I should have a blog

There are a lot of things I want to write about. So I think, "I should start a blog." I should start a blog to write about all of the things that are not the articles on my desk I need and want to finish, not my book manuscript, not the talks and lectures. These things range from analysis of the representation of sexuality and in-between-ness in Lost Girl, to thoughts about random cultural phenomenon, to thoughts about teaching and about the difference between information and understanding. I think I should start a blog for those things and make a discipline of writing in it every something (week, month, day). This could be a writing practice and an outlet for the things that rattle around and take up space in my mind.

But then I remember--"wait, I have a blog. But then I wonder, "is it still there? It has been forever since I wrote in it." So I looked today, and yes, yes it is!  So then I read what was in it, and wow, is it personal. Not all of it, but some of it. So it won't be the place to write all of those other things if I want anyone to read them, because I don't want my professional intellectual world reading that last post I wrote, for instance.

So then I think, maybe I need a blog to write about Kaya. Kaya my amazing beautiful 9 month old daughter. But then I think maybe I need a blog just about Kaya. And then there is this blog. So maybe I need three blogs. This one--to continue an to keep writing in whatever vein this was that I opened back in 2008 I think, one called Kaya Linda--where I write for her and about her, and the other one, where I write the analytical stuff and creative stuff that comes to mind.

So this one is what it is--what I started already. I'll return to it and see where it goes.

If the fears come true

If this turns out to be among the many things I fear it to be, I will survive it.

I have survived things similar before.

The bad thing about that is that I know what will be in store. I will be very, very, very angry, and anger is very frightening for me. I will be very, very, very scared, and fear is the most terrifying thing of all for me. I will feel shattered—but I won’t be—and I will have a really hard time focusing on anything else—but I will manage to. I won’t want to eat, and when I try, it will be hard to swallow—but I will get myself to the gym and work up an appetite enough to lose only so much that I am changed but not in danger.

I will feel horribly alone, but I won’t be. I will thrash around at night looking for a lifeline and I will sometimes miss it and just keep thrashing, but then sometimes, I will find it, and there will be deep peace.

I will look around and I will see many dear friends. They won’t be physically present, and that will be very scary and hard, but they will call, they will write, and they will listen to my tears, and rage, and fear, and confused words, as they have so many times before.

And I will pray. And I will pray in the dark alone with no one listening sometimes. And those will be the long dark nights of the soul that will be miserable, but I will survive them. And sometimes I will whisper, and I will be heard, and held, and I will feel myself start to come back to life again.

This time will be different, because I’ve never been where I am before. I am pretty sure this time will be worse. But I also have something I’ve never had before, and that is the years that have come and gone, that I have worn like clothes that then became a new part of my skin. Maybe to make it thicker. Maybe.

But whatever comes, I will survive it. I will survive it, and it will just hurt like hell. So why fear it now? I can’t stop the pain if it is on its way. But what I can do is rest up for the storm. I can know that something really hard might be coming, and I can take precautions. Not the kind that prevent things, but the kind that make one more ready for the struggle. Resting. Loving myself. Keeping things simple. And working.

I don’t know if I can do those things, but they are good goals. And if I can’t, I can still know that I will get through, whatever is on its way.

And of course, it might only be my fear, and I might be passed over this time, once again. But if not, I will go on.

violence

Its been a loooong long time since I have written here. I don't think many people read it, because I don't let many people know about it. I am still a bit ambivalent about being a blogger. But there are some things on my mind and I can't find people talking about them, so I'll start.

Something is up, don't you think? Violence is every present and certainly focused on in the media, so I'm not saying that the recent string of family murders, child murders, and domestic violence cases are new. But combined with what seems to me to be an unusually large number--in an unusually short amount of time--of mass murders--rampage style random or not so random killings--this does seem unusual. Columbine shocked us, and then there were more Columbines, and that shocked us. But in something like three weeks we had the Alabama shooting spree, the shooting rampage at the nursing home, the shooting rampage at the immigrant center, and at least one other that my sickened mind is blocking out. Before these rampages there seemed to be a large number of parents killing their children them themselves out of desperation of some sort. Can these things really be disconnected?

Are things accelerating? Do we always think that? Is the problem only about firearms? Obviously this is a problem, but is something else going on too?

I don't have any theories. But I'm disturbed and concerned. And I have a sense its an expression of things much more ordinary and commonplace, and our sensationalizing of it all doesn't help us get to the bottom of it.

Wisdom from Audre Lorde

Pleasure. Some wisdom I remember...its been a long time since it guided my life, but it is present in my mind, and today I have been calling it to the center...

"...we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge." "...a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings....an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self respect we can require no less of ourselves."

"It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies."

"this internal requirement toward excellence....must not be misconstruied as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. [it is]....a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness."

"Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision--a longed -for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered."

Can we live with that? Live up to that? Can we afford a world in which we don't?

My old kitchen floor

My kitchen floor is teaching me a great deal. First, let me say that I am grateful to HAVE a kitchen floor. Not everyone does, and it is a luxury and a blessing. Having said that, my kitchen floor is my least favorite part of the house I am currently living in. It is a white and pale gray linoleum floor, but the problem is that it is very old, and being very old, has degenerated to the point that its surface is very grainy and porous. It looks fine when it is clean, but its surface sucks in dirt and dust at an amazing rate, so that after a few days it starts to look and feel (if you are barefoot like I prefer to be) really gross. The worst part, though, is that it is very, very difficult to clean. Mopping is not enough--no matter the mop, no matter the cleaning fluid--the only thing that works is getting down on your hands and knees and scrubbing hard with the scritchy side of a scrubby sponge.

It takes about 30 seconds of scrubbing for each square of linoleum. Depending on how dirty the floor is, this means from 2 to 3 hours of hands and knees scrubbing. Even if you like to clean, which I don't, there is no way that 2-3 hours on your hands and knees scrubbing fiercely is fun, though it is a good work out. My partner and I try to clean the floor once a week and we take turns, so each of us is only facing this onerous task once every couple of weeks. Nonetheless, every time I had to do it, I used to feel miserable, and then continue to feel worse and worse until by the time it was done I was exhausted and very grumpy.

But the thing is, I hate a dirty floor. I hate the way the grit and grime feel under my feet and I hate looking at it while I'm having breakfast or making coffee. And the entrance to our house is through the kitchen, so its the first thing I see when I walk in. So for me, there really isn't an option, but to face the scrubbing at least every other week.

And there is no way to speed it up while its happening. This I have discovered as my insides try to hurry the task along and my outsides try to find shortcuts and tricks--none of which work. So something has started to happen that is rather mysterious and spiritual, actually. And yesterday, I realized that it has something to teach me about many tasks in my life--particularly, currently, the arduous process of finishing my dissertation.

What happened is that I began to surrender. I didn't decide to, exactly, it just sort of happened. After failed attempts at resistance, rather than cry, I just began to sink into the rhythm of the scrubbing. Scrub scrub scrub scrub, wipe wipe wipe wipe, and move on to the next square. As I went, I began to see the brightness of one square at a time compared to the parts I hadn't cleaned yet, and it began to fill me with some kind of joy--a satisfaction and hope. Rather than being dismayed at all the squares that lay before me, I focused all of my attention and energy on the one little square I was cleaning. And I found it to be meditative, even therapeutic. My mind quieted, I began to sing sometimes, listen to the birds outside my window sometimes, and actually, I can't believe it, but enjoy the task and the process.

Now I actually almost look forward to my turn to clean the kitchen, because I know that the job itself will force a state of being that I rarely find on my own. The hardest part now is when I am nearing the end. When the squares get enticingly fewer, I begin to rush ahead, longing for the end, and I inevitably feel a return of the impatience, frustration, and my own daily anxieties. The last part of the floor is never as clean as the rest of it!

So yesterday I thought of my floor and this place that I have found in the cleaning of it, and I thought of it after realizing that I have (temporarily, I hope) fallen out of love with my dissertation. It has become drudgery and my procrastination and need to take breaks with increasing frequency and of increasing lengths is not just a reflection of my character flaws, lack of discipline, or laziness, but rather of the reality that I don't love what I am doing anymore. In fact, I sometimes hate it.

It was scary, but freeing to say that "out loud" to myself in my mind as I was going on a walk past a beautiful stream, wishing I could spend all my time doing things like that. And once I felt that freedom, I was able to move past it and into acceptance. Ok, so maybe I hate my dissertation right now, maybe I'll even always hate it, though I suspect that is not the case, but say it is, I still have to finish it, and it is not even a question in my mind that I wouldn't give it my all to finish it. There is too much I want and need on the other side of its completion.

And that is when it hit me. My unfinished dissertation is like the dirty kitchen floor. I can't just leave it that way--I have to clean it, because I love a clean floor and a dirty one is not something I can live with. And no one is going to clean it for me, and there is no short cut to make the task any easier, shorter, or less hard work. So there it is. I don't have to love it. I just have to do it. And maybe if I relax into it, surrender to the task of cleaning each square before me, the "drudgery" will transform--at least sometimes--into something meditative, something therapeutic, something meaningful in its quiet way. And maybe then I can stop seeing all of the unwritten chapters and the revisions left to do, documents left to tabulate, and instead see the pages and pieces I've done slowly add up. It takes the time it takes, but if I keep going, I can't help but get to the other side of the kitchen.

Presence

Its been a while. I have been searching for synthesis. I have been searching for balance. But not the kind that is like a great big blur--not a melting pot of my different aspects--but rather a sharpening of the distinctions and greater skill in moving between them, and an even strengthening of them all. I don't want to be a mental person--a mind-identified person, nor do I want to be entirely a body identified person. I don't want to be mostly political, or mostly spiritual, or mostly intellectual, or mostly sensual, or mostly physical, or mostly creative. I want to feel whole and to be able to play with all that is human to be.

When I sit at my chosen desk to write my dissertation chapters, or when I ask myself hard questions and puzzle out the answers, or when I try to read very old documents, I want to be able to use the different parts of me like I might pull various tools out of a tool box. I want to learn to focus my analytical mind to the task in a way that is pleasurable and effective--but without letting it control my life. I am not my mind--or at least my mind is not the entirety of me, and because I forget that, my mind runs wild, gets distracted, and hops around--grabbing at things like my friends' new puppy.

When I swim, or run, or go on a bike ride, I want to give to the experience everything that I have. I want to enjoy my body, love it, and embody it as the gift that it is. In every physical experience I want to be fully present--not trying to dominate my body, but learning to listen to it, follow it, but also to lead it firmly.

When I meditate, I want to be open to all the states of consciousness that are available and flashing like tempting jewels at the edge of my peripheral vision. I want to fully give to this part of being human--to the explorations and experiments that shift my perspective and lift my spirit.

When I feel--when I am happy or sad or angry--when I am sharing emotions with others, witnessing and holding space for their emotions, I want to be fully present there too. I want to feel and be rather than think, or solve. This is not the place for my over active mind to run free.

I want to move through these ways of being actively. I want to chose powerfully. I want to live life as a physical, spiritual, intellectual, creative, sensual, and conscious being. I want to enjoy it. I want to get all I can out of the experience of being alive and human--the experience of being me--in my path, in my choices, right here, right now. Nothing fancy. Nothing completely new. Just a transformation of being. A new ontology, informed perhaps by a new epistomology, but maybe the other way around. A new way of knowing might grow out of a new way of being. But what I am looking for is presence. Full, embodied, conscious, present, presence. Sounds like the best and sharpest tool, the most delicious drink, the deepest breath. This is my quest, though I wander from it.....

Enligtenment, Colaboration, and Coalition.

I don't know what the relationship is between surrender and responsibility, between empowerment and humility, or between learning to create our own reality and learning to let go of control, but I know that for me, this relationship is what life is all about--the dance between these seemingly different ways of seeing and being. And I think that maybe enlightenment is just a moment or moments of understanding this relationship, and that it wouldn't be a thought or word thing, but a heart and spirit thing--a moment where all the seemingly diametrically opposed truths would appear as perfectly intricately arranged continuities--a shimmering landscape whose many colors catch the eye differently at different moments, each leaping forward and waning in its own special time as the sun moves across the sky.

This is what life is for me right now--learning about the relationship between letting go and diving in, between taking responsibility for my life and what I create and surrendering to the beauty and struggle of what is. And the process of learning about this reminds me of other truths that dance together--the relationship between boundaries and connection, between autonomy and interdependency, between the individual and the collective community. between structural forces and personal experience. Maybe like enlightenment, collaboration, communication, and especially coalition is only possible if and when we can hold these things together in our hearts and minds--if we can conceptualize them all as true.

This is what I had to say tonight after walking alongside a moonlit lake reflecting a midnight blue sky.