Final days in San Francisco

My time in San Francisco draws to a close, and I will shortly resume Life, Interupted. There are things I am going to miss: my family, my friends, the golden sunlight, the quiet days. However, there are things I am not going to miss: doctors and nurses, medicine, hot, dry, dusty air, and the restlessness that comes from being inactive.

Most especially I will miss MR, who has been a far better host and companion to me than I have been a guest. He has tolerated all of the medical paraphernalia scattered everywhere, and my need to hook up my IV every 8 hours. When I want sushi, he takes me for sushi. When I want steak, he takes me to a steakhouse. When I want to get out of the house, takes me to the movies or to mini-golf or he just gives me the keys to his Z3. In all fairness, though, I give as good as I get. His house is clean, his is laundry done, his back is massaged regularly, and I do fill the gas tank.

I've just realized that in the past six months I have worked just 6 weeks, and that I have spent more time at his place than at my own. Tammy's death, Caro's cancer, Terri's heart attack, Chrissy's kidney stones, and then my own hospital adventure. Its been costly in so many ways and I am so looking forward to going home and getting a handle on my personal finances. There is nothing like paying for a funeral and helping sick relatives make ends meet to lay waste to savings. Thankfully, I have medical insurance.

One of the highlights of my being stuck here in San Francisco was seeing my very dear friends K and C and meeting for the first time the little girl they adopted a few years ago. For all the challenges she faces, she is a terribly bright child, and I have confidence in their abilities to provide her a loving home in which to thrive. I would have liked to see more of them, but he was here to speak at the Apple conference and I didn't have the stamina to keep up with a 7 year-old for very long.

I wish I could say I'd done some writing and recording, but I haven't. Along with the meltdown in my health, I have experienced technological challenges with my cell phone and my laptop. Ah well.

From all accounts, my friends in Portland are eagerly awaiting my return. I've multiple invitations to dinner, to snuggle, to movies, etc. I expecially look forward to resuming my activities in the LoveTribe and ecstatic dance communities.

Watch out Portland! Here I come!

In hospital

May got off to a good start. I was having a lot of fun.

Then I caught a flu bug from a colleague that hammered my immune system.

Then I got an ingrown hair. It got infected. I got some antibiotics for it.

I flew to CA to see my sister and celebrate her first round of chemo. And never made it to see her. The infection turned septic and I ended up in the hospital, 550 miles from home and 3 hours away from family. I've been here since the 16th of May. I've had two surgeries and nearly 2 weeks of IV antibiotics and they want me to do two more. I'm trying to get out on home health care and a PICC line for IV antibiotics--MR has graciously offered to take me in for the duration of the illness. This, despite the fact the needles and IVs and blood and such make him squeamish. But he's just a mile or two from the hospital, and they don't want me to go far.

Life is absurd. I laugh about it most of the time. And when the pain or the boredom gets to be too much, I look out the window at my million dollar view of San Francisco and try not to cry.

On the up side, I've got my laptop now, and limited wifi, and soon I won't have to endure any more needles in my arms. Yay!

Beaming metta in the rain

Yesterday I met up with some friends for lunch in Chinatown. We had sushi of course. They are poly, and I really like her, I did the photography for their wedding a few months ago. They've been very good to me since my sister died, and he's been concerned about my being anti-social, so Thursday, Friday and Saturday I spent some time with him. Its been good for me. After lunch we parted ways. I was pouring rain so they had their car instead of taking the Max home, and I walked toward the Chinese Garden.

I called my sister and we spoke briefly. I've been beaming a lot of metta her way, and I think I must have left it on, because when I got to the Chinese Garden, I noticed people were noticing me. I normally do a good job of being Plain Jane and avoiding notice, so I must have left my energy level turned up like a beacon in order to catch the attention of so many people. The first was a little boy. He was walking along a path and then he just stopped and stared at me. I looked back at him and smiled and still he stared, and then when I spoke to him he walked to a corner and turned it and then peeked back at me. I caught him glancing my way quite often. Shortly thereafter a man asked me a question about a penjing on display, and we got into a conversation about bamboo. Later, two women, same thing.

I had just finished my first walk around the garden and exchanged a few words with a young man wearing a back-pack when I decided to go into the tea house. It being a rainy day, the place was crowded with people, and the windows were thrown open to let in the sights, scents, and fresh air that is so keenly appreciated here in the Pacific Northwest. I went upstairs and while I waited to be seated, I noticed a woman sitting alone at a table. She was one of the three I had seen in wheelchairs at the garden yesterday, and everyone else in the room had company, so I asked her if she would mind if I shared her table. She graciously accepted my self-invitation. We talked for a bit and then my tea and lotus-seed mooncake arrived. She has cerebral palsy and has no fine motor-control, so I hand-fed her bites of the mooncake wedges. Does that sound strange? It seemed very natural at the time, but in retrospect, it is a bit odd that two strangers would sit at a table and establish enough of a rapport that one would allow the other the intimacy of feeding them. She finished her tea and left and I remained for a while, looking out the windows. Its like being in a tree-house, with The Big Pink dominating the skyline like a redwood tree.

I knew there was someone behind me and to my left and after I paid for my tea and turned, I recognized him. The college kid.

"You should have asked if you could join us," I said to him.

"I didn't want to intrude on you and your friend," he responded.

"Oh, I met her just now. I asked her if she wanted to share her table."

His expression was bemused. "Do you come here often?" he asked me.

"Yes, I am a member."

"So am I," he said, "We can have tea next time."

I smiled and nodded and walked downstairs and out into the garden again, to enjoy its beauty and try to capture it on camera. A man was doing walking meditation though the garden, chanting a mantra. I stopped to listen and then turned to smile at him and he stopped for a long moment, looking at me. I held his gaze for a bit and then continued walking the paths, camera in hand. He followed me after that through much of the garden, and I noticed that he would stop in the places I had paused to photograph or just gaze, and then he would move on. Eventually, I finished my second circumnavigation of the garden and wandered out into Chinatown.

Here are some photos. The one with the girl and the lion has an interesting story. I was looking through a window in at a porcelain dragon, when the little girl behind me leaned over the railing to look at the fish. When she did, her reflection draped itself over the lion's head. I snapped the photo and just a moment later she moved. I thought I had missed the shot, but I did not.

On my previous entry, SacredTouch made the following comment:

To be free in the present moment with someone involves bearing all possible responses and reactions, moment by moment, including silence. To be there for someone, wherever there is, especially for someone in the depths of suicidal despair, requires patience above all, as well as a willingness to speak from the heart, about your own experience, in relation to the conversation (however minimal) that arises moment by moment out of the space you make for the encounter. Beyond this, I cannot think of what else to say, except to ask: are you prepared to face the realization of total freedom from your encounter - or your encounters?

This comment and closing question stayed with me for the better part of the day. I recognized the wisdom of his words and the true depth of his question. It is profound and in many ways conceptually, never mind verbally, ungraspable. I was still wrestling with the impact of my attempts to imagine my response to such a powerful expression of freedom when my cell phone rang. It was my sister. She'd been released from the hospital, cleared medically and mentally. We discussed many things, though the main theme was a complaint about strength. She had wanted to be admitted for 72 hours of psychiatric evaluation but was told it was not necessary. She was deemed to be a strong woman who was stable and no longer a danger to herself. Her voice broke, she did not understand how other could see strength in her where she felt only emptiness, exhaustion, and a profound sense of loss.

As I listened to her, I held in my mind the image of my sister as the woman I know she is and can be again: beautiful, compelling, vital, earthy, funny, raunchy, strong and free. And when I spoke to her, I spoke spontaneously, from my heart, and I surprised both of us.

I'd like to ask you to try to distinguish between energy and strength, and between exhaustion and loss.
You feel weak because you have exhausted your strength, not weak because you have lost your strength.
A body-builder is very strong, but there comes a point when he has exhausted his strength and does not have the energy to lift that barbell one more time.
He must rest and eat so the next day he can go back to lifting heavy weights.
Take a break, give yourself time to build you energy reserves back up, and you'll find that your strength will be there, too.

Apparently it was the right thing to say.

Perception determines Reality

Freedom is possible. I know this because reality is free. How is reality free? Reality is mutable, creative, nebulous, contingent, turbulent, and uncertain. It is free.

I have an act, and that act is "I'm trapped." I've spent much of my life acting out that script, doing my best to avoid being trapped, or, finding myself trapped by my circumstances, either doing battle, making the best of it, or on the rare occasion, indulging in self-pity. And its all bullshit.

I am my own jailer. I hold the keys to my own freedom, but I often cling to an illusion that keeps me trapped. And the way I trap myself is by insisting that who I am is a fixed thing that exists independent of reality and the conditions of reality.

Who I am is not a thing. I am not a chair. You cannot take me out of the dining room or the office and put me out on the lawn and say "This is Kay the chair." If you take a chair apart, bit by bit, piece by piece, at some point the assemblage of parts is no longer a chair-object, but the potential of one. But I cannot be disassembled. My parts do not have existence independent of each other, nor do I exist independent of my experience of reality.

Who I am is not an object that exists independent of the conditions of reality. My ego thinks that independence is freedom...that seeking to separate or differentiate myself from others, from reality, etc will set me free. But that is foolishness. Isolated and alienated self-centeredness is not freedom. It is aversion. It is desperate clinging to a static vision of self and world. It is avoiding acceptance and understanding of Reality, of What Is, and of my intrinsic connectedness to everything.

What can I do to remind myself that I am both free and interconnected? By practicing awareness of the freedom present in each moment, by permitting myself to experience each moment authentically and by responding spontaneously to each moment of my experience without trying to force myself or reality to fit some idea I have of how it should be.

When I am in that place, I cannot help but be filled with wonder and awe at the beauty and mystery of it all. Reality and my experience of it are numinous and intrinsically ineffable, and I am free to question, so long as I do not insist on answers. When I am content to question and let the question go without requiring an answer, when I am content to act without needing things to work out a certain way, when I do not allow my fear of uncertainty to prevent me from acting, then I know I am free. And that feeling of freedom and connectedness and awe, that is powerfully inspiring to me.

Now how do I communicate that to someone who is in the deepest, darkest depths of despair? How do I inspire to live a person who cannot accept reality as it is, who rejects it so deeply, so viscerally, that she tried to kill herself? How do I help her see that her trap is not real, but a matter of perception, and that she can set herself free simply by choosing it?

I am free. I want to inspire her to realize the possibility of freedom for herself. But I am very attached to this--I want it very badly. I want her to live. How do I distinguish between clinging/ attachment--between my own agenda and my own rejection of her reality--and accepting where she is now and acting out of my commitment to help her realize her own potential for freedom? Especially when I am afraid to say the wrong thing? Simply because an outcome is possible does not mean it is probable. I want to take a possibility, a potential, and make it a probability, a certainty. I am determined to find a way to present Life to her as an opportunity, rather than as the trap she perceives it to be. And so I will. And so I will.

Turning the corner

I've had trouble sleeping. I fall exhausted into bed and am awake a few hours later. I force myself to go back to sleep and I do, but its more like being in alpha-state--sometimes I catch my mind talking to itself and listen in on the internal dialog. It seems I am always running a litany of things to do mixed with musing over problems to be solved and rehearsal conversations with family and friends.

Knowing there would be no more rest for me, I forced myself to get out of bed, lest I decide there was no purpose to getting up. I am fortunate, I reminded myself in the shower. I have a wide network of friends, people who love and support me. My family is in crisis again, but my shoulders are broad, I can handle this. I can handle this. Tears fill my eyes but I will not allow them to fall. I've cried enough the past four months. Right now, tears are not an answer or a release. They are simply an indulgence. The urge will pass.

Outside my window it is Spring. The birds feed their nestlings. I cannot believe this is happening. The flowers and trees bloom, and the sky is a thousand shades of gray. I will spend the weekend with people I love. I will support my sisters, my parents as best I can. I choose what is happening. I cannot change it, and I could deny it, but that changes nothing. A gust of wind shakes the plum trees, scattering flower petals like confetti. In choosing to accept What Is, I can move forward from a firm basis of reality into a future of my own creation. Scrubbing the kitchen, taking refuge in rhythmic movement, in the preparations for guests that I will attempt to entertain this weekend. Thoughts and attitudes are causal forces in life. I can create my reality, the circumstances of my life. I know I can create it, because I can look back and see what choices I have made that created the circumstances I am in now. Sweeping the floor with the broom, going over it with the damp swiffer pad. I choose. I choose to live my life powerfully, as an agent of my own goals instead of as a victim of circumstance. I choose to go forward with my plans, however I must. I choose to love, and to support, and to be who I need to be in order to do what I need to do in order to have what I want to have for myself and my life. The floor is clean. The way is clear. It is time to go out into the world, to turn the corner, and trust it my ability to handle whatever lies beyond my field of vision.

Passover Buddha

We've had bizarre weather here in the Pacific NW this weekend. The sun has been emboldened a few times to yellow the clouds and brighten the days, and in between, rain, sleet, and snow, most of which did not stick in the lower elevations. In Seattle, where I visited friends, there was snow on the ground, contrasting nicely with the forsythia and the black bamboo. After a four hour drive which afforded me ample opportunity to ponder the chameleonic weather, I arrived home in Portland, to find the tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are blooming, undaunted by the chill. It is April, they seem to sing as the wind and weather force them to dance. For all that the weather left me cold, I was warmed by the company of friends old and new, by several glasses of wine, and by kosher Passover food cooked by foodies both Jewish and Gentile. The last time I had food that good was for my birthday, at The Sardine Factory. It has been years since I was invited to a Passover Seder, and my first time participating in the reading of the Haggadah. The ritual meal took about 3 hours, and was both delicious and educational. I hope I am invited back next year.

I was cleaning out my closet when the sun came out and slanted through the photinia bushes to illuminate my room. There was something about the quality of the light, the shadows, and the tiny prismatic crystals of the valance that had me grabbing my camera for a photo. It is a nice background for the Buddha statue.

I am tired and yet aroused. I got a good long kiss from my rocket-scientist friend before I left his place in Seattle. It is Sunday evening, which means bath night. I will soak and shave and then play. After the week I had, I certainly deserve it.

Life impacts my senses at the speed of light

Life impacts my senses at the speed of light. A moment emerges and is gone, both enfolded and supplanted by the next moment, the next sensation, like a mini-series of lives and deaths. When I am present to this I become aware of the ongoing drama of my inner-life, and how untouched I often am by the outer world.

I walked through a garden today, a garden drenched in misty rain, bathed in shadows and momentary shafts of light. It smelled of the earthworm's gratitude and the mating of flowers. My senses delivered me from my self-absorbed brooding. I've much to brood over, I suppose, and no one begrudges me my pensiveness... except me.

Preoccupied with my thoughts, I walked unseeingly past brilliant red camellias, purple-white magnolias, and tiny yellow azaleas and penjing forests. At some point I realized I had walked a quarter of the way through the garden without seeing a thing. And stopped. My feet had been following the lovely patterned walkway just as my mind had been following its predictable course, flowing along the thought-patterns I've developed over the years. In the tumult of life, I look for ways to control my circumstances, for ways to alleviate the pain of suffering and loss, the crush of anxiety, and the desire for isolation. And often, the way I cope, the way many people cope, is to try to fit experiences into a predictable pattern so that I can then anticipate the future.

Life is uncertain. It is contingent. It is poignant. It is absurd, and tragic, and indescribably beautiful. It happens. I cannot control the flow of life. I cannot control the speed at which life impacts me. I can only control myself: how I respond within, and how I react. My senses send messages to my brain about reality, and the filter of my attitudes in turn creates my perception of reality. In resuming the life I left behind in January, I jumped into an irresistible flow of if-only's and should-be's and might-have-beens that generated feelings of frustration and disappointment and sadness.

And standing there in the garden, my hair and face misted with cool moisture, my nose assaulted with scents and my eyes with colour, I stopped. I dropped out of my preoccupied thought-flow and opened myself up to the sensual immediacy of what I was experiencing in the here-now. And in doing so, I remembered my freedom.

I was born free. Free of cares and concerns and cravings. My concerns were immediate: food, water, shelter, affection. I responded to and learned from my environment: this burns, that is so cold it hurts, this stings, that tastes sweet, etc. And then I learned semiotics and language. I learned what things meant. And I also learned to give meanings to things. And that... that is what started the descent into hell--that fall from innocence. Life happens around children, and they use their children's minds to determine causality, and then meaning, and they build continuously upon this fragile framework of childish logic an adult life, until as adults we are long past realizing that we are responding to The Now out of patterns established in childhood that have no bearing on the present. Such patterns rarely lead to healthy, rich, fulfilling adult lives. How can they? Children are acquisitive. They want. They dream. They are continuously bewitched by the perceived desirability of what they see/imagine but do not have. Some adults evolve beyond this stage, but most do not. Most of us live under a childish cloud of dissatisfied acquisition and unconsummated craving.

Life impacted my senses, and my senses sent their messages to my brain, and my mind finally called everything to a halt. It took stock of where I was and what I was experiencing, and in that moment, I knew who and what I was, and I responded freely and authentically to what was actually happening. I remembered my freedom and my joy, remembered that there is no intrinsic meaning to my life. My life is like an empty vessel, and I choose what fills it. There in the garden, I emptied the cup of my mind, and then extended myself, extended all of my senses, and experienced the moment. I took refuge in the moment and found sanctuary. I found freedom in the absence of all that 'meaning' I had haphazardly gathered in an attempt to define both the world and who I was in it.

It was a moment of bliss, a moment in which I could see beyond the vanishing point of my perspective to the place where it converges with the infinite possibility of All-That-I-Am. And then it was gone. In a flash, the habitual thought-patterns reasserted themselves and
I was once again my familiar self. My consciousness embraced my identity like a child does a beloved toy. My sense of calmness and vulnerability remained with me for the duration of my walk through the garden, however, and I resolved to remember to embrace the life that impacts me at the speed of light.

I choose

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

-- William Butler Yeats

I choose. I chose to return home and go back to work. Gave my doc the "return to work" papers and told her to sign them. I've been home 6 days. Being back at work was good in a lot of ways. People missed me, said they were glad to see me, and gave me time to get back into the groove before they started asking for help again. It is a choice to return here... to the same company and bosses I've worked for going on ten years now. While I was away I received a few job offers off monster.com, one of them was a 50% pay increase and twice as much vacation time as I currently have. I turned it down, which no few of my intimates has told me was insane. But I had good reasons for making the choice to remain, not the least of which is that there has been so much uncertainty, change, and loss in the past few months that I really don't want to put myself through the additional stress of adapting to a new workplace, particularly seeing as my line of work is stressful enough.

So much uncertainty in life. In my life right now. I find myself hesitating to commit myself to doing things. I've no idea when Caro is going to breathe her last, I've no idea how the family will handle her death versus her dying. And I have plans. I really do. Life is uncertain but there are things I have chosen for myself and my life and I'm feeling very powerful in my choosing, in the possibilities that I am creating. In three months I should accomplish a major milestone that I have been working toward for a year now. By then, hopefully there will be closure with Caro and I can go forward with the career map I laid out for myself in September. Then, I expected to be in a very different situation by Spring 2010. We'll see. Sometimes, having too many possibilities or choices is worse than having too few. And me, I'm being encouraged along two different paths in my profession, as well as being encouraged to take other things like my writing and photography more seriously. And my relationships, oh my... the joys of loving and being loved by more than one person can at times be overshadowed by the complications of feeling pulled in multiple directions at once. I want... something in me says. I want... I want... and then, when the time comes, I commit. I choose. I choose.

Har den äran

High noon. I roll the car out of the garage. The top is already down. There is a blanket in the passenger seat, a book of Rumi's poetry, a bottle of water, and my camera. The weather is brilliant. I've got two days of sunshine left before I return home to Oregon, where it is raining. Of course. I love Portland for its rain, for its cool misty mornings, for the volcanic skyline and the unpretentious , surprisingly sophisticated people. But I am a California native, a 5th generation California Girl, and this--this land of golden hills and winding roads, of sunlight and fog--this land is in my blood. And in the past few days it has called to me, and I've recalled what I loved about it.

California Highway 1 again, across the Golden Gate Bridge. This time I do not stop in Sausalito, I press on, up to Mt Tamalpais, over and around, winding my way through groves of Eucalyptus and wildflowers that perfume the air with citrus sweetness. The car hugs the curves, growling up from the shaded sylvan corners into the sunny straightaways--the entire drive to Stinson Beach done in 2nd and 3rd gears. A blast of salt-scented air and warmth, and I am on the west side of the mountain, the car in neutral, gliding down the narrow highway toward the Pacific Ocean. A hawk follows my descent, gliding with me. Stinson Beach appears below, and I am awed by the power and beauty of nature. And deeply, deeply grateful that I am here to see, feel, and smell it. I am alive, despite the death and dying around me. And perhaps because of it, I am keenly aware of the joy and beauty to be experienced in my everyday life.
There are few people on the road with me. I thought there would be more, seeing as today is Good Friday, but I share the road with a few other people in convertibles and a lone highway patrolman. Most of the traffic on the road is cyclists, actually, and their stamina and svelte physiques awe me almost as much as the engineering wizardry that went into making this powerful car so very quiet. There is a 10 mile section of Highway 1 between Stinson Beach and the hook-up near Muir Woods where most of the drive is 20 miles per hour. Winding switchbacks that give teasing views of San Francisco to the South, before turning inland again.

The day, the drive, the car, me... it is all poetry. But it gets better!

Around 4pm I cross the Golden Gate bridge again, going south. I prop my camera on the steering wheel and got this shot, even:

Over the bridge, through the crossover to Presidio Park, make a right at Geary, two more rights to get onto Clement (it takes three rights to make a left in SF), and I am headed the right direction to pick up a very special cake for MR's birthday. My friend Janne is always talking about his swedish princess cakes and how much he loves them, and I'd despaired of getting one here in the States, but I found a German bakery in San Francisco called Schubert's that makes princess cakes. I know MR likes raspberry, and almond/marzipan, and I figured he would enjoy the kirsch custard and whipped cream and moist white cake. I mean, what's not to like? So I have my usual excellent parking luck in SF and got a spot a half block away from the bakery. I walk in and pick this up:
A swedish princess cake with a pale yellow-green marzipan icing, and the words "Har den äran Älskling!" which is the Swedish equivalent of "Happy birthday, my love" but literally says "In your honour, lover." It is a very light cake, airy. Even the custard is light. The raspberry layer is fresh raspberry, hardly sweetened at all -- it tastes vividly of sunlight and whole raspberries. MR approves. Yum and Yay.

Life just is

I know you think the world is a warm and gentle place
she breathed into my ear from 3000 miles away
That life is good. But for me its a shithole
she sighed and dragged on her cigarette
I heard the exhale, saw the smoke apparitions
saw grandmother, mother, and sister dying
of tobacco in my mind's eye
rolled the ghosts up and stashed them away
for another conversation another day
Oh baby, life is what it is, neither good nor bad
its attitude that gives it colour. We wear glasses
some rose-coloured, some shit-brown coloured
(she coughed a laugh of recognition)
You've just got to hope one day you can exchange
those glasses, change your attitude.
Life just is what it is, it happens
we get to choose what we make it mean

Birthday in Monterey

I am 40 now, a pisces child born in the year of the monkey. A Monkeyfish. Nothing so beautiful as a jellyfish, I think.

Mostly right now I feel vaguely fatigued, and somewhat old. MR says I'm a four-year-old with a big "O" on the end. I told my family and they laughed. It is very appropriate. I'm growing older but not 'up'. And "The Big O" as we all know, is an orgasm. And I am so terribly fond of my Os.

So despite the grief and stress, I suppose I am still young at heart, and my friend MR indulged my inner child. We went to Monterey for my birthday and stayed at a nice hotel on Cannery Row called The Spindrift. We had dinner at an upscale restaurant with "Sardine" in its name, and then spent most of the following day at the Aquarium. Wow. I've been to many aquariums, and I enjoyed this one the most. The lighting is designed for optimum viewing of the fish, but is dismal for purposes of photographing them. Dark rooms and lighted tanks made my camera want to flash--and flashes cause reflections off the glass. Turning off the flash means the lens aperture stays open longer, and all the wonderful creatures moving around are captured as blurs. Still, I got a few good photos, and I found myself particularly fascinated by the jellyfish.

The drive from Monterey to San Francisco was pleasant. It was a clear evening, the hills were green, and the fudge we picked up on our way out of town was sweet.

Even in the midst of loss and grief, its nice to have reminders that life is good.