Friendship, 2nd Case Study

Sometimes, when life feels impossible, I start dreaming again about living in a cave. Some place in high country with a crawling-height foyer (about 12 to 15 feet deep) opening into a dry anterior chamber with a ceiling high enough to allow me to stand up. Further back, down cool, dark, stony corridors, water rooms--algae-covered walls and pools for drinking.

A major attraction of cave-dwelling has always been the (perhaps mistaken) belief that all my guests would be groovy people. Inconceivable that anyone would drive three days and hike 5 hours (uphill) to make small talk or false talk.

This weekend, still living in an apartment at sea level, I am in hell. Not the enveloped-in-flames-with -tongues-of-fire-kissing-my-ear-lobes variety but, at moments, pretty damn uncomfortable. I have a house guest.

Several minutes into a stultifying account of her life before her gall bladder was removed and her life since her gall bladder was removed and comparison of her experience to her mother's experiences pre- and post-gall bladder surgery, I asked "Why are you telling me this story?"

"Well, I don't know. It was just something in my head and I'm just an open-book kind of person. I just say what ever's going through my mind." This is a verbatim quote.

We attended the same high school. We last saw each other about 20 years ago. We last had a "conversation that matters"...well, I don't remember when. But I'm sure we had one somewhere along the line. She re-entered my life 2 years ago when another high school ..friend... searched for and found me and shared my contact info with "the gang." Since then, my guest has telephoned a couple of times but mostly just sends me awful supposed-to-be-funny email forwards every other week. All of the jokes, every single one of them, is either about growing old or sex--the tee-hee-hee, this-is-nasty, adolescent type sex humor.

She's gained about 200 pounds since high school. I asked this afternoon how she got from my size to plus-size, what was she thinking. She said in the first year of her marriage they lived near her in-laws and ate with them often; the in-laws were heavy people who prepared vast quantities of food and "it seemed rude" not to eat as much as they ate.

"But as your body expanded...when you saw yourself in the mirror, what were you saying to yourself?"

"I didn't say anything to myself. I didn't notice," she said. "I'm not like you--so serious and philosophical all the time. I don't need the mind games and deep-thinking. I just live my life and don't think about it." A nearly-verbatim quote.

I don't wish this woman any harm or misfortune. I just want to make it through this weekend and then never spend time with her again. She says I am one of her dearest friends. She says she makes new friends everywhere she goes and every friend she makes is a friend for life.

I say our definitions of "friend" are dissimilar. And I know if I lived in a cave, I wouldn't be in this predicament.

Some cave pictures I found online:

The Good Purge

On the one hand, there's a permanent address and shopping lists and precious possessions
favorite TV shows and a standing appointment at the beauty salon
a real job, a career path, a safe deposit box and dues-paid memberships
extra sheets and shoes
spare tires, spare toothbrushes
a cute box with alphabetically filed recipes and a set of "good" dishes

On the other hand, there's owning nothing, planning nothing and living on Earth

I live somewhere between the two, leaning one way or another at different times.

Yesterday I was deleting files from my laptop. Russell made what he thought was a helpful suggestion: I didn't have to throw anything away, he said. We have a new external drive in the office. "Just move them off your laptop onto the external drive!"

The thing is, the last week was hard. My heart is sore. And heavy. I'm looking for relief. And I spell relief, the sweetest relief, P U R G E.

Where someone else might go shopping, I start lightening the load, clearing the deck. Whether it's shaving my head, giving away books, burning my boyfriend's manuscripts or click-and-drag trashing, nothing lifts my spirits like making things disappear.

I've been up all night. Obviously still carrying too much. Something's gotta go...

Loose Ends

"Everyone is gifted" the speaker told us today. "Everyone."

"...everyone is an expert about something" says the poster over my desk.

" even the dull and the ignorant... have their story" we are reminded in Desiderata.

What do I do with this information? What does it ask of me?

A group of us went down to Frenchman Street after the awards dinner Monday night. The conversation turned round to cynicism; how the way "people" are inspires it or justifies it--their ignorance or blindness or stupidity or ....

Cynicism is where I end up if don't watch my step. Hence, the poster over my desk. Unlike some in the circle that night, I don't experience cynicism as a high chair where I perch self-righteously and wearily shake my head--or snarl. Cynicism is a short, slippery slope that quickly lands me in a pit where my skin and heart and mind are gnawed to shreds by prickly eels with long teeth.

I dare not go there. At least not alone. I can play, nervously laughing through a half sneer, with a friend. A couple minutes talking trash. But I'm scared and ashamed the whole time. I feel slimy and insincere. But mostly scared. Like, oh god what's happening to me?!

When I'm interacting with someone I judge (yes, that's what it is) to be dull or ignorant, I might be bored or restless. Or maybe impatient. Or, sometimes, embarrassed. If I find myself in a group that I judge to be mostly comprised of dull or ignorant people -- and especially if I am paying in dollars or time to be with them, I become angry.

But the question remains: even if I successfully detach from any of those "negative" feelings and begin chanting those opening ideas like mantra, and my mood and perspective shift--then what? Does Love ask anything more than tolerance of me? If so, what? And what does it look like?

Gulf Coast Babble

I was a mostly-silent witness today to a ... well, let's call it a "conversation." A man and a woman talking. A difference of opinion but without anger.

Sometimes they looked right at each other and took turns talking.

Sometimes they looked right at each other and interrupted each other.

Sometimes they made no eye contact and took turns talking.

At times, each of them was long-winded. Most of the time, there was little or no eye contact during long-winded segments; but, over the hour of their exchange, each of them made at least two long speeches, with eye contact.

Now and then, one or the other of them would look at me while still talking to the other. Often this happened when they were saying something funny, making a joke.

Early in the exchange, the man faced me and asked what I thought. Late in the conversation, the woman looked straight at me and asked me to help her make the man understand her point.

The conversation went round and round. They were each trying to convince the other but, judging from their statements, neither had moved from their original standpoint after an hour of talking. Neither had changed their mind. Neither could see It from the other's perspective.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday I was invited to take training and join the Mississippi Mediation Project. I attended an Essential Problem Solving Skills workshop last month sponsored by the MS Mediation project. The organizer and facilitators were impressed by my facility with and approach to the material. I accepted the invitation.

Conflict resolution interests me. Communication interests me. I'm sure I'll enjoy the training and the idea of doing what I watched the facilitators do last month sounds like something I would enjoy.

Listening to the previously described conversation, I tried to remember techniques from the workshop. I listened to the conversation the same way I read the samples in the workshop handouts and viewed the video skits. Like an anthropologist or psychologist or linguist or playwright.

There is still so much work to be done on the Gulf. Every day I see how poor communication further complicates already frustrating situations. The problem is often due to one or more of the following:

• People don't know how to put their thoughts into words
  
• People don't know how to listen--to themselves or others
• People are blind to emotional dynamics
• People talk too much

Right after the storm, things were simpler. People either needed food, water, shelter, transportation, health care or they were offering those things.

Now there are volunteers and developers and politicians and service providers and funders and city planners and environmentalists and crooks and contractors and insurance agents and tourists and activists and more on the ground, milling around, each speaking in their own tongue with their own agenda. People are here from all over the world and from right here. Teenagers and young adults and Boomers and elders.

It's all very intense: whether on fire with a bright new idea or a campaign of hope or service, or profoundly depressed or despairing, nobody's blase down here these days.

It's never been more important to foster and facilitate good communication. I believe we're at another critical turning point in the recovery. I suspect poor communication is a contributing factor in the crime surge in New Orleans. What good are solutions if people don't have adequate communication skills to promote and implement them?



As I left the scene of conversation, the woman made a self-denigrating remark in the form of a question to me. Something like, "Oh I know you must think I'm awful for going on and on and believing...." I said something like "No, I don't think you're an awful person. I think you feel strongly about this and want him to understand your feeling." She said, "Oh, Alex. You are such a great mediator."

I just smiled and said goodnight. We'll see.

The Stream of Healing, Remembrance and Awakening

I started the day grumpy but didn't notice until I began interactions with The World. An hour of telephone calls, a stop at the market to pick up cat food, a trip to the office which involved dealings with Russell, Mary and Larry Bird (the cat) and I realized my neck hurt and my mouth was dry. My voice sounded strident and my thoughts were careening inside my head. I felt possessed.

On the way home, traffic was frustratingly sluggish and choppy. A small group of men were gathered around a white van that had rolled into a ditch. A fire truck screamed by. EMTs were pushing a woman out on a stretcher in front of a neighborhood restaurant. On the radio, a local talk show host was trying to stimulate call-ins by making outrageous, misogynist generalizations. Overhead, for the third day, the military boys played with their loud, fast flying machines.

I thought, the whole damn world is possessed!

For several days I've been thinking about giving up cigarettes, starting an exercise regimen, resuming meditation practice, returning to the Kegan-Lahey work, eating better and/or designing formal spreadsheet schedules for piano work and writing. Feeling like there's something I need to do, something I need to change. All the madness in the street today--it's not just me. "Things" are out of balance, out of sync...

Back at home, an hour or so of piano work softened the jagged edge of my mood; but I still felt there was/is more going on, more for me to know or see in this possession, this imbalance in me and the world. I ran the water to wash dishes and looked up--as I always do when petitioning Higher Power for input, guidance, clue... What is here? Help me see It.

The phone rang.

It was the storyteller Opalanga from Colorado. DCE met her a few months ago at the Rocky Mountain Storyteller's gathering and returned to Gulfport visibly deeply impacted by making her acquaintance. She sounded like someone I would like to meet. She sounded like a member of the Tribe.

I recognized the call as response from Higher Power. We talked of many things. I experienced especially high resonance near the end of the call as our cell phones began to break up. She said she would be holding up my continued awareness of the importance of making music to my spiritual health, awareness of the essential balance, nurturance and sustenance it provides. She said she had only this week resumed a meditation practice, holding herself to make meditation as important as brushing her teeth before leaving the house each day.

She said she has begun stopping at yellow lights when she's driving. She said the practice slows her down and this is a good thing. This reminded me of two new practices in my life: paying for things with exact change and always granting entrance to vehicles trying to merge into traffic. Both practices are slowing me down and it feels good.

I'm going to borrow another practice she mentioned: whenever she opens a door, anywhere, she stops and asks Spirit to go before her. I felt that in my bones when she described it.

We talked of many things. Too much to write here. I was the complete opposite of grumpy during the call.

When I got off the phone, I popped in a CD and Joni Mitchell was singing about seeing "through a glass darkly." The lyric comes from the Bible. I looked it up. I don't know why these verses belong in this post but as I read them, they felt like a keenly relevant part of the flowing story of this day.

1 Corinthians 13

1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.


3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. ...

9For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.


12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.


13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Sweet Gulf

I took US 90 back from New Orleans today. Last time I traveled that route was December after "the storm" with some labor activists from CA. To that time, without access to a motor vehicle, my exposure to Katrina, Rita and Flood Havoc had been limited mostly to New Orleans and adjacent areas within the parish.

I had come to appreciate the distinction often drawn by locals at the time--survivors had suffered either "wind" or "water." If you'd "had wind" then you were missing a roof and whatever hadn't been tied down in your yard was no longer in the yard. Probably, since the roof was gone, a bunch of stuff in your house was ruined by the rains that followed the "wind." This was the story for my friends on the West Bank.

But if you had "water," you were living in New Orleans when the levees broke. You suffered loss and damage from the wind, but nothing compared to the extent of the wreckage incurred by 3, 5, 8 feet or more of water filling your house and staying that way for some time. Or just washing your house right off its foundations and floating it down the street.

I leaped at the chance to ride along in December because I wanted to see how far east the damaged extended.

What I saw blew my mind. It was worse than New Orleans. I hadn't seen acres of ruined forest in New Orleans. Or boats in trees. Or an entire bridge gone. Or billboards twisted and mangled. It went on for miles and miles. Just past Waveland, the road ended. The bridge was gone.



Not like tornados--which I knew a little bit from growing up in the Midwest. Tornado devastation looks like something big walked through and left footprints. With a hurricane, it looks like something big and mad threw a tantrum--kicking and picking up things and throwing them around and pounding it's fists on the ground.

I was stunned. Humbled. Heartbroken. Awestruck.

That December, we'd had to circle back and go north to I-10 to travel further east. In a strange foreshadowing, the exit we chose as a place to attempt to reconnect to the Gulf Coast road was one of the state roads that lead to Gulport. We actually stopped the car and got out and walked around in Gulfport-- as it turns out, I wandered within half a mile of the site where I live now. And I saw pelicans that day.

Anyway, I wanted to see how things were coming along. So I drove 90 East for the first time since then today. OZ was playing good cajun zydeco stuff that really fit the personality of the terrain. I had all the windows down and the car was filled with the hot, steamy, green-ness of the bayous. It was a beautiful, if heartbreaking drive.

I am coming to love this watery land more and more. But even as my heart celebrated the lush, green recovery of the land in evidence everywhere, I mourned for mile after mile of pillars with no houses perched atop. Trailers parked next to cement slabs where houses used to stand. Devastated, abandoned buildings.

The bridge has been rebuilt. (I'll try to remember to take some pictures next weekend.) The casinos, over in Biloxi (where we ended our drive back in December 2005) have been rebuilt. There was still a lot of ghost-town feeling for me today. The human recovery seems to be going slower than the ecological/botanical recovery.

Maybe there's some validity to the argument that this land is uninhabitable; that any attempt at full-throttle modernization and civilization is doomed here. When I'm in New Orleans, I believe it's absolutely worth every last drop of blood and sweat to try to live here. Out in the wild wetlands of Plaquemines Parish or south Mississippi, I'm not so sure. Driving through the bayou beauty today, I wondered what it would take to learn the ways of this land well enough to live in harmony with it rather than trying to tame or transform it.

A Few Sure Things

So far, it doesn't matter where I'm going--if I go on my motor scooter, it's a groovy time.

I suppose if I drove one every day, there'd be opportunities to ride around frowning and arrive in a bad mood. But I only ride on weekends since my scooter lives at my friend's house on the West Bank. I only get to ride when I'm in New Orleans.

I've driven to job interviews, to the bank, post office and grocery store, to a movie theater and cafes, to work, to church... Doesn't matter. I feel great pulling up anywhere if I get there on a scooter.

Playing piano works too--no way to stay in a bad mood or bored if I'm playing. One difference: if the instrument is crappy or damaged it makes a difference. I won't play long.

Bodies of water also have this magic. I can't think of a body of water I've visited and didn't feel like I could stay there forever. Some of my favorites are the Pacific, Lake Merritt in Oakland CA, the Mississippi (up by St. Louis and down at New Orleans), and now, Turkey Creek and the Gulf of Mexico. I'd like to visit the Amazon and the Yangtze before the show ends.

I've heard people say "Who doesn't like sex?" and it's not that I'd raise my hand; but when I compare having sex to riding my scooter or being at the ocean or playing Beethoven...well...

It's surely the result of not enough "good" sex and too much mediocre or careless sex in my life. People with traumatic piano study histories or for whom playing is difficult probably shake their heads at my lust for piano. We all have our "things," no?

I tried not to smoke today and made it until about 2. Talking to my son on the telephone, he playfully suggested that if one of my wealthy friends were to offer me $10,000 to quit smoking I might succeed. At that moment, my jaws were clenched and I had tears in my eyes from the intense confusion and discomfort I was feeling (still hadn't broken down and bought a pack). I told him I didn't think it would work.

Later in the day I thought about it again: would I quit if someone offered me money? I still don't think it would work. Money has never been one of my "things."