February Fifteenth Twenty Twelve

My - over 60 - cousin Susan & her lovely daughter Kimmy

No matter how I say it or write it, the reality of the upcoming year for me is that it is the year I turn 60.  And that's freaking me out.  Sixty years old - some synaptic process interacts with some idea I picked up somewhere - years ago - and I only think "Old!"  Reality, evidence to the contrary, how others see me, what I see in the mirror, what I feel - none of that matters in the face of this belief - that, at 60 I will suddenly become old.

I suppose it's no different really from the belief I had in adolescence that I'd become "adult" at 18, from considering 30 as the age to "get serious" about life, from feeling, at 46 (don't ask me why it was 46) the entrance to "middle age."  The belief itself - the message I've carried around within me - isn't different, but how that belief has affected my capacity to imagine and consider is VERY different.  For reasons I don't yet understand thinking of 60 as "old" has kept me from planning for or playing with what life might look or feel like, what life might hold when I am old.

So - though I could put it in terms that make me sound more OK with it - the truth is this belief tells me that when I get old, life is over.  God, have I swallowed the Cultural Gatekeeper whole, or what!  Our culture tells us older women are invisible, that we're "done" - no longer desirable sexually or even as customers (which, of course, is the most important thing anyone can be in our culture).  We become overlooked, even invisible, after a certain age.  And because I have held this belief I haven't imagined anything about what life may be, look like, feel like, hold, or bring into being once I reach 60.

I understand that writing this, telling it, confronting it - I'm doing the work of debunking this myth I've given space to in my head for so long.  So that's a good thing.  But I'll tell you honestly that prying loose this belief that 60=old=game over brings up tons of uncertainty, wheelbarrows filled with the rocks of self-doubt I've always tended to throw at myself.  Going against such a long held belief, backed by the cultural dictums, reminds me of the labor of birthing.  The pain of birthing comes from opening - as the cervix widens the entire body loosens to prepare to push - and our core musculature and skeleton becomes more flexible.  We require support - physically and emotionally.

I guess, in allowing my words to flow here I'm finding the metaphors my imagination can work with.  Birth is a good one - and one I have worked with many times in the past ten years.  Yes, it involves pain, and hard work, letting go of trying to control the uncontrollable - but what in life, what that's worth having anyway, does not.  A re-imagining is required then, and now.  And sharing the unfolding story, developing it, getting feedback from those who hear it - this too is necessary.

At least that's how it looks to me as I sit outside in the breeze and sun of this late December day.  Sure as the weather changes so will my consideration of what it means for me to reach 60.   I'll keep writing here as it happens.

The Occupy Movement - or - How I Came to Think About Being an American

When the Occupy movement began my immediate response was, "HELL, Yeah!"  I still respond that way - more today than when it began.  The events taking place at the various sites, the responses of so-called Conservative media and commentators (I say so-called because I don't see these institutions as conserving anything, except their own status and power and grabs for more), the struggles (often against guns and other weapons) that the Occupiers have undergone to continue the movement - all encourage me in my view that this movement is important.

At the start I didn't see the underpinnings of the movement.  Yes, I'd had an immediate positive response, but I think that came more from a place of Aquarian rebellion than from a creative or critical thought process.  Even when I began supporting the Occupy Louisville group, I still wasn't sure what it was about.  Like so many others I was used to asking, or posing, the question "What do they want?"

It was only with the recent moves in three separate cities, on the same night (interesting, hmmmm?) to remove the Occupiers from their peaceful (mostly) and organized locations - moves undertaken in the dark of night (another hmmmm) and by police in riot gear - that I really understood the importance of the protest.  What they/we of the 99% want has less to do with specific issues and everything to do with the assumptions most of us have about what it means to be an American.

There's so much to articulate about what that last sentence means, that I feel a sense of overwhelm in the idea of trying.  Luckily I happened upon an article in Rolling Stone that says it, and better than I could.  Here's a link to it:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-ows-protests-20111110 

I'd encourage you to read this article - it's not long.  The author's journey to understanding the Occupy Movement felt really similar to mine - and rather reflects the thinking of a bunch of folks I've talked to.  Have conversations about it, or do something, anything that expresses your own point of view.  Me, I'm gonna keep supporting the OL group, keep considering what I'm doing that maintains the status quo the Movement is throwing a light on, and keep trying to live up to my "Hell, Yeah!" spirit.

Telling Our Stories

The Sun Singer - Allerton Park

Just last week I ended regular therapy sessions with the fabulous person I've been seeing for nearly five years.  It was time - I knew it - we'd discussed it over several months, but only just bringing the idea into the room and then allowing it to be there.  Only on the day of our last appointment did I appreciate that it really was fine for it to BE the last appointment.  And that session flowed forward around the decision.

As expected, the Gatekeepers who accompany me through every day came forward in the days following to attempt their usual sabotage, to harass my adult attempts to allow the necessary grief, and to plant the seeds of fear in my child-self.  Yet their attempts to derail me, as I move into a life that doesn't include regularly scheduled sessions,  are weaker than previously.  Perhaps I've "made friends" with them after all. A wonderful teacher once said that this process of friendship with the Gatekeepers frees us to see them for who and what they really are - messengers of protection that we once needed but now can function without.

Or possibly the power of these Gatekeepers to push me into the swirl of worry, of self-doubt, of draining and tiring judgment of my thoughts and actions is weakened because I - instead of closing myself off from others as they want me to do - instead chose to share this important choice and its attendant emotions WITH others.  I told the story, and continue to do so in conversation and interaction with those I care for, and who care for me.

Telling the story to others - allowing them to hear our sadness or anger, our ambivalence (which is quite dominant in this situations), our fear, our joy - is what permits the emotions to move in and through us.  In telling this story (to my wonderful story telling group - among others) not only did my emotions become accessible, but I was able to see this ending in context - as part of the flow of growth and change in my life.  Somehow - for me - experiences of depth and soul do not become 'real' until I tell about them.  Oh, the Gatekeepers hate that - hate my facing reality.  But then they aren't in charge anymore, so too bad.

Telling my story to the group, rather than reading a story I've written (what I usually do) also illuminated that I just might be a storyteller.  I've wondered if I might have the skills of a teller as well as a writer, and telling this to the group confirms - well, at least sends a strong maybe into consciousness.

Recently Louisville received the gift of a regular Moth Story Slam.  For years I've listened to The Moth on NPR, and fantasized about going to the closest slam (Chicago).  Now, voila!, I can attend a Story Slam each month.  Why am I telling you this?  Well, as you can guess, I may put my name 'into the hat' to tell a story this coming month.  After my experience with the small group, this seems like a next logical step - get on stage, tell my story, and be open to the response of an audience.  It may not be THIS story (at least not this month - when the Story Slam theme is "Busted"), but then I've got plenty of other stories to tell that fit this theme.

Will I do well when I do this?  Will the audience come along with me as I tell?  Will I cry, or become confused, or forget the next part (since stories must be told without notes)?  I guess we'll find out.  What I know now is that telling my stories is important for me.  And maybe it's as important for others to hear them as it is for me to tell.

The Challenge

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" 

I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

- Rabbi Zusya

And isn’t that the challenge, for each of us – to be ourselves, our largest self, the self that burns, perhaps, too brightly for some of the people in our lives.  Most of the people I’ve met seem to struggle with this.  I know I do.
Rabbi Zusya gave this answer to someone who asked him why he wasn’t more like the Patriarch.  In answering as he did Zusya was not saying he couldn’t be as large a figure as Moses, but that his task was to act from his own authority, from what God had given him to work with.  To be the most Zusya he could be was his task, what, and all that, God wanted of him.
I’ve struggled most of my life with the belief that I should be “better” than I am – with feeling a failure because I can’t write like Fitzgerald or Welty, and other equally ridiculous premises.  Conversely, I fear to try, to speak and write from my own voice, with passion, power, conviction - what a conflict.
And then there’s the belief that I think most of us have – that we “should” be like “most” people.  I’ve only met a few people who have that inner sense that they can speak and act from a passionate and empowered position, from a sense of self that, while they may fail at things, or take a wrong path, it is all in the service of learning who and how and what they are – and that’s just fine.  We are too often raised, or at least acculturated, to fit in, to not rock the boat, to avoid taking the big chance.  The risk of being only, and absolutely, ourselves places us on the outside, or sometimes in the lead – both lonely places.
I know – not everyone can do what Moses did – leading a people, making decisions that affect life and death outcomes, listening only to that voice that he called God and some of us might call inner self.  And we tend toward thinking that our individual choices, our inner callings, the actions we take when we aren’t sure what to do – that those don’t matter anyway.  But what if they do?
What if that is what Zusya is telling us – today?  What if being faithful to, trusting, acting on and from our authentic self matters as much as parting the sea did?  How do we know it doesn’t – in some future we may not be around to see?

Certainly, it ought to be evident, I don’t have any answers here.  At best I can consider these ideas, these questions, this challenge – and share them with whoever shows up.  At best, and for what it’s worth, I can be Mary Jo (she of the incorrect name) and try appreciating, if not understanding, what a good thing that is.

Summer Rant

         For over two weeks now the majority of my experience of the world has taken place looking out the living room window.  I’m not the only one, I know, hibernating indoors, avoiding fifteen days of over ninety degrees and heat indices in the hundreds.  Even from the window this neighborhood seems to be holing up, hiding out where it’s cool, shades drawn. 

Across the street the young couple - earlier this month they hung Buddhist prayer flags, planted daylilies, and carried home a high backed wooden bench which they struggled up to the porch – the ones who spent mornings on the porch with coffee and cigarettes, evenings on that bench too – they’re inside now too.  The squirrels seem lethargic, while the cars move down the street, faster, it seems in the heat – particularly those with windows down, with no working air inside. 

Although a nearly continual breeze tricks me into hoping for air that may refresh, sets the prayer flags waving merrily; when I succumb to that hope all it takes is opening my front door to dash it against the furnace of sticky concrete.  Outside the air smells like room temperature mayonnaise, left on the counter after the sandwich is made. 

After fifteen days of it my body still won’t adjust – probably because I only go out when I must, when I’ve promised to be somewhere.  Yet the body isn’t interested in becoming regulated to life in a sauna, because this body sweats.  Not one of the healthy, good workout sweats either, the kind that lets you know you’re doing yourself some good.  Even getting in a short walk in the relatively cooler morning hours results in coming home drenched, so slick the doorknob won’t turn in my hand, unable to see for the salt pouring down into my eyes.  It’s just too tiring, too trifling a reward for the effort.

Looking out the window will suffice.  As will focusing on what I can do indoors.  Some good has come of it after all:  the apartment cleaned, de-cobwebbed, a first-rate start on a short story made, working my way through the journals of the past few years to see what I’ve learned and what I’m still working on, making space on the bookshelves, and writing a series of articles on working with dreams. 

Mostly this time has been an exercise for my psyche and spirit – a practice in sitting, accepting that sitting has value to me, time to hold awareness of my tendencies to self-punishment, following my relish for reading and films into the creative places they take me.  The most surprising gift though has been locating in myself something I’ve never had - faith.  Not faith in a religious or even a practical, plan-filled sense – but finding faith that, just as, eventually cooler weather will arrive, so too does acceptance of who and how and what I am seem to be showing up. 

How interesting I find it to discover that I can rant about the weather, among other things, and not see myself as a whiny bitch.  I get to know and act on my body’s inability to deal with wet heat and not find it weak and lazy.  To understand that it isn’t just about escaping into fantasy when I read and watch movies, but a creative jumpstart for my own writing is part of that faith.  To know that I am a woman approaching sixty, still learning, becoming ever more her own creation, and even more comfortable with herself – that’s a faith I never thought to have.

Not bad for this summer I guess.

A Nightmare Come To Life

   Someone is after me - a threatening and dangerous someone, with a weapon or just with the capability to hurt or kill me.  And I can't get away - can't run because my feet are stuck, my legs won't move.  Or I find a place to hide from the danger, but know, somehow, that the person will find me anyway.  
   This is one of my worst dreams, one that will reoccur, a dream I continue to seek to understand.  It varies, but is always about being "got" by someone who wants me dead and I can't do anything to stop it.  Brrrr - makes me shiver to recall it.  But that dream has been on my mind, poking at my consciousness - since hearing about the recent slaughter of nearly 80 people at a youth camp in Norway.  
   My usual Saturday morning ritual is an NPR marathon - propped up on my bed with coffee, a notepad for ideas or thoughts or interesting words heard, and, lately, a stash of kleenex to handle the allergic responses to our lovely Kentucky summer weather.  This past Saturday the first story I heard was about the massacre at the youth camp.  Suddenly Click & Clack, Bob Edwards' Weekend, and even This American Life lost their appeal.  It felt to me obscene somehow to be relaxing and enjoying myself after hearing a mother speak of how her daughter had hidden in a bathroom while the (apparently) lone gunman had shot another youth right outside of her hiding place.
   With each report - of how the murderer had chased those who tried to escape the island by water and shot them as they swam, of the young man who hid behind the very rock the gunman stood on - he could hear him breathing raggedly, of the woman who watched while the man (dressed as a police) called people to him and then gunned them down - I imagined the fearful music of Pan's pipes playing in my head.  I felt a connection to the mothers and fathers of those children at the camp.  Every parent's nightmare - being unable to protect a beloved child - urged me to a need to speak to my own daughter even though I knew she was safe, and sleeping, not far away.
   And my own dreams, of being unable to escape from sudden danger, certain death, were aroused - brought into the waking world for review and interpretation.  Just recently I wrote about my understanding that the world isn't safe, that safety (if such exists) lies in ourselves rather than in the environment http://companionforthejourney.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-in-world-is-safe.html.  Yet here I was reacting to an event in that world from and around an unconscious and deeply held fear - one I don't usually let myself know about as I go on my daily round.  
   Why is it we respond so emotionally, so strongly from the unconscious, to some stories, some events and not to others?  Across the planet, every day, people are killed, mass murders take place, terror as well as weaponry is used to do no more, often, than make a point.  I don't usually react to those stories so strongly.  And I suppose that's good - for if I were to take every story of death and defilement to heart I don't believe my heart or my psyche could stand it.
   Is it enough that my dreams and my waking life connected through hearing this story of horror and madness?  In doing the further work to open my unconscious, my shadow, to connection with the conscious - in furthering my own healing through writing (for I hear several "stories" knocking, requesting awareness, wanting to be told) am I contributing something to the collective consciousness?  
   Given that this is all I CAN do - I only hope it will be enough.
   

what in the world is safe

I was telling a friend about a poetry reading I attended recently at a downtown hotel.  21C is such an interesting place, filled with modern art exhibits, and including one of the best restaurants in the city – the kind of place you take out-of-town visitors who like art or enjoy gourmet food, or who just like to sit with a well prepared and presented cocktail.  That it’s located downtown is a problem though for some people who, like my friend, wonder if “it’s safe” to park and walk to at night.
My friend expressed this concern – she’d like to attend the readings, held at the hotel once a month, but worries about the neighborhood.  In reply I said something I’ve heard myself say many times to others.  “Sure it’s safe, I suppose.  Well, I don’t worry too much about it.”
This time I must have actually heard what I said.  And I’ve been wondering about it since.
My wondering took the form of a question.  Why does everybody else worry about that so much?  But soon I began asking a different question – why don’t I worry about it.
What I first told myself was – well it’s safe enough at night really.  There are people in the restaurant, coming and going from others in the next block.  And the rest of that block between 8th St. and 9th on Main contains museums and one of the biggest tourist attractions (Hillerich and Bradsby) in town.  But the reality is that, at night the museums and H & B are closed.  The next block really is a long one, pretty far away to expect help if something happened.
Then I got into defensiveness.  Well – I live alone, and sometimes don’t have anyone to go places with.  Unless I want to miss out on things I just can’t worry about this.
Defensiveness became resentment.  Well, these other people have someone, a live-in spouse or partner, who will go somewhere with them if it’s not safe.  They can afford to worry.
Even without the defensiveness or resentment those things are true.  But they aren’t to the point.  Why don’t I worry about safety?  Should I worry about it?  More than I do?
This line of thought led me to a question that I’d never asked any of those who’d queried me about safety – what did they mean by safety.  I knew what they meant, in a particular sense – was there a danger of mugging or purse snatching – would they return to their car to find it stripped, the windows broken, or even gone?  In a larger sense though, they were, I was sure, asking about emotional wellbeing as much or more than physical safety.
Just to make sure I was on the right track I called a few people who’d asked me that question.  Sure enough, each of them said yes, they were asking if they would feel secure.  One person brought it all into focus when she said, “Downtown isn’t familiar to me, so it’s just scary.”
And that statement provided the final puzzle piece.  The familiar feels, to most people, safe.  The unfamiliar – scary – to most people.  Looking at the completed puzzle, I got it.  I’m not most people – not anywhere close.  Safety, security and wellbeing are NOT things I expect from the world because I didn’t grow up with them, did not know what they looked like.  Instead, I learned early on that my only safety was in not showing fear, in plastering a brave countenance over my panic, and in escaping what was familiar in search of . . . well, I wasn’t sure what, then.
It has taken decades, thousands of hours in therapy, education, and even heart attack to learn that fear isn’t shameful, to appreciate that safety isn’t Out There somewhere, to understand that my early learning was based on bad teaching.  Yet that learning did hold gifts.
One is this lack of worry about external safety.  Now, I’m NOT out in the world taking foolish and unnecessary risks every day, though I did some of that when I was younger.  I do have, and use, common sense, and have at times pointedly driven away from places, people or situations that were clearly dangerous.  With time and learning and experience, I’ve identified what’s worth taking a risk for, and learned how much risk I am willing to take.
I suppose my way of being and doing looks mighty brave to others.  Honestly, I’ve never felt brave in going places alone, or exploring events or new cities solo.  Courage is fear that has found its legs, and I’m not afraid when I go out in the world – if I’m interested in what’s out there, engaged in what’s going on, meeting new people and trying new things.
In some ways that early, ungratifying, environment from which I learned a lot of wrong lessons has better prepared me to live in and explore a world that really isn’t essentially safe, or set up to be so.  I’ll never be one of those devastated by its inherent indifference to our individual wants or needs, as so many are.  I’m learning instead that safety comes from occupying my own true ground, from authenticity and even from vulnerability.
In learning this I understand that I really don’t have to worry if the neighborhood or the situation is safe.  All I need to attend to is the answer to the question – do I feel safe in it.