Why This Blog?

Trepidation is the best word to describe how I feel about putting this blog out there.  I raised the question to myself, a friend, and the universe.  This is how the universe responded:

You  must continue to take yourself seriously, you must remain your own witness, marking well everything that happens in this world, never shutting your eyes to reality  You must come to grips with these terrible times, and try to find answers to the many questions they pose.  And perhaps the answers will help not only yourself but also others.

                                                                                      - Etty Hillesum (Holocaust Witness)
 
I hear what she is saying. I will probably spend more time with the questions though. In Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke responds to the poets desires to know the answers, "Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

My belief is that dabbling in the questions may in time lead to the answers, but either way they are both encouraging us to seek.

I do not suppose to know the answers, or the questions for that matter.  I definitely do not claim to have experienced anything so harrowing as the holocaust or have the insight of Rilke.

In fact I struggle against that voice that asks, "Who do you think you are to even write this and share it with the world?"

Who do you think you are to express an opinion, raise a question, share an experience.  but I believe it is our silences that kill our spirit.  I believe when we are divided and separated to think we must do this all on our own we deny ourselves the opportunity to not feel as if we are the only ones who have experienced these things.  And miss the chance to see the possibility to overcome and see the other side. 

It may suit us for awhile to cherish our own individual difficulties.  To sooth ourselves with the belief that no one understands us.  However, when I have sat with other women, it is the recognition of their stories that helped me to raise my head, look in someone's eyes and realize I was not alone.

 
 

Is Play the Answer?

Do what you love and the money will follow.
Release your mind and the rest will follow.
Love the good life.
We are that we might have joy.
Life is good.

These are not the mantras I grew up with.  I think mine were more along the lines of, "No pain, no gain."

You know what?  Forget it.  I know paddling about in your past can get you all kinds of material, but why paddle about in the muck I don't want to replicate.  Why am I not diving into the moment of pleasure.  And, if I am looking for answers about writing, writing as play, why not those moments of pleasure I found in writing about the hamburger in 4th grade?  I mean, what was that hamburger doing anyway?

Going back further to my earliest artifact of writing I have--a poem.  It's probably about half a haiku and it dwells on birdsong and sunshine.  It was my first attempt to capture pure delight on paper.

Is play the answer?  Look at the semantics because believe me it depends on how it is defined.  And I've heard quiet a bit of definitions to the defamation of play...but, so have you.  But I am going with this list: delight, pleasure, passion, lift, joy, in the moment, laughter, love, innocent, bliss. 

Do kids wake up on a summer's morning looking to the day with trepidation of the play thing they will do that day.  Does their heart rate go up?  Do they question if what they do that day will meet the criteria, quota or please those around them?  Do they avoid it, procrastinate it, ignore it?

No.

They breathe in a bowl of cereal with there feet tapping out a syncopated rhythm and leave skid marks behind as they burst out on to this day.  This moment.

Can you imagine?

Waking up with the freedom of PLAY blasting through your mind--adventure, curiosity, freedom, questions, desire.

There is a note on my sons door: Do not disturb--scholar at work.

I am going to make one for mine: Do not disturb--writer at play.

Right In Front of Me

My mind wants to go with Kathy's prompt.  I stare into the woods looking for that one thing to describe or write about that is in front of me without naming and my will resists pulling me to the blog I want to get started.  Then the breeze picks up and lifts the upper branches of the Oak tree like a prayer flag sending my desires to heaven. 

The thing before me is this moment to let the ink flow along with my hand and mind.  Why not let it lead me. 

And what I get first is the distraction of a couple dozen mosquitoes who have noticed my bug spray has worn off and I am in a clearing in the woods where the breeze is not getting to and I am sitting still not creating my own breeze with walking...

It is open season--distractions are everywhere.

I sopped subbing two weeks before the end of school because I jut couldn't take another step.  That is figuratively speaking.  The real concern was I would be in a classroom of students and say something I would just wish I could have stopped behind my teeth before it tumbled out. 

I was tired.  Pushed to an edge after a year of school and working with my son, who once again had stopped going to school due to anxiety--I just stopped. 

And then I decided to do what I wanted.  Now you may think that my days would then fill with writing, reading and relaxing walks.  However, nature abhors a vacuum.  And, just like mosquitoes, the distractions set in.  Soon two weeks are gone and, yes, I am not so anxious that I feel close to coming undone, yet the writing is just not as easy as the reading and walking.  When I do write I find that having to turn my mind back to interactions with my family, or an appointment, are met with my resentment of having to leave my writing.

I am not a transition person.

So I return to that image this morning.  There were the retreat attendees meditatively stepping into the woods--bringing their thought to that moment.  they have a practice to bring their mind to where they are. 

Are they training to control their mind or enjoying where they are?  Are they the same?

What struck me though were the two children playing.  They didn't need training.  They were caught up in joy of the moment and needed no practice.  Do we forget this innocent attendance to here and now?  Is play the answer?

Maybe if  looked at my writing as my play...no.  Then I would just bring right along my guilt of "not working." I've been down that road many times.  So then I go off and visit possible other reasons--past words, experiences and I see those two kids playing again.  I see the line of white robed people and it is the woman, second from the end, that turns to me.  She acknowledges my presence with hands together at her heart, and, tilting her head, she offers me the recognition of seeing the divine in me.  I return that to her.  She smiles and falls back into step.

She knows how to be in both worlds.  She recognizes what is around her and she steps forward to where she is going.

And I am speechless.

False Start Number Three

The Montague Bookmill's motto is, "Books you don't need, in a place you can't find."

I found the place, and, in contradiction of their motto, I found the books I needed.  Roaming through its two stories I found books that seemed like a variation on a familiar theme. 

After finding these books I came home and pulled off the shelf Women Who Run with Wolves. This book seemed to track me over the years and jump off the shelf to lay in my hands.  I finally bought it once and opened it momentarily, to only give it away.  Once again it found me--this time in a pile of free books.

I opened then with good intent.  It was 2010.  About the same time I purchased Christine Northrup's Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, another book that seemed to be following me. 

There was a plan.  I was going to read these two books together.  Why?  Besides the feeling that these two books had something to tell me I opened the book and began to read:

While women's loss of innocence is often ignored, in the underground forest a woman who has lived through the demise of her innocence is seen as someone special, in part because she has been hurt, but much more so because she has gone on, because she is working hard to understand, to peel back the layers of her perceptions and her defenses to see what lies underneath.  In that world, her loss of innocence is treated as a rite of passage.  That she can now see more clearly is applauded.  that she has endured and continues to learn give her both status and honor.  (396)

I continued reading:

This psychic ability is often called processing.  When we process, we sort through all the raw material in the psyche, all the things we've learned, heard, longed for, and felt during a period of time.  We break these down into parts, asking, "How shall I use this best?"  We use these processed ideas and energies to implement out most soulful tasks and to fund our various creative endeavors.  In this way a woman remains both sturdy and lively. (396) 

 This is why the book had found me.  I was entering my tenth year of divorce.  I was a single mother to four children.  I had been involved in a non-profit group for the last few years as a volunteer that moved in a direction of recognition of motherhood and womanhood.  Believing more in my voice than I could remember for a long time I applied to graduate school. In November of 2009 I began a Master of Fine Arts program in Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.  Then things went off track again:

Whether they are being too cool or too well-behaved, in neither state are they responsive to what goes on deep inside, and a sleep gradually cover over the bright-eyed, responsive nature....When a woman surrenders her instincts that tell her the right time to say yes and when to say no, when she gives up her insight, intuition, and other wildish traits, then she finds herself in situations that promised gold but ultimately give grief.  Some women relinquish their art for a grotesque financial marriage, or give up their life's dream in order to be a good wife, daughter, or girl, or surrender their true calling in order to lead what they hope will be a more acceptable, fulfilling, and more sanitary life.

 As I read back over these underlined paragraphs, marginal notes and place them in the timeline of my life, my heart breaks.  When life became challenging again due to, well, life, I turned to some people for assistance who directed me to another, more reasonable, path. 

By her sweetness, her warm and welcoming voice, her lovely manner, she not only attracted those who took away an ember from her, but so large a crowd gathered before her soulful fire that they blocked her from receiving any of its warmth herself.

The poor bargain she had made was to never say no in order to be consistently loved.  The predator of her own psyche offered her the gold of being loved if she would give up her instincts that said "Enough is enough." (398)

Right at the time I seem to have stumbled on the guidance and answers I needed to "find my voice" I sacrificed it.  In 2010 I made the marginal note, "HOPE!  Teaching is a means to the end-it is not the end after reading the following:

Over the long term there will be even better news yet.  That which has been given away can be reclaimed.  It can be restored to its proper place in the psyche.  You will see. (401)

 And then, I put the book away.  I stopped writing in my journals.  I went back to school for teaching certification the next semester as "instructed."  Much has happened since then.  Much happened before then.  Much  more is to come.  I am not sure what.

I do know that I came out the other side and am finally saying, "Enough is enough.  I am going to sit right down here--by my fire--and process."

 

 

Revisiting Joe

Losing myself in the life of Joe March I stumble across the place I may have picked up on the idea of kind gentlemen opening the world to a deserving young girl. Was it not the uncle in Secret Garden who provided the "bit of earth" and Mr. Lawrence who allowed Beth the opportunity to play upon the grand  piano.  Even Jo had an enormous library to peruse, full of atlases and globes, that had belonged to her uncle. 

Are we not trained from an early age in are literature that the prince will rescue us.  Even if he is old or a relative?  Did I have any other example for a way to meet my desires and secret wishes?

But I wrack my brain for more relationships that provide a path to "possibilities" that I read as a child and I come up with the man in Little Princess and the uncle in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  

Mrs. Havisham is exactly what she is, a spiteful, bitter woman whose heart is not melted or changed from the goodness or hope of Pip, and instead preys upon his innocence.  Somehow, the men benefactors end up kind hearted and handsome.  Even Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester ends up kind hearted and handsome, to her, in the end. 

Is it any wonder my daydreams consisted of these men's extensions?

I would propose we need empowered female role models, but lets take it a step further and have them be one's that encourage a young women to use her voice and gifts.  The older books most often reflect societies view of women in their day.  The idea of a woman "earning her keep" or "having a voice" was revolutionary in Joe Marches world.  And both the character and the author, Louise May Alcott, were grappling with the idea of women's rights. 

I am getting to the part where Joe starts getting paid for her writing and contributing to the family.  I know I did not miss this when I was twelve.  Alcott is the one I credit for my wanting to be a writer. 

However, the conflict was there.  It still is.  I find myself in between analyzing what influenced the option I picked, doing as I was told, and changing my familiar pattern to the possibility that lies outside that room, choosing an authentic self.

Shame

Today I prepare myself to sit down and lose myself in Steve's meandering thoughts on writing.  Instead, I find him still pursuing his childhood, and therefore, stirring up my own memories.

I stayed with him through the movies and their inspiration, thinking I can address this later, I just want to read right now.

Then came the shame--his and mine following close behind.  I had to get a pen.

Stephen King's shame surfaced at the hands of Miss Hisler's unrhetorical question, "Why would (you) write junk like this in the first place.  You’re talented.  Why do you want to waste your abilities?" (49). 

He points out that he was 40 before, "he realized that almost every writer of fiction and  poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God given talent."  He continues, "If you write someone will try to make you feel lousy about it..." (50).

My shame came at the hands of the one who encouraged me the most, my dad.  I remember a conference that included belittling of my 'rapturesque' poetry-complete with someone rising into the sky (My mother played a lot of Jimmy Swaggert and Tennessee Ernie Ford) and not much positive to say about my second focus, issues of the heart (the most recent was John, the boy next door.)

I suppose that is when the ambivalence towards writing came in.  I was twelve.  What I had once embraced as mine, a place where I wondered on paper rather than through imaginary gateways into other realms, was seen and found wanting.  I kept those gateways open in my head.  No one could make judgments on what stayed inside, but on paper it never measured up to my potential--just ask my dad.

It was about this time though, my body broadened its physical limits.  Once content to play in the yard, I now found the potential of my feet and bike.  On the outskirts of Springfield, Oregon I would jump on my bike and ride closer and closer into the heart or walk down Deadman's Ferry road and lose my self in the quiet solitude of the Mackenzie River.  Out there no limits exited.  That world atlas I had pondered over for years began to take shape in my physical world, if only in watching rivers and roads make way into the distance and my mind traveling on with them.

Snapshots

I thought Stephen King might lead me along some passageway that would strengthen my desire to write.  And yet I find my mind flooding with childhood memories as he meanders through his....

1) Playing in the creek behind our house with my brother, five years wiser, who is intent on a game that takes two people see sawing on a inner tube.  Each time, yes, more than once, he times his exit just right--when I rise in the air he slips off and leaves me to flip off the tube sputtering and bawling to dad.  I believe this is the first memory of a chance to say no not taken.  Wasn't dad, even at my tender age of three, from his vantage point encouraging me to just say no and stop? 

2) I lay in bed at night waiting for the trains whistle to vanish in the distance.  This signaled that my friends, led by a tiger that, mysteriously, resembles Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh, could gallop up the hill into my room.

These imaginings continue throughout my childhood.  Morphing through the years, but always including a different, hidden world that only I was privy to--an insignificant sink hole at the edge of the creed leads to an underground cavern containing an entire mansion and adventures.  This same creek had an above ground mansion further downstream. I often walked alone there in my daydreams. The owner's butler would meet me and the kind owner would provide me with a menu of my desires: paints, horses, lessons, strawberries, my own room.  All the desires of my ten-year-old heart.  (It is funny, now with my teaching certification, possibility of employment, and children nearing the time of departure, and therefore "independence" for me, I become the mysterious man who continued to arrive in my daydreams into high school.  And maybe, unrealistically, it is what my subconscious continued to look for until this above realization...I can be the prince of my dreams.)

A little later in life, I simply had a secret world at the foot of my bed under the covers.  I merely waited for the matron of the girl’s school or orphanage, although my parents were alive and well and present just down the hall, for me to crawl to the spot where my imagination slipped away into another world of adventure.  (Adventure being another imagined theme in my life.)

3) There was the playing outside in the woods and on old cars looking out over the Summer Lake vista...one I understand the water is returning to.

4) Watching the Monkies on TV and becoming positively out of control as I mimicked the physical comedy of bouncing off the couch and tumbling on the floor, spinning around and bumping off each other--until we collapsed or are mother yelled for some civility or to take it outside.

5) This followed closely by the manic craziness of Get Smart, which I would run from the bus to watch.  PBS had nothing on afterschool TV in the early 70's if my memory serves...

6) I started writing early on also.  I wrote silly stories.  One of which was about a hamburger.  My teacher, Mr. Cushman, encouraged me to continue writing and I did, to a point. It is odd to think this banjo playing, thick mustached, hippy is now living somewhere at sixty-eight or seventy-five.  Bless him wherever he is.  He only encourage me, reigning me in only in consideration to allow other people to shine (as I did have a tendency of hogging the stage once I had it.)

7) I, too, had my tonsils out.  At seven.  I was the only child on the floor and used it to its fullest extent--visiting nurses at their station in the middle of the night, demanding crayons and eating my fill of ice cream.  My only grievance was the nurse that came in a shot me in the butt as I talked to my brother on the phone.  I didn't let off screaming at the top of my lungs until I felt both my brother and the nurse knew exactly how I felt.

8) I shared my childhood illnesses with my older brother.  We timed it well enough to spend several days together in our bunk bed making twisted landscaped of sudden ending roads and deep caves for his Mattel cars out of our bed blankets, playing an endless amount of card games and eating popsicles.

9) Steve's mother's matter of fact horrific story of the man falling to his death reminds me of my father's explanation of the grate in the fireplace of our home.  He did not tell it in a nonchalant manner.  His story included flames, Beelzebub and the depths of hell just through the grate where we sent the ashes back as a gift for his allowing us the use of fire and to keep him at bay.  (The details of this story may have suffered from poetic license over the years.  Suffice it to say he scared the hell out of me and at seven I vowed to be obedient in every way.)

It is interesting to revisit your childhood.  As I read Steve’s line that he is, "when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group.  The final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit," (On Writing, 34).  I realize, although I am not a novelist, I am one of those lucky "last few" who grew up outside on a bike, climbing trees, and, as my sister says, "with a book permanently attached to my hand." 

I look forward to visiting it more as I wonder about.

Open Sesame...

After my divorce I moved another thousand miles further away from my father and brother.  Looking back over those years I say it is because I needed to hear my own voice in my head.  At the time though, I believe it was just because I wanted to go east and I saw the opportunity to do what I wanted.

I have had those lucid moments of acting on free will.  We always have free will. Sadly, for me, it is most often drowned in the jelly like fluid of authority.  My heart stops, my ears fill up-- I lose foothold on whatever hill or mountain top I was ascending and become the obedient, little girl once more.

At 48 I realize that no matter how many miles I travel, my initial response is to listen to what I am told. 

Listening to what I am told has stymied school, career and adventure choices. It has gotten me involved in fields of service and work simply because I was told, "you are good at it."  It has even led to sexual coercion.  With all of these, but especially with the last one, I carry a shame, believing it was my fault because I allowed it.

And I believe becoming aware of this shame actually opened up a door for me.  A slight light poured on the floor and through the door I saw opportunity--opportunity to say, "No." I believe I have tried before, but I have scurried back in when I was told to go to my room--to "behave," and remember my place.

I need to take the time to acknowledge just how deep that belief went in me.  So deeply that I, like a mermaid, in order to get acceptance, recognition and "love," gave up my voice, my will, my worth.

But now I believe I can make the choice to step out of that room.  I can throw the door open wide and wonder through other rooms, down hallways, into forbidden parlors, and, heaven help us, out the front door into a wide, wide open world of possibilities.

It would be nice if the hallways were empty, but alas, I am probably correct in assuming they won't be.  The naysayers roam the rooms I wonder.  So to combat the naysayers, those who in the past I quickly responded to by placing my tail between my legs and scurrying to where I was told, I choose to bring along my own companions.  Some I already know from my childhood, others from just a few years past, and others I have yet to meet.  But one thing I know, words are mightier than the sword, and books are full of them. 

And for my beginning venture into the dark and lonely hallway I need someone a bit irreverent and with teeth...I choose Uncle Stevie--Stephen King and his book On Writing. 

And you are welcome to follow the trail of words I write along my journey.

Signs of Life

...there was nothing for awhile. 

 

Then I wrote this entry.  As I came to the end of the entry I realized my entry about The Seven Year Cleanse and this entry, about my admittance to a near implosion and opening the door to wonder, went together.  And so, here is a perfect place to continue on...

 

 

I said to a friend that I felt as if there were a thin, transparent wall between the world, and me and that behind it I was vibrating and about to burst into tears.  If I did, I knew the wall would shatter...I would shatter.  She said, "It sounds like you are describing what I feel all the time.  Maybe that is just the way we are suppose to feel."

 

I sat for a moment looking out the car window.  Feel like this all the time? 

 

"No.  I disagree.  I believe we are meant to feel peace. I have to stop."

 

She is not an easy person to say no to and it seemed I was opening a door.