And on the Fifth Day

For four and a half days I had no







and no

...which is, of course, a euphemism for "no internet access"-- and this is infinitely more critical than not having access to a laptop. I discovered this when someone in the training program (I'll talk about this later...) brought a laptop to a session. I'd done some casual research/shopping for a new machine a few days before; but my desire to "check my email" when I spotted her laptop was intense, focused, excited. And the satisfaction I felt logging into Gmail and just browsing Subject lines was deep.

No laptop at home also means no computer games. My addiction is not as persistent as the cigarettes--I don't have to step away from the world and get a fix of Diner Dash or Luxor 2 after a meal...between thoughts....whenever I drink coffee; but it is an issue. After three hours at the piano I crave nothing more than to logon and earn a million dollars manufacturing chocolate candies in the game-world of Chocolatier.

During these four days, as it happened, Netflix and the US mail service (as it functions in Gulfport MS) had conspired again to leave me without a single DVD film to watch. (I love film. I love the escapism. I love being moved to tears. I love learning something. I love sitting on my bed with some yummy pasta and warm bread and my remote controls.) I watch a lot of films--compared to the queues of my Netflix Friends, my queue exists in another universe, like the difference between a demitasse espresso and a 50-cup percolator in a military mess hall.

So for four and a half days I was thrown back on myself, into a depth of intimacy I had not experienced in quite that way for a long time. I played piano. I listened to CDs. I looked at my guitar...

I existed in my mind and body without props, without favorite toys. I showered, brushed my teeth, flossed my teeth, painted my toenails. Wondered how my counterpart in Uganda handles "free time"...does she have free time?

I started thinking about my other toys, my stuff in storage in Oakland. I wandered mentally through the boxes...my oil crayons and big paper, my good pencils for sketching, the rest of my CDs, my books, my favorite piano lamp, my cast iron skillet...

When I was finally able to borrow a laptop for a couple of days, I was excited but not frantic. I didn't spend hours online and I noticed that my body--specifically my neck, left shoulder and elbow and lower back--doesn't respond well to long stints sitting at my desk in front of the laptop. Perhaps there's a more comfortable posture or setup. Perhaps it's just as well to spend less time at the computer.

The Work of Intimacy

My friend read that Woody Allen doesn't consider movie-making the "end-all" of his life. I asked "What's the end-all for your life?" and he answered "Intimacy."

I'd been thinking about intimacy, about how much closer the World is to me lately. Weather, kindness, soap, ideas, injustice, music...it's all begun to register on a keenly visceral level.

In the course of trying to describe in a telephone conversation the Brahms Intermezzo I'm studying , my free hand clenched and danced and touched my breast. Words were insufficient. The sound of the music, the way it feels to play it--glissandi and irregular arpeggios in my hands, the pedals under my feet, even the way the notes look on a page evoke a blend of joy, serenity, excitement, yearning and curiosity that vibrates every molecule of my being--physical and psychic.

I finally looked up the tempo marking -- Andante teneramente -- and discovered that teneramente means "tenderly." Ummm, one of my favorite words. How can one hear that word and not feel its meaning viscerally? Comprehension of the word is an intimate experience.

On an impulse, I bought flowers yesterday for two of the women I work with. The florist was a heavy-set, middle-aged woman. She was talking on her cell when I walked in but ended her conversation smoothly and smiled when she said "Hi. Can I help you?" I told her I wanted a little something for two overworked, stressed female coworkers. "They just moved their office into a little cinder block room over in Biloxi and everything over there needs some softening," I told her.

"Oh, maybe a couple little bouquets in bud vases? A little bit of ribbon?"

"Sounds good."

As she worked, we "got to talkin'". A little ceramic plaque on the counter said, "Don't lose any sleep worrying. Give it to God--He'll be up all night any way." The design of the plaque was too sweet but the thought was somehow both sweet and compelling. I commented on it and that led to a conversation about God. Her speech flowed from a traditional stern-but-loving-Father perspective and mine did not; but still, we communicated.

I could feel her Life, the living breathing reality of her, as we talked. And although I can't know exactly how she felt, her energy felt open and present. She was not distracted or defensive or resistant. The interaction was, for me, intimate; in part due to the theme of our conversation but also because after only 10 minutes of acquaintance we were together bridging a divide that so often proves impossible to transit. Both of us willingly brought our attention to the moment where we stood. We did not pretend anything. We did not demand anything.

The space between things is where Intimacy takes nourishment. Being physically close enough to share breath creates an especially fertile space. I think of lying with a lover, limbs intertwined in the dark; and the space between a mother and a nursing baby. I even think of fighting--when someone "gets in your face"; although intellectually polarized, combatants can not get much closer to each other--bodies and psyches wrestling.

The place where things touch is where Intimacy takes nourishment. There is sitting with my friend when she cries--and there is holding her as she cries. There is saying "Nice to meet you" from three feet away and there is clasping hands with eye contact as you say it or embracing and speaking the words directly into the ear.

I understand my current heightened sensitivity and increase in intimacy consciousness as yet another gift of Grace in my life. I also recognize it results from my willingness to approach and enter intimacy. To acknowledge and surrender when those spaces and places of Intimacy present.

My friend wants to create and facilitate such spaces and places. I am a little frightened by the idea of such work for myself...and I'm also curious and drawn to such work. Surely I don't know enough and am not good enough at it to do it for hire, I tell myself. But I can learn and get better at it by living in it, practicing it, sharing it with other people day-to-day. Like everything else, it will find its way into whatever I do for hire.

Almost ten years ago, in the Bachelor of Arts Completion program at CA Institute of Integral Studies, our cohort explored "identity." We were asked what we would with our lives if we had only ourselves to answer to and everything was possible.

I said I would be a courtesan because it allows an unparalleled depth of intimacy--and a lot of time to do things I love, like dancing and bathing and making music and reading.

The topic came up again just a few days ago. I searched for a new answer after all these years but my answer was the same. I would still choose to be a courtesan if everything was possible. What with all the softening and growing sensitivity (and pianistic development, if I say so myself) and rising intimacy consciousness--I wonder if I'm on my way there.

Writing Home

We write to remember. To be remembered. To discover ourselves. To reveal ourselves.

A friend sent a video of Obama, an excerpt from one of the debates. She said she follows and favors Obama at this point in "the race"...while waiting for the appearance of any candidate "willing to weigh in strongly on the side of PEACE."

I watched the video and wrote "Where is Marianne Williamson when we need her?"

Then I selected the text, deleted it and instead wrote (and sent)

I remain, unfortunately, unimpressed by any of the candidates presently in the race. I am beginning to believe that the most responsible route is to get educated and stand with the political scientists, social activists and others who are spreading the word about the myriad fucked-up systems and policies that are, at varying rates, eroding the freedom, prosperity, security and general well-being of all life forms on the planet.

Or

to pour the rest of my life hours into artistic and spiritual expression and exploration.

I am influenced by the world and the lives of the people in it. I was introduced to the concept of humans as spiritual beings having physical experiences (in contrast to physical beings having intermittent spiritual experiences) fifteen years ago in Gary Zukav's book "Seat of the Soul". The concept and the book changed my life.

Just hours before receiving my friend's email message, I heard a radio interview of Robert Reich about his new book "Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Every Day Life". The discussion provoked a roiling despair in me, a seething discontent and I watched the Obama video less than half an hour later. The radio interview changed my life in the short term. Moving in my sensorium like smoke in a glass cylinder, it set the mood in which I listened to Obama's remarks.

Tonight, I watched the PBS film, "The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo". The biography was gracefully edited and delivered a portrait of an artist who lived passionately from the beginning to the end of her life. And I felt the fascination and envy that I always feel when confronted by stories of passion.

She was mostly bedridden in the final years of her life. She loved Diego Rivera. The relationship was not easy. In her journal, during the bedridden years, she wrote of her love for Diego in what sounds to me like the voice of a spiritual being have a physical experience of love.

I compared my life to hers as I watched the film--the risks she took, the rules she broke, the things she did that I have assiduously prohibited myself from doing. And I remembered, as I always do since being introduced to the concept in The Book of Runes, that it is foolish to compare my life to any other. It is tiresome stumbling on uneven ground into a dead-end.

When the movie ended, I checked my email and found a response from my friend:

i'm in favor of the latter. . . the former isn't much fun and easily leads to severe frustration, along w/increasing feelings of hopelessness. besides which, if what u focus on expands, then focusing on the problem is likely to get us more of -- guess what -- the problem. make art. repeat.

yeah.

Something is breaking through (or trying to breakthrough?) in my life. I often feel it while writing here. Fissures, hairline cracks in the swollen, stretched tight skin of my upper arms where something molten and sacred is swelling, near bursting.

Or it feels other times like my life is approaching the time to lay down a very heavy burden I have been carrying for a very long time; to take off the long, black coat forever.

Like a spiritual being having a physical remembrance of freedom. Of home.

Letters from the Ledge

I want to read Mother Teresa's letters. She dedicated her life to Jesus, the poor, the sick and the abandoned. And for the last 40 years of her life, she suffered a crisis of faith.

It is not unusual to hear news of the secret life of a celebrated person after their death. That is often the way it is described in popular media, the "secret" life. Besides the obvious profit motive underlying the use of such a tantalizing word, there is surprise--"He was not who you/we thought he was!"--and sometimes anger or a sense of betrayal--"He was not who he said he was!"

There are so many unspoken agreements between the Public and those in its midst who live in the spotlight. They are unspoken because if they were codified, no one would sign the contract. "We, the people, proclaim our right to know supersedes your right to privacy at all times, even after death." It's reported that Mother Teresa requested many of these letters be destroyed when she died. It is easy to imagine the thinking of her friend who decided to disobey her instructions.

Without having read the letters, though, the news of her inner struggle compels me. I don't think of it as her "secret" life but her "private" life. The letters, and other legitimate biography, suggest the larger work of which we have only glimpsed a detail. It's not "the rest of the picture" but it is a fuller picture. I yearn for fuller pictures: to see and be seen. I yearn similarly toward unconditional love: to love and be loved.

Considering "crisis of faith" evokes Simone Weil on "affliction." My first encounter with Weil's work in graduate school took my breath away. I felt and recognized her immediately. And I felt seen, in that special way that certain writers' work allows: the eloquent expression of something I could not find words to describe and did not know anyone else had ever contemplated.

Though in different ways, I believe both Weil and Mother Teresa suffered crises of faith. A crisis of faith is a most profound destitution. It is difficult, in this moment, to appreciate a difference between "crisis of faith," "affliction," and "depression." Perhaps I am standing too close. The words echo down long corridors in my psyche and reverberate in the most ancient rooms of my soul. I know those words and I know the place they define. I am reminded of an image from Adrienne Rich's "On Women and Honor" essay: the vast, bleak ledge where we stand, alone, lashed by cosmic rain when a friend lies to us.

I am not surprised to hear that Mother Teresa's faith lagged. I am surprised by the length of her estrangement. I am moved by the disclosure of her struggle (though I was not moved by her life while she lived) because she persevered in faithful work in spite of it. She lost her faith but perhaps she retained an unconditional love for Jesus and that was enough to sustain her. Unconditional love for Jesus also sustained Sojourner. And even without Sojourner Truth letters in which to discover a crisis of faith, I can imagine her spending some time out on the "vast, bleak ledge."

About "affliction," Weil wrote:

"The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment...is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God."

Maybe it was more than unconditional love for Jesus. Maybe it was the silence of God.

Snippets

Why doesn't Oprah Winfrey have a Southern accent?

One reason the Deep South feels like "home" to me is that some of the things I love the most are the same things that exasperate me. Items in the "To Keep" basket and the "!@#" basket keep spilling into each other.