Waiting in limbo for transformation most likely

This is my: yes I am in the cafe at Kripalu waiting for my room post, but this time before yoga teacher training. So instead of waiting for 3-5 days of being here, I am waiting to find out where I will stay for 26 days, which seems not dissimilar to a rehab stay in terms of time. Never been to rehab, but this seems like a voluntary version of it.

Because I take the bus from NYC, I get here before they have rooms available. But there is a lovely cafe and I get quite a view while waiting.

I have never been here before when it is this warm. Even the first time I came here - in 2003 before there was coffee or locks on the doors - it was early May so not this lusciously green and as mentioned no coffee. Or WiFi. In fact at that time I didn't even have a laptop. So here I am now for better or for worse with a computer, WiFi, and coffee in a plastic mug (reusable - don't freak out).

Met a lovely woman on the bus then spent a lot of time looking at the trees and the lake as we passed by it, and also parts of Connecticut I know personally or from researching my grandmother's life. Seymour, Waterbury, the Housatonic River...It's a sweet, gentle day here. I know it's hot in NYC, though was even lucky enough to leave before that hit.

I have some idea and then No idea what to expect. It's the exciting, stomach churning feeling. What will this be like? Will the other kids like me?

I spent my childhood in New England, moving from place to place, school to school, and sometimes camps and summer schools, staying with different relatives in summers and for a couple years, everything shifting, and every change, I remember thinking: maybe this time it will be better! Where I got that optimism from is beyond me, but kids are kind of amazing. Perhaps needless to say it was not always better, though sometimes it was. But the idea was: This time I will get it Right. I will finally figure out the right clothes, attitude or whatever (I never did - you just have to trust me on that one - sometimes I accidentally got it right, but usually a day late and dollar short).

And so even though I am 55 and should "know better" (drum roll please...) I find there is still some of that. Though also and equally based on prior experience at Kripalu, knowing I can eventually lay all that at the door.

This is why I am here for yoga teacher training and not somewhere else, because this is the place I come to Lay it All at the Door. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but usually there is at least one moment this happens, and that moment is transformative. It's like a sober acid trip (without the acid, natch). A view into the soul, somewhere new, unguarded, unseen until that moment, and it's such a gift...

And amazingly that gives me a segue into writing about something I am kind of obsessed with but was not sure how to write about until typing the above paragraph:

Season 2 of Fleabag. If you have not watched Fleabag, do, and maybe read this after. This is full of spoilers and meant for people who like me have watched it and can't shake it...

Because season 1 was satire, very good satire, about how whack we get over grieving intense loss. Sounds unpromising but the young British actress/comedienne pulls it off.

But Season 2 is another thing altogether, because while it is incredibly funny, there are a bunch of set ups that make you think: oh OK I know where we are going, this person is like this and that like that but instead, in each case, even the most unlikely, that person, including our protagonist, finds themselves laid bare, vulnerable in a way as funny as it is heartbreaking and from there a big change happens in their lives.

I think this may be why we who have watched it were all riveted. I won't go into details in case you are still reading and have not watched it yet, but the larger point remains: grief makes you demented, but when you are grieving, you can also find parts of yourself hitherto unknown, and if it's not grief, maybe it is love or attraction or Something Outside of Your Control.

And the only way transformation is possible is by allowing yourself to unattach from your little stories about who you are, which are ultimately not only limiting but also to some degree or other delusional.

As anyone who knows me will understand, I am not saying this from a mountaintop (well OK I sort of am since I am in the Berkshires but not a figurative one) but as someone who has experienced and experiences this, because we are meaning making machines and so we create and dismantle and reconstruct ourselves all the time, minute to minute. And maybe the older we get the challenges to the story are a little harder to come by, or maybe sometimes when you just keep fucking losing people and things and ideas and etc, it gets easier when you get older.

But I am here now, and I am not the same person who came here in early May 2003. And I doubt I will be the same person who typed this when June 21 rolls around. I mean I will be of course, but have a feeling some things will have shifted, but here's the funny scary great - did I mention scary? - part: I don't know what this.a

Time to go check to see if my room is available yet.

***

And it was/is. Unpacking now, to shower and yoga! Posting now and if typos will fix later...

***

OK so it's a day later, and now posting because no WiFi in room. Which means I have kept my laptop until now in a safe. Yay me, and on our first day we were teaching each other a basic pose. So...I'm on the way and by afternoon taking a yoga class I would not have dreamed two days ago I could have survived. Even with shoulder issue, it turns out, once again, I am way stronger than I know - but also in some bits, so out of shape, but here I am. Still alive.

Favorite little snippet from today, Kripalu yoga teacher training leading us to be "a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage." This remains my favorite kind of yoga by a mile and one of my favorite places on earth to be. It's Day 1, though, so stay tuned...as they assured us, some days we will wonder why we are here. I imagine that is true.

But for now I live in a jigsaw puzzle photo...check out this view from outdoor dining area. I saw lilacs on the drive in, so hoping to find some of them, too.

"You're on earth, there's no cure for that!"

Yes, the title of this long overdue blog post is from Beckett (Endgame to be precise). I have chosen it because I am considering the obsession we have for curing things. I have been reading an excellent book by Bessel van der Kolk entitled The Body Keeps the Score. It has given me great insight into and compassion for how trauma lodges in the body and can keep us trapped in certain cycles. As I read, I found myself hating myself (and other people) much less and understanding all of us who have been traumatized so much more.

Now, I am in the 'how to fix it' section. Some - many - of the ideas are excellent, and they are also clearly not meant as one-size-fits-all, for which I am grateful. He manages to speak of all of this without pathologizing people, and with great kindness in general. Some of this probably has to do with his awareness of his own traumas and the fact he, too, has worked with some of these therapies. He is a medical doctor, specializing in psychiatry, so the book is rigorous and not too New Age-y lost in the mystical sands of yore or whatever, but he is also somewhat skeptical of the profit-driven pharmaceutical industry and their offers of 'cures' that aren't cures but more like kind of awkward band-aids, that are very useful at times as that: band-aids, but not as cures.

I was cheering along, and happy to see some of the things I do are already patented healing technologies, such as: yoga (for safe embodiment and help with breathing), theater because it's theater and a safe way to work things out, 12-step meetings because people in community helping each other, and body work, etc. He also mentions EMDR (an eye-movement therapy - which he thought sounded hokey until he tried it and did lots of research and discovered it worked - for some - mostly people with adult onset trauma they could remember) and other things I haven't read about yet.

Again, yay, sounds great! (Haven't done EMDR and pretty sure I'd be one of those for whom it would only be of limited use, but may try it some day if/when can afford, etc...fun times in American medical world...blah blah blah...but this is relevant because a lot of these therapies costs a lot of money and are therefore inaccessible to most, whereas All insurance pays for the drugs these days - which makes me rather nauseous, but I digress...)

However, I did pause today, another day of crying over the memory of the miscarriage I had almost 10 years ago, and the way that all grieving makes you feel like a failure and how that probably taps into the April of 1966 when my mother and father split after a violent fight, and on and on and on...and I was thinking as I do every year: maybe This year, it'll be different. Maybe, This year I'll Turn it Around. AKA: maybe This Year I'll be Cured.

And I felt like crap.

Until I stopped thinking that way and stopped worrying about "being better" and just let myself feel how I felt: aka like crap, and teary and irrational and unable to focus and not knowing whether to take my laptop with me or not being enough to push me over the edge of more tears, and then just put the damn laptop in my bag in case I wanted it later and went out to where I was going - a place I can talk about stuff like this - and did.

In this place, you get a period of time to speak without anyone interrupting you. I asked while speaking that no one come up to me with advice afterwards, because I frankly would have lost it. A couple people came afterwards and hugged me and one person started talking to me in a way that seemed suspiciously like she might be about to give advice so I braced myself to flee, but no...that was not it - instead she asked if I could help her with something because she loved listening to me speak and thought I sounded like a healthy person.

In other words: by not trying to pretend to be 'cured' or whatever and in fact living in and expressing my confusion and lack of focus and teariness and rage at God or a Higher Power or WhatHaveYou, I helped someone else.

So, maybe this whole cure thing is oversold, is my point, and Beckett's line is a valuable reminder. Perhaps when we attempt to 'cure' we are instead masking a desire to control and harboring an illusion about immortality? Or some kind of semi-benign (probably semi-comatose) state in which we are 'serene' all the time. I put serene in quotation marks because I don't think that is what serene means. I think serene actually means the ability to be in hell, chaos, turmoil, joy, happiness, peace, craziness, aggravation or equanimity and simply witness it, be there and witness it. That to me is serenity. Or as I heard someone say today instead of "it's happening to me,"saying "it's happening." Not in a denial, pretend it doesn't hurt way - that's just fake Buddhism - but in a fully embodied, present yet holding oneself kind of way...or not. Just fucking freaking out maybe or sobbing or raging or whatever...but not trying to escape the pain.

And maybe - while of course there is some kind of traumatic response that needs to be addressed and I still hold out hope for relief of some of my symptoms and repetition compulsion - maybe...there is a need for a level of acceptance, too, of the messiness of life, of the fact that some losses are just too much to bear in whatever weird little narrow box we have of acceptable in our culture.

Maybe, as Leonard Cohen says, "there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." If everyone and everything was 'cured' where would we be? In the darkness?

This is not in any way to make light of anyone's suffering or the need to seek relief from it. I have no idea what your journey needs to be. Only you do.

However, my gift for the day because of rolling with my reality rather than trying to 'fix' it was to take two short walks in parks - in Central Park where I saw some trees in bloom like a purple azalea and some white maybe cherry? blossoms and saw about 12-15 tourists crowded around a small tree taking photos of an unfazed squirrel. A NYC squirrel. A show off. Behind them rose the bizarre Central Park South skyline that now looks more like a computer simulation than the Deco-inspired New York I pine for when large soulless skyscrapers tower over the few older buildings that remain. But I continued to walk and notice too the flowers and buds and remembered that no matter what - at least for now - spring keeps coming with its relentless life-force regardless of our architectural follies.

Then back uptown and walking in Inwood Hill Park and seeing the pink blossoming tree at the small inlet and watching the graceful white egret catch a fish after standing very, very still for a long time, and out at the point hearing the gentle tide of the Harlem and Hudson rivers lap up on the shore as the sun was setting and the daffodils and crocuses and buds ready to spring out given half a chance and a warm day and looking at the blue blue sky and remembering Cornwall in the UK in April 2007 where I lost my 12-week pregnancy on the first day of a honeymoon the day after the wedding (and also in NYC in September 2001) with the same blue blue sky and crying and crying and then seeing the little kids at the playground and crying some more and thinking thank God/dess, thank you, for the fact I feel sadness rather than anger at the kids or ignoring them or trying not to cry, so I can breathe and smell the soil that is damp and the grass as it is growing and hear and see everyone - and in Inwood I mean Everyone - playing some form of baseball - on a diamond or in a patch of grass or dirt and today - this day - see - for once - kids of every color playing together - and that doesn't always happen - so while I cried I was happy, too.

And the squirrels all running around like little lunatics trying to find the food they had buried in the fall. And all the life everywhere.

So I'm not cured...but I do hear the voices sometimes of the spirits of the two lives that began in me and did not ever make it out alive telling me they are OK, very OK, and that I will be, too, and I cry some more and see the white birds flying in front of the darkening wood, and it's like a painting and they are them and I know that and they are not them and I know that and I am not cured and I'm not sure I want to be.

Great workshop and figured out my fancy camera

Things are looking up.

Spring is springing.  I continue to be amazed by all the blooming of flowers and buds.  I have a lilac flower in a glass-as-vase, smelling up the hallway with that sweet lilac smell.  Was walking with a new friend tonight when I came upon the lilac bush and he being taller than me, picked a flower for me, which was lovely.  He's someone like me in weird marriage-limbo so we discussed this as I took him through the same walk another friend had shown me when I first moved up here.  To the wetland area up through the woods and around to the Hudson - during twilight to sunset.  I had figured out my fancy camera, which can take kick-ass photos in low light and am delighted by some of the shots.  I have not yet installed the software on my computer to download the photos properly so will have to post them later - along with a bunch of other amazing shots I've been getting.

I can smell the lilac from here now - the advantage of a small studio.  It reminds me, too, that right now in London the lilac tree I planted in the backyard that used to be B's and mine should be blooming.  I planted it as a memorial to whomever could have been if I had not had the miscarriage five years ago on this coming Sunday.  I love lilacs.  They are my favorite flower.  In Maine, they bloomed in June, which was my birthday month.  I think usually they bloom in NYC around May, but this year has been so warm, so we have them now at the same time as the canary yellow forsythia, which I remember mostly from Waterford, Connecticut - growing at the gravel driveway that led to the back of the house in which we rented the upstairs apartment from Mrs. Beckwith who lived downstairs, next to the young couple who used to fight and have loud make-up sex below our kitchen.  My mother told me once - in another one of her excellent moments of mothers (and I mean that not sarcastically at all by the way): that (referring to the sounds below) is a bad relationship.  You don't ever want to be in one of those.  Amen, tell it sister.  She was right.

I have managed to get into some sub-optimal relationships, but have never had to go to that extreme, though I have a lot of sympathy for those who do.  Because, imagine if you will, the shame attached to it and who the fuck wants to admit to that shit?  I wouldn't.  I couldn't even admit I was being emotionally abused, never mind if there had been physical abuse, too.  On the other hand, the lack of physical abuse was the excuse I used to stay in that particular relationship, as in: "on the positive side, there's no physical abuse."  Trust me, if that's the best thing you can say about a relationship, it's not a good thing.

However, it's easy to know this intellectually, as I did even then, but not be able to act on it, such is the nature of emotional loyalty to really old and bad ingrained ideas....

So, how do I segue from that into my theater workshop on Saturday that went really well?  Ok, here's the attempt:

Speaking of emotional loyalty to really old and ingrained bad ideas: the workshop works first with clichés as a way to penetrate into the reality grid we live in at any given moment.  And I'll be damned if it didn't work again...levels of address, cutting them up...bringing in gestures, doing the same.  I've taught versions of this same workshop to numerous groups of people and every time I'm re-amazed: it works, it works!  It still works!

This group was special, too - people from many different backgrounds and ages, some in theater, some in social work, some doing conflict resolution work...some teachers, some professional actors...a fantastic combination of talents, opinions, points of view and amazing dedication to the task at hand.

There were 14 participants in all, which considering it was Easter and Passover weekend struck us as quite extraordinary.  The comments and engagement was phenomenal, and as usual, I had some inspiring conversations and made a few connections with people that may lead to some very interesting possibilities.

I am thinking of continuing in this vein - teaching workshops at Brecht Forum and other places independently, as everyone involved gets so much out of it and I find out so much new stuff about the work.  I will be working up a proposal to teach an experimental play/performance writing class, because I want to move this 4 dimensional performance energy into working with writers as well.

But I am also hoping to extend these workshops finally, past the beginning stage to something where people can take the ball and run with it a little further.  If you are interested in checking out the one-day workshop, we'll have another one on May 12 (see sidebar for details).  We will probably also have another workshop in June to do more advanced work for anyone who knows the basics, so that'll be a start.  I've done that before with 4-5 day versions of the workshop in university contexts, but want to see if I can bring that outside to a place like Brecht Forum, so can work with a more diverse group who can then bring this stuff into their professional practice as artists, teachers and/or political organizers...

Speaking of which, just saw an amazing documentary on PBS tonight called 'To Be Heard' following the lives of three students in a high-school Power Writing class that takes place on the campus of Bronx Community College.  From the beginning of the documentary to the end, starting with a glimpse at the buildings where I teach and the students, I started crying - in recognition and in joy at what the teachers were doing with the students and their voices, which were so crystal clear.  If you can see this documentary, do.  It's extraordinary, not for the faint of heart, not in any way sugar-coated happy-clappy but real as dirt.  You will then see the faces of the students I see about a year before I see them.  Though some of these students go on to places like Sarah Lawrence College, which is great, too.  It really made me wish I was teaching writing, too...but also gave me some ideas for the class I am teaching.

I realized, too, the importance of where I am teaching and the politics of teaching these young people language, writing and communication skills.  The whole documentary vindicated my insistence on writing in my class.  The lecture one teacher gave about the importance of understanding vocabulary words, because if you don't know the language "you will be screwed" sent me into another fit of crying for joy.  He went on to say things like "If you can't control language, you will be fucked by it and adding another bar to the prison cell - not necessarily an actual prison, but the one in your head."  A man after my own heart.  The motto of their writing class is "If you don't write your own life story, someone else will do it for you."  So great.  I will try soon to find these people and see if I can help out.  Obviously.  I am also going to apply for a full-time position at BCC.  I'm just a teaching application machine...one application at a time.  Need to go and work on one now.  It's late but it's due tomorrow.  Oy.  Wish me luck...will be interesting to see where which chips land.  No clue right now.

Spring happens

Hello after a long pause.  I am still not entirely sure what to say right now, but have some photos of early spring in Inwood and that seems of note.

I have an ambivalent relationship with spring because it leads inexorably to anniversary of April 14, my wedding day followed by April 15, miscarriage day.  While this was five years ago, I still have no children and that's a wrap, and now I am separated from my husband, mostly likely for good.  This is my first year facing these days without him.  Because of the miscarriage, our anniversary was never just an easy day, but I had been looking forward to the time when that would change.  But now, that won't happen.  On the other hand, because we are not together, I don't have to pretend to be happy on April 14, so I guess that's a grace note.

This is the general tone right now, hence the reason I have not written in close to a week.  I don't want to just be a purveyor of sadness or violin background music.  On the other hand, I can't pretend I'm not grieving.

I have spent this past week meditating and making up teaching work left undone because of a month of being sick.  So part of it is simply tiredness.  And let's face it, I'm also depressed.  And no, I don't want to take fucking drugs for that, so please don't suggest it.  I'm not suicidal, I'm just really sad.

At random, I picked a PJ Harvey CD from my collection To Bring You My Love and am listening to it now.  I have not been able to bear listening to this album for years, because it reminded me of a time when I was way more open with myself and with B (our first year together - somehow we seemed to be falling away from each other for all the subsequent years even though we tried the getting married thing - didn't help - not really...I have some suspicions of why this is so but will not recount them here).  I spent the rest of the years trying to pretend this part of me that Harvey's music touches didn't exist.  I didn't do that consciously.  But I did it.  I knew there was a loss.  I probably blamed it on B, on the UK, whatever.  But the fact is: I was the one faking myself out, not anyone else.  No one forced me to stay in an untenable situation.  That was all me.

Dear God, I never want to do that again.  I feel like it's Groundhog Day as I write that.  Said it after my first marriage, too, for slightly different reasons, but not That different.  So, how do I trust myself ever again in relationship world?  Not sure I do.

But this I am doing differently: I am not even looking to be involved with anyone else right now.  Not even looking.  Seriously.  I know this and only this much: I am damaged, I need to heal.  I don't mean damaged by B to be clear.  I just mean damaged by the whole experience much of which was by my own hands, though of course we were both there.  Not to mention all the childhood stuff, etc.

After my first marriage while I didn't go flying out to find someone, I ended up in various romantic-ish intrigues fairly soon - some of which were real, some of which were loosely based on fact (like a hack job bio).  When B and I first separated, I felt like I should go find someone new right away, even though that wasn't 'healthy' mostly because I was sick to death with always trying to be 'healthy' which seemed to have produced nothing but yet another failed marriage, a kind of endless grieving process over a miscarriage, my father's death and a sense of chronic dislocation...etc., etc...Years of therapy and various recovery processes and where was I?  Sobbing in my bed at 2am.  Fab.

Quickly, however, cooler heads (mine) prevailed and I realized: You Are So Not Ready to Be With Anyone.  And so here I am - still alone.  No prospects.  I'm assuming B is with someone by now, but don't know for sure.  But then again, I always assume stuff like that.

This album, the one I have on now, I sent to him after our first 10 fall-in-love-like-in-a-movie days together in NYC, for Valentine's Day.  Up to that moment, we seemed to be on the same page - open and absurdly in love.  Then his response to this CD was somewhat muted and I was - secretly - crushed.  I didn't say anything of course, but I felt what I continued to feel for 10 years: I'm too much for him.  I have to back off.  I'm too intense.  I'm too....fill in the blank... Be careful.

10 years.  Be careful.  I'm too much.

See?

Who would do that for 10 years?  Whose fault is that?  B's?  Nope.  Mine.

Until I can honestly say to myself that I will never sell myself down the river like that again, it's me and my cat and a cup of tea.

I can't tell myself that honestly until I know in my bones that I am worthy of taking up space on this planet.  I would like to tell you after my 5 million years of recovery/therapy etc. that I can do that, but honestly, I'm not sure.  Sometimes I fear I am irrevocably damaged and real love is just a bridge too far for me in this lifetime.  Maybe that's true.  I don't know.

I do know I feel real love for a few close friends.  I have acted in moments out of unconditional love for a handful of people.  Those moments and the relationships that include those moments are the most precious things to me in the world.  Unlike all other transitory happiness, the memory of those times and what has resulted from that never dies.  There's a saying where I hang out a lot: you've got to give it away to keep it.  Yes.

I don't know if I will ever write something that I feel is what I could do if only....If only what?  Not sure...Had enough time, wisdom, real ability with words...was better, more observant, richer so I had that sensibility...more something.  Too much of that, not enough of this...etc.

But for all that, spring happens....not only in nature.  In me.

I love this PJ Harvey album tonight.  I am Not afraid of this part of myself tonight, the part with passion, love, need and that can cry it out loud.  I am reclaiming her.  Thank God/dess.

It's tentative like the buds on the trees in photos below.  But she will grow back, re-emerge.  She's not dead.  Because I have the opportunity to start over again - even if it feels a bit old at 48, here I am.  Again.  New again.  Spring again.

Yeah, there's grief.  Yeah it fucking sucks.  And yeah there's spring.  Spring tears my fucking heart out.  I want to cry all the time, but I will walk around in the woods.  I will breath in the new plants.  I will love the shit out of it even if it rips my guts out.

I don't want to ever feel like too much of anything ever again.

The beauty of NYC remains: it is impossible to feel too much of anything for this place.  That includes my friends here and everything I've been doing so far - teaching, friendships, readings, writing...etc.  If anything, I feel I have to get bigger, learn to take up space again.  I spent too many years trying to get smaller.  As my cousin Darcy's mother said to her once about trying to make yourself 'fit' in a relationship: "You can never be small enough."  She was right.

So I will leave you with some very early spring photos on this Daylight Savings Time night in the US.  The one good thing Bush did as president was move this day earlier in the year.  More sun.  Good thing.

Here's to never being too much....and to PJ Harvey.  An excellent British export.

no matter what...spring happens

relentless buds...

grass returns pushing away dead leaves

profligate yellow defying the brown (a lesson...?)

Ugo chillin'

ducks chillin'