CURRENTS THROUGH USELESS BAY

I watched one of those educational programs on TED Talks the other day, and the speaker made a comment about how our educational system trains us out of making mistakes. Mistakes are shamed and invalidated, while conformity and head-knowledge are rewarded. We are conditioned to get the right answers, and through our archaic grading systems, strive to be as error free as possible. He argued that we become more and more careful and conscripted, fearful and approval-seeking.

Reflecting back to Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides, I thought how Andy Goldsworthy brought his projects to the edge of balance, and at times, watched as they collapsed. At other times, he succeeded brilliantly and his creations endured through the seasons, reflecting the attributes of snow and rain and sun. Often, his work was intentionally transitional, hanging only in the liminal space of film and memory, and then vanishing in streams or currents. My mind flashed on a chalk drawing I saw years ago on a Dublin street–a perfect rendition of Mona Lisa, littered with coins from passers-by, and long since washed away by rain.

I’ve been thinking lately of my own perfectionist streak, and about how often it has stopped me from doing things I want to do. I look back at a blog post and see all the grammatical or stylistic errors and I cringe–I think of going back and re-writing, but time slips by, and I don’t get to it. The imperfections remain, and perhaps they reflect on me, or someone judges them. Still, maybe it’s important that they remain. Maybe they are perfectly imperfect, and allow me to practice a sort on nonviolence toward myself. And perhaps among the flaws are a few jewels that can be appreciated, or polished up for future use. And maybe there’s an even more important aspect to them than this obvious one. Maybe they are a sort of record of the time I was in–a place, like a journal entry, where my disorganized thought was attempting to create an idea–think through a complexity, or express the heart of meaning as I was then able to grasp it. And so, the imperfect writing is part of the process. And maybe I should leave more mistakes, do even less editing of myself!

A direct correlation does seem to exist between my need for perfection and my ability to create. My perfectionism stops me. When I expose my flaws and cease to judge them, my creativity begins to unfold. I am more accepting of both myself and others. And, as one diagnosed with “attention-deficit-disorder,” I have often desired to conceal my state of disorganization and chaos from others, sometimes at the expense of emotional connection and friendship. My desire for the perfectly organized home or life is in such contrast to the messy realities of day to day life, I’ve had countless reasons to disparage myself for my inadequacies.

Driving to a friend’s house yesterday, I was caught off guard by how a slick snake of road rose up through the drowning trees–by its beauty in the rain-soaked woods. Just a common errand run, and then a trip to the woods, where we walked our usual trail. Along the trail I wondered at what Goldsworthy might do with the already falling leaves–how would he create patterns and find color, and envision them within that particular landscape? I knew he would organize himself according the call of the place–he would harmonize himself within the particularities of his environment. He would not impose order from outside of himself, or from the outside world. He would attune himself with the immediacy of his surround, and establish an intimacy with all that he touched, always aware of a sort of composition he was making with the nearby trees, water, and slope of land.

Goldsworthy’s natural patterns inspire me to organize myself differently. Through meditation, I am learning to attune myself to the conditions I meet on a day to day basis. By enforcing order on my life and on myself–by imposing an image of who and what I am supposed to be and look like, I do violence to myself. I want to attune to my world more, to others, and also to my own needs and body within this world. I want to break down the violence I inflict on myself–violence I learned from the misguided educational system, from the ill culture, and from my alcoholic family–through loving the process of attuning to our world–through embracing my many mistakes and errors, and allowing creativity to move through via their imperfect and wayward agendas. I believe a new sort of order will come from this–the sort of order that is more reflective of Goldsworthy’s patterns–the Pattern Language of Christopher Alexander, or even nature’s own many repetitions and systems. I think there’s a sort of wholeness in this that is difficult to grasp or even say, as I struggle to find the words in this rapid blog….but it can be felt. It can be experienced. I do know that when I open up my contemplative gateways, it does indeed move me.

Kuan Yin at Green Gulch

9.4.09 Body sore from starting up yoga again, and it still felt good to move along the trail. Sky, overcast, light and air all seeming warm and intimate, a humidity like breath rising up from the bog and fen. We walked slowly in meditation and the day fell off like so many scales. This shedding is necessary.

A small bird played near the bench where we did some sitting meditation. I was gladdened to feel how little fear she had of us. A sedge darner dragonfly with a broken tail, flew near and paused to look us over. I was surprised she seemed healthy in spite of her obvious liability…no self-consciousness there, of course….

Maybe this is part of why nature is so soothing. It’s not a self-improvement project. Plants, insects and animals grow under their given conditions, and they thrive or they fail to thrive. There’s no judgment. Some plants seem to have the stuff it takes to grow out of rock on the side of a cliff in what looks like an utter absence of nutrient, while others wilt in what appears to be the best of conditions. This is just how it is–the Dharma of nature, and the plant neither criticizes or praises itself for its attributes.

Humans could learn some things from watching nature. And of course, we are different in many ways from other creatures. We can grow up in a withering environment, and through hard work and effort, improve our emotional and psychological lives. We can grow up in privilege and nurturance and allow our entitlement to wither us emotionally later in life. We seem to have more choice or possibility open to us. And this is both our curse and our gift. I think sometimes we believe we have more choice about our circumstances than we actually do, and this leads us to self-criticism or disparagement. That’s why I like to be in and with nature, observing how it accepts all that its given, how it yields to fate, and has no thought about whether it should feel guilty or wrong or inadequate.

Which of course, is not to say we should give up and not try to improve ourselves. Maybe there are real things we can do to help ourselves, in much the same way that a plant will turn its broad leaves toward the sun, or sprout near sources and conditions that will sustain it. But, I think it’s important to listen to where the voices and the shoulds we sometimes adhere to are coming from. Who is telling me I ought to have six pack abs? Why am I not okay unless that’s the case? Who is saying I ought to be extroverted and willing to dress for success when I’m really an introspective person who prefers Chaco sandals and fleece?

Maybe our most important self-improvement project is to learn how to fully love and embrace ourselves as we are. When I go out into the woods, I feel complete acceptance–the plants don’t care about what I’m wearing or thinking or planning. Although I need to be aware of natural dangers, I can mostly just be. I come into the feel of a different ethic–how to be silent, how to listen, how to observe, and how to draw energy and creativity from the subtle and still life around me.

One of my goals is to improve myself by learning how to be in nature without violence. In this way, I’m being mentored and taught by my interactions with the natural world, and this happens only in proportion to my ability to be gentle with both myself and the world I inhabit. The deep message coming from the woods today is that my ability to be nonviolent with anyone, and in any situation, begins with my ability to be nonviolent with myself.

Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides
(click on link to watch video)

“When I make a work, I often take it to the very edges of its collapse, and that’s a beautiful balance” A. Goldsworthy

A few nights ago I watched the film Rivers and Tides for the second time. The first time I saw this documentary about the work of Andy Goldsworthy, I felt it was important and beautiful, but the message entered only my mind. On this second viewing, after many more hours of both meditation and time spent in nature, I felt the message of Goldsworthy’s art enter my body in quite a different way.

As an introspective person, the sort of restoration experienced in nature that Goldsworthy describes in the clip above makes sense to me. The natural world is a place where my mind can recover from the demands of human interaction and the harshness of speed and competition. But how Goldsworthy conducts his artistic process is equally essential to his healing. As he explores the meaning of edges, balance, patterns in nature, and all that is inscrutable about art making, he has also found his reason for being out in nature. This purpose helps him connect with the natural world. While he makes art, feels the texture of rock and stone, plant and fiber, nature enters him–nature relates with him. His artistic process creates the opening and susceptibility needed to become sensitized to the voice of the natural world.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we’ve lost our connection with the natural world, and how we have become not much more than spectators, or sight-seers once we do find ourselves in the woods or on a hiking trail. Many of us become bored and uncomfortable after an hour or two (sometimes less) in the natural world. In some ways, this is very similar to the process of meditation. We give up on trying because we can’t remain in the stillness for very long. Until we realize that there is endless engagement in the process of studying our mind and emotions, it’s hard to see the point.

So, how does each one of us discover his or her purpose in the natural world? In times past, this was not an issue–we worked out of doors, hunted, gathered, farmed, etc. Our lives necessitated contact with nature. But now, with cars, computers, temperature controlled offices and all of the concerns of speed and efficiency, our time outside has become merely recreational, and we mostly move from building to car, car to building. Unless we develop an interest such as bird-watching, plant identification, or some kind of art-making, we are hard pressed to justify our time spent in the woods. We have lost our “feel” for the woods–our intimacy with leaves and bugs and changes in air pressure–and as such, our ability to see what is happening to the environment that sustains us has diminished. We can’t remember what we need to preserve, even though it means preserving our own lives.

I’ve lost the source on this, but I recall at one time reading about how Van Gogh needed his five mile walk everyday, or he suffered from what he called “the meagerness.” I believe increasing numbers of us are suffering from the meagerness in N. American culture today. We are bored receptacles of the entertainment industry, stuffing ourselves with stimulating tastes and programs, and wondering why we feel so miserable.

My interest is in helping people become inhabitants of their world again–not mere ghosts or sight-seers. I believe connection to land and place (re-enplacement) and community is the way to do this. My upcoming workshops will all focus on how to stop being a sight-seer and re-inhabit one’s place. Additionally, this blog will document my own process of losing my sight-seer eyes, and re-inhabiting this place where I live.

Every time we try to deal with our outrage over the freeway, our misery over the office and the lighting and the crappy furniture, the crime on the streets, whatever–every time we try to deal with that by going to therapy with our rage and fear, we’re depriving the political world of something. And therapy, in its crazy way, by emphasizing the inner soul and ignoring the outer soul, supports the decline of the actual world. Yet therapy goes on blindly believing that it’s curing the outer world by making better people. –James Hillman & Michael Ventura

I went out into nature today to reflect on the upcoming changes in my therapy practice. Walking among the sedges, hedge nettles and salal, I felt the return of my energies and noticed as my mind began to clear. Thoughts came more easily. The ponds and bogs stirred a little with their cattails, curious sedge darners, and pond lilies, and I felt soothed by the brush of a spider’s web across my upper lip, the sound of red racer garter snake cutting quickly into the dried ferns, and the sharp reminders of Himalayan blackberries on my bare toes. I could sense how the land I was on is undergoing a healing process in much the same way that I am.

Today marks a switch in the content of my blog. As the nature of my therapy practice evolves, these blogs must also evolve to reflect the changes. Even as the land beneath my feet reveals its healing process, so also, my practice is growing and changing to reflect a similar healing. The call has come to me in a very solid and clear way. Now is the time to begin a contemplative ecotherapy practice, and this blog will now speak toward that ethic.

My silent walk among the trees stirred aggressive alarms among Douglas squirrel and osprey, and I wondered, how can I walk on this earth without creating disruption? How can I move my body without violence? What does it mean to grow quiet and to enter the woods without all of its creatures running away in fear of me?

I want to notice such things. I want to know how to cultivate greater awareness which will protect me, and also how to create a field of peace around me that other creatures need not fear. Listening to the sound of speeding traffic on highway 525, I realized this is no easy task, and that I am moving toward a life that is not well-matched with modern culture. Still, the cultivation of presence with the world is sorely needed so that it may heal, and so that we may heal within it, and as such, this must become the focus of my work. The great loneliness many of us feel is embedded in our inattentive quest for speed and aquisition. This slowing down and becoming present to the world is how our lost connections are restored, and how we develop deep satisfaction, and that’s why I feel it is necessary to help others do this work.

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong
at the broken places.”
—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

When we have a loved one who abuses a substance, how do we know when and how to help them?  People in this situation ask the deepest and most philosophical questions about life, how we care for one another, and where our compassion is in all of this.  The recovery movement can seem harsh to someone who wants to help their loved one recover or avoid the consequences of addictive behavior.  They ask whether they should be the judges of another’s behavior, and how can they withdraw from the great need that arises in the addicted person’s life–sometimes survival needs, such as care, food and shelter.  If alcoholism is a disease, how can we abandon those who are thus afflicted?

I wish I had better answers for these questions.  My aim is always to try and keep an open heart about the one who is addicted–to see the disease process that has the person in its grip, and to try and separate that from the person. But I haven’t always been able to do this, and serious dangers lurk when we try to help those who are addicted, and one has to work very hard at remaining clear as to what is helpful and what is not.  Perhaps a story from my own experience can help illustrate this.

When I went to help my father, who was dying from alcoholism for which he refused treatment, I went with the best of intentions.  I thought I was being heroic.  I was going to somehow save him, or me, or some such other misguided idea.  I had barely begun my zen practice, and I lost all clarity in the situation very quickly.  I was away from my sangha (group of practitioners), and was receiving misguided advice from some sources.  I was easily led astray both by my mind and my influences.  As I lived with my father and helped him with his day to day activities, I began to feel entitled.  I was “giving” so much to him, and he remained, well, alcoholic, self-absorbed, and manipulative.  The longer I stayed the more deserving I felt, and the more bitter I became about the situation, how far I was from home, the lack of support from my siblings, etc.  By the time I left him in the care of other caregivers and hospice, I was a mess.  I didn’t know which way was up, or down, and I didn’t trust myself anymore.  I blamed myself and fell into a habit of recrimination, falling prey to bitterness and resentment.  It took years of practice and emotional work to forgive myself and my father. 

Our desire to help begins with good intentions.  But we are not helping our loved one when we interfere with allowing them to suffer the consequences of addiction.  We are helping an alcoholic dynamic, or system.  When my father finally reached bottom, he died.  If he had been younger and found his bottom sooner, he perhaps could have been helped, but perhaps not–people die at very young ages from this disease.  And many things conspired to keep him in denial with regard to his diseased condition, one of which was a thorough enmeshment in a good old boy system of similarly situated alcoholics in his places of work.  In these places among men of a certain age, the alcoholics really look out for each other.

When we help others, we have to do it with clarity and intention, and without expectation.  If we begin to feel entitled, which I did with regard to my father, we begin to believe we can change things about them or their behavior.  We believe we are “owed” something, such as the right to tell them what to do, how to live, where to work…  When, because they have the disease of alcoholism, they don’t listen to us and fail us, and then fail us again, and continue not to listen to us, we become angry.  We grow bitter toward them.  We begin to blame them for their affliction.  Our hearts become stiff and hard against them, and our thoughts narrow into a rigid view of them, assassinating their character, or behavior, or whatever else justifies our position.  We do this because it’s so hard to keep an open heart toward someone who chooses not to get help.  It’s like watching someone with tuberculous refusing antibiotics.  We feel utterly helpless.  We begin to act in ways we don’t like.  They feel our blame–they hear it in our voices, and they take on the shame and give it back to us as further blame.  We become the very people they accuse us of being.  They sometimes blame us for their addiction, and so forth.  The cycle continues.

When we shame the addict, it damages both of us.  The disease model is helpful in that we can begin to separate the person we know and love from the disease that is destroying them.  Maybe for some, like my father, the disease is as incurable as cancer, and they are just going to die from it.  What remains within our capacity is our ability to choose how we act.  When we can see the disease for what it is, we can continue to love them, and act in ways that don’t feed the disease process–ways that are non-shaming and non-blaming.  Each person has to decide for him or herself what is truly helpful to someone who is addicted.  If money that should be spent on rent is going toward drugs or alcohol, then maybe we shouldn’t help them with the rent.  Maybe eviction is what is ultimately best for them.  This sounds cold-hearted, but in the wider picture, it’s really not. (Remember, it’s the disease we are not paying the rent for, not the person–if your loved one was not an addict and lost a job because of the economy, your choice might be very different).

This issue is far from easy, and has many layers of complexity.  From a Buddhist point of view, we want to save all beings.  But what does “saving” mean?  And what if we are excusing ourselves somehow from our bodhisattva vows by using co-dependency as an out?  I really don’t know.  I do know that with regard to my father it would have taken someone much stronger than myself to withstand the pressures that emerged while I was “helping” him–and losing myself in this was helpful to exactly no one.  I should have helped my father in very different ways–ways that I learned a little too late to help myself.  Some questions I should have asked myself at the time were:  What is my motivation for doing this?  Does it help him in the long run, or is it only a short term fix?  Does it help or hinder him from looking at his addictive behavior?  Am I really just soothing myself by doing this for him?  Am I helping him out of a guilty conscience?  Is how I am helping him interfering with my other relationships?  What am I getting out of this? Is there any other way I can meet the needs I’m trying to meet by being here with him in a more healthy way? Who can I ask for help and support? Am I really being honest with myself? Can I really face the consequences and pain I will feel when I withdraw my helping habit from him? Am I avoiding this pain?

The last time my father ended up in the hospital from drinking, I hardened my heart and did not go to him.  Because of all that had transpired between us, I felt great bitterness toward him.  He died when he was told he would have to be sent to a nursing home.  In reflecting back on this, the worst thing that I did was to avoid facing my own pain with regard to his death from alcohol.  I couldn’t face it at that time for many complicated reasons.  I couldn’t face him again.  I became very blaming toward him, rather than dealing with my own pain–facing it head on and grieving it.  I’m still living with the repercussions from this behavior today, and I regret that I didn’t know how to cope any better than I did.  Once I got to a place where I could face the pain and grieve, it took a long time to recover.  I needed a lot of help, and I got the help I needed to get through it.  My father’s bottom, death, was also my bottom.

Being in relationship with an addict is a broken-hearted path.  There’s no way to get around this.  The addict will create painful situations as a substance erodes his or her life and capacity.  In the end, the manipulations, the lying, the diseased behavior will take over the body of the person we love, unless they seek treatment.  Even those treated relapse.  And now, with resources becoming more scarce, this is more frequent and difficult.  We have to work even harder to find ways to withdraw from the dynamic of addiction, without withdrawing from our loved one.  Sometimes we have to leave and physically withdraw–this is just necessary, and it’s the hardest thing we may have to undergo.

Our greatest hope lies in our ability to cradle and nurture our pain, and remain open-hearted to ourselves while we are undergoing all that co-addicts undergo.  When we reduce violence toward ourselves by not shaming or blaming ourselves for our many complicated feelings, we are already setting up the conditions for health.  We are creating a new system that, over time, gains much resistance to the effects brought into our lives by addiction.   As we learn to love ourselves better, we become stronger and are able to remain in our own center, even as the addict’s diseased behavior tries to unbalance us and draw us in again.  We need a lot of support and help to do this, and we must love ourselves to a certain degree to feel worthy of asking for such help.  But, even if we don’t feel worthy, we must ask anyway.  It is the first and most necessary step to healing co-addiction. Ask, and ask again. The only way through this is to have lots of support. There are many, many healing paths available, and we just have to find one of them.

Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out.
Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek.
So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye.
Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before.
We shall always be meeting again at the true source,
Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.
Thich Nhat Hahn, No Death, No Fear

I’ve been watching birds lately and contemplating how perilous their lives are. At first glance, our yard is filled with bird song, deer, rabbits–a Disney caricature of nature, seemingly full of joy and abundance. But in watching more closely, a different picture begins to emerge. There’s hunger, a pecking order, finches being chased off by black birds, sparrows invading the swallow house, a swallow who can’t interest his mate in a new house, and a Cooper’s hawk that snatches the slower moving birds from the feeder. The birds are consumed by feeding, nesting and trying not to get eaten themselves.

Any intimate contemplation of nature makes me think about death–how short the life of the fly at my window, and the already wilting daffodils. When my father died, I saw him turned to vapor, and I often wonder where he is now, if anywhere. Is he within me? Is he carried in the air? Is he part of the remains that now are part of a mountain near where he lived? It’s so hard to believe he is no longer embodied–no longer a discreet, contained consciousness moving through space, making phone calls, or carrying on conversations with the television.

Thich Nhat Hahn writes that death is not what we think–not some cessation of existence we need fear. We fear death because of our attachment to this particular level of consciousness. He suggests a larger consciousness in which we all live, and that life is this larger consciousness changing form. We appear to die, but we are simply moving from this level of existence to another. We do not cease to be. We have already been so many things, and we’ve emerged from material that has been here since the beginning of time. What makes us attached to our current form is our fear of non-being. But we have always been, and always will be, in one form or another. In this way, Thich Nhat Hahn assures us, there is no dying, only continuation.

And so I feel a little less bad about the difficulties of the birds. I continue to care and fill the feeders and chase off the blackbirds and raptors, but I know that even in death, we are all going on in some way. The important thing is to learn how to give to the life that is here, now. The losses I’ve experienced linger within me, but they too, are transforming into forms of creativity–generating by their absence more poignancy, compassion, and energy. My mistakes are also forms I tap out in the words I type, morphing into something I can use to understand someone else. I change their form into something bearable with each word, each new level of understanding. They inform me as I let them pass. Their soil is rotten, rich, fertile. I slice their ground with the blade of my shovel and turn them over into another way of being.

We need to [mother] our own anger before we can help others do the same. When the flames of anger flare up, we tend to lash out at those who have watered our seeds of anger. It is like finding our house on fire, and instead of putting out the flames, chasing those we think started it. Arguing with others only waters the seeds of anger in us. When anger rises, return to yourself and use the energy of mindfulness to embrace, soothe, and illuminate it. Do not think you will feel better if you can make the other person suffer, too.

–Thich Nhat Hanh, from Teachings on Love (Parallax Press)

Grief seems to blister on our most vulnerable parts, and always at the wrong time. The cushions that insulate wear a little thin–seem just a bit inadequate. Complaints formulate in the soup of what we dare not feel.

How do we comfort rage? Or should we let it pock us, like a distant moon, meteoric and soundless, silently accumulating fragments on our un-atmosphered surfaces? When frustration arises, how do I meet it? When I feel irritated, do I turn to blame to soothe myself? Do I push back on the abuser and reiterate how it hurts, rehearse how it stung and birthed in me the disease of shame?

Yes, I was hurt. I was the person on the other end of the stick of rage. I am not responsible for the ugly weeds that this wind brought here, but I also don’t need to water them. Does it matter how this came to me? Does it matter where it started–where that first human fell in shame and held to his genitals an inadequate covering, while pointing at snakes and women with a finger of blame? Adam, or Cain or Abel, or some sad tragedy of evolution, or the devil who said “you’re unworthy of God anyway, so you might as well go ahead and betray him,”–that brilliant Luciferous blame like a luminous current to light the way of war, and power, and sending down through the generations all the ugly acts that we struggle to understand…

Who thought up this human hate anyway? Where does it come from? I turn from my work and ask this daily, if not every hour and minute. Why does the hurt continue? Where did it start? How does it end?

And that’s why I watch myself carefully. First the subtle irritation. Then the way it wants to grope outward, claw out, react, find someone or something to pin it to. It feels better that way. I cast it out into the theater and make a play of it–writing my scripts as I go, always hoping for a different ending. I cast my characters and recruit my actors and then pretend I am one–a helpless part in this scene, not its director, not its writer, just another player, caught in the play…

It only stops when I begin to see the futility of blame, and when the listening begins. Do I need to understand it to stop it? I don’t know. I do know I need to understand the defense and how it formed, how I protected myself in the only way that I knew how, and how brilliant that protection was for someone so young and vulnerable. That’s how the listening begins–first to that self, fragile and young. to take her in my hand and hear all the things that no one wanted to hear. I’m frightened. I’m angry. I’m sad. And what does she want? What has she always wanted, since the moment she urged out of the womb into the brightly lit and sanitized world of white-coated doctors with rubber gloves? She wants comfort.

Where does the sadness hide? Where is the anger? Where is the huge pain of shame? It’s in the body. Listen to the body and you will find it. It will speak to you in a language like the throat breaking open–like a hard rock in the gut–like acid in the colon–or a hummingbird in the heart. It will convulse from you in sobs, and break open in the liminal places–it will come to you, if you let it. It will come to you if it knows it is safe. But it will run from you if you channel it onto the man next to you who is trying to love you in his way. Or the woman who waits by the lamp in the evening with her magazine. Or the child involved in your un-asked for dramas.

It’s the only way. Turn from blame, turn and start to give what is needed. Fill the world with soothing sounds, the coos of a new mother, the touch of a lover, the sweet comfort of an embrace that doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, but wants to welcome your orphaned need like a long lost friend–wants to welcome your shame the way you take-in a broken-winged bird, softly, gently, with the patience of a heron waiting in shallow water. Eventually you get to a grief that is sweet, a sadness so pellucid and subtle, like a jewel discovered in a rubbish heap–a grief that is pure, and without shame. Comforted grief. Grief without blame. And rage disappears on its own.

(I’ve been reading Norman Fischer’s book Sailing Home: Using the wisdom of Homer’s Odyssey to navigate life’s perils and pitfalls, and because of this, have been reflecting again on the stories of Odysseus.)

At the north end of Whidbey island, a narrow gap separates the land masses creating violent and deadly currents only a very sophisticated and experienced kayaker would attempt, and then only at slack tide. At floods and ebbs, one can look down from the bridge hung dizzily over this roiling cauldron and safely experience its beauty. It must have been a passage much like this that Odysseus passed through on his way home to Ithaca, lashed to the mast of his vessel to pass close to the siren songs of temptation, fully feeling a desire he could not act on, as his oarsmen refused to give in to his pleas to release him to go toward the siren’s song. He had taken the precaution of stuffing up their ears so that they could not hear the siren songs that had lured so many men to their ruin.

Why did he put himself through the pain of that craving? Why not stop up his own ears and avoid feeling the pull of the songs and unsatiated desire? Why listen to those calls at all, when they can only result in rope burns from straining against restraint? In Norman’s book he makes a striking and subtle interpretation that compares siren songs to nostalgia and longing for our pasts, and the drag the past can have on the present moment. I think also we might look at it in terms of how Odysseus wanted to bring home the story, because story-telling, for him, was the point of the journey. A returning hero with a tale of adventure, Odysseus traveled from place to place, telling tales, spinning yarns, and wrapping himself up in an endless tangle of seemingly avoidable problems–had he listened to the predictions and warnings. Odysseus was instructed very carefully by Circe about how to pass by the sirens–he knew exactly how to do it and faithfully followed this advice. But maybe most of have an inner Cassandra, not an inner Circe.

Cassandra was first given the blessing of being able to see the future, and then cursed by an angry god who made it so that no one would believe her. Perhaps we carry an image of her within us, a knowing one who calls and calls to us to do the right thing, but we don’t quite believe her. She fills us with ambivalence, tells us what lies ahead in the future, and yet, we risk everything anyway for the sense of adventure, for stimulation, or for the hope that we’ll find some trick whereby we can bypass our problems altogether. We don’t prepare, and we believe we can avoid the pain of hearing the siren songs–they won’t effect us as they do others. We’ll somehow make it without any preparation or help. Sometimes we know a risk is not acceptable, and yet, there we are, acting again in a way that ultimately harms us, or at least strips us, over time, of everything we held dear, before we come to our senses and come home again. How do we make sense out of this?

Maybe the gods cursed our inner Cassandra because they wanted our stories. Certainly, there are enough random and tragic events in life to keep us occupied without us adding to them. But maybe there’s something about our ability to fail and really screw things up that’s essential to spiritual growth. Why are we, with our gigantic and odd human brains, so willing to use our intelligence toward all that is destructive, selfish, and mean? Why do we hurt ourselves through compulsive and addictive behavior? Maybe the ability to make big mistakes is what ultimately creates the hero. There could be no Odysseus without the Trojan War. There could be no homecoming and restoration, without first abandoning home and neglecting it. Without the damage, how would we then know how powerfully we are able to heal? And maybe we wouldn’t be able to appreciate home, without first losing our way.

But it’s no good to think, well, then I should create all sorts of troubles so that healing opportunities can happen! I usually bristle at glamorizing the stories of our past mistakes because of this error in thinking–one that can easily fall into pollyanna-ish ways of glossing over the pain and tragedy in the world. First of all, we’re already embedded in enough tragedy, and our inner Cassandras (denial) are already hard at work trying to avoid facing it, thereby creating more of the same. So there’s just no need to add to it.

For me, maybe it’s something like tying myself to the mast. I know there’s trouble up ahead–I know that I won’t be able to resist it, but I also have to pass through it. I want to keep my heart open and hear what my desires are, but I don’t want to give in anymore. I now equally want to listen to Cassandra, and break the curse, but I don’t want to shut out any part of the reality in which I live. I would be deceiving myself if I thought I was strong enough to resist the sirens on my own, though. So I have to prepare. I have to put wax in the ears of my oarsmen, who have habitually obeyed me and done my bidding. I have to instruct them to lash me to the mast, and keep rowing. Maybe the oarsmen symbolize new habits we cultivate in place of the old…

Hearing my feelings without judgment is like this experience of hearing the siren songs. If I can fully express myself and say what my desire is, say my deepest and innermost feelings and longings, and just let them be without acting on them, blaming anyone for them, or hurting anyone with them as I pass through the difficulties, then the pain subsides. The songs do stop. Odysseus screamed and ranted and raved while tied to the mast. It was his only outlet, and he utilized it fully. When the storm had passed, the lashes came off, the ears were unstopped, and integration and story-telling (processing) ensued.

A tiny rufus hummingbird rests on the feeder hung in the window, trembling on the small perch, feeding, looking, feeding…and beyond her a green field bleeds up to a dull gray sky, the sort of gray that defines the coastal Northwest, disturbed only by bright narcissus bulbs, a sanguine finch, and marker tape hung on tree seedlings for the mowers to avoid. I want to warm the shivering hummingbird in my palm and know what her quivering life feels like.

Yesterday as we walked by the bay under the bluff, we saw how Winter had changed things. Storms separated a large section that lay in a tumbled heap of clay and sand, narrowing the beach. Fresh striations of clay and sand patterned the bluff, and kids had already climbed up and announced their lives in names and initials. Ozymandias, I thought, “the lone and level sands stretch far away…” But I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s the wearing away that matters so much. I blunder my mistakes into the too visible bluffs, and time mercifully erodes them, and sometimes takes them out in an avalanche. These erosions begin to make more sense, and I take my chances again on freshly exposed awarenesses, knowing that every grain of sand whether tainted or pure, in the very same way, has but one direction, one destination, and that is its joining with the sea.

I want to say that life is fragile–but it’s not. It’s resilient as hell, and I know that. The sands that slide have been here since time began. The tiny bird hovering in my window is made from material constructed by this utterly mysterious cosmos we’ve somehow come to inhabit. We are life’s forms changing and remodeling ourselves, rising and falling, rising again, urging toward some reconciliation with time and space that maybe we haven’t even begun to understand yet….

Christopher’s figure retreats down the walk, beneath the vined arch toward his car, hoo hooing toward invisible owls in the budding alders. I laugh, hearing his happy bird calls, and start to miss him before he is out of the long driveway toward work, where he’ll remain until Wednesday. The dim light of our home folds me back into rhythms that become my own again. The sweetness of our past four days together lingers in his absence.

Sometimes I wonder how we’ve come through all of these tangles and trip-wires–how we’ve managed to stay and work and cry and fight and fall, and get back up again, to find ourselves once again steeping in the sweetness of love. Curled close, breathing air that is the breath of the other, we’ve twitched in our own dreams and awakened to the startle of eyes opening opposite. I’m here for you. You are here for me. And then, we disappear again. What is love? I don’t know. Sometimes I think I know its smell and taste and sound. But life straightens me out on this point, again and again…

I am murky now, twilight blackening the still bare trees in a tangle against the disappearing sky. Dimness without, little lamps glowing brighter within, a small computer screen glaring coldly on the desk. Yellow squares of light appear on the hillsides, one by one. I eat what remains of the soup he made before leaving. Beans, mushrooms; orange carrots so vivid he could not stop commenting on them. I am nourished in his absence, holding him in my heart as he drives to the ferry.

Walking in the rare sun today along Useless Bay, we spoke of history, of shame, the fallout of our pasts, and the miracle of these moments we now share. I told him of how grateful I am for the mistakes I’ve made, for how hard I’ve had to struggle through my own shame to forgive myself for things I never thought possible–grateful because of how this creates a path through my experience that can help another. And this is what I do, what I am here for, to heal these wounds and scars, and then use this light to guide others.

I don’t know what any of this means. But it seems important. I guess I think it means that if I can turn my painful experience to service, then it has value and meaning. This pain has purpose, and it is to help others find their way through. Maybe this is too grandiose–to full of itself–too noble-sounding and strange. Maybe tomorrow in the empty arms of morning, I’ll regret my gratitude and long for solace somewhere else…tomorrow my cynicism will say, you dope, you were too full of soup and oxytocin*–what do you know? But probably not. More likely, some part of this feeling will stay and replenish itself in the silence and strength of writing.

(oxytocin is a chemical released in the brains of pair-bonding mammals during intimate connection–soemtimes called the “cuddle hormone”)