Trick or Treat

Some time recently I read a piece of wisdom writing but I can't remember where I read it or exactly what it said. A snatch of the teaching, mostly a sense of it or perhaps a word or two, is all that remains in memory. As sometimes happens, I've been reading from lots of different books and magazines and newspapers--as well as blogs and other internet writing--all at the same time, for several weeks.

Now I can't exactly remember what I read; nor can I completely forget what I read.

The furry memory of it feels Buddhist. And very old; perhaps ancient. It may have been a poem. The theme was...desire...or maybe it was attachment.

Something about a quality of detachment or contentment that makes an enemy no more or less cherished than a lover.

Several times a day now the sense of the text comes to me, floats into the center of my field of attention. I stop what I am doing and stare into space and frown just a little--with frustration because I want to read it again but I don't remember where I read it; and also because I am unsettled with the idea and what it seems to mean.

I am not resistant to the idea but it is provocative. It's not like the concept of "unconditional love", which was understandable, incontrovertible and appealing from the first time I encountered it. My mind wants to play with the current, haunting concept: to consider it, question it, hold it up to the light, cup my hands around it and see if it glows in the dark.

Wherever I read it, I understood the teaching to advocate a kind of meditative neutrality.

I placed the incompletely-glimpsed concept in dialogue with a recent Andrew Cohen Quote of the Week entitled "The Evolution of We" which opens

The evolution of consciousness and culture is not about the individual. It's not the evolution of you, it's the evolution of we—the evolution of the consciousness that's being shared in the collective or intersubjective “we” space between individuals.

(It's a long quote. You can find the full text here if you like.)

Last night, unable to sleep, while I tried to wrap my mind around holding friends and enemies with the same regard and, by extension, viewing the potential for collaborative evolution of human consciousness as equals since the intersubjective "we" space between me and any Other -- enemy or friend -- would, of course, also be undifferentiated...

Two things happened: One, I received a long, angry, email rant from my adult son; and Two, I discovered a blog authored by some disgruntled former students of Andrew Cohen and a critical biography of Cohen. Two explosions in the middle of the night.

(I finally fell asleep around 7 a.m. and slept fitfully for two hours. I'm hoping for some sleep tonight.)

Sleep deprivation makes it impossible to discuss fully last night's mental and emotional journey; but I'll say this much:

Due to the presence of the haunting concept, I'd spent the last few days experimenting with finding flat level ground from which to deal impartially with all people. The exercise saved my life today. I don't know if I could have survived reading my son's missive otherwise. If I'd had to receive the hit from the high place or the close place where I emotionally hold him. With everything else that's happened recently, I would have been devastated.

The Web writing pulled Andrew Cohen down to level ground from the lofty place he'd occupied in my thinking.That was a relief because though I've never met the man, I've read some of his writing and attended a sort of intro to Evolutionary Enlightenment talking circle in SF a few years ago led by some of his students.

I'd found some good stuff in his writing but being in the same space with his students was downright creepy. I couldn't explain the strangeness definitively but the dim lighting, the way the hosts all spoke at the same volume in the same pitch, the humongous screen at the front of the tiny room, suspended at a height that forced you to look up, running looped video clips of Andrew while the audience arrived, all the chairs facing the screen... and out of the seventy or so folks who showed up that night, I was the only person of color in the room and one of perhaps five people who looked like they had to work for a living...yeah, all that had something to do with it.

Anyway, this concept, indistinct as it must be for now, has been quietly floating around in my subconscious like a ghost in the machine for days. There's a fetching perfection about it finally howling through to consciousness on Halloween.

Start Here

Ah, New Orleans....

I spent a day and a half in my favorite city on earth this weekend. Hands-down highlight was catching the Rebirth Brass Band (yes, follow the link to get some spirit of this band and some spirit of night life in New Orleans and possibly fall in love with NOLA) in a free show at Fulton Street. Lordy, lordy I did shake my boo-tay.

And it looks like that's as close as I'm going to get to The Dream for now. M_____ says New Orleans is a lover spurned who will not open her arms to me, the ingrate who walked out on her. Mona at the Adeeta employment agency says that even though stores are open for business, people still aren't themselves and the environment remains unstable; everybody is kinda hangin' on. The crime rate, political corruption and apathy, the "disrupted" vibe that still understandably permeates the place--too many natives still gone and too many newcomers stirring things up and talking funny. It's hard to get your bearings in NO these days.

I can't say I understand why I'm not in New Orleans. And my unknowing doesn't bother me. New Orleans is full of mystery and ghosts. So much that cannot and will never be explained in and about New Orleans. I don't live there but I've been bitten and so, like so many before me, for the rest of my life I will describe wherever I am as either "in New Orleans" or "away from New Orleans."

It's rained all day on and off. The streets are flooded. Creeks and rivers are cresting. Tornado warnings 12 miles north of me. My apartment feels cozy if not necessarily safe. I made my first cornbread of the season (still working on a new recipe...this batch produced the kind of loaf that's not so good right out of the oven but reheats well and is especially good with any "red" spread--raspberry, cherry, plum, strawberry....jam, syrup, preserve, etc.) and even played guitar for the first time in over a year.

I'm learning a song I'll sing at Pallas' ordination in November: "All Will Be Well" based on the Julian of Norwich quote.

In part, it sings

Julian
Do you not know...about sorrow
Do you not know about pain
about hunger, about shame

She said
All will be well
All will be well
All manner of things
Will be well

I have Joni on one side singing a checklist of preparedness that proves sufficient Fight and Insight to gain the Earth and Everything in it. She's been living in isolation for 10 years. On the other side I have the words of a woman who lived her life behind a brick wall hallucinating visions of Christ's bleeding head. And She says "All will be well."

I have cornbread that I made with my own hands cooling in the kitchen and a windy, rainy night to sleep in. I should write my own song.

Stitches in Time

Often my inspiration for posting here comes from observing a recurrent motif or multiple random occurrences of a symbol in the world. Yesterday, for example, I described an acquaintance as "mousy." Later that day, a mouse ran across my kitchen floor. Hours later I was playing an online computer game (instead of doing something more productive). It was one of those find-the-hidden-objects type games and the challenge on one of the early screens was to "find all the mice in this picture."

Sometimes, the dots I am moved to connect seem unrelated. And yet, as my little brain goes about its "meaning making," it's like each item strikes the same chord. There's something here, I feel/think to myself.

This morning a friend and I were talking about change and how we handle it and the impact of imminent change on our psyches...and also how desperately we need a break from "things." I took a shower and went out to buy some Half-and-Half. As I walked across the parking lot, a guy called out to me "Dark and lovely! Good morning." ("Dark and lovely" is apparently a favorite pet name for me among Southern Black men. I hear it a lot.)

I popped in Annie Lennox's new CD when I got back home. Making coffee, I heard her singing "It's a dark road/and a dark way that leads to my house..."

Accepting change. Dark and lovely. Dark road. There's something here...

Discussing the film Babel yesterday, I was asked how do I find hope in the face of the kind of ignorance and violence and despair depicted in the film and in the "real" life of the world. [Occurrences of the "hope conversation" are another set of dots I often think of tracking or trying to connect...] "I don't 'do' hope," I answered, as I have answered similarly for a couple of decades now. "Hope is too often a distraction we indulge. A distant vista to set our eyes upon instead of looking with focus and love on the work that is here and now to do," I said.

It is said that Hope is the inspirational fuel for the work we do today. May it be so for some.

For others, the inspiration for today, the fuel for the work at hand, is a combination of belief in the work, love for humanity and commitment to the evolution of consciousness. The place where we stand today may be obliterated tomorrow by some unforeseen calamity. The work we do may come to naught. But we stand, we work, because it is the right thing to do; because the alternatives--turning away, giving up, closing our eyes and ears--are a kind of dying. Still breathing but unplugged.

Loving humanity is to love myself--I am here. We are one. Each pressing on in our heartrending imperfection. Whether we are aware of it or not, evolution, change, transformation is intrinsic to the human condition. Ain't no way to stay put, to hold tight, to make this journey without changing and being changed along the way.

In a very real way, the work of becoming--as expressed in what we choose to do, what we choose to love, where we choose to invest our energy and talents and attention--is essentially the work of survival. Without it, we sit in a collapsed mine with a limited supply of oxygen...it's just a matter of time before our recycled air becomes worthless to us and we expire.

I've been told that the Path is very dark without Hope; that without a light at the end of the tunnel it is difficult to impossible to proceed. I know the darkness they speak of. It surrounds me much of the time. And I know how difficult it is to go forward sometimes.

And I also have the experience of appreciating the loveliness of the Dark. It is mysterious and unfathomable and reflective and awesome. I am afraid sometimes. But the Dark is somehow less oppressive when I am doing The Work -- that is, doing work I believe in--with my heart open in Love. My hammer strikes the anvil and sparks fly, lighting the dark in the small space where I work. I am attentive to the work and something new is forged.

What light there is to be found in Life lies much closer than the end of the tunnel. It's right here, in the streams of intention and attention that flow through me -- through each of us -- into the work. The shower of sparks lights the dark road, like star shine on moonless nights. I can see it. Others can see it. Who knows but it might be all the light we need to make our way.

When All the Slaves are Free

One of my last activities before bed last night was a Google Image search on Marion Jones. I was driving to New Orleans in blinding rain on the morning she met the press and made her confession. I've been thinking about her on and off since that morning.

Today, I woke up luxuriating in the warmth of my bed. The weather turned overnight and there was a definite chill in the room. Resisting the nagging voice in my head that insisted I get up and get busy, I snuggled deeper into the blankets and remembered "I'm free and grown and I'll get up when I want to."

As I lay there, "free" kept echoing in my head. I started thinking about American slavery. I tried to imagine myself waking up on a crisp October morning, 200 years ago, abducted, transported, indentured, on a plantation perhaps somewhere near where I live today as a "free" woman. In the imagined scene there were the sounds and smells and heat of other bodies around me and there was comfort in that, for this 21st century sojourner who wakes up alone and lonely most mornings.

But there was also the mind-boggling, soul-crushing reality of No Choice in the scene. No pantry or refrigerator offering choice of breakfast foods. No rack of colorful clothes from which to choose a costume/disguise for the day. No option to sleep in. No option to find a wi-fi cafe and sit with a laptop and blog. No choice about how many hours to spend working, how many to spend playing.

Sojourner didn't do well as a slave. I suspect I'd have had even less success. With my penchant for speaking my mind and "giving looks", there's every likelihood I'd have ended up sold and sold again, each new owner trying to beat me into submission, probably sustaining numerous physical injuries before expiring in one final brutal beating. Or maybe I'd have attempted to escape.

Isn't that what I've been doing for the last 10 years...maybe longer? Trying to escape? Trying to find Freedom?

Quality education. A good job here and there. Some amount of celebrity--in spurts. Relative affluence (ref. my sisters in Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan...) and freedom of movement. Good health. Family and friends who love me.

Still not satisfied. Still the feeling of enslavement. Still searching, still running, still wanting... What?

At 27, Marion had a baby boy. She and the father did not marry but she gave the boy his father's name...and went on with her life. Kept pushing, searching, the old burning questions still driving her, coupled now with the ineffable love and sense of responsibility that come with motherhood and the complicated connection to a man with whom she has a child. In private moments, she must have looked back and remembered the simplicity of childhood compared to the tangled intricacies of adulthood. A multiplicity of decisions to make and less and less often a calm, clear space to stand in to make them. A dwindling circle of trusted others to support her as she made them.

And so she finally finds herself caught in a web of illegal activities with the baby's father and his friends and their friends and the white-hot glare of celebrity and fans and sycophants and her own ambition and immaturity and compromises that were almost always immediately recognized as wrong ... Ensnared. Everything whirling fast and overlapping. She is caught. She is no longer free. She is a slave.

Sojourner walked away and found some measure of freedom. Marion has made a public admission of guilt, forfeited her medals and prizes and awaits judgment. I hope her confession brings her some peace and freedom. I hope she feels released from the too-fast treadmill of the last 8 years of her life.

It is not easy to make a life. Attempting to make one as a hugely celebrated woman of color in the rapacious snake pit of American popular culture must surely be an especially daunting endeavor. It must require finesse to avoid the spiritual destitution that often accompanies "having everything."

"If" from Shine keeps playing in my head as I write this blog...

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken...
Or watch your life's work torn apart and broken down
And still stoop to build again with worn out tools.
If you can draw a crowd and keep your virtue...
Then the Earth is yours and Everything that's in it...
You'll be alright, you'll be alright.
'Cause you've got the fight
you've got the insight
You've got the fight, you've got the insight...

My prayer: that what's left in me of the desire to escape be transformed into Fight and Insight.

If I Had a Heart I'd Cry

Joni's new album arrived yesterday. It is playing now for the umpteenth time and will continue as the soundtrack of choice here for another day or so. It's a privilege and an inspiration to receive another musical statement from her. She is one of my primary life lights. Meeting her is the one of my "If you had three wishes..." answers that has persisted over time.

I chuckled when they mentioned her smoking American Spirits in the article. That's my brand, too. I was turned on to cigarette smoking and Joni Mitchell in the same year, 1972 -- cigarettes in the Spring and Joni in the Fall when I entered college. It was a couple of years before I found out that she smoked. One of my most enduring psychological impediments to giving up cigarettes is the knowledge that the musical artist I admire most in the world is a chain-smoker.

Note: Don't bother to challenge the logic or sanity of this notion. I know, I know...

So the music and lyrics of "Shine" accompanied me into dreamland last night. I found myself in a cozy attic apartment (similar to my lodgings in Brighton, CO at Jason and Mandy's) surrounded by books and recorded music and candles and my guitar and piano...all my favorite things. And my favorite people, including Joni. And my favorite textures: corduroy and satin, leather and feathers and silk and linen. And there was about the scene the feeling that I was Home, that this was my last place on Earth.

The talk among the visitors in my Last Place was honest. We talked about hard things in the same spirit that Joni comments on the hard things of this world in "Shine": seeing clearly, feeling the sadness and anger...not raging and distraught but seeing the Hard as clearly as the Soft, the Glory as well as the Tragedy. Holding it all as The Way Things Are.

Some in the group were walking the path of protest and resistance; others had chosen the path of prayer. There was peace and love among us. We understood that none of us had The Answer, only our earnest personal choice of style of engagement.

If there is a God Father in a lofty distant press box watching the Show, He must by now be wondering about that original decision to endow His creation with Will and Freedom of Choice. Or perhaps He knew all along that we would tear it up -- He just wanted to see exactly how we'd do it.

<-----------------This way or that -------------->

I've seen Vanessa perform twice. No live performance has ever moved me more. Freedom, love, vulnerability, passion, curiosity. She surrenders her body to the vibrant, eloquent expression of these essential dimensions of the human experience. You cannot look away once she begins.

Now she is returning to New Orleans to perform and to lead a two-day workshop.
And I can't attend. The second step of my training as an Essential Problem Solving Skills (EPSS)** trainer takes place that weekend.

The synchronicity of this schedule conflict is profound and mysterious. Nothing less than a head-on collision between Artist self and the Other self that I am when I am "away from" Art. The Other who feels by comparison, at different times

traitorous
cowardly
ashamed
off-course
empty

The EPSS training is a project of the Other to which the Artist hopes to contribute...eventually.

For some good and practical reasons, the workshop design focuses on the workplace as the primary context for practicing the skills. Workshop participants come mostly from hard-working nonprofit organizations and the EPSS skill set is directly relevant. If I were a trainer, though, I would expand (or change) the design to focus more on "personal life" and "community" settings, using theater-games from my improv workshops (of yore) as vehicles to practice the skills of EPSS.

So I'm not in full-on Artist mode but Art is in the mix.

It's just...faced with the bald facts of my situation -- not available to study with a master performer because I've made a choice to do something practical in Gulfport, MS... It's got me thinking. Or, I guess, just noticing the arrangement of my life these days.

When all is said and done, I said 'yes' to EPSS because it offered a meaningful way to remain a part of the Gulf Coast recovery. We'll see what happens. There are few easy choices and infrequent definitive signs of progress down here. Standing on shifting sands, sometimes you do what your hand can reach.



I met a friend for drinks last night. (This was seven hours after leaving the chiropractor's office and four hours after being rear-ended in traffic...) We laughed when our talk revealed neither of us has a career goal. We are probably typical of many people who came to the South after Katrina. Our goal is to be part of the Recovery, to keep finding ways to be a part of the Recovery. That's what our lives are about for the foreseeable future.

It's a sketchy, complex certainty, thick with issues and questions like where and how to offer what to the rebuilding; how to maintain and sustain ourselves--financially, physically, spiritually, socially; how to discern whether our work is doing any good, having any effect; what to do with who we were and what we loved before we got here.

For me, there is also the reality of the little man in the picture. My grandson. Growing up hundreds of miles away from me. He is a certainty. And a possibility. The knot on his forehead is the result of lots of running toward the future, following his heart on new legs. His gaze is unequivocal. Courageous and interested and true.

I printed a large format copy of this picture today and hung it over my desk. Something about the gaze has pertinent teaching and encouragement for GrammAlee in her current situation.


I also printed this one:





because sometimes life be's like that, too.











**I attended EPSS last spring. The workshop handbook explained:

"The focus of this workshop [is] to introduce...residents of the MS Gulf Coast...to problem solving and conflict resolution skills, in rder to enhance your capacity to work collaboratively and productively in long term recovery efforts... [It] will enhance your capacity to be an effective problem solver with regard to conflicts in your personal life, employment relationships and community."

After the workshop, I was invited to join the first class of MS residents to be trained to facilitate future workshops.

Quiet Terror

Money is my Bogey Man, doncha know?

There are altars built to "Bright Goddess of Abundance" and I have worshiped there. But you know how it is after you leave church: sometimes it is difficult to sustain the euphoric confidence you felt, on your knees with your arms outstretched...and the candles burning...and the uplifting hymns.

You find one more email detailing one more horror story of post-Katrina economic injustice in the morning. You discover your checking account is overdrawn (Hitchcockian, the way the discovery simultaneously disturbs both physical and psychic sensorium) a couple of hours later. And finally, your lunch date cancels 30 minutes before you were to meet--the infamous "free lunch" is, once again, a no-show.

I was running away from the Bogey Man into the Bright Goddess' arms when I left CA in '94 and it wasn't my first time on the run.

But He's a clever goblin. Even as the Goddess sings a lullaby and tucks you in for the night, Bogey Man makes His presence known. He is under every bed in every room, breathing slow and softly enough so only you can hear him. He gets inside your head. You know he is smiling. You know He will wait and you know that He will come for you in the dark.

Bogey Man nipped at Sojourner Truth's ankles most of her life. I don't know that she ever commented on the impact of poverty in her personal life but a number of biographers make reference to her lifelong desire to own a home. I suspect she did not have a checking account. She lost her first house after only a few months of ownership because she could not keep up with repayment of the loan that financed it.

She worked hard and traveled ceaselessly and passed the hat and sold printed images of herself and accepted invitations into parlors and salons where, though she would always be regarded as a fascinating, exotic outsider, she would be fed and lodged for a while.

It is a life. Certainly less terrifying and debilitating than sitting down to wait in the pit for Bogey Man to find you.

Tears

You've seen this picture before. For awhile it appeared in the side bar. It's a pretty old photo and I believe it's the only family photo we ever had taken. I'm the little girl on the far right. I'm about 8 years old.

I'm pulling it out again because my emotional firecracker for today was set off when I used a painful scene from my Mommy Book to make a point with someone. It is over 20 years since the day of the incident but tears sprang to my eyes when I related it today. And tonight, remembering the ache I felt in my heart and gut this afternoon, I pull a picture from twice as many years ago as illustration for the blog.

What is memory? Why do we remember some things and not others? Why do we remember some things for a long time and then one day are surprised to discover we no longer remember them? I thought I would always remember his name....

I have a handful of painful memories that it seems I will never forget. In therapy years ago, I asked my therapist "Will I ever stop crying?" For most of my life I've been a cry-baby, by which I mean to say I have cried easily and often. In therapy, I talked about the past, pulled up those painful unforgettables and cried and cried and cried. Between sessions, I would write in my journal and remember...and cry and cry and cry. When I posed my question, I'd become self-conscious about all that crying. I feared it was a sign of something horrible or weird or defective about me--but I didn't know exactly what.

Sometime later I remembered that my paternal grandmother had cried all the time. I decided my lachrymose nature was genetically inspired. I stopped worrying about crying and eventually stopped crying so much--say, two or three times a week instead of every day...

A few years later, the thought dawned that perhaps my grandmother had been depressed. Perhaps that was why she cried all the time. Maybe depression and not mere tearfulness was the hereditary endowment.

My current belief is that I descend from a fairly long line of exceptionally sensitive people for whom crying was the dominant vehicle of expressing deep feeling. Whether due to DNA or environment, my people have been prone to tearfulness and so am I. My insecurities about crying have disappeared and usually it actually feels good on some level to cry these days.

It's a feature of my physical presence--like my gait--and my psychology--like my sense of humor. It can be controlled somewhat but I've decided why bother? Much more fun to shop for handkerchiefs.

Ignorance, Stupidity and Bliss

A blog begun a month ago and never posted:

It is late Sunday morning and I was awakened from a sound sleep by my Landlord for the second Sunday in a row. I responded to pounding on the door by calling down from my second floor bedroom window "Who is it?" "Landlord," a gruff voice replied.

"Are you the same person who woke me last Sunday?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I'm here for the rent. It's due on the first."

"Stay there," I said. "I'll come down."

Last night, for the first time, several tenants of the complex sat in the courtyard together, listening to music, drinking, laughing and talking. It felt good. It was an important, positive turn of events. A suggestion that perhaps "community" is possible here.

The conversation turned to definitions of and differences between "ignorance" and "stupidity." There was nearly unanimous agreement that "ignorance" resulted from lack of exposure to ideas or information and "stupidity" was an inability to absorb new information and make a choice to change. Someone mentioned the folks in "the Delta," whose lack of social grace and notorious racial and sexual bigotry was the epitome of ignorance because they live isolated from the larger Mississippian community. Everyone thought it's "better" to be ignorant than to be stupid because at least with ignorance there's a possibility for improvement.

What of my landlord? He's a "businessman." He owns property in Los Angeles and San Diego as well as Gulfport. In other words, he is exposed to other ways of doing things. I learned today that he and his wife were "born poor" (to use his words) and "worked for everything we got." So we might say his life started in ignorance. Is that still the case or did he slide over to stupid at some point?

What a difference a month (and perhaps the fiery vehemence of the protest/reprimand I launched when I got downstairs that Sunday?) makes. My windows are open on this beautiful morning with Best of Chopin on the turntable. Outside it feels like Fall but sounds like Spring--something very very green in the birdsong.

The landlord is across the way pounding on the door at #4. He beats and beats the door. Of course, no one responds--they moved out over the weekend. As did #2. The folks in #5 will be gone in a few days and the kind hearts of #6 moved out while I was in Boston.

After only nine months, I am the senior resident. A young couple moved into #6 last weekend so two of the seven units are occupied.

Just how stupid/ignorant is my landlord? Can he observe the connection between his taking ownership in late July and nearly every one of his tenants voluntarily moving out within two months?

Or am I the stupid one--not realizing that he wants everybody to leave. He's got something planned and I'm the last rat on a sinking ship...