I'm Still Here

My mother informed me that, if you are keeping tabs of me via my blog, it seems that I have gone off the New Age deep end. Don't worry, I'm still here. I am still able, despite the last few posts, to speak in specifics rather than spiritual generalizations. But sometimes doesn't it feel good to indulge the big language? Perhaps that is the next task: to construct my own metaphors that accurately relay the immense melting goodness that I can see when I'm looking at the world through a blind truster's monocle.

There is something vaguely threatening about all this. Water tensing at the edge of a table.

What about tonight.

I'm exhausted, but just have to type out a quick addendum to the last entry. Tonight, I attended another session in the Engaging Spirit series of events. This session was about shamanic journeys and Paul Diamond, the teacher-in-residence, led the group on a shamanic journey to find our spirit animal. Not very long ago, I would not have been able to take this seriously. I like to think I have a highly attuned bullshit detector. Recently, that is in the last few years, I've started to realize that power and utility don't have to be explicit in something to be present. In other words, you can't eat the cake before you've bought it.

I won't go into much detail about the shamanic journey itself, other than to say there was a trance induced by rhythmic drumming, and Paul led us to a place where we met our spirit animal. Before we started all of this I was very anxious about not meeting an animal, I was doubting my ability to visualize or "go on" the journey. I ran to the session, a couple minutes late from a poetry seminar that ended at the time the session began. Even though Paul seemed confident everyone would find an animal, I was worried and very tense. The tension started to ease as Paul led us through a body relaxation technique that I have practiced since I was a child and had trouble falling asleep at night - you simply focus on each part of your body in sequence, relax the muscle groups and let the body part melt into the floor.

My spirit animal, very much to my surprise, is a donkey. In exchange for it's power, I agreed to dance more. Afterwards, Paul asked each of us what our spirit animal was, and told us a bit of the power associated with each animal. Very spookily, the donkey represents continuous, daily hard work and daily commitment to those things that are most important to us. Which in lieu of my last entry, freaked me out a bit. Maybe I'll gain some daily stamina and purpose in exchange for my dancing, who knows.

In an exercise for myself, which is not very helpful to anyone else reading this, I'm going to decidedly not analyze this experience. I am going to take it at face value and appreciate the beneficial effects.

An Exercise

Good Things That Happened Today:
1) I was late for my 8:30AM class, but I was not the only one. As we walked into class together my teacher agreed that it was better to be five minutes late than to go through a three hour class about the philosophy of religious experience without coffee. She wished she had a prettier reason for being late; Just as she was walking out of the door, her diabetic cat threw up everywhere. Yet again, CATS:1 HUMANS:0
2)My friend Tyler found my rings that I had left in the meditation room after our practice yesterday evening. I thanked him by squeezing his hands and started my morning class feeling connected.
3)Coffee works.
4)I made a phenomenal sandwich for lunch: Country white bread with crunchy peanut butter, bananas and blackberry jam. Um. In light of this sandwich, life is good.
5)I saw a performance piece called Loup Garou which grew out of a meditation on issues affecting Louisiana's land. We had a discussion after the performance which brought up issues of connectedness, ancestry and tradition, having a sense of place. It made me feel urgent, but coupled with the meditation of last night I felt really positive about moving forward with practice of your life project everyday. Seeing this made me want to work, in an anxious way at first, but then I settled into this lovely trust that if I keep my eyes open and seeking everyday (which is a feat, when there is so much to turn away from, or to discourage you) I will find what I'm looking for. I also felt a sense of release, and realization that you can't plan everything - I've always thought of myself as a spontaneous person, but I think lately I've become wedded to my datebook in way that is unhealthy. I'm trying to control my experience, instead of live it. But of course I go in and out of this. One day I'm living to the point of tears, right here and spontaneously combusting in every moment. The next day I find myself bogged down by a weight of anxiety about accomplishment and progress. I sense of defeat envelopes me and I don't see the point in pursuing anything. But! I believe that you can endorse your best self, and rather than being weighed down by "what" you are in this moment, if its defeated or messy or plagued, you can decide to be your better self. BECOME your better self by promising. In class this morning we talked about the phrase "I promise" as being an action. I think that points to the power of mantra - and also the power of insight. As Bernadette Roberts tells us, don't use your insight, let it use you. If you try to control or understand completely an insight, you are trying to work it into an old framework. If it's a true insight, let it go and it'll follow you around like a shadow.
6) I went to therapy. Which is always good, even if I think it was bad.
7) I went to an amazing sculpture exhibition. A bunch of my friends had work in it and I was blown away by all of it. Chatroulette projected into a gallery? Please and thank you. Vibrating buckets of black water? Thank you very much. Two way mirror experience? If you make it, Maya, they will come. My friend Moriel did this piece where she videotaped herself collecting her tears into a jar over a period of months (I'm assuming?), and had her friends and family take shots of her tears. It was beautiful. And powerful. And I felt it right here.
8) I got to talk to my dear friend Emma today, who I adore. She is such a light in my life here, and even though she doesn't live on campus so I dont' see her as often as I would wish, I know we are in each other's lives and hearts. We talked about release today. And it felt so good!
9) My friend John is "seriously" considering moving to Door County for the summer. This makes me happy beyond all words. First, I think he would have a blast. Secondly, I love showing DC to people because it's my love. John has such an infectious energy that I want around all the time.
10)I talked to my Mom today, which is always grounding. Plus, we have the same sense of humor.
11) My next door neighbor and all around LOVE, Kat Atkins, left me homemade blueberry muffins on my desk. I melt!
12) I got invited to a baby shower and get to knit little booties and hats and stuffed animals. Also, I get to learn how to knit.
13)I made up a really funky dance to Mykonos by Fleet Foxes in my head. Also, I started to dance while I make food again, which is always a good sign.

Good going, day!

A rambling post for a gambling mood

This afternoon I went to a excerpted performance of Loup Garou, a collaborative solo work meditating on the Louisiana wetlands, Big Oil and the importance of place. The performance was abrasive and moving, the kind of sweating performance that makes people of my cloth nervous in the best way possible. The performer, Nick Slie, brought a girl up from her seat for a wolfish dance cheek to cheek. After the performance, there was a talkback. We talked about the idea of rootlessness vs. being married to a place, and the responsibility that comes with the latter. Slie spoke of his realization, after Katrina, that there is no time to make work that doesn't matter. The goal of their collaborative work was to tell their deepest story. Tracing ancestors and river routes to discover the resonances in you of things past. We touched on the frustration of working against something as seemingly all consuming as Big Oil. What resonated with me is the idea of "one day". The struggle is to balance a greater awareness of the world with a focus on your specific life project. Slie called himself an "artist of place".
This resonated with an experience I had yesterday during a meditation practice in my school's spiritual space. I am participating in a series of events called Engaging Spirits, led by Paul Diamond who is an explorer and teacher of many traditions. We participated in a puja ceramony to the saviouress Tara, and then were led in meditation for about fifteen minutes. I struggled. It had been a long, emotional day and the last thing I wanted to do was sit with my thoughts. In all honesty, I found in excruciating. And I knew I had to keep doing it. I knew then that this practice was something I should pursue, everyday.
It's this idea of practice that I am interested in. We live in distracting times. It is very easy to go through one's day disconnected from those things we think are important. Community. Spirit. Peace. Mindfulness. The practice of daily meditation is a gesture of life among the bullshit.
Just as there is no time to do work that is not important, there is no time to not live this day, practice this day.
Everything connects today. In my class this morning on the philosophy of religious experience, my teacher mentioned a book we had read last semester by Bernadette Roberts. Bernie told us to not use our insights. Just have them, and let them work on you in their own time. If you cling to them too tightly, you are shoving them back into a preconceived framework where they become staid and frail.
Just keep engaging everyday. I ask myself all the time, how am I going to accomplish anything I want to? When is it going to happen? Right now, by gathering and communicating and looking people in the eye. Getting emotional. Breathing. Listening. Moving forward and endorsing your best self.

It's a poem, dig?

A Letter to Alice on her 21st Birthday

Here are the facts.
You tore out into the forest
With no shoes on and
Asked me to carry you home.
We moved your boxes
One by one
From the room
To the car
To the air.
(you had an adorable disease)

where you forgot they were yours
and dumped each one over
until a business card
for a tumbler maker
landed on the street
in Pilsen
and was winded to
the end of the country
where I drove
with my dad
to get it for you.

In San Diego
There is a gully
In a mountain made of
Packed sand.
A single pine plank
Stretches over the nothing,
you can’t bounce on it
Unless you have
arms to
rush into at the end of the trip.

You went into your room
Then, made a door
I didn’t have the key to.
And were very loyal
To your convictions
when you decided
To forget about me.

The front desk told me
You filled the bathtub with gin,
Took a picture of yourself bathing,
And taped it to the front of the mini-fridge.

I paid your room bill and
I called your name into the darkness
For a couple days,
Until a tree tapped me on the shoulder
And said you lived inside of him,
But weren’t home right now.

I drove the road back East,
Dropping your shoes, one by one,
Out the window of my
1994 Cutlass Sierra,
which explains the phenomenon
of one lost shoe on the highway.

I make the rules here, Joe. See. See!

This is a prose exercise I wrote for class. The assignment was to write two paragraphs about something you keep in your desk drawer. I feel like its cheating to post this here (cheating on my blog, not on my class assignment), because I just happen to have this, I didn't actually write this for the blog. I feel guilty about not writing in the blog. I'm sorry, blog.


-------------------------


Before I begin these paragraphs, I must admit to the reader something definitive. I’m going to talk about an object that I keep in my desk drawer, but I must admit that I keep most of my stuff out. Out on the desk, out on the floor, out on the walls. My drawers are filled with edges of photographs, the middles of which are pasted onto my dorm walls. Old prescriptions, tools and tape. But I keep old receipts, magazines, business cards, Magic Hat beer caps and rubber bands out. Books stay out, too. There isn’t any logic to in-the-drawer or out-of-drawer status. I guess I keep out those things I want to remain active, turned on. Putting something in a drawer turns it off. Who ever finished a book they put away in a drawer? There are 15 books on my nightstand right now, and I have hopes for all of them.
While rooting around in the top drawer of my desk, I found a letter that I had been carrying for a while in my day planner. It was a letter from my boss at the pizza restaurant where I’ve worked the past two summers, the Wild Tomato. Sara sends these letters out every February or so, inviting back old team members for the upcoming season, and updating the “Wild Tomato Family” on new additions and plans for the restaurant. I love these letters. The excitement I feel when reading about the new 6 beer tap system is akin to the relish with which a sixth grader picks out her notebooks for the new school year at Wal-Mart. After I graduate this Spring, I’ll be heading back to the Wild Tomato. I’m learning to fight the urge in this moment to say something self-deprecating about waitressing after getting your liberal arts degree. It’s good, honest work. Simple as that. I don’t feel awkward or depressed about it, though most people silently indicate that I should. I’m excited to see how they’ve streamlined the waitress station, and train 18 year olds to smile. And six months from now, when October is coming to a close, and the last of the die-hard weekenders have come and gone, the restaurant will close and I’ll be hungry for something else.

Feeling Young Again

I’ve always wanted a big scar with a great story. Something peaking out of my t-shirt, a massive burn maybe, that people would be uncomfortable asking me about. It would be a sign that I had “been through something” and make people like me out of sympathy and respect. When I was in grade school I used to make up siblings and then kill them off slowly as a way to get attention. I told my best friend I was born on a houseboat in the Irish Sea and my middle name was Banana. At summer camp a couple of years later I convinced this same friend that I was a mermaid. It took a couple of days, but by sticking by my story I got her to ask, “Well, what are you doing on land then?” This was a personal triumph.
The point is, I’m only beginning to understand scars. That silly, wishing girl didn’t understand anything about pain. By sheer luck I have gone through this life on the periphery of tragedy. I’ve been witness to it, helped others through it, but have never experienced the sharp pain that earns a true scar, physical or otherwise. I do know, however, the dull ache of scars just beginning to surface. I’m only beginning to understand how foolish one must be to wish for them. Those little mangled girls and boys lived in another world, bitter and so much faster than mine.