Not Proud

I interviewed for a position today that really intrigues me. Part of the intrigue (but only part) has to do with a question the interviewer asked.

"Tell me about a time you aren't proud of, and what you did with or about it."

I don't think I've ever had a question worded just that way before. Sure, I've had an interviewer ask me to relate a mistake I've made - but never was it phrased in the way this was. Admitting a mistake is one thing - but a time when you weren't proud of yourself reeks of something personal - something shameful. What you choose to talk about can't help but tell a WHOLE lot about you - how you see yourself, what your fears are, what you want that other person to think of you.

How would you respond? Would you actually answer the question that was asked, or talk about a mistake made or problem solved instead?

I did - at least - reply honestly rather than deflecting the question into one I was more comfortable with. There's a time to be proud of. But the question itself seems to be taking me on a journey through all the times I didn't tell her about. The times I've actually treated people coldly - out of fear I couldn't let myself feel, even the times I've slunk away rather than let out my anger at someone's mistreatment.

I am often amazed by the way each day offers lessons in self-knowledge. I guess that really is the work of, and for, a lifetime. I do hope I get the job I was interviewing for. But then I also hope not to have to become too busy to continue contemplating, meeting, and accepting myself.

This becoming a grown up, perfectly imperfect human can really drain one.

Namaste

Wednesday Morning - So Far

Coming in from the cold I'm wearing three layers, top and bottom. When you enter the coffee shop through the back door you walk first by the roastery/office. Cain is roasting today. The smell of baked earth greets me.

Behind the counter three barristas stand around in a semi-circle. They are bent slightly at the waist, looking down. Aaron says "Oh Yeah! Nothin's gettin' through this baby." Jesse laughs in agreement.

That wakes me up, as the cold hasn't.

Later, the remains of donuts at my right hand, I'm feeling overheated beneath my layers. Unfamiliar music over the speakers includes a rather operatic woman's voice - two of the patrons laugh, begin to howl like dogs til Jesse manipulates the iPod to the next song.

Each small task online is complete. Other errands require re-emergence into the frigid day - entering traffic I anticipate with dread. Tonight we are forecast all manner of winter precipitation, and already grocery shelves will be stripped of milk and bread. Sitting here pleases me - like stretching long and lazy in bed, taking my time to enter the waking world.

Where You Stumble

I'm good at pushing - really, really good at it. What do I mean by pushing - attempting to MAKE something happen, to change how things are, to FORCE, direct or otherwise manipulate to get what I want, or what I think I want.

What I'm best at pushing is myself. Lots of practice. Lots of opportunity. The curse of perfectionism, probably a lot of other isms as well

I've given up pushing myself to stop pushing - accepted that there's a Gatekeeper (who will identify itself only as The Critical One) of long residence who will probably always - automatically - give the first shove just about the time I start feeling comfortable with how things are - with how I see myself and my life. I've figured that fighting this G. - trying to get rid of it - is REALLY a waste of energy - sort of like the pushing.

But I've also figured out how to catch the pushing before it gets me deep in the poo that I used to live in all the time. And somehow it seems as if the Gatekeeper doesn't fight back so hard at being caught as it does if I try to stop its energy in the first place. Makes sense really - at least to me. Kind of like a little kid who will throw the tantrum of the year at being told "no" but who will behave more civilly if just given some time or space to do what they want for a while.

What brought all of this up is the understanding I came to only yesterday that I'd been pushing myself to submit poems and other pieces for any number of wrong reasons.

I'd been noticing for a while that I really seemed to have little to say, in writing, to 'the world' - example #1 being that I just couldn't think of things I wanted to blog about. Oh sure, something would show up in my day that I'd connect to and write about - but I didn't feel any juice for getting it in shape to share.

Then there were my dreams. Night after night I'd show up in a scenario where my words and actions took me to the front of a group, into a leadership position with everyone expecting me to produce, to get results - but without the tools necessary to the job and, most notably, by acting as an automaton. Then, when things fell apart, predictably, everyone and everything that was important TO ME about what I was doing was derided and scorned.

Clearly my energy for what I wanted and needed was being subverted into the "shoulds" I was following instead.

Even my Morning Pages - Julia Cameron's term for the journalling we need to do whether we are doing our 'real' writing or not - were telling me what I wanted to be writing, and to whom. There I noticed that each day's pages read like letters to some aspect of myself - even to the Critical One Gatekeeper - asking questions so common to letters.

I'd been submitting pieces to 'others' - to journals and contests - when I needed to be writing to, and for, myself. And I'd been doing it because of the 'shoulds' and because pushing myself to accomplish, to justify the time I spent writing, to 'act like' a 'real' writer (whatever that means) is what the Gatekeeper does so that I won't spend the time and energy going down into the abyss of myself. The G. will do anything to keep me out of there.

Yes, I only saw most of this yesterday. But then, nearly immediately, and inexplicably, as usually happens, I got some assistance from an unexpected source which helped the lesson deepen. In the daily quotes that show up in my e-mail I found the following - and it all fell together.

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

- Joseph Campbell

Coffee Shop - Sunday Afternoon

Maybe it's because I'm still drunk from last night's wine, lustily imbibed and heartily enjoyed (I've decided that the word "hangover" is just a way of prettying up what is, really, still being drunk).

Maybe I'm just very aware of the difference in age between my middle aged self and the rest of the people here.

Whatever it is - what sounds, in the title, like a peaceful way to spend a Sunday afternoon is, today, an experience in sorting through the cacaphony of fifty different conversations, the clicking of 28 keyboards (I just counted them), and the various sounds involved in preparing and pulling espresso shots. The noise, for that's what all of it adds up to, has a wave-like quality - added to by the music coming out of four well placed speakers - that is giving this experience a rhythm and metre that I wish I could capture in my writing.

Now the blender, someone's ordered another iced drink, comes in to the mix - just as the two neighborhood pre-teen girls come in the door. They show up every time the barrista Tristan is working - their joint crush on this young man clearly visible on their faces, in their postures. And now all conversations drop off at once, one of those moments when, if someone farted, we'd all hear it clearly.

Do I have a point here? Not so sure - as my still drunk brain refuses to produce separate thoughts, discrete ideas - responds only "rabble, rabble, rabble" when I ask it to organize and make sense of what its experiencing.

Perhaps the point is about having reached an age when a wall of sound is heard as just a wall. Perhaps I'm struggling to live with the fact OF my age, that I really ought not drink so much, ought to have better sense. Alas, it seems that I don't - and really can't get too concerned about it.

Perhaps the point ISN'T to worry about what the point is - but to observe, to allow my senses and psyche to be affected by where I am in this moment, to stop demanding that my brain figure out the "whys" of the experience and simply be with what the experience IS.

Being in the World

This weekend just past - a writers' retreat just outside of Louisville, but with a feeling of remoteness from the city and its rapid pace. And then there was the retreat aspect - time to sit on a bench in the chill, under a maple still half possessed of its orange leaves - time for early morning walks with no deadline, no clock telling me it is time to shower and get in the car.

Jeeze - listen to me - you'd think I worked full-time and led a hectic life! But seriously, there is a deepening of joy to be found in time taken in nature, and around people who create. For of course the most affecting aspect of the weekend was being around poets - who are often nit picky about more than just the right word or whether or not a comma works in a certain spot - and who always strive for clarity and for that gem-like object we call a poem.

The juiciness of the smallest piece of experience seems to drip in my sight and smell and hearing when I'm around these people, whose passion is to create, and who willingly, even eagerly, put in the hours and use up the paper to get the result we call poem.

Returning to the world from these retreats always seems like returning from Oz - like I used to flying back from California after school weekends. I have to remind myself to be careful on the drive, to watch vigilantly - because, emotionally for sure, I am still on retreat.

Then today - observing a sand mandala construction at the Festival of Faiths here in town. Though observing is incorrect, the wrong verb. But what is the right one for this experience?

This is my third mandala. And with each one the same gestalt is re-made, re-entered, and yet somehow experienced as for the first time. Different populations don't seem to affect the experience, nor do variants in the location or the time of day I am able to attend. I guess the verb I was needing to use instead of observing was experiencing.

If you've never had the opportunity to experience a mandala construction, take the next one you get. It's actually rather indescribable - but I can put a bit of it into words.

First is the rare physical sensation of calm - peace if you like - that moves from the mandala, out through the monks, and into the entirety of the space. It comes over me in the same way, or nearly so, as the grains of colored sand are placed in position - through the slightest of motions and the clearest of intentions that weren't even evident before settling into the space from which I watch. There is an obvious, but always unexpected, feel of heart at rest, of the blood's motion proceeding at its natural pace - both too often lacking in the daily round we call life.

Then come the images, the memories of sound and smell and hearing that somehow don't seem to be personal. The closest I can come to defining them is that they are what Jung called collective unconscious - some connective memory that we - individually - haven't experienced, but know, nevertheless.

Usually, and today was no exception, I discover - when I first find my body needing to move - that I've sat or stood for over an hour without awareness of time passing. Or maybe I've fallen into time in a whole new way - I don't know. What I do know is that when the monks are ready to stop I always feel as if I'm supposed to either go with them or stay in the space where this experience lives. But the world outside has not gone away - and I must re-enter it after all.

I try to do so carefully - in the same way I leave retreat - in the same way I used to leave school weekends. I also find that I see this world outside differently than before I went in. People's faces seem so angry to me, their movements so unsure. There appears to be more, and noisier, traffic than ever. Most interesting of all is that I seem able to observe all of this and not feel anger or sadness about it. Nor can I join back into this hard-edged world with much energy or any will to change it.

The more of these experiences I have, the greater my appreciation of the incredibly rich gifts I am graced with. Yes, me, myself, Mary Jo - who has often bemoaned so much of what life has presented her with - is learning, gradually, to see herself as the Being in the World she was meant to be - always was.

Namaste

Life, friends, is boring.

It's the birthday of John Berryman, poet and teacher. I've always related to him because he struggled - obviously as an alcoholic, and less overtly with depression - which he dealt with through his writing.

I try to remember, when I feel leaden in the world and despairing of any future easiness, that creative people are often creative because of the dark vision they carry - or have lived inside of. It's difficult, this attempting to recall the impetus for wanting, hell, for needing to write. The world in which I was raised, the world I tried so valiantly to fit in to, the world where so many people seem so comfortable and happy to exist on the surface - this world had me convinced that my darkness, my ironic viewpoint, my deeps were to be hidden rather than written down and shared.

Shaking off this conviction has been the work of my last few years. I'm better for the shaking, but still fall back into the belief that my experience and what I have to write about are not really wanted by the world - at least occasionally.

So I'm glad to be reminded today of Berryman's Pulitzer for the 77 Dream Songs - and these lines that He wrote in "Dream Song 14":

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,

we ourselves flash and yearn,

and moreover my mother told me as a boy

(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored

means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no

inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

Peoples bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes

as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag

and somehow a dog

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving

behind: me, wag.

Watch This Space

Last week I realized I hadn't posted for almost a month. The truth is that it's been a busy time, with observing and serving the end of life process of a friend's mother, with a new year of medical education ramping up, and with [finally - thank the Spirit] temperatures easing down so that outdoor activity is again possible rather than simply suicidal.

The whole truth is that what's been going on in my life, what I've been choosing to put time and energy into, has been strongly triggering loads of unfinished business. Times like these, at least in the past, haven't allowed much energy or brain power for either writing or sharing - this one seems to be running along parallel lines. It's nothing but the truth to say that, while I know this will pass, and I'll be back to attempting to run, or at least comment on the world - to giving you my opinion, whether you want it or not - for now it seems the requirement is for an inside job.

So - I can't say when I'll post again - but - in the spirit of autumn, of dying and rest and the sleep of long cold nights soon to be with us - I have faith that a time of the juicy sap of life slowing down is just what is needed.

Unusual for me - I offer the ultimate sign of hope - WATCH THIS SPACE!