As the train turned
To cross the bridge
The city was drenched
In the last golden light
Of a late winter day.
I was watching gulls
Flying above the river
Turned into glimmering
Gems hanging in the
Approaching twilight.
11Mar/090
Pressure
My terrible headache was diagnosed yesterday as a sinus infection. Today my physical therapist worked on all the headache points in the neck, top of the shoulders, jaw and cranium. She noted that I had nearly every trigger point for headache active, including the important muscle points around the glands and lymph nodes in the throat. She thought that nothing was probably processing effectively in that area which likely contributed to the infection.
So I'm on day two of a massive dose of antibiotics and taking ibuprofen regularly to help with the pain when I move my head around. After IW worked on my neck tonight I can feel it is released but everything is aching a lot. She warned me that I might feel a little worse this evening. Ugh.
I made a decision last night not to write for several reasons, being sick one of them. I then spent much of the time trying to get comfortable enough to sleep listening to the voice of my inner critic who sees the body it inhabits as inferior, weak and pathetic. Deriding my decision not to write a poem for the 30 day challenge, noticing how I can't even keep with something for 30 days.
Making space to be sick is really hard for me, in addition to being flogged by my critic for getting sick in the first place, I feel anxious. There is no space for compassion for feeling unwell. A grudging willingness to admit my head hurts so much that I want to cry. Then I end up crying, it makes my head throb and my critic goes off on how I'm acting like a big baby.
I was sick a lot as a kid and seriously so and felt like I caused my Mom a lot of worry, was a burden to her. When she started fighting cancer I especially felt bad for getting sick so easily. She felt barely well enough to look after herself much less me sick again.
As I became an adult I learned that if I was sick things would fall apart. In my early 20s I lost a job because I was sick too often. During my first marriage things I normally took care of around the house were just left until I was well enough to deal with them. I jumped from the guilty, semi-support from my Mother as a child to being entirely unsupported after leaving home.
Now when I get sick I feel guilty, anxious and burdensome. I feel driven to keep working on everything, not letting go. It is easy to look at the reasons and think they make sense, but harder to let go of the way they drive my reactions.
Impatience
For now it is
Enough to watch
The voice impatient
With a frail body.
To observe how the
Voice drives the
Anxious fear of
Illness, of needing
Compassion and care.
9Mar/090
Love Based Living
I had the pleasure of facilitating the Love Based Living group I meet with tonight. I haven't been able to in many months since I teach on Tuesdays and most Sunday evenings I'm overloaded already. Last month they changed one of the meeting days each month to the second Monday of the month -- a night I am free! Before I could think too long about it I offered to facilitate the group.
Facilitating means you keep the flow of the sharing moving as well as come up with a theme for everyone to talk to. I arrived with a theme centered around generosity. How we define and express self-generosity. How we engage our Inner Critic to work with self-generosity. The final round of discussion being what we'd take with us from the evening out into the world -- how we stay compassionately engaged with the Inner Critic and foster self-generosity in order to cultivate generosity towards others.
And that all said I'm going to devote more time later to everything that came up. In the past when I've gone we often wrap up the questions quite quickly, but much to my surprise this topic had such depth for everyone that we used up the whole two hours for the meeting! Mindful of the evening I am being generous with myself and accepting that I need to go to bed, I want to spend time with CK who was too tired to join us tonight, and I don't need to try and cram everything into one night.
A poem that for today that came out of some of the realizations I had tonight:
Receiving
I feel my body
Pull away from
Kindness, the
Generosity of
Others, with a
Tightening of
Muscles and mind.
My heart prepares
For the withdrawal,
The betrayal,
Even before the
Offer is finished.Now,
Even if wincing,
I try to offer
Gratitude and
Be present
To receive-
Validating
The offering.
8Mar/091
Unexpectedly Free Afternoon
It has been generally quiet today. Wasn't sure how the day would go after I woke up at 5AM disoriented and aching. I got back to sleep, Phoebe tried to help by curling up next to me again and woke up later than I'd expected when my Mom phoned at 9AM.
She sounded terrible, had been coughing a lot, and there were 3 inches of snow with more coming down! She said that she thought it would be better if I didn't come out. I told her we'd figure out another time, although it would be very difficult for the next few weeks. I hung up and observed the ache in my sinuses, felt the relief of this cancellation.
Two students showed up to class today and we spent a long time in less poses. Going deeply, taking time for me to work with them on alignment. It felt really good to offer that kind of attention to detail with just two people. I was aware of how enjoyable it was to have the freedom to really focus like that.
With my afternoon suddenly free I took some ibuprofen my still aching head and decided to take a long hot bath, dozing off while I soaked. After I felt that kind of groggy, heaviness I get after a nap. Unfortunately my head didn't feel much better. I washed the dishes and decided to go ahead and make stew even though I'm alone. I've been making a stew or soup most Sundays but didn't think I would today with the plans to see Mom.
AM rang up while I was getting started. We chatted for a little bit about his experience at the Beginner's Mind retreat over the weekend. It was a good experience, made him see that trying to go into residency at Great Vow may not be the best choice for him right now.
After getting off the phone I decided to just be with the silence this afternoon, resisting the urge to put on music or NPR. I'm going to see M. Ward at the Aladdin later this evening and it seemed like a good idea to spend the afternoon being mindful in the quiet. I have come to really appreciate preparing food in silence, just being fully present for the act of cooking.
The apartment smells wonderful. I'm writing early on account of the concert and will wrap up in order to eat some of the stew. I miss CK a lot and am very grateful she will be back tomorrow afternoon. I sent her a message about the stew, something about having made it so she'll be able to enjoy it tomorrow feels comforting.
Stew Meditation
Under my hand skin
Comes off in
Long brown strips
Revealing jewel
Orange flesh.
The knife moves,
planes, strips, cubes.
The hands set aside,
Move to the next
To be made into
Small pieces.
Then into a
Humble pot.
The order a
Kind of ritual.
First lilies to
Soften, grow fragrant.
Then roots,
Stalks, fruits.
Water rushing
In to give depth.
Then sitting while
All ingredients join
Together in silence
And heat.I am nourished
By the act
And result.
7Mar/090
Hearing Through my Mother’s Ears
Joy had us working on the things we felt most uncomfortable, uncertain about teaching. She had all the trainees doing various Sun Salutations and abdominal series over and over. I may ache in the morning.
I hadn't volunteered for anything since I feel pretty steady with teaching all of those things. I've been teaching them for months, if not a few years now. When she put me on the spot about which one I wanted to practice I said really the thing that makes me most nervous is chanting and "Om" at the beginning of class, something I was doing today.
I practiced it with my training class and Joy was commenting about how to go beyond that nervousness. She was noting that she didn't want to "play therapist" but was alluding to the ways in which we're told we're too loud, etc.
I said that it wasn't all that hidden. That during childhood I was repeatedly told I was too loud, talked too much, and no one was interested. When it came to music I was told I "couldn't carry a tune in a bucket" and, except for one embarrassing talent show (all my peers thought my performance was completely, laughably lame) was actively discouraged from any interest in music. It wasn't until I was in college, over 2000 miles from home, that I took some vocal lessons.
I never got comfortable with it. Never have felt like I could just sing and get over it. Chanting service after zazen at the Dharma center has been excruciating but I've gotten a little more comfortable with it. Chanting at the beginning of a yoga class feels closer to singing and everyone looks directly at you, unlike chanting service where no one really looks at me.
What I noticed was how I'd curled up into a protective ball talking to my teacher training class about it. I'd gone from sitting cross-legged, body open, to a tight posture with knees drawn up and into the chest and my arms wrapped around the shins. Several of my co-trainees and Joy noticed the incredibly protective, defensive body posture I'd moved into.
But I chanted Om at the beginning of class with 8 co-trainees, 1 teacher and 18 students looking at me. It was OK. Not comfortable, but OK. I felt better once I moved into teaching pranayama and a meditation on the breath.
And on that theme, today's poem:
My Mother's Ears
My voice sounds
Too loud.The ears that hear
my voice belong
To my Mother.
Her ears that
Decide the voice
Is too much,
Too often,
Too loud, and
Tuneless.Not sure when
I began to listen
To my voice through
My Mother's ears.
When I talk about
Singing I hear
Pure tension and
My body curls into
The smallest
Possible ball.
7Mar/090
Alone
CK is down in Northern California with family, attending to her uncle who is very ill. I dropped her off at the airport a little past noon. I start to miss her by the time I drive away.
My mind does all the reminders about how important it is that she see her family. How I admire her for spending this kind of time with her family. How it is only a short trip. How I'll email, chat, text message, and talk on the phone with her.
Blah, blah, blah... I miss her.
I cannot even be distracted by talking to AM, hanging out watching TV together. He's out at Great Vow doing his Beginner's Mind retreat. He was very anxious when he left this afternoon. He's also needing to rethink again on what he's going to do come June 1. I so want him to be well, be happy, to know some measure of pride in what he's done.
I don't think I mindfully filled this weekend alone with as much as possible, but it has worked out that way. Tomorrow is the first of 4 very long days at Prananda. I'll assist in the 9:30AM gentle class, then a break for a bite to eat, then a full afternoon of teacher training, teaching a class at 4:30... Whew! Sunday I'll teach, spend several hours with Mom, then go to the M. Ward show at the Aladdin. CK and I were supposed to go together, but when the need to be with her family came up we decided I'd still go with my friend EB.
Monday CK will be back, I'll run out to the airport to pick her up around 2:30. Until then I'll have the silence to appreciate the way she just clicked into my life. Having the quiet to look at this I can see the empty spot I just kept trying to bridge, work around, do anything but really honestly look at what was needed to complete it.
Which brings me to a poem for Day 6 (technically this is 7, but I haven't been to bed yet so it counts).
Missing Piece
It is in the time
That fills with
Silence when
You are gone
That I can see
How you fit into
A space in my
Life I didn't want
To admit needed
Completion.
5Mar/090
30 Poems – Day 5
Thursdays make for a long day for me. Work and zazen; usually I get home around 10PM. Today I met CK and DT for dinner at Laughing Planet on SE Belmont in between the two things, making for no real break at all. I'd realized that they would be the hard days to come up with a new poem! Mindful of that, the walk home from the bus stop inspired a new haiku:
Spring's Impatience
“Snow’s cold novelty
Has entirely worn off.”
Say Spring’s first blossoms.
5Mar/090
A Letter of Gratitude
I did something I've always considered terribly silly and somewhat uncomfortable today.
I wrote AND mailed a fan letter to one of my favorite authors, Ursula K. Le Guin. I was introduced to her writing in high school in 1985 and have been a reader ever since. Novels, poetry, short stories, even commentary and translation -- her words just resonate with me. They made me think about the world in a different way as a teen and continue to inspire me. Even when I reread things I continue to learn from them and about myself through them.
I've never actually written anyone a fan letter before. I always felt kind of silly. Even meeting a handful of authors I really like* and once or twice a musician I felt painfully awkward. Not that I don't see these people as human or that I'm entirely at ease meeting people. I feel generally awkward meeting people in general, when I talk with someone who's art has deeply affected me the everyday uncomfortable feeling gets turned up to 11, as it were. To try and put it into words... well, I feel like some babbling fool.
It also feels as though I'm being a bother, an imposition. I run into this one a lot, actually. The feeling as though I'm worthy of the attention of someone I admire in any way.
Why write a letter? Well, there's a certain element of 'why not?' in the answer. A few other things too... I've never had the opportunity to meet Ms. Le Guin or even hear her speak. She's rather reclusive and even though I've been a fan for mover half my life & live in the same city, it just never has happened. As I approach 40 years it occurs to me that, since neither she nor I have halted the aging process, I should actually let go of feeling foolish and just offer my gratitude.
What I said to her in the letter that I had come to understand that in holding back from writing the letter, in listening to the voice of my Inner Critic, that I was denying both of us the pleasure of my gratitude. It isn't as if Ms. Le Guin will find it overly tiresome to receive one more letter thanking her for her writing. Even though it feels a little awkward still I am glad I took the time to share my gratitude.
*Of the authors I have met in person I must say that Neil Gaiman has always been the most cordial of them all and an absolute delight to chat with even if only for a moment. I've been very grateful to be present for hearing him read from his work -- wonderful, marvelous experience!
4Mar/090
The Distraction of Approval
I'd like to write about the charming fox sailing away in a golden walnut boat that arrived in the mail for me today, bringing me absolute delight. I kept trying to write about this and move into the comforting pleasure about writing about silly, happy, lovely things.
Instead I've been counting the days in my head since AM and I filed for divorce. I think today is 30 days since filing. We each received a slightly baffling piece of mail saying how a General Judgement was entered last week. I did some research and looking through the certified copies of everything. That's one of the pieces of paperwork that was in the filing. Once it is entered by a judge and 30 days had passed the divorce would be final. So I think it may well be today. Feels a little strange.
I think if we'd not done it now, to have just let things between us continue to drift, I think eventually it would have eroded our friendship hugely, perhaps irrevocably. Not rejection so much as a mutal willingness to look unflinchingly at what we've both avoided for years. My therapist pointed out to me last week that since I've been seeing her (going on 6 years) there has been this undercurrent of distance and a sense of my compromising on my authentic self for the sake of loving a friend so much. And now we both get to step off in very different directions, very different people.
Here I am, dropping another privilege of normalcy - this time all the things that going along with the shield, anonymity of "hetero-normal". I tried to hard to fit in as a kid, really throughout most of my 20s too. Moving who I was towards positive reinforcement, they ways in which I could be sure I'd be liked.
I feel exposed and notice reminders daily of how I don't fit in with society. How in some cases many people, if not several other countries, believe what I'm doing is abnormal and wrong, sinful and shameful. At the very best finding me extreme in my choices. It is kind of terrifying, much of the time really. Despite all of that, in the past 6 years I've come to know with certainty that to move closer to the Truth, to rest in the Essential Self, is to turn away from all the things I once distracted and comforted myself with.
The Distraction of Approval
Given sufficient uncertainty
The familiarity of bending,
Towards the false idol of praise
Felt as normal as breath,
More so.At some point the stories
Lacked humor, especially to me.
The smile, merely pasted in place.
The laughter always sounded
Canned, a track stuck in a loop.
3Mar/092
The Gift of Unexpected Back Bends
I went to teach yoga feeling the same fatigue I've been fighting with for a week or two now. My throat never gets beyond a little "scratchy" feeling and I'm sneezing a bit (but the trees are starting to get leaves), but never really where I feel sick. Mostly just so tired out and my shoulders felt a little sore from the class I took at Exhale last night.
Three students showed up tonight and one of them, a returning student who has a more advanced practice, asked if we could play around with "wheel" pose. Really this pose is called "Upward Bow" and I had noted a couple of weeks ago I couldn't teach it because my shoulders were so badly strained. Tonight when she asked I realized I didn't have to demonstrate how to do the pose perfectly so much as I needed to be very precise in verbally teaching it. That and very mindful of my students.
I put together a class to work towards ending with upward bow pose ; opening the front of the legs, warming up the abdominal muscles, and waking up the strength in the shoulders. Not too vigorous so they would have the energy to lift up at the end of class. I got everyone set up with bricks against the wall for extra length and as I finished helping the two very new students I looked over to see the returning student, L, UP in the pose all on her own!
I believe we were both equally excited about her getting up into the pose when she didn't think she would be able to!
I then partnered with one of the newer students and we were able to cradle L through a drop backwards into upward bow! The two new students, having both seen and helped someone into the pose, felt brave enough to try it after that! Each of the three students did the supported back bend! There were many smiles, much laughter, occasional "oofs", and spontaneous applause.
It was just amazing working with them and receiving another lesson in the ways in which my inability to do a pose perfectly, or at all, matters so much as my mindful teaching. I found myself sitting bemused and filled with gratitude while they all lay in savasana at the end of class. How sometimes the manner in which I can be pushed outside of my own limits to realize another way is possible is a delightful experience.
Out of gratitude for the gift of the class tonight I wrote a poem for the 30-day Challenge about learning from my students.
Student-Teacher
I learn from them,
These people called "students".
That arrive each week
And call me "teacher".I have learned that we forget
Self-compassion as easily and as
Quickly as we forget the breath
When experiencing a challenge.I have felt how laughter helps
To release the deep, sharp
Intensity in a body overly
Familiar with tension.
And how a room filled
With that laughter feels
Warm and welcoming
Even on the coldest days.A measure of the daring I
Possessed as a child has
Been reintroduced to me
Through people delighted to
Try something simply because
I offered instruction,
Encouragement and support.
2Mar/090
About my Poetry (and my day too)
My day was filled with meetings with clients in which I tried to figure out what they're doing, what they need, and that I don't actually do "magic", I write code. Then I fixed bugs, caught up and generally went about my Monday.
Checked out a Hatha/Restorative class at Exhale, a new "green" yoga studio in the Alberta Arts District. Great class, enjoyed it a lot. Not as restorative as I was not-so-secretly hoping for, but not too strenuous considering I felt a bit tired and achy. Lovely space with a nice feel and a cork floor (which was kinda chilly to me). Would be a class/studio I'd considering taking more classes at definitely! Gave me little thoughts about having my own studio too!
After class, which got out at 8:30, I foraged around the kitchen and came up with a mostly leftovers dinner + steamed broccoli. Watched Q.I. while I ate dinner and chatted with CK a little. All the time in the back of my mind thinking, "Gotta write a poem for the challenge today..."
I used to write a lot of poetry. Angsty stuff when I was in high school and college. In my 20s I wrote a lot of steamy, sexy stuff of desire. In my 30s I pretty much stopped entirely except for the very occasional haiku that's popped up over the past 4 years.
Now putting thought into poetry, thinking about how some of my favorite poems used language and space, I find myself an even harsh judge than ever before. As though lines written without the fire of infatuation lack spark.
That the 30 poems in 30 days challenge is part of my Zen community... well, my inner critic gets very insistent that I try to write about being in the present moment, shining the light of Dharma... But that feels even more pretentious than anything else I try.
This evening I wrote about Portland. I guess in a way it is writing about the present moment.
Evening Commute