I hate uncertainty.
That's a confession, not a defensive declaration of stubborn intent.
I'm coming to understand better what that means to me as I work through things, confusing moments, with Ann Marie. Moving from dependence to independence to interdependence, moving from certainty that leaves so much unspoken and unrevealed, hurtfully so, to uncertainty that is open and genuine and hopeful, is an incredibly healthy-feeling process, but also a very, very scary one.
Look at our world, full of contracts, bindings, insurance, all meant to externally enforce certainty. Which none of them do--all they do is create different reactions to uncertainty when it happens, which it does.
It kind of hurts even thinking or writing about this, because I want to feel something, to have something and someone in my life, that I can count on. That I can absolutely trust with my heart and feel, "this I know." And to think of everything in life being uncertain feels like saying that I can't have that, that everything is transient and unobtainable. That I am unsafe, in danger.
And in a sense, of course, it is that way, because we all die, we all get old, we all keep growing and changing. But it seems that a connection to something I can really believe in is my rock in life. It frees me, it fuels me, it inspires me, it gives meaning. How can I acknowledge that without fearing uncertainty?
What I'm starting to realize is that I've been taking the wrong path to what I've needed all this time. It has something to do with what I mentioned in an earlier post, when I spoke of Ann Marie telling me I respond to crises by resisting change. Part of that is equating change with uncertainty, and uncertainty with loss.
And that last part may be the key. I capture a certainty, and then lock it away and keep it hidden from the world, hidden from my heart, which can't bear the thought of something changing into loss. It explains a lot about how I've handled separation from AM in the past, approaching it without even realizing I was doing it as a sort of life on pause, or life frozen, or life on hold, and our communication would become two spectators of our shared life, sitting on the sidelines, and I felt of life that it was something that would happen later, something to come after riding out or waiting out the present moment of uncertainty, which was most certainly not part of any life I wanted anything to do with.
What I'm starting to see isn't some detached, easy-come-easy-go, let-life-do-whatever-it-wants-and-don't-care reaction to that fearful notion of uncertainty. I think too much equivocation can be poisonous to real depth of connection in life. Instead, what I'm starting to see is the potential for a wholly different approach to creating lasting, growing, dependable realities in life. Not one that struggles and emerges with a frozen statue of certainty, then plants it in the town square and lets it rot. But one that's based on the intentional and specific application of hope, of imagination, of willingness, of openness, a kind of certainty that is only as certain as the present moment, and yet is strong and deep and count-on-able as anything we could hope for.
I believe in commitment. I believe in things that last. I believe in certainty. But it requires being friends with uncertainty, and renewing that friendship every day, remaking and renewing and re-loving what I want to make permanent, lasting. Permanence not as stasis, but constant re-creation.
Maybe that's what all this rambling points to. Seeing that life is only a series of moments, but that we have the choice of how those moments take shape. We can dissipate them, through disconnection or through superficial skimming. Or we can guide them, knit them together, make them into an ongoing series of deepening, bonding, nurturing, building moments, chapters of a greater story, one that's precisely as certain as we make it. Which can be absolutely, or not at all. It's in our hands.
It's still touchy for me. It still hits a nerve that's directly connected to my fear center. Part of me doesn't want to let go of any certainty, however lifeless and anti-life it is. But the uncertainty-certainty--that gives me more power than does any objective control over something. It's the power to choose something profound, again and again and again, and delight in its growth. That's the greatest power we have. It will take work for me to believe in that hope enough to start really basing my life on it. Its potential is daunting, but exciting.
2008-07-11
2008-07-07
2008-06-29
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Favorite moments of the day:
While running on the MKT trail this morning, on my way out, I passed an elderly Asian man (not positive, but I think Chinese), walking glacially slow, head down, no expression. Not the least common sight out there. But I've been thinking about how little interaction there can be sometimes between people on the trail. When I was on the main trail in Yellow Springs recently, I was amazed and delighted by the way people would go out of their way to say hi to you. In Columbia, it's not unpleasant, but most people are more reserved and don't make eye contact. I've noticed I don't tend to initiate a "hi" unless there's some kind of obvious opening, like eye contact, and sometimes it bugs me that I'm not one of those people who surprises you by saying hi. I feel the positive effects of it, and I'd like to give it back. So, on my way back during my run, I passed the old gentleman again, same head-down look for him, but this time I said, "good morning." And just like that, in a second, he looked up and the sunniest smile you can imagine beamed off his face, and he said the same thing to me in return in broken English.
Yes, if it's about my life, this blog will deal with a lot of small moments.
My other fave moment today came when I was taking the dogs out to Grindstone park. We had our walk around the area, and were heading back to the start. The dogs angled toward one of the entrances to the water, and I followed them down to the bank to watch them splash around, which is such a nice sight. As I was standing at the water's edge, it dawned on me--I have water-friendly sandals on; why am I on the shore? So I waded into the shallow water with them, going a little ways downstream, which only encouraged them to walk, swim, and splash around longer than they'd normally have done. The water felt cool and I felt alive. I'm glad I didn't make it through this week or so of looking after them without taking on some dog behavior myself!
Another nice random, if vicarious moment was flipping on the TV this afternoon (to rewind a tape I'd previously taped some Euro 2008 soccer on) and happening to catch the men's 100-meter-dash Olympic trials. And I saw the fastest time ever recorded in that race--9.68 seconds. it didn't count as a world record due to slightly too-high wind speeds, but it was the fastest anyone has ever been recorded running that distance. It was neat to just randomly happen to see the boundaries of human limits being pushed a little further.
(Speaking of TV, I've been remarking to myself how little of it I've been watching in the last month or two. I have the last few episodes of House, CSI, and Numb3rs on tape, unwatched, and I haven't had any interest in watching them. I've got piles of MST3Ks, DVDs I've never watched, and a full set of cable channels to choose from, and I don't feel like choosing any of it. All I've watched lately has been a bit of tennis and soccer, and some basketball during the playoffs (go Celtics). The TV's been idle otherwise. It feels good, and a little weird. I'm almost tempted to get rid of it altogether.)
Apart from that, it was a day of random activity. After biking to the trail and running this morning, I looked at a house for sale on Anderson Ave. It was a lovely old house, with lots of wood and character, old trees, lots of light and open space. It also had some pretty severe cracks in the foundation, and probably-related signs of shifting on the main level. So not perfect, but it made me think hard about the type of space I want to be in. It was close to an ideal space, but then I feel like stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Space for what? Focusing on a certain space feels like it might be in line with the checklist thinking I describe several posts ago--the approach I've taken over the last few years to sort of build an imitation of life out of unliving pieces, rather than focusing on the living endeavors that give life purpose, then building out from there. Of course, there's value to being practical, and nothing wrong with looking for a space that I feel good about and which could be a place to house a life and family, but it's also a warning sign for me where I am now. I feel like I should keep my focus on figuring out some important relationship issues, and then with that knowledge, digging in to either shared or singular next life steps. Then, requirements for space and location will have more context.
I also spent a couple more hours in the pottery studio today, trimming one last bowl and glazing the two larger mugs I've made. The glazing I did previously on my first/smaller pieces was really hit and miss--didn't turn out as I'd hoped. The instructor, Karsten, happened to stop by today and he told me I was being too conservative with my glazes, that I could go thicker. So I did that on the two pieces I glazed today. These are the two pieces I most hope turn out well. Fingers crossed.
Least favorite moment of the day: forgetting it was my dad's 70th birthday yesterday. I'd been keeping mental track of it for the last month or so, but completely lost the plot just this last week and spaced it out. I'm glad I got to see him this morning and wish him happy birthday, but I wish I hadn't let it slip. I guess there's always room to improve.
It's been a productive day, and the emotional reassurance I received yesterday is keeping me calmer than I was before it. I'm still feeling a bit anxious and working through some confidence issues, a state I'll be at least partially locked in for the next week or two. I'm really hoping things go as well as they felt they could during my phone call yesterday morning. I feel so ready to just get on with it and start living the things I've been putting off, especially in the relationship area. I still don't know why I've been able to do that so well; I work and work and save money and don't make any plans, yet somehow subconsciously assume that everything I want is going to work out. But it never actually gets worked out, and I go for long stretches completely missing the connection, always shifting the actual substance of life until later, a mysterious later that is undefined.
I've done this most of my adult life, and it's afflicted pretty much every relationship I've been in. This is the first time I've ever really seen it like this, the first time I've realized how this pattern works, how I defer life. Even when I get pieces of that puzzle, it's always come too late to put the lessons into practice in the relationship I've been in. This time, there might just be a chance. I'll fight for it.
Better go now. Have some more to do before bed, and want to get there at a reasonable time, to then get up early and bike to work. I've been on a real streak with exercise, and I want to keep it going full speed.
While running on the MKT trail this morning, on my way out, I passed an elderly Asian man (not positive, but I think Chinese), walking glacially slow, head down, no expression. Not the least common sight out there. But I've been thinking about how little interaction there can be sometimes between people on the trail. When I was on the main trail in Yellow Springs recently, I was amazed and delighted by the way people would go out of their way to say hi to you. In Columbia, it's not unpleasant, but most people are more reserved and don't make eye contact. I've noticed I don't tend to initiate a "hi" unless there's some kind of obvious opening, like eye contact, and sometimes it bugs me that I'm not one of those people who surprises you by saying hi. I feel the positive effects of it, and I'd like to give it back. So, on my way back during my run, I passed the old gentleman again, same head-down look for him, but this time I said, "good morning." And just like that, in a second, he looked up and the sunniest smile you can imagine beamed off his face, and he said the same thing to me in return in broken English.
Yes, if it's about my life, this blog will deal with a lot of small moments.
My other fave moment today came when I was taking the dogs out to Grindstone park. We had our walk around the area, and were heading back to the start. The dogs angled toward one of the entrances to the water, and I followed them down to the bank to watch them splash around, which is such a nice sight. As I was standing at the water's edge, it dawned on me--I have water-friendly sandals on; why am I on the shore? So I waded into the shallow water with them, going a little ways downstream, which only encouraged them to walk, swim, and splash around longer than they'd normally have done. The water felt cool and I felt alive. I'm glad I didn't make it through this week or so of looking after them without taking on some dog behavior myself!
Another nice random, if vicarious moment was flipping on the TV this afternoon (to rewind a tape I'd previously taped some Euro 2008 soccer on) and happening to catch the men's 100-meter-dash Olympic trials. And I saw the fastest time ever recorded in that race--9.68 seconds. it didn't count as a world record due to slightly too-high wind speeds, but it was the fastest anyone has ever been recorded running that distance. It was neat to just randomly happen to see the boundaries of human limits being pushed a little further.
(Speaking of TV, I've been remarking to myself how little of it I've been watching in the last month or two. I have the last few episodes of House, CSI, and Numb3rs on tape, unwatched, and I haven't had any interest in watching them. I've got piles of MST3Ks, DVDs I've never watched, and a full set of cable channels to choose from, and I don't feel like choosing any of it. All I've watched lately has been a bit of tennis and soccer, and some basketball during the playoffs (go Celtics). The TV's been idle otherwise. It feels good, and a little weird. I'm almost tempted to get rid of it altogether.)
Apart from that, it was a day of random activity. After biking to the trail and running this morning, I looked at a house for sale on Anderson Ave. It was a lovely old house, with lots of wood and character, old trees, lots of light and open space. It also had some pretty severe cracks in the foundation, and probably-related signs of shifting on the main level. So not perfect, but it made me think hard about the type of space I want to be in. It was close to an ideal space, but then I feel like stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Space for what? Focusing on a certain space feels like it might be in line with the checklist thinking I describe several posts ago--the approach I've taken over the last few years to sort of build an imitation of life out of unliving pieces, rather than focusing on the living endeavors that give life purpose, then building out from there. Of course, there's value to being practical, and nothing wrong with looking for a space that I feel good about and which could be a place to house a life and family, but it's also a warning sign for me where I am now. I feel like I should keep my focus on figuring out some important relationship issues, and then with that knowledge, digging in to either shared or singular next life steps. Then, requirements for space and location will have more context.
I also spent a couple more hours in the pottery studio today, trimming one last bowl and glazing the two larger mugs I've made. The glazing I did previously on my first/smaller pieces was really hit and miss--didn't turn out as I'd hoped. The instructor, Karsten, happened to stop by today and he told me I was being too conservative with my glazes, that I could go thicker. So I did that on the two pieces I glazed today. These are the two pieces I most hope turn out well. Fingers crossed.
Least favorite moment of the day: forgetting it was my dad's 70th birthday yesterday. I'd been keeping mental track of it for the last month or so, but completely lost the plot just this last week and spaced it out. I'm glad I got to see him this morning and wish him happy birthday, but I wish I hadn't let it slip. I guess there's always room to improve.
It's been a productive day, and the emotional reassurance I received yesterday is keeping me calmer than I was before it. I'm still feeling a bit anxious and working through some confidence issues, a state I'll be at least partially locked in for the next week or two. I'm really hoping things go as well as they felt they could during my phone call yesterday morning. I feel so ready to just get on with it and start living the things I've been putting off, especially in the relationship area. I still don't know why I've been able to do that so well; I work and work and save money and don't make any plans, yet somehow subconsciously assume that everything I want is going to work out. But it never actually gets worked out, and I go for long stretches completely missing the connection, always shifting the actual substance of life until later, a mysterious later that is undefined.
I've done this most of my adult life, and it's afflicted pretty much every relationship I've been in. This is the first time I've ever really seen it like this, the first time I've realized how this pattern works, how I defer life. Even when I get pieces of that puzzle, it's always come too late to put the lessons into practice in the relationship I've been in. This time, there might just be a chance. I'll fight for it.
Better go now. Have some more to do before bed, and want to get there at a reasonable time, to then get up early and bike to work. I've been on a real streak with exercise, and I want to keep it going full speed.
2008-06-28
Joys
The feeling of having only recently seen, spoken to, or written to people I love from whom I've been keeping myself apart
Feeling heavy-hearted in a moment, knocking myself, and then realizing that I need to do something that's healthy for me, and then doing it
Waking early(ish) on a Saturday morning, looking out and seeing sun, and feeling excited to go hop on my bike and do some serious exercise at the gym
The cherubic faces of little ones in cars passing me as I bike, peering at me curiously, and how much it makes me smile
Noticing interesting patterns and colors of decorative wooden shingles on the side of a random house I pass, that I never noticed before
The two young girls at the front counter of the gym (the ARC), practicing bumping a volleyball back and forth to each other in the little enclosed space behind the counter
How many quite old people are at the gym, walking laps and on various workout machines
The feeling of shooting several swishes in a row on the basketball court, falling off my rhythm, and then finding it again
The indescribable feeling of throwing up a high, arcing outside shot and having the instinctive feeling that it is definitely going in, well before it does
The feeling of, after about 20 tries, finally hitting that shot from 3-point distance from the left corner (for some reason, that one position really resists my efforts)
Shooting baskets for the exact amount of time needed to get back to my locker and open my backpack just in time to get a call from Ann Marie, and to feel marvelously loved and confident by the contents of the call. Literally a few seconds earlier or later, and I would have missed the call.
Going to the weights area after that call, and feeling stronger and more determined as a result of it, going through chest press, lat pulls, dips, pull-ups, shoulder press, butterfly, tricep curls, bicep curls, two types of forearm curls, squats, leg presses, hamstring curls, back bends, shoulder raises, and a couple more I don't really have concise names for and don't want to spell out, because this is wordy enough already
Feeling in love.
Feeling heavy-hearted in a moment, knocking myself, and then realizing that I need to do something that's healthy for me, and then doing it
Waking early(ish) on a Saturday morning, looking out and seeing sun, and feeling excited to go hop on my bike and do some serious exercise at the gym
The cherubic faces of little ones in cars passing me as I bike, peering at me curiously, and how much it makes me smile
Noticing interesting patterns and colors of decorative wooden shingles on the side of a random house I pass, that I never noticed before
The two young girls at the front counter of the gym (the ARC), practicing bumping a volleyball back and forth to each other in the little enclosed space behind the counter
How many quite old people are at the gym, walking laps and on various workout machines
The feeling of shooting several swishes in a row on the basketball court, falling off my rhythm, and then finding it again
The indescribable feeling of throwing up a high, arcing outside shot and having the instinctive feeling that it is definitely going in, well before it does
The feeling of, after about 20 tries, finally hitting that shot from 3-point distance from the left corner (for some reason, that one position really resists my efforts)
Shooting baskets for the exact amount of time needed to get back to my locker and open my backpack just in time to get a call from Ann Marie, and to feel marvelously loved and confident by the contents of the call. Literally a few seconds earlier or later, and I would have missed the call.
Going to the weights area after that call, and feeling stronger and more determined as a result of it, going through chest press, lat pulls, dips, pull-ups, shoulder press, butterfly, tricep curls, bicep curls, two types of forearm curls, squats, leg presses, hamstring curls, back bends, shoulder raises, and a couple more I don't really have concise names for and don't want to spell out, because this is wordy enough already
Feeling in love.
2008-06-27
Moments
On a whim, I made a run to the local natural-foods store (Clover's, for those in the know) just before its closing time tonight. I was working on writing a letter to AM, and put off going just long enough so that I had to really hop on the bike and race, head- and tail-lights flashing.
Got there, grabbed a few random things (rice milk, spinach, cat food, chocolate, baby oil--I did say random, after all), and got in line. Two spots ahead of me was a wonderfully whimsically eccentric older woman who was very much an extrovert, randomly engaging the girl working the register (who, incidentally, had a stunning smile, in a vaguely Ani DiFranco way) and the 50-something moustached fellow in front of me, who looked tan and well-off (but not aloof) and was buying some peaches and black-bean-chili chips. Her cart was quite full, and it was closing time, and she looked back and noticed our comparatively small loads and was apologetic, though in a somewhat wacky and endearing way.
While the checkout girl (all too demeaning a description for her; let's call her something else...say, Ariadne) worked through the myriad items and bags and the woman made a complex show of paying, a bag of carob-coated something--almonds, maybe?--burst in her cart and spilled over the floor. Again, a sort of wacky apologetic, slightly doddering, yet not really, reaction from her. The fellow in front of me and I picked them up off the floor and poured them into Ariadne's proffered hands. The woman, with apologetic tone but playful intent, wondered whether the other fellow and I were in a hurry. We both insisted no, and she looked at me and said something about do I never rush? and I smiled and replied, I don't want to say that categorically, but I'm certainly not in this moment!
Then the long, slow process of checking out all her goods got underway, and the woman engaged the fellow in front of me in some conversation about travel. He had the look about him of a guy who goes to very sunny places to play golf, but again, not really in a bothersome way; he seemed congenial to all involved. Then the woman turned to me and out of the blue, asked: "Are you a singer?" I was flummoxed for a half second but said yes, and asked why. Then she pointed to her throat, and said after a moment, "it's here. You've got it. It's in your voice." Well, that made me blush, especially in the presence of Ariadne. It was one of the best, most spontaneous comments anyone's ever made on my voice. Most of the time, when people say something, they ask if I've done radio or some such. And I've had compliments on my voice when I sing. (Some of the best ever came a couple years back at the Sequatchie Valley Institute, when I performed a killer set of "Tristesse" by The Church and led a round of "Happy Birthday" for Ann Marie.) But to have someone just hear me say a few words with good humor (and a bit of dimples and smile lines thrown in) and then tell me there's music in my voice--that's something.
I was feeling pretty miserable and helpless at one point earlier in the evening. Working on the letter helped me feel better. Being in the right place at the right time for such a random moment as the one described above made me feel good.
As I was finally checking out, Ariadne thanked me for my patience. I thanked her for staying late (it was 10 min. after closing time at this point), and said, "it's amazing what kind of energy you can find just by being open to it at the right time." She smiled and said, "well said."
Got there, grabbed a few random things (rice milk, spinach, cat food, chocolate, baby oil--I did say random, after all), and got in line. Two spots ahead of me was a wonderfully whimsically eccentric older woman who was very much an extrovert, randomly engaging the girl working the register (who, incidentally, had a stunning smile, in a vaguely Ani DiFranco way) and the 50-something moustached fellow in front of me, who looked tan and well-off (but not aloof) and was buying some peaches and black-bean-chili chips. Her cart was quite full, and it was closing time, and she looked back and noticed our comparatively small loads and was apologetic, though in a somewhat wacky and endearing way.
While the checkout girl (all too demeaning a description for her; let's call her something else...say, Ariadne) worked through the myriad items and bags and the woman made a complex show of paying, a bag of carob-coated something--almonds, maybe?--burst in her cart and spilled over the floor. Again, a sort of wacky apologetic, slightly doddering, yet not really, reaction from her. The fellow in front of me and I picked them up off the floor and poured them into Ariadne's proffered hands. The woman, with apologetic tone but playful intent, wondered whether the other fellow and I were in a hurry. We both insisted no, and she looked at me and said something about do I never rush? and I smiled and replied, I don't want to say that categorically, but I'm certainly not in this moment!
Then the long, slow process of checking out all her goods got underway, and the woman engaged the fellow in front of me in some conversation about travel. He had the look about him of a guy who goes to very sunny places to play golf, but again, not really in a bothersome way; he seemed congenial to all involved. Then the woman turned to me and out of the blue, asked: "Are you a singer?" I was flummoxed for a half second but said yes, and asked why. Then she pointed to her throat, and said after a moment, "it's here. You've got it. It's in your voice." Well, that made me blush, especially in the presence of Ariadne. It was one of the best, most spontaneous comments anyone's ever made on my voice. Most of the time, when people say something, they ask if I've done radio or some such. And I've had compliments on my voice when I sing. (Some of the best ever came a couple years back at the Sequatchie Valley Institute, when I performed a killer set of "Tristesse" by The Church and led a round of "Happy Birthday" for Ann Marie.) But to have someone just hear me say a few words with good humor (and a bit of dimples and smile lines thrown in) and then tell me there's music in my voice--that's something.
I was feeling pretty miserable and helpless at one point earlier in the evening. Working on the letter helped me feel better. Being in the right place at the right time for such a random moment as the one described above made me feel good.
As I was finally checking out, Ariadne thanked me for my patience. I thanked her for staying late (it was 10 min. after closing time at this point), and said, "it's amazing what kind of energy you can find just by being open to it at the right time." She smiled and said, "well said."
Where have I been?
My intent for this blog was, as you can see below, the one-a-day post, each labeled with the date, as a form of discipline. It worked at first, but over the last few days I've been thrown for a pretty strong emotional loop, and I haven't had anything left for the bloody computer, so to speak.
I don't want to go into full detail here--I still have some boundaries to the open disclosure efforts here--but suffice it to say I'm having a lot of preconceived, long-held notions about love and relationships and connections challenged, and challenged hard. Combine that with the work I've been doing to open myself, which only recently manifested itself in this blog, and it's been a very emotional time for me. It's made me feel weak as a baby a lot of the time, and yet there are glimmers of the hope and newness of said baby peeking through the clouds a little. It's what they call in my Clark Kent corporate world a "stretch experience". Just call me the rubberband man.
But, thankfully, in addition to that there's been a lot of good stuff going on throughout the week. I've finally cracked open the walls I'd built between me and getting in touch with two people who are very dear to me, Tris and Nicki, and also threw myself out at a random moment to an interesting new person who's seeking a musical interaction, Julia.
It will take me some time to really sort it out--and I'm actually hoping I just find a way to move on from it so effectively that I never really do need to go back and ponder it--but I have this confounding tendency to just go into deep space and lose touch with the people I love the most. Along with Tris & Nicki, there's Charles, Eric, Christie, and of course Ann Marie, who's been closer to me than anyone in recent times yet has still suffered from my affliction. I can pretty much make a list of the people I've most cherished in my life, and I've been more frequently in touch with people at work whose names or faces I don't even know than I have them. Even my sister, who I love as much as anyone in the world, hasn't heard from me in 6 months. And the same goes for doing the things I love to do the most in my life.
It would take too long for me to even wrap my words around the basic components of the problem, but the point here is that I've been choosing to work against it. Not completely or all at once, but with individual direct choices. I just emailed Nicki out of the blue, just wrote Tris and started opening up. Just drove over to Julia's and hopped up on the porch and started chatting.
This isn't rocket science. Most people do this stuff naturally. But I've got problems with it. I think that for some reason I'm really under-valuing myself, and thus removing myself from the field of play again and again and again. AM's tried working on this with me, trying to get me to see how my not giving myself enough credit hurts me and her both. I've resisted that lesson, but am finally waking up to it. And it's uncomfortable to wake up to, because it involves accepting how much time and life I've wasted in the process, and it involves the fear of losing some I love, including her, because of how long it's taken me to understand.
Tris just wisely said to me "you are a goldmine and you are the worst foreman of a mine in the history of the world." I feel like I'm in the midst of a really wonderful learning experience, growth experience, and I have a sense that there is a change energy that's been tapped into. But I'm also so afraid of losing someone I love in the process. I don't want that to be the price of a lesson learned. I've had enough of that in my life. I want to learn the lesson and keep the love.
But anyway, I've felt well-loved this week by what's chosen me. Tris greeted me with more love and understanding than I felt I deserved (which, my loved ones would shout in a chorus, is something I need to stop saying!), and wrote words of uncommon wisdom and insight, just when I most needed them. He also very cleverly proposed a pledge that would enforce ongoing contact (I accept, Tris!), so there will be more to tell of this.
And it was wonderful to see Nicki. She was a victim of the fallout from my divorce, when my self-image crashed and I fled from all the friends who loved me and for whom I no longer thought I was worthy. I've thought so hard about getting in touch with her for years, but have been too stuck in my mind-world. This week, I just did it. Just like that. She was responsible for one of my peak experiences, spending 9 days in the desert of Moab, Utah 10 years ago. It was a magical time and a magical place, still singular in my mind. At that time I was working at the university, a simple job in a simple life, but a good simple, not the suffocated one I've forced on myself in recent times. I was playing music with the local Irish band (having them all walk over to my place unannounced on my birthday, playing their instruments along the street and walkway leading up to my door, is still a magically surreal memory for me), seeing friends regularly, living in a 2-bedroom place in a neat old house, walking to work. Almost immediately after coming back from Moab, I met my future wife (incidentally, one of only three occasions of love at first sight I've ever had, all of them quite random--one in a 7th-grade science class, one on the sidewalk while playing Irish music, and one that followed a random knock at my door on a dark, rainy night). Those were good times.
But these pesky barriers to self-worth have combined in recent years with a sense that working and living are separate entities to create a painful and persistent sort of social/emotional agoraphobia, which has affected all my relations. Especially tragic is that it's plagued me while I've had such a wonderfully adventurous and free-spirited person like AM in my life. One of the main effects has been to make me feel that I need to be able to do something special, provide something special, for anyone into whose life I'm presumptuous to insinuate myself. In other words, it's not inherently good enough to just give them me. Whether it's just because I'm a man, or through some type of conditioning, I've devalued the purely emotional and focused on the practical providing as my show of worth to those I love, without even really intending to or wanting to, and it's just depressing to think about all the time I've wasted in the process.
Of course, I'm glad I'm seeing all this now. I'm glad to finally be understanding what's been going on, why things have been breaking down, why I seem to work harder yet become more unfulfilled with it over time. Thank goodness for that understanding. But it's also harrowing to see that emotional blood on my hands.
I want to keep this going. I'm going to need help to do it.
I don't want to go into full detail here--I still have some boundaries to the open disclosure efforts here--but suffice it to say I'm having a lot of preconceived, long-held notions about love and relationships and connections challenged, and challenged hard. Combine that with the work I've been doing to open myself, which only recently manifested itself in this blog, and it's been a very emotional time for me. It's made me feel weak as a baby a lot of the time, and yet there are glimmers of the hope and newness of said baby peeking through the clouds a little. It's what they call in my Clark Kent corporate world a "stretch experience". Just call me the rubberband man.
But, thankfully, in addition to that there's been a lot of good stuff going on throughout the week. I've finally cracked open the walls I'd built between me and getting in touch with two people who are very dear to me, Tris and Nicki, and also threw myself out at a random moment to an interesting new person who's seeking a musical interaction, Julia.
It will take me some time to really sort it out--and I'm actually hoping I just find a way to move on from it so effectively that I never really do need to go back and ponder it--but I have this confounding tendency to just go into deep space and lose touch with the people I love the most. Along with Tris & Nicki, there's Charles, Eric, Christie, and of course Ann Marie, who's been closer to me than anyone in recent times yet has still suffered from my affliction. I can pretty much make a list of the people I've most cherished in my life, and I've been more frequently in touch with people at work whose names or faces I don't even know than I have them. Even my sister, who I love as much as anyone in the world, hasn't heard from me in 6 months. And the same goes for doing the things I love to do the most in my life.
It would take too long for me to even wrap my words around the basic components of the problem, but the point here is that I've been choosing to work against it. Not completely or all at once, but with individual direct choices. I just emailed Nicki out of the blue, just wrote Tris and started opening up. Just drove over to Julia's and hopped up on the porch and started chatting.
This isn't rocket science. Most people do this stuff naturally. But I've got problems with it. I think that for some reason I'm really under-valuing myself, and thus removing myself from the field of play again and again and again. AM's tried working on this with me, trying to get me to see how my not giving myself enough credit hurts me and her both. I've resisted that lesson, but am finally waking up to it. And it's uncomfortable to wake up to, because it involves accepting how much time and life I've wasted in the process, and it involves the fear of losing some I love, including her, because of how long it's taken me to understand.
Tris just wisely said to me "you are a goldmine and you are the worst foreman of a mine in the history of the world." I feel like I'm in the midst of a really wonderful learning experience, growth experience, and I have a sense that there is a change energy that's been tapped into. But I'm also so afraid of losing someone I love in the process. I don't want that to be the price of a lesson learned. I've had enough of that in my life. I want to learn the lesson and keep the love.
But anyway, I've felt well-loved this week by what's chosen me. Tris greeted me with more love and understanding than I felt I deserved (which, my loved ones would shout in a chorus, is something I need to stop saying!), and wrote words of uncommon wisdom and insight, just when I most needed them. He also very cleverly proposed a pledge that would enforce ongoing contact (I accept, Tris!), so there will be more to tell of this.
And it was wonderful to see Nicki. She was a victim of the fallout from my divorce, when my self-image crashed and I fled from all the friends who loved me and for whom I no longer thought I was worthy. I've thought so hard about getting in touch with her for years, but have been too stuck in my mind-world. This week, I just did it. Just like that. She was responsible for one of my peak experiences, spending 9 days in the desert of Moab, Utah 10 years ago. It was a magical time and a magical place, still singular in my mind. At that time I was working at the university, a simple job in a simple life, but a good simple, not the suffocated one I've forced on myself in recent times. I was playing music with the local Irish band (having them all walk over to my place unannounced on my birthday, playing their instruments along the street and walkway leading up to my door, is still a magically surreal memory for me), seeing friends regularly, living in a 2-bedroom place in a neat old house, walking to work. Almost immediately after coming back from Moab, I met my future wife (incidentally, one of only three occasions of love at first sight I've ever had, all of them quite random--one in a 7th-grade science class, one on the sidewalk while playing Irish music, and one that followed a random knock at my door on a dark, rainy night). Those were good times.
But these pesky barriers to self-worth have combined in recent years with a sense that working and living are separate entities to create a painful and persistent sort of social/emotional agoraphobia, which has affected all my relations. Especially tragic is that it's plagued me while I've had such a wonderfully adventurous and free-spirited person like AM in my life. One of the main effects has been to make me feel that I need to be able to do something special, provide something special, for anyone into whose life I'm presumptuous to insinuate myself. In other words, it's not inherently good enough to just give them me. Whether it's just because I'm a man, or through some type of conditioning, I've devalued the purely emotional and focused on the practical providing as my show of worth to those I love, without even really intending to or wanting to, and it's just depressing to think about all the time I've wasted in the process.
Of course, I'm glad I'm seeing all this now. I'm glad to finally be understanding what's been going on, why things have been breaking down, why I seem to work harder yet become more unfulfilled with it over time. Thank goodness for that understanding. But it's also harrowing to see that emotional blood on my hands.
I want to keep this going. I'm going to need help to do it.
2008-06-22
Sunday, June 22, 2008
A pretty mellow day today, mostly attending to various routines. I'm stiff and sore all over today from my extended, all-body workout yesterday, but that's a great feeling I haven't felt for a while. I like exercise in the context of doing something--say, biking to work--but can see that going to the gym will be good training for my body to handle more ambitious tasks in the future. I'm not sure just what those will be at this point, but I think back to mending fences in the setting sun with Ann Marie a few days ago, and I start to get some ideas.
But, stiff muscles or no, it was time to get out of bed and go for a bike & run first thing this morning. (And my legs were sore, after doing leg presses, squats, and hamstring curls at the ARC yesterday.) So I biked out to the MKT trail entrance at Flat Branch, ran my 3.5 or so miles (in which my tired legs fared well, and I was passed by the most outrageously cute little redhead, though my thoughts were more on how I'd like to be out there with Ann Marie), and biked home just in time to meet my folks for breakfast.
After me having taken them on a tour of local, downtown eateries for several consecutive weeks' worth of Sunday breakfasts, it was only fair that they finally turn the table on me and get me back into a generic corporate chain, in this case Bob Evans. Smaller and not as noisy as the factory-like atmosphere of Cracker Barrel, it had few distinctly vegetarian options, but I had a decent omelet with a few vegetables in it.
So, no real complaints, but I was thinking about it this morning, and realized that these corporate places all seem to want to recreate or evoke something from the past, or an idea of something from the past, and don't have any identity of their own. They're all replications of something that doesn't exist.
Nostalgia is really all these places are, and they're little more than collages of random images that have nothing at the center. They're built, decorated, and supplied based on standardized templates. They're the same everywhere you go. And for a lot of people, that's the comfort. Like McDonald's, it's a predictable experience, even if it's an entirely artificial one. Such places are industrial food-producing factories, and the differences between them are little more than veneers.
What feels more "right" about the local places is that they are nothing but themselves, and unique. Ernie's, Broadway Diner, Cafe Berlin, Lucy's--they're not imitating something else, they are what other places imitate. Ernie's & the Broadway Diner really are diners, which have been around for decades, and the history on their walls is their own, actually-lived history, not some framed copy of an old photo or some other antique bought out of a catalog. Sometimes they're rough around the edges, and they don't have the regimented predictability and uniformity of a chain restaurant.
But going there is a genuine experience. That's the difference. They're not fooling you into thinking you're somewhere you're not. Cafe Berlin has local art on the walls, somewhat motley-looking furnishings, very cheap-looking ceiling tiles, and slow service by very local-looking, quirky people. And nothing on the menu is prepared in the way it's prepared in a corporate place. And that weirds some people out, including my parents to an extent. But it's real. And unique. And that feels healthier to me. In those places, nobody and nothing is trying to fake me out.
Local places also represent the fruition of real individuals' ideas. The local places I list above are all the products of local individuals with their own ambitions and visions of what a diner should be. They are living ideas, born, raised, growing, and producing their own fruit. They're creating legacies for those who founded them, and stories for those who visit them. Does anyone really have unique Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans stories? Corporate places are just snap-together models whose workers and managers are drones carrying out the vision of some vague, distant corporate entity. Everything is done by one set of rules. It's all someone else's vision, and by this time a diluted one that belongs to no one but a nameless corporate ring-binder of standards.
So, that was breakfast.
Afterwards, I took my folks over to meet the two huge black dogs I'm watching, and they all liked one another. My dad had some good stories of dog-obedience to tell, as well as a somewhat harrowing (not dog-related) one I'd never heard about a time when he was a child and he and a friend found a dynamite detonating cap. His friend set it off, lost two fingers, and it was only through sheer luck that my dad's eyes were somehow shielded from a blast that send tiny bits of metal into most of the rest of his face. 36 years old, and there's still so much I don't know about my own family.
One other thing my dad said really struck me. I was talking about people I know with student loans, and saying I was glad to not have any of that, and how I've been able to save money, get a pension at my job, etc., but sometimes wonder what my life would be like had I gone to school somewhere more exotic and costly, such as the Chicago Art Institute I was accepted to. And my dad said that if I wanted to go in a different direction and try something different in life now, they'd support me however they could. Here I am, 36, good job, great credit, no debt, and they're offering to help me if I want to change everything. That felt really good, and is already helping nourish the seed I feel in me of expanding the scope of my life. In a small way it's already making me feel that if there's something I wanted, it would be okay. A simple thing, but you wouldn't believe how hard it is for me to accept that idea sometimes.
The afternoon was mostly that maintenance I mentioned earlier. I took the dogs out to the park again, and had a great time with them as always. We run across a few other dogs every time, but they're perfectly well-behaved and never aggressive (even when one dog we met was). One treat I got to see yesterday and today was the dogs taking a dip in the creek. Usually, when we're nearing the end of our park walks, they go tearing off into the woods and emerge a little later soaking wet from the creek. So I decided to try and follow them and see it for myself, catching them in the act before they run back out and come find me. So I scampered up the winding forest path and down the steep slope to the creek, and was met with the sweetest sight of two massive dogs wading, paddling, and splashing around in the water like little kids. Blackie did most of the paddling, being shorter, and Walter loomed over the water, his belly clear of it when he stood at full height. It warmed my heart to see it. Those two make great adopted brothers.
Later in the afternoon, I read a little poetry (bits of Yeats, Frost, and Rilke), and sent a section of a Rilke poem to Ann Marie via text message. Then, after watching half of Italy v. Spain soccer, I headed back over to Access Arts to finish glazing my first five little pieces of pottery. I hope they turn out well; dry glaze is such an ugly, plain, powdery thing that it's hard to imagine them turning into shiny, glassy pieces with rich color. I hope they get fired soon, so I can learn from the experience before glazing my final three pieces. This stage was just experimental, combining a variety of the colors I liked best. While there today, I met a somewhat reserved middle-aged woman named Jacque who was working on some lovely-looking plates on the pottery wheel. She was kind and encouraging when I told her I was just getting started and learning the basics. From what I've seen over the last six weeks here, pottery is something that really captures the imaginations of a lot of people once they get exposed to it. In a world in which we're increasingly expected to just consume what's already been made for us, things like pottery open an immediate door to doing your own making. And the loving energy that people put into the work, in many different forms, is really beautiful to see. There's no pretense here. People of all shapes and sizes--mostly women, but not all--young, old, white-haired, high schoolers, tattooed & pierced, quiet and conservative--all come together with the same light in their eyes to make something real, small, their own.
It gives me hope. And sometimes hope is a painful thing for me to have, because it involves me contemplating the potential for loss, which can make me afraid. In our conversation last night, Ann Marie made a really insightful comment about how she and I respond in crisis moments. She said I tend to respond by trying to minimize change, and I think she's right. For whatever reason, I've had developed in me an instinctive resistance to certain types of change, and the counter-instinct to that has been an unconscious desire to just have everything figured out already. To weigh all my options, make a decision, and then be done with it. That subconscious approach to life is one of the factors that ended my marriage eight years ago; I didn't really know what to do and how to grow once everything was official, and I responded poorly.
Being with Ann Marie has been a real challenge to that suffocating tendency of mine, and frankly, at times it's been really difficult for me. But I keep re-engaging and loving her, because I know that to challenge this aspect of me is right. She's helping me to learn that decisions, commitments are living things, and like any living thing they require tending, feeding, care, nurturing. I've lived a lot of my life as though I have a checklist in hand, going through and figuring out one thing at a time--what job do I want? Check. What car do I want? Check. What bass guitar do I want? Check. What relationship do I want? Check. And so often, those made choices have withered on the vine afterward, as I treat them as finished when they're really only as alive as how they're fed energy in every subsequent moment.
And from pottery to unique diners to frolicking dogs to love to this very blog, the living moment is my goal. If I can ask anything of those I love and the universe, it's to help keep me in these moments.
But, stiff muscles or no, it was time to get out of bed and go for a bike & run first thing this morning. (And my legs were sore, after doing leg presses, squats, and hamstring curls at the ARC yesterday.) So I biked out to the MKT trail entrance at Flat Branch, ran my 3.5 or so miles (in which my tired legs fared well, and I was passed by the most outrageously cute little redhead, though my thoughts were more on how I'd like to be out there with Ann Marie), and biked home just in time to meet my folks for breakfast.
After me having taken them on a tour of local, downtown eateries for several consecutive weeks' worth of Sunday breakfasts, it was only fair that they finally turn the table on me and get me back into a generic corporate chain, in this case Bob Evans. Smaller and not as noisy as the factory-like atmosphere of Cracker Barrel, it had few distinctly vegetarian options, but I had a decent omelet with a few vegetables in it.
So, no real complaints, but I was thinking about it this morning, and realized that these corporate places all seem to want to recreate or evoke something from the past, or an idea of something from the past, and don't have any identity of their own. They're all replications of something that doesn't exist.
Nostalgia is really all these places are, and they're little more than collages of random images that have nothing at the center. They're built, decorated, and supplied based on standardized templates. They're the same everywhere you go. And for a lot of people, that's the comfort. Like McDonald's, it's a predictable experience, even if it's an entirely artificial one. Such places are industrial food-producing factories, and the differences between them are little more than veneers.
What feels more "right" about the local places is that they are nothing but themselves, and unique. Ernie's, Broadway Diner, Cafe Berlin, Lucy's--they're not imitating something else, they are what other places imitate. Ernie's & the Broadway Diner really are diners, which have been around for decades, and the history on their walls is their own, actually-lived history, not some framed copy of an old photo or some other antique bought out of a catalog. Sometimes they're rough around the edges, and they don't have the regimented predictability and uniformity of a chain restaurant.
But going there is a genuine experience. That's the difference. They're not fooling you into thinking you're somewhere you're not. Cafe Berlin has local art on the walls, somewhat motley-looking furnishings, very cheap-looking ceiling tiles, and slow service by very local-looking, quirky people. And nothing on the menu is prepared in the way it's prepared in a corporate place. And that weirds some people out, including my parents to an extent. But it's real. And unique. And that feels healthier to me. In those places, nobody and nothing is trying to fake me out.
Local places also represent the fruition of real individuals' ideas. The local places I list above are all the products of local individuals with their own ambitions and visions of what a diner should be. They are living ideas, born, raised, growing, and producing their own fruit. They're creating legacies for those who founded them, and stories for those who visit them. Does anyone really have unique Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans stories? Corporate places are just snap-together models whose workers and managers are drones carrying out the vision of some vague, distant corporate entity. Everything is done by one set of rules. It's all someone else's vision, and by this time a diluted one that belongs to no one but a nameless corporate ring-binder of standards.
So, that was breakfast.
Afterwards, I took my folks over to meet the two huge black dogs I'm watching, and they all liked one another. My dad had some good stories of dog-obedience to tell, as well as a somewhat harrowing (not dog-related) one I'd never heard about a time when he was a child and he and a friend found a dynamite detonating cap. His friend set it off, lost two fingers, and it was only through sheer luck that my dad's eyes were somehow shielded from a blast that send tiny bits of metal into most of the rest of his face. 36 years old, and there's still so much I don't know about my own family.
One other thing my dad said really struck me. I was talking about people I know with student loans, and saying I was glad to not have any of that, and how I've been able to save money, get a pension at my job, etc., but sometimes wonder what my life would be like had I gone to school somewhere more exotic and costly, such as the Chicago Art Institute I was accepted to. And my dad said that if I wanted to go in a different direction and try something different in life now, they'd support me however they could. Here I am, 36, good job, great credit, no debt, and they're offering to help me if I want to change everything. That felt really good, and is already helping nourish the seed I feel in me of expanding the scope of my life. In a small way it's already making me feel that if there's something I wanted, it would be okay. A simple thing, but you wouldn't believe how hard it is for me to accept that idea sometimes.
The afternoon was mostly that maintenance I mentioned earlier. I took the dogs out to the park again, and had a great time with them as always. We run across a few other dogs every time, but they're perfectly well-behaved and never aggressive (even when one dog we met was). One treat I got to see yesterday and today was the dogs taking a dip in the creek. Usually, when we're nearing the end of our park walks, they go tearing off into the woods and emerge a little later soaking wet from the creek. So I decided to try and follow them and see it for myself, catching them in the act before they run back out and come find me. So I scampered up the winding forest path and down the steep slope to the creek, and was met with the sweetest sight of two massive dogs wading, paddling, and splashing around in the water like little kids. Blackie did most of the paddling, being shorter, and Walter loomed over the water, his belly clear of it when he stood at full height. It warmed my heart to see it. Those two make great adopted brothers.
Later in the afternoon, I read a little poetry (bits of Yeats, Frost, and Rilke), and sent a section of a Rilke poem to Ann Marie via text message. Then, after watching half of Italy v. Spain soccer, I headed back over to Access Arts to finish glazing my first five little pieces of pottery. I hope they turn out well; dry glaze is such an ugly, plain, powdery thing that it's hard to imagine them turning into shiny, glassy pieces with rich color. I hope they get fired soon, so I can learn from the experience before glazing my final three pieces. This stage was just experimental, combining a variety of the colors I liked best. While there today, I met a somewhat reserved middle-aged woman named Jacque who was working on some lovely-looking plates on the pottery wheel. She was kind and encouraging when I told her I was just getting started and learning the basics. From what I've seen over the last six weeks here, pottery is something that really captures the imaginations of a lot of people once they get exposed to it. In a world in which we're increasingly expected to just consume what's already been made for us, things like pottery open an immediate door to doing your own making. And the loving energy that people put into the work, in many different forms, is really beautiful to see. There's no pretense here. People of all shapes and sizes--mostly women, but not all--young, old, white-haired, high schoolers, tattooed & pierced, quiet and conservative--all come together with the same light in their eyes to make something real, small, their own.
It gives me hope. And sometimes hope is a painful thing for me to have, because it involves me contemplating the potential for loss, which can make me afraid. In our conversation last night, Ann Marie made a really insightful comment about how she and I respond in crisis moments. She said I tend to respond by trying to minimize change, and I think she's right. For whatever reason, I've had developed in me an instinctive resistance to certain types of change, and the counter-instinct to that has been an unconscious desire to just have everything figured out already. To weigh all my options, make a decision, and then be done with it. That subconscious approach to life is one of the factors that ended my marriage eight years ago; I didn't really know what to do and how to grow once everything was official, and I responded poorly.
Being with Ann Marie has been a real challenge to that suffocating tendency of mine, and frankly, at times it's been really difficult for me. But I keep re-engaging and loving her, because I know that to challenge this aspect of me is right. She's helping me to learn that decisions, commitments are living things, and like any living thing they require tending, feeding, care, nurturing. I've lived a lot of my life as though I have a checklist in hand, going through and figuring out one thing at a time--what job do I want? Check. What car do I want? Check. What bass guitar do I want? Check. What relationship do I want? Check. And so often, those made choices have withered on the vine afterward, as I treat them as finished when they're really only as alive as how they're fed energy in every subsequent moment.
And from pottery to unique diners to frolicking dogs to love to this very blog, the living moment is my goal. If I can ask anything of those I love and the universe, it's to help keep me in these moments.
2008-06-21
Saturday, June 21, 2008 Part II
Just a quick update on events of the evening. Had a lovely phone call with Ann Marie, filled with lots of sharing and insight and leaving me feeling quite good, hopeful and reassured. I think that no matter how I expand the scope of my life, we'll have a different experience of experiencing, but my tendency to withhold myself exaggerates that contrast to an artificial degree, which makes us feel divided. When I don't withhold myself, and open myself to the moment, the result is an experience that we each have in our own ways, but which complement one another in a pretty joyous and intriguing way. It's like the way two eyes make a stereo vision--two shared experiences create one with depth.
I started just before the call, and continued afterward, the process of writing a song for her. I've spent so long working on music in abstract--ideas, fragments, themes, mostly without words--that it feels odd and challenging to be in the process of something so cohesive as writing a song. As I told her, I have the annoying tendency to want to make each one everything--to have it live up to every standard I have, and it almost always sabotages the process, leaving more fragments. I came up with some ideas I quite liked tonight, but still have had second thoughts about them. My challenge now is to be at peace with those thoughts, and use them to shape it or change it, not desert it.
I started just before the call, and continued afterward, the process of writing a song for her. I've spent so long working on music in abstract--ideas, fragments, themes, mostly without words--that it feels odd and challenging to be in the process of something so cohesive as writing a song. As I told her, I have the annoying tendency to want to make each one everything--to have it live up to every standard I have, and it almost always sabotages the process, leaving more fragments. I came up with some ideas I quite liked tonight, but still have had second thoughts about them. My challenge now is to be at peace with those thoughts, and use them to shape it or change it, not desert it.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The day isn't complete, but this seems like a good time to sit and write a bit. Still being way behind on sleep, an active day may not have been in the cards, but it sure has turned out that way.
After I woke (or rather, after I was awakened by a too-brief call from lovely Ann Marie, then got up and fed the cats, then thought of going back to sleep, then decided against it), I was taken with the idea of biking over to the ARC and trying out its various workout facilities. The last time I went to the gym (back in 2002, which was also when I first took up running) was one of my all-time peaks in looking and feeling fit and strong. I'd had an earlier peak with a couple different home gyms, but in recent years, in my little no-space-wasted domicile, I've had to rely on little dumbbells, which haven't produced the same motivation or effects.
So, on the bike for 3 miles and then in to explore the ARC. I spent about an hour moving between the various workout machines and a few free weights, and at first it was kind of like the feeling I've had in pottery class--feeling very pathetic but better off for it. But as I went along, I felt a sense of that old, good struggle and satisfaction creeping in. For the most part, I was doing a bit more weight and reps than I expected, and it was nice to be worked so thoroughly.
After the weights, I ran for about half a mile on their little track. A 1/6-mile loop gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly, but it was a good break. From the track, you can see down into the pool area; I saw a few young parents with their babies moving gently through the wading area, and my heart melted a bit with the idea of being a parent, and thoughts of who I'd like to do that with.
Then, on a whim, I went over to the basketball courts. It's literally been years since I've even held a basketball; in fact, I don't even remember when it was (maybe Tris would remember?). Maybe it was just getting sucked in to the NBA playoffs & finals this last month or so (which culminated in watching the final game on a tiny TV with terrible reception in Ohio, with AM and Margaret gleefully mocking it--and, I grudgingly admit, deservedly so--and me trying to follow the action through the snow), but I just felt like doing a bit of shooting.
At first, rust was everywhere--I kept misjudging distance and threw up a lot of swish attempts that turned into air balls. But then I settled down a bit, breathed, focused, and things started clicking. Now, I doubt my attempts at prowess turned any heads there (except for the occasional glance at me running down a random missed shot in all directions), but after a little while I was feeling happy, engaged, and good. I found my memories and movements from years ago--playing around with Tris on the courts at New Haven North Elementary, even being back in 6th grade and forming a deadly duo with a classmate at summer enrichment; he was the inside threat and I the crack outside shooter--soaking back in, like a sealed-up door to part of myself that was being pried open, and a little piece of my neglected potential flowed out. I even discovered new things, like a wholly unintended little last-second delay move happening when I went up close to shoot layups--like I was faking out invisible blockers without even intending to. (Not that I made all of those layups, of course, but it was amusing to find myself somehow doing a little juke move unconsciously!)
After about an hour of that, a couple guys approached me about joining an impromptu game they were trying to get going. Four on four--teamed with me were a large, thick black fellow; a smaller but super-buff black fellow, who I'd seen earlier working out in the weights area with his girlfriend; and a skinny little 13-year-old white kid, all sandy hair and freckles and no fear at all.
From no ball at all for years to a pickup game my first time back on the court--Ann Marie would laugh knowingly at this, and in fact she and Margaret and I were talking about this very topic the other night--I can sit back in my cave and think through everything I want to, but nothing makes things happen like just being out there in it.
(A note to the gentle reader: I don't intend for such observations to seem like new discoveries, or lectures to you. You know it. Everyone knows it. But for all my supposed smarts, I'm slow and thick-headed with it comes to some pretty fundamental lessons. AM could give you hours of examples, but it would be bad for her blood pressure to do so.)
It was a lot of fun. I was average; I made a few great shots and a few great, quick steals, I defended well overall and got a few rebounds, and I also missed some real clunker shots, had a couple passes stolen, and got burned a few times by the other team with fake passes and letting down my guard. But it was simply nice to be in that moment and responding to it.
I'm uncomfortable when moments like that come up; at first I felt like resisting the offer of joining a game. I'm uncomfortable at the potter's wheel. I feel strange and awkward when around a group of strangers. I'm hesitant and uncertain and under-confident in my worth.
But it always feels good when I beat that and slip out of its grasp. When I strike up a brief conversation with the guy at the ARC's bike rack who had a really neat looking recumbent bike, and he tells me how he realized there's a defect with the bike that had convinced him that the wheels not lining up was normal, and he compensated for that for a few hundred miles. Little things. I have no idea how they add up, or to what, or if they even do at all. But they make me feel like I'm actually alive and not just thinking about being alive. They make me want to go back and be with the people I love and share things with them. It's a nice feeling--being exposed to that randomness of the world around me is both stimulating and makes me want to share and deepen my connection with those important people in my life.
It makes me feel like I'm waking up after a long sleep. I just have to keep waking.
After that, it was off to the dog park with the two big, black goony dogs I'm looking after. They're such great, sweet dogs, which is a measure of how great and thoughtful their owners are. And that allows the dogs to run and play and be happy without stress on me or them. Somehow, these little outings I'm currently taking with these two have made me feel more like owning a dog than I have in ages. They're wonderful creatures, and they do have a way of making you feel better, and feel like a better person than you are. Nothing against my two surly cats, but it's just another good, engaged feeling.
And more small moments. While I was walking along the dirt & grass trail with them, a butterfly (which I haven't yet identified, but will update this when I do) landed on my wrist and, to my amazement, seemed to be drinking the sweat off my arm. It sat there quite calmly and unmoving as I walked along, its wings beating very gently every now and then, dragging its long proboscis back and forth across my skin, like a paintbrush or mop. It seemed to be quite enjoying itself for a few minutes (or so it seemed to my thoroughly-amateur-lepidopterist eye) before finally winging off. It was a strange and lovely moment, and I felt grateful for it.
After I woke (or rather, after I was awakened by a too-brief call from lovely Ann Marie, then got up and fed the cats, then thought of going back to sleep, then decided against it), I was taken with the idea of biking over to the ARC and trying out its various workout facilities. The last time I went to the gym (back in 2002, which was also when I first took up running) was one of my all-time peaks in looking and feeling fit and strong. I'd had an earlier peak with a couple different home gyms, but in recent years, in my little no-space-wasted domicile, I've had to rely on little dumbbells, which haven't produced the same motivation or effects.
So, on the bike for 3 miles and then in to explore the ARC. I spent about an hour moving between the various workout machines and a few free weights, and at first it was kind of like the feeling I've had in pottery class--feeling very pathetic but better off for it. But as I went along, I felt a sense of that old, good struggle and satisfaction creeping in. For the most part, I was doing a bit more weight and reps than I expected, and it was nice to be worked so thoroughly.
After the weights, I ran for about half a mile on their little track. A 1/6-mile loop gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly, but it was a good break. From the track, you can see down into the pool area; I saw a few young parents with their babies moving gently through the wading area, and my heart melted a bit with the idea of being a parent, and thoughts of who I'd like to do that with.
Then, on a whim, I went over to the basketball courts. It's literally been years since I've even held a basketball; in fact, I don't even remember when it was (maybe Tris would remember?). Maybe it was just getting sucked in to the NBA playoffs & finals this last month or so (which culminated in watching the final game on a tiny TV with terrible reception in Ohio, with AM and Margaret gleefully mocking it--and, I grudgingly admit, deservedly so--and me trying to follow the action through the snow), but I just felt like doing a bit of shooting.
At first, rust was everywhere--I kept misjudging distance and threw up a lot of swish attempts that turned into air balls. But then I settled down a bit, breathed, focused, and things started clicking. Now, I doubt my attempts at prowess turned any heads there (except for the occasional glance at me running down a random missed shot in all directions), but after a little while I was feeling happy, engaged, and good. I found my memories and movements from years ago--playing around with Tris on the courts at New Haven North Elementary, even being back in 6th grade and forming a deadly duo with a classmate at summer enrichment; he was the inside threat and I the crack outside shooter--soaking back in, like a sealed-up door to part of myself that was being pried open, and a little piece of my neglected potential flowed out. I even discovered new things, like a wholly unintended little last-second delay move happening when I went up close to shoot layups--like I was faking out invisible blockers without even intending to. (Not that I made all of those layups, of course, but it was amusing to find myself somehow doing a little juke move unconsciously!)
After about an hour of that, a couple guys approached me about joining an impromptu game they were trying to get going. Four on four--teamed with me were a large, thick black fellow; a smaller but super-buff black fellow, who I'd seen earlier working out in the weights area with his girlfriend; and a skinny little 13-year-old white kid, all sandy hair and freckles and no fear at all.
From no ball at all for years to a pickup game my first time back on the court--Ann Marie would laugh knowingly at this, and in fact she and Margaret and I were talking about this very topic the other night--I can sit back in my cave and think through everything I want to, but nothing makes things happen like just being out there in it.
(A note to the gentle reader: I don't intend for such observations to seem like new discoveries, or lectures to you. You know it. Everyone knows it. But for all my supposed smarts, I'm slow and thick-headed with it comes to some pretty fundamental lessons. AM could give you hours of examples, but it would be bad for her blood pressure to do so.)
It was a lot of fun. I was average; I made a few great shots and a few great, quick steals, I defended well overall and got a few rebounds, and I also missed some real clunker shots, had a couple passes stolen, and got burned a few times by the other team with fake passes and letting down my guard. But it was simply nice to be in that moment and responding to it.
I'm uncomfortable when moments like that come up; at first I felt like resisting the offer of joining a game. I'm uncomfortable at the potter's wheel. I feel strange and awkward when around a group of strangers. I'm hesitant and uncertain and under-confident in my worth.
But it always feels good when I beat that and slip out of its grasp. When I strike up a brief conversation with the guy at the ARC's bike rack who had a really neat looking recumbent bike, and he tells me how he realized there's a defect with the bike that had convinced him that the wheels not lining up was normal, and he compensated for that for a few hundred miles. Little things. I have no idea how they add up, or to what, or if they even do at all. But they make me feel like I'm actually alive and not just thinking about being alive. They make me want to go back and be with the people I love and share things with them. It's a nice feeling--being exposed to that randomness of the world around me is both stimulating and makes me want to share and deepen my connection with those important people in my life.
It makes me feel like I'm waking up after a long sleep. I just have to keep waking.
After that, it was off to the dog park with the two big, black goony dogs I'm looking after. They're such great, sweet dogs, which is a measure of how great and thoughtful their owners are. And that allows the dogs to run and play and be happy without stress on me or them. Somehow, these little outings I'm currently taking with these two have made me feel more like owning a dog than I have in ages. They're wonderful creatures, and they do have a way of making you feel better, and feel like a better person than you are. Nothing against my two surly cats, but it's just another good, engaged feeling.
And more small moments. While I was walking along the dirt & grass trail with them, a butterfly (which I haven't yet identified, but will update this when I do) landed on my wrist and, to my amazement, seemed to be drinking the sweat off my arm. It sat there quite calmly and unmoving as I walked along, its wings beating very gently every now and then, dragging its long proboscis back and forth across my skin, like a paintbrush or mop. It seemed to be quite enjoying itself for a few minutes (or so it seemed to my thoroughly-amateur-lepidopterist eye) before finally winging off. It was a strange and lovely moment, and I felt grateful for it.
What this is all about
With a perfectly good web site, MySpace page, Facebook page, and a blog with enough hot air to balloon me across the sea, what the heck do I need this new thing for?
Because despite all of those tools at my disposal, I've fallen into an increasingly hard to escape pattern of, in a sense, not living my own life. I could try to list a lot of reasons why; psychology, personality type, nature, nurture, fears, relationship patterns, and so on.
But that would just be one more thing for me to sit around and ponder, try to solve, try to beat through understanding. Which is what my life, in a general sense, has turned into: one big puzzle that I've been trying to solve all at once through thought. Trying to line up every element of my life and psyche until, like a cheap special effect in some archaeological adventure, pieces magically click into place, tumblers turn, and the doors open to reveal a room full of gold, the end.
I don't want to knock my analytical skills too much, but they've been horribly misplaced. While I consider every nuance of what life is, what my role is, what things are important to me in abstraction, I neglect and take for granted all the people who love me. I let the days blur by, unlived, while I wait for a ship to come that exists only in my head. I let loose any control over happiness, and don't even realize how perplexed and saddened are the people I care for the most. And I've stopped creating. Art, music, poetry, writing, the machines all grind to a halt, waiting for the end to be figured out before the means.
My instinctive and very wrong approach to this--considered consciously very little, cloaked in increasing denial--has been to retreat from the fray, wait it out (wait what out, I don't know), let everyone else sort out their own things, and try to make myself ready for when destiny shows up, suitcases in hand, to whisk me off to what I'm actually going to do with my life.
Which, of course, is complete bullshit.
So in an effort to attack this hermit tendency to hide myself away, I'm willingly wading into that most mind-numbingly useless icon of our age: the confessional daily-routine blog. I have to deflate any sense of its greater importance upfront: it's not literature, it's not something I assume is interesting to anyone, and it's not really designed to be a part of the blogosphere. It's just something I think I have to do right now. So if it devolves into me expounding on the breakfast cereal I ate this morning, someone please stop me.
So long as I allow life to turn into a fog in my head, time will evaporate and I will lose people I love. I don't want that to happen. I think this will help, because it will give me a kind of outside accountability I don't currently have. I've managed to create an airtight system for my daily life and job, where everything is set up just right for needs I've made too simple over time, where routine becomes paramount. It's decorated with my notions of the people I love, but not the love, giving, sharing, opening that they and I deserve.
I hope that this blog becomes unnecessary. But until that time, I now have a witness to my days. I've done a pretty thorough job of hiding from everyone, and from myself. Here's hoping I can rescue myself.
Because despite all of those tools at my disposal, I've fallen into an increasingly hard to escape pattern of, in a sense, not living my own life. I could try to list a lot of reasons why; psychology, personality type, nature, nurture, fears, relationship patterns, and so on.
But that would just be one more thing for me to sit around and ponder, try to solve, try to beat through understanding. Which is what my life, in a general sense, has turned into: one big puzzle that I've been trying to solve all at once through thought. Trying to line up every element of my life and psyche until, like a cheap special effect in some archaeological adventure, pieces magically click into place, tumblers turn, and the doors open to reveal a room full of gold, the end.
I don't want to knock my analytical skills too much, but they've been horribly misplaced. While I consider every nuance of what life is, what my role is, what things are important to me in abstraction, I neglect and take for granted all the people who love me. I let the days blur by, unlived, while I wait for a ship to come that exists only in my head. I let loose any control over happiness, and don't even realize how perplexed and saddened are the people I care for the most. And I've stopped creating. Art, music, poetry, writing, the machines all grind to a halt, waiting for the end to be figured out before the means.
My instinctive and very wrong approach to this--considered consciously very little, cloaked in increasing denial--has been to retreat from the fray, wait it out (wait what out, I don't know), let everyone else sort out their own things, and try to make myself ready for when destiny shows up, suitcases in hand, to whisk me off to what I'm actually going to do with my life.
Which, of course, is complete bullshit.
So in an effort to attack this hermit tendency to hide myself away, I'm willingly wading into that most mind-numbingly useless icon of our age: the confessional daily-routine blog. I have to deflate any sense of its greater importance upfront: it's not literature, it's not something I assume is interesting to anyone, and it's not really designed to be a part of the blogosphere. It's just something I think I have to do right now. So if it devolves into me expounding on the breakfast cereal I ate this morning, someone please stop me.
So long as I allow life to turn into a fog in my head, time will evaporate and I will lose people I love. I don't want that to happen. I think this will help, because it will give me a kind of outside accountability I don't currently have. I've managed to create an airtight system for my daily life and job, where everything is set up just right for needs I've made too simple over time, where routine becomes paramount. It's decorated with my notions of the people I love, but not the love, giving, sharing, opening that they and I deserve.
I hope that this blog becomes unnecessary. But until that time, I now have a witness to my days. I've done a pretty thorough job of hiding from everyone, and from myself. Here's hoping I can rescue myself.
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