Monthly Archives: April 2014

Apr30

Are You Responsible? Or Are You a Jerk?

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Years ago, I caught up with a friend who was evolving after a personal crisis and decided to join a 12-step program. He had been in the program for about six months and was sharing with me, as we walked off a soccer field, his journey toward self-discovery, self-confidence and self-pride.

We talked about “responsibility” and how when he was abusing his vice, he’d also abused the notion, and how he’d cast off and cut loose his accountability for most of what a conscientious person does not slough off.

I said, “You mean, like picking up your kids from camp on time? You mean, like not littering? You mean, like … ”

He said, “Ha. That’s stuff that I always do because people are watching: external gratification, ego-based living — doing the right thing not because it was right, but because I wanted to be seen doing it: I was all about appearances, having all the answers, being considered one of the reliable people; people considered me a common ‘go to’ person. Top seller in my company! Scratch golfer. The stuff I’m talking about now, is about internal gratification, conscience-based living: being responsible when no one else is looking. When no one cares. I didn’t have a conscience before. That’s why I thought I was above it all … that’s why I had to get help.”

We walked some more. He talked some more. I was curious to know, however, how fine is the line between “conscience-based” living and flat-out martyrdom. “It is a fine line,” he said. “I see martyrdom as making sure everyone knows you suffered while doing the right thing… doing the right thing should never make you feel bad; you feel good when you do the right thing… martyrdom can be a close ego trap.”

That made sense to me.

He continued, “Shopping carts. I never used to put them back. Sure, one was available whenever I needed it and it was in the corral when I went to get one, but I never put one back. I deluded myself into believing that what I was doing: leaving a cart in the middle of the parking lot or on a grassy median, was creating a job for some poor schmuck who needed a work-incentive program. That’s how arrogant and disconnected I was.”

The sun was high above us after the game, his kids and mine were sighing, moaning and hissing from their seats in the cars because they wanted to get their rightful post-game Slurpees. I was engrossed though.

“I’ll get you a donut too!” I promised them, “Just a few more minutes!” I begged.

My friend elaborated, sweat running down his temple. I used to think, “Where would the prison work programs be without me and my cigarette butts on the curbside? That was how I rationalized it. Other people in the program would say, ‘I left the dog poop there, the grass will grow better…’ we knew deep down we were full of crap. But I can’t tell you … I feel so much better now, just for taking back my shopping cart, it’s hard to explain. It’s like I have credibility now, real credibility. I don’t need to rationalize anymore,” he said.

Just blame someone else.

Anyone can rationalize anything. “Look what you made me do!” Have you ever heard that one?

Anyone can choose to look the other way. “Anyone can choose to do nothing, because even doing nothing, even not choosing is a choice,” said my sagacious 10-year-old the other day.

do you do this? are you one of those assholes? source: fhotd64476.yuku.com

What about when you do the wrong thing? And you KNOW it’s wrong! And you KNOW it’s indecent and unethical and completely unacceptable — for example taking or sanctioning a photograph of a unique-looking person, or of a minor, without their knowledge just because the technology exists. Do you rationalize it? Do you say you have a good reason? What could possibly BE that reason?!

At a local elementary school, there’s a upper-grader who goes into the restroom at school and snaps photos of classmates and then extorts the kids into doing whatever this person asks under threat of sharing the image on social media.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL! Where are these kids learning this stuff? Where are the parents?! Since when is it OK to EVER record an full-on image of another person without their awareness or permission?

What about when you practice “Do as I say, not as I do?” Do you think that’s ok too? Do you run red lights or roll through stop signs but expect your spouse or kid to do the right thing?

When you point at other people, three fingers are pointing back at you.

What about when you know something is amiss, but you lie to yourself and you project your inability to sit with the discomfort of the truth, on to innocent people? That’s how many addictions and aberrant anti-social and sociopathic behaviors can begin: people rationalize and believe, with all their might (even though at first they say they don’t) that they are above the law or the code of moral correctness. That they are separate. They they are special.

“She looked at me wrong.”

And it morphs tragically into a drive-by or school shooting. No communication is necessary for these folks; they just go ahead and do what they want because they have just cause: “work incentive program”; “she’s mean to me”; “no one saw me…”; “I saw my mom do it once … “; or my personal favorite: “it’s always been that way, it’s tradition…”

Are you one of those people? Are children around when you do this crap?

Can you even admit it? And if you do, can you sit with the uncomfortable truth, the yucky, sticky and gross feelings that I would hope would come up (because that means you do have a conscience) with the choices you make and the swath of destruction, confusion, embarrassment and woe in your wake?

I’ve met people like this. I’ve bobbed in their seas of denial, ~~half-~~disgusted with myself for continuing to hang on to them, despite my Spirit telling me to get away, to seek the light, to do the right thing — for myself — and to evolve.

I’ve held on because I put them first. I’ve held on because I feared that my life would somehow be less-than without them. I’ve held on because they made me feel like I needed them and that they needed me … I will never know. I’ve moved on. Their antics of delusion and harsh, foul projection of blame and accountability onto other people have finally snapped me to my senses; as though I’ve been t-boned or rear-ended.

My friend and that conversation flew into my head last week as I was walking back to my car from returning my shopping cart. Actually, I think of that conversation every time I put away my cart. “Even if you’re in a rush — ya gotta put the cart away,” I remember him saying.

How’s he doing? I don’t know if he’s still in the 12-step program; I sure hope he’s OK. He never contacted me to atone for any of his failings while I was involved in his life and was hurt by his abuse and witnessed his faults. I wish him the best. I hope he does this from now on:

clean up your conscience. put your cart away. www.ripoffreport.com

clean up your conscience. put your cart away.
source: http://www.ripoffreport.com

Do you put your “cart” (read: do the right thing) away or are you one of those people who thinks you don’t need to?

Right your ship.

Thank you.

Apr24

Missives from the Mat #11: Why Yoga?

Posted on April 24, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

I fell in love with my first svasana*, corpse pose, back in 1998. My first child was about six months old and I wanted to try something new to get my bearings on my re-formed body.

I had illusions that my body would return to its pre-child state, that with yoga, I could ease myself back into a world of fitness and of edgy, corporate communications and public relations agility and the pre-baby woman I was. That I’d get my groove back.

I had no clue what I was in for. The person that yoga restored me to is so different from the person I thought I was.

When I was younger, much younger, I remember my mother coming home from her yoga “classes.” I use quotations because I’m not sure what the classes were like back then, in the 70s, and what she actually did. I recall vividly of her *lying on her back, just lying there! and saying, “this is yoga.”

As I’ve aged, but before I allowed yoga to know me (not me to know yoga) I remember thinking, “Bullshit. That’s called ‘lying on your back.’ ”

Another time she came back from her classes, her hair in a scarf and she in a buttoned-down shirt of my dad’s knotted at the waist and wearing beige velour pants. I encountered her again laid on her back as she lifted one leg up in the air. The raised leg was straight and the foot was parallel with the ceiling; the lower leg was flat on the floor. Her hands were by her sides. “This is another yoga move,” she said, as the sunlight through the window set the room softly aglow. She did seem calmer. I was about five or six.

As a child, I’m sure I was eager to learn more, to connect with her in a way that she clearly felt she could have both the advantage and teach me without it seeming like a “lesson” and also to also connect with me in a nonthreatening way in which we were both learning new things.

Mom could extrapolate information and then diffuse it in a completely unique way that, given the right circumstances and a goodly amount of general ignorance in her audience, she would reign omniscient. Yoga in the US was esoteric and weird back then, nothing like the mainstream, studio-on-every-corner, $6.9 billion industry (hey! where’s my share?! oh wait, that’s not yogic) world it inhabits now.

Little did I know, that some 25 years later, I’d begin my own journey on my mat, with my children equally entranced by this mysterious relationship between movement and silence. And I’d also learn that what she was doing, was yoga.

Recovery from trauma

So when I started, I was attuned to the fact that something had changed forever and that even though I knew it was impossible, I endeavored to regain some semblance of my physical being despite having given birth to an eight pound baby whose head measured 14cm. I won’t go into the discussion of childbirth as trauma / business in a hospital, but I will say this: it’s far from a nurturing environment. Pregnancy is one thing, being “prenatal” is something else entirely.

As I look back on it now, the fact is that I knew I was seeking healing. I knew what I’d experienced — all of it, from the invasive tests, to the low count on a premature CVS test, to the weight checks and belly measurements, to the peeing in a cup every two weeks for the last eight weeks, to the false labor, to the rejection at the hospital, to the being up all night, to the final moments, to the wholly disturbing unscheduled induction… to the birth to the recovery, to the incessant overnight interruptions for blood pressure and temperature taking, to being released home, to nursing, to insomnia, to returning to work — was a major disturbance to my qi.

On a level I’ve only recently allowed, it was all trauma. I was angry. I told Mom everything that had happened, but she didn’t seem to acknowledge in on a level that I needed; she brushed it off and said, “that’s the way it goes, kid,” about it all while also allowing some tenderness, but overall, little sympathy.

I remember her telling me I was angry. I didn’t think I was, but as I look back now, I see it. But I didn’t know that yoga would bring me peace and self-acceptance (and still does, despite my crazy ego-induced fallacy that I don’t need self-acceptance). I just went to yoga classes to get my body back, right?

Everyone seeks healing in one way or another

As I’ve continued my journey, now with its latest step as a yoga “teacher,” I’ve had to allow and ultimately embrace jubilantly, actually, that those of us who seek yoga do so because we allow, finally, that we need to be healed.

Some people have families, some people are alone. Some have tight hamstrings, some have loose hamstrings. Others have jet lag, some are mad at the world, some are mad at themselves, some have too much going on, others have too little going on. Some people are sick, some people are healthy. Some people have fears and anxieties, some people are in recovery. No, strike that. Everyone is recovery.

Everyone in that room, on their mat, has a story. Every morning for each person, no matter where they live, starts differently.

One person’s morning might start gently, with a bird’s call outside the window and the golden light streaming into the room between the cracks in the venetian blinds. The eye lids slowly open and flutter, blinking back and forth between near-darkness and sunlight. A stretch in the bed as an arm extends ushering a big inhale as a leg joins in the dance.

Another person’s morning might start from a gorgeous dream when she was young, seventeen even!, on a beach with her first love, walking toward a twilight bonfire on a sultry summer BUUUUUZZZZZZ! She shoots out of bed, knocking her glasses off her nightstand and sending her glass of water into the wall behind the nightstand. No stretching for her. She has to find her glasses and then look for the cup, but not until she finds a towel to clean up the mess.

Another person’s morning might begin with a phone call from a child at school asking for the delivery of a long-lost assignment that is required. This request comes on the heels of a pre-dawn argument with that child about her performance in school and how her future depends on her compliance in her classes and performances. He rushes back from the drop-off, pulls his car into the parking lot, grabs his mat and dashes up the steps to the studio.

Countless other mornings take shape all over the globe, many of them without the answer of a yoga routine through the day or the lifetime of the people experiencing them.

For all of these people, however, there is a practice which awaits them. A practice which meets them where they are in that moment, on their mats. A practice which, if allowed, will show them their strength and their grace, and their limitations. A practice which, when noticed, will show them how much they’ve grown and how much wonder there is yet to experience.

And for all these people, there is a teacher who has also been there, providing she has done her own Work. Becoming a yoga teacher is not easy; to be a sincere one, you have to do a lot of self-discovery and be OK with it. This teacher may not know her students’ personal woes and frustrations and triumphs, but her allowance and realization of every mutual up and down, every moment of ennui, every doubt of what to wear, what to say, how to act and what to think –within herself– is what brings her the courage to stand before them and share her love of yoga, a vital bridge for the work of self-healing.

I stand before people three times a week, sometimes four times a week, amazed and humbled by their confidence in me and my presupposed ability to take them away from themselves for just a few moments each time we meet. I stand before them willingly and without pretense because doing otherwise is inauthentic.

Find your breath, find yourSelf

Every movement has its release: running, skating, rowing, swimming, cycling, dancing, gymnastics … they all offer an opportunity for the practitioner to express him or herself physically in a way that no other activity provides. We create teams of these exercises because others want to engage at the same time and also connect. Then we have people come and watch these teams engage.

In yoga, it’s you and your mat. Partner work exists, but a few of us shy away from all that. We indulge our teachers and form our little groups which help our classmates stretch psychically as well as physically, but we prefer the solo work.

It’s the whole of the solo work, the inhales on a lift and the exhales on a fold; or the inhales on a lift and the exhales on a twist, that creates for a room of people, a symphony of breath and movement. Even though each person is doing it by herself or for himself, the sound of your fellow yogis inhaling and exhaling on their forms at their paces and in their ways affirms the notion that while we are social creatures, we are also solitary ones.

For a yoga teacher, as new as I am, I can say that right now at this stage, I feel it’s the best time: to experience the concert of motion and breath where everyone finds themselves and ultimately loses themselves in the same room. When you lose yourself in yoga, you don’t necessarily have to go looking for yourself … yourself finds you where you are.

“Mom, my quads are really tight.”

All three of my kids have taken yoga classes with me as teacher at one point or another.

I remember when I first started teaching, kids!, I was petrified.

“They’re going to know I’m not certified,” I would insist to myself as a reason not to do it.

“They’re going to know I should have said ‘left foot forward instead of right foot forward,’ ” I would think to myself once I got started.

I look back on that now, six years ago, and I think to myself, “The crap we do to ourselves in the name of advancement is just awful.”

The kids had no idea; they just liked that it wasn’t math or science. As each week went by, it became easier and easier to do. I wasn’t in a limbo state where I felt I had to convince them to do any of it. They just did what I proposed to do because they knew yoga was good for them and they knew they should try it and also because I was “the teacher.”

So as I worked through that, I gathered the nerve to teach adults. And the conversations I have with myself still (and for likely a few sessions which will dot more months, if not years, to go) are still rife with self-doubt, nausea-inducing nervousness and at-times crippling inadequacy fears.

“Oh! I’ve done that! It gets better, I promise,” one yoga teacher friend said to me when she asked me if I’d worked myself sick with worry before a class.

“Have you thrown up yet?” asked another one.

“Almost,” I answered, relieved? that this teacher could relate to where I was coming from.

“I still have moments when I leave the studio and think to myself, ‘well, that was a career low,‘ but the people come back and somehow in the morning, it all seems better,” another one said to me.

“If you do this and it brings you nothing but anxiety, isn’t that defeating the purpose of teaching yoga?” my son asked, his brothers, and my husband nodding in accord and looking at me expectantly.

I have no answer for them other than the slowly revealing one: that each time I teach, it gets a little better. I’m perfectly happy to admit that I’m at the stage where I need I need I need positive feedback.

After dinner, the conversation continues in our bedroom.

“They keep coming back, right? No one has asked for a refund, right?” my husband asks when I pace from plank to downward facing dog to plank to upward facing dog like a Newton’s Cradle toy, just to flush out my anxiety.

“No.” I answer on my presses back to plank. Rats, shoulda answered that on the exhale press back to dog… when will I ever learn?!

“Then just keep showing up. They will too. You’re good at this, Mol,” he sighs, exasperation and humor in his voice over the irony of it all.

Our bedroom door creaks open.

A little shape is in the crack; his silhouette formed by the light in the background.

“Mom? My quads are really tight. Those are my muscles in the front legs, yeah?” Thing 3 asks.

“Yeah, buddy. That’s where they are. Can’t you sleep?” I ask, silently hoping inside that he’ll say no and that he’ll need a cuddle and a moment here. With me.

“I can’t sleep because you won’t stop talking, but also because, yeah, my quads are tight. I think it’s from growing pains,” he says. “Can we do some yoga? To help stretch them out?”

“Sure buddy. Go get your mat.” And he turns around because it’s right outside the door and he drags it in and we do some yoga together.

He asked me to buy an app for him where we can design a bedtime routine for him. He does it, but he prefers me to teach him. I watch the routine, and give him pointers.

Thing 3 and his mat and his yoga app.

Yup. We all just want to heal a little.

Thank you.

Apr21

Grief: Remembering Mimi

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

I received an email this morning from a wonderful woman I’ve never met, but with whom I share a sad fact: we both lost our mothers last year, within six weeks of each other. I “met” this woman after reading her post on Elephant Journal where she wrote about preparing for her mother’s imminent death. I had to write to her, fresh from my mom’s own departure to tell her how her essay had touched me.

She and I write back and forth now, with greater calm than we did in our earlier days. I am so grateful for her friendship and her trust in me this morning.

I didn’t have that “luxury”: to prepare for my mother’s death.

It’s hard to determine who has it easier: those who prepare for the crescendo of their loved one leaving soon or those who have no clue and it just hits them like a grand piano. In either case the crashing music resonates for days, months… and I suppose, years.

Mom died on September 2, 2013. It’s been almost eight months. Some days are easier than others, but then some days just suck.

I try to stay strong, be upbeat for my boys and smile for people I encounter. None of it is real or false. It just is. I recognize the dangers in existing too long in either emotional state.

Today, my oldest son is 16. He and Mom, “Mimi” as she was called, had a special bond. She stayed with him every day for a year when I went back to work. My relationship with Mom was complicated. We had vastly different views on life and how to live it. I wanted more for her than she seemed to have wanted for herself. I also needed more of her than she was able to give.

My oldest son said to me with no weight other than truth the other day, “I wish I’d spent more time with Mimi.” Instantly, I felt a pang of heat and ache and my heart shrivel a bit, for I knew it was my choice that we didn’t spend so much time together; as I said, Mom was complicated.

I resisted the urge to rise to defensiveness. I resisted the urge to tell him she was difficult and complex. I nodded instead and said, “I do too,” which was the truth.

We can’t undo the things we’ve done. We can repent and repeal and revise and reinvent, but I refuse to do all that too. This is the life I’ve made for myself based on the framework, experiences, and tools I was given.

My friend’s email took me by surprise this morning, I was so glad to see it.

“Five months today,” she wrote. “I miss her so much,” she closed. Two sentences.

I got it. I wrote back with this,

She used to call at the most inopportune times, dinner blitz, school blitz, practice blitz… Just to hear my voice. She would mostly just listen on the other end, hang there, say nothing just to get a sense of the frenzy and live it a little. She would leave voicemails, “Call when it’s conveeeenient,” she would almost sing into the microphone.I used to think of her hanging on to listen as strange, creepy and weird; something I’d never ever do. She said her own mother used to do the same to her; “You don’t have to say anything,” she said she’d say. “Just Be There….”

The other day I had to listen to a voicemail cue itself up, I waited with great anticipation, almost ready to roll my eyes, because I was certain it would be her, calling, leaving a message.

No. It wasn’t her. There was no call from Mom and there will never be another call from her again.

I get it.

And so my eyes well up, my throat thickens, my nose reddens and begins to water, my breathing deepens and I catch myself really missing my mom. So in some vain, feckless way, to bring her back, to let her sit here with me, I’ll share some other things she used to do …

When my father would drive, and she considered it too fast, instead of stating it, she would make this odd noise, “Yieelllll…. Doug…” and somehow he knew that meant to slow down. To which he would usually reply, “Jeez, Meem, willya?” and she’d say, “Fer Cripessake, Doug.”

When she would drive, which she hated to do and I don’t think she got her license until she was 40, she would veer to the right and degrade to an achingly slow pace whenever oncoming traffic was headed in our direction. This move was also accompanied by the “Yieeellll….yuuullle” sound.

She would break out into song in her best Danny Kaye, “Make ’em laugh! Make ’em laugh!” or shout out “The show must go on, Kid!”

Once she made a pot roast that I think was cured in a salt mine for months before she dared put it in an oven. My inner cheeks haven’t yet recovered. Baking was simply not her thing.

She would seldom look at the lens in photographs. Always away, just off center for some reason. She considered it theatrical, I suppose. It drove me nuts. For a while in my mid-20s I decided to mimic her, for spite. She never caught on or likely admired the practice.

She made amazing tomato sauce, like a puttanesca that was to die for. I remember smelling it very late at night when she would cook it while the rest of us were supposed to be asleep. I remember sneaking down the stairs and wedging the spindles between my eyes to spy on her eating while she watched a Columbo on television. The glow from the set that she sat about five feet from created a midnight silhouette which prevented my sleep and was often the last thing I’d see before eventually drifting off. She was always a mystery to me.

She used to put hot chili peppers on pizza, not the nicest tack, thus ensuring the children wouldn’t indulge (it’s a memory!).

I remember one Easter Sunday when it must’ve snowed in Buffalo. She hid all our baskets in different locations in our Victorian home’s myriad nooks and crannies. I found mine, or I recall vividly someone’s basket being hidden in the flour bin. I remember going back there for years to see if there was any candy left behind. That was where she stored a lot of her drawings. Mom was not a baker.

Cashmere. Always wearing cashmere and scarves. Big prescription sunglasses. Very in the mode of fashion in the 70s and then always classic after that.

She could play piano by ear with frightening accuracy.

She and my dad would sing as Dad played some honky-tonk song on the piano. They also sang, “He’s a Tramp” and I remember my body curling up with girlish pride and enthusiasm every time they did it. “Again! Again!” I remember asking.

She had several gorgeous floor-length kilts she would wear to balls and galas with my dad; he’d be in a three-piece suit or tuxedo and off they’d dash to their event, the most elegant couple of all.

This is typical of my parents’ in their shots of just them. He’s likely talking about politics and she’s not.

She used to color her hair by herself. It was often a disaster. “Ashen blonde” was her Clairol color of choice and I remember smelling the chemicals and then waiting to see what she’d done to herself. She was a naturally platinum-haired beauty, but like me, didn’t like the idea of looking “old” with her natural color. One time her hair came out the shade of eggplant. Another avocado. Sometimes it was umber. And never in a linear sense: it was a tapestry of bad home hair color jobs. She pretended not to care, but I know it bugged her. She was preoccupied with her looks in a way that for me, a modest glance at a hallway mirror makes me feel as though I’ve turned into Narcissus.

On Christmas, we would have to wait for her to rise for opening gifts. It was difficult, terribly difficult for us children to wait on Christmas morning for Mom. She would also urgently and passionately insist that we not tear into the gifts and untape them in an orderly fashion. That was also really hard. I often failed at it. As I grew up, I resented the entire Christmas experience.

Visits to restaurants were always an adventure. Mom would take the waiter hostage and reengineer the menu, order her pasta al denté (which ensured fresh pasta) and always ordered her Coke without ice, despite the numerous free refills provided. Mom loved food; she married a man who loves it and loves to talk about it and how to cook it. They were made for each other that way.

My parents and aunts & uncles and our cousins would always shut down the restaurants, usually to the chagrin of the staff and us children. If not asleep on the carpeted floor under the skirted sink in a bathroom, we could be found in a coat closet, on a bench somewhere in the establishment, or were still awake bending the silverware, or making ketchup and pepper-based potions under the tables.

Easters at the Buffalo Yacht Club always consisted of whatever food they served (often we would order “chicken in a basket” which was a fried drumstick and thigh, a biscuit and some provision of green vegetable or carrot wheels) followed by sitting on the large leather chairs in front of the Club’s 19″ RCA color TV on a rack with casters to watch either “The Ten Commandments” or “The Wizard of Oz.” Sometimes we could see a storm front come in over the lake from Canada and the boys would rush over to the “weather station” which would hum with barometer needles riding on a spool of graph paper.

Our kitchen phone had a very long curly line between the base and the receiver and I remember that if I couldn’t ever find Mom when I was looking for her, to look for the phone line and follow it. Usually it led to her sitting at the kitchen table or somewhere in the back hall by our basement stairs (which were always scary unless my brother said it was time to go to the BatCave, which he created out of our coal-room basement) looking for something to eat or cook… or maybe hiding… something I’ve become savvy to doing when I’m on a call that simply can’t be interrupted for anything but a natural or man-made disaster of epic proportions.

Tape recordings. Mom used to tape record us all the time; often without us knowing, just to hear us on tape I guess when we weren’t around. She also would tape record herself reading a sonnet or play or poem or essay. Mom preferred the past; it was easier for her, she could fashion it as it was or in a way that brought her comfort. The present must’ve been too much for her and the future? Forget about it.

Without fail, she would call the very next day to thank me for hosting her the night before. Even though she had said too many times to count, how wonderful a time she was having or “thank you” as she worked her eventual way to the car.

Goodbyes were impossible for her. She refused to utter the words. Hanging up from a phone call was terribly hard for her and I remember many times that I’d become furious or impatient because I simply couldn’t get off the phone. I simply couldn’t just do the right thing, say, “Good-bye” like normal people. It was always so hard.

“Don’t say goodbye, birdie. Just say, ‘I’ll see you later.’ Ok?” she would insist.

I’ll see you later, Mom. I really miss you.

Thank you.

Apr17

On Writing … Muses … Bathrooms … Daffy Duck … Palms … and Order from Chaos

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

My email box “ding!’ed” this morning with a message from WordPress telling me it was time to meet my blog’s weekly posting goal.

Would I like to write more often? Of course. Can I? Sure. Do I feel like I can do it whenever the moments strikes me? No. Oftentimes, I’m washing dishes or driving to a lesson or in the middle of sleep when inspiration strikes. I need to get better about writing things down.

I have a dear friend whose beloved gently mocks her for keeping a journal in their restroom because it’s often in the middle of the night when she gets an idea, which is so brilliant, that she also has to evacuate her bladder. This is the way it goes for some of us.

I am often roused from a brilliant dream or deep sleep with inventions or stories or insights and I SWEAR allegiance to the ideas, murmuring, “no, no, I’ve got it, the dusty suede shoes are a metaphor for Nnngngngnnzznznzngnggg growth along with the inner nnnnngngnngzzzng and then it’s all over, everyone thrives!” and it’s gone.

I may as well just bolt upright, point and laugh at my muses the thin air saying, “You’re wasting your time! Go tell Elizabeth Gilbert! Is Updike still alive? I won’t remember this at all!” and then flop back onto my down pillow, thrusting reluctant feathers into the air.

Feathers. Woo-woo people like me believe feathers are a sign that our angels are near. If they’re near when I have those nocturnal insights, they are legion, trust me. I found out two weeks ago that I have six angels or guides or whatever by my side, but is that a good thing? Maybe I’m totally lost and am a mess. Don’t go near Molly, she’s got SIX guides… she can’t find her way out of a paper bag much less an existential crisis…

What do I do with it all? All these ideas, these insights? I can change: I can allow myself to wake up, just for a moment, write down what’s going on and hope to the chocolate gods I can read it in the morning and go with it. I can do what others do: wake up completely in the middle of the night. Go with it, set my fanny on my yoga ball chair and put my laptop on dim and start tapping away. I’ve never tried it. It’s spring break, I could try. I don’t want to disturb my husband or kids though.

Thus, it’s occurred to me that famous writers must *have* to be total narcissists. I mean, how else can you decide to wake in the middle of the night, put on a robe, ~~pour yourself a scotch, light a cigarette,~~ shuffle off to where your perch is and start tapping or scribbling away without a care in the world about whether you wake someone. Just you, and your method, and your muses.

Children need to eat, to be seen and embraced. Dogs need to be let out, groomed, fed, talked to.

On the advice of my therapist last year, I read a New Yorker column, “Sins of the Father” by James Wood about a modest collection of memoirs written by the children of famous father writers, William Styron, Saul Bellow and someone else I can’t recall (sorry!) and how these now-adult children are faring in the long shadows of their dads. Being a child of a writerly father, I could identify with a good amount of the column. The need for quiet, the temperamental (I’m being nice) personalities and their “I CAN’T WORK LIKE THIS, PEOPLE!” tendencies. It’s not that my father is a famous writer; it’s that he is a serious writer and a serious personality. I don’t write about him much here because I do feel it’s necessary to keep the boundaries clear. I will say this however: being the child of a dedicated writer / artist / scholar / any interest the adult has of its own that doesn’t involve family time, can be very challenging.

Buuuuut …. we WANT people to have lives. We WANT people to continue their pursuits. It’s very important for people of all ages and stages to have SOMETHING of their own that is truly separate and nourishing to their spirit. Does it matter if it doesn’t earn an income? Eventually, yes, to the practitioner, it does.

At first, it’s something the avocationist pursues for mental growth, but after a while, the question of “purpose” comes walking into the room, gently standing over you while you type, paint, read, hum… nudging you, “say… what are you going to DO with all of this?” and then your sense of value / your ego comes into play, “yeah… what AM I going to do with all this?” and before too long, you’re Daffy Duck arguing with yourself after being outsmarted by Bugs Bunny.

Or … you start to percolate and wonder clearly as yourself, “there should be something bigger, right?”

That’s human nature.

I’m in Good Hands.

About four years ago, I met a woman who is now a very good friend. She is a “non-predictive palm reader”; she’s not the gypsy with the magic glitter and finger cymbals. She’s a math-y, skeptic, scientific, hard data person. She runs successful businesses and she’s not at all a flake. She’s also one of the funniest people I know and that’s saying a lot because I know some really funny people.

She read my palms. I have the prints upstairs in my bedroom. I remember her saying, but I forgot it after several years, when she first met me, and looked at my hands, just for an instant, and searched in me asking, “What if it could be easier? What if it didn’t have to be so hard?” That moment haunted me then, and reading it again last night, it swept me away again. Indeed, ‘what if it could be easier.’ I sit here wondering just that. Still. I fight myself all the time.

I audio recorded our first and only full palm-reading session. I transcribed the recording and I went back last night, for the first time in several years, and read what she had to say. This time, I believe I am ready to really hear her and hear what my hands had to say about me then and look at how my prints have changed since then.

I am left handed. I have strong Mercury lines on each of my hands. Mercury is the communication / messenger god in palmistry. I also have on my left pinkie my purpose marker, a “whorl” which looks like a swirl. Quoting directly from our session, this is what Peggie had to say,

My purpose is on my left pinkie: the whorl – it stands out: my purpose is to help other people transform. I hold the safe spaces – I’m the healer and I have healer gift markings. Healer is life purpose and markings – I’m to clear out my own stuff and do my own thing and then help other people. Here’s where you are and here’s where I am, here’s my life story and I’m telling you this so that you can learn too. That’s my life purpose. To inspire to others that if I can do it, they can do it too. That’s where the healing comes from. Inspiring to others.

What have I done since that reading? I put it away. I thought about it and put it away. I thought I’d moved on, that I wasn’t doing anything with the information. But as we say, “you can’t un-ring a bell” and I heard the peal, even though I thought I hadn’t.

Well, it turns out I heard her, I just still need to keep hearing her.

I started this blog about four months later. I remember consciously thinking, “this is me stepping into my purpose a bit. This is me taking a chance, telling my story (somewhat) and trying it out.”

I find, when I let me out, I can hold that space for others. But I can’t let that be my only space. I need to step into my space too, which requires that I get out of my own way.

Order from the Chaos.

It’s been quite a month for me. I’ve taken over three yoga classes from people who were over-scheduled, started a new one from scratch, ended an eight-week session, got fingerprinted and background checked, filed for insurance, filed for yoga alliance registry, created lesson plans, taken in checks, accounted for students, shifted pick-up and drop-off of my kids for various lessons, school dismissals, practices and the like, attended my yoga classes where I get to be told what to do, gutted a freezer, folded laundry, made dinners (sometimes woefully), walked the dogs, volunteered at school for other stuff, blown out my hair, colored my roots, gone to angel healers, eaten and slept, attended a children’s book signing, put on make-up and have done my best to maintain a level head. I’ve done more downward facing dogs and triangle poses in the last month than I’ve done in one year, I’m sure of it.

My friend from high school is an airline pilot. He has a blog in which he shares amazing photos from the cockpit and writes a little bit (juuuust enough to keep the gears turning after you finish) about each photo and the impression it leaves on him. I have always thought highly of this friend. He would boldly wear bow ties in high school. He’s an old soul and he’s very bright and clever. When my freezer died about three weeks ago, I pretty much lost my mind for a few hours. The timing simply and ineloquetly “sucked.” It was totally in the throes of this new yoga teaching I was beginning and it was one of those moments when I was certain, I just didn’t have the time, or the mental bandwidth to deal with it. But deal with these things we must, yes?

The freezer died because one of my sons left it open ALL NIGHT. We had just stocked it with our hunt at Costco. I wrote about it and my ensuing thrust into reflection here.

This friend wrote to me about my chaos in that moment. He posted his comments on the blog post itself.

In retrospect (and two days later) I let soak in what he had to say and it made sense. I even paraphrased it as a quote to be read at the end of my yoga classes:

Chaos and disorder are the natural order of a mind seeking an enlightened path and reason. Chaos, and the sense of hope it can eventually yield, show us that there is a path for everything and it rarely begins with perfection.

Those who would have us believe the opposite, that everything is “wireable” don’t help us to understand and grow from the wisdom of chaos.

However at the time, I saw what he said and at the moment I was all defiant, “piffle” I thought; “so insightful of you from your 30,000 feet view to see the serendipity of this moment of total eff-upedness in my life.” I laugh about my reaction now. I wasn’t nasty internally about it, I just couldn’t deal at the time with his compassion. I was still caught up in the moment of it, so angry about it all: the loss of food, the tossing of food into the trash, and of course the re-spending of funds for both a new freezer and the restocking of the food. Ugh.

These are the things we do to ourselves: these first-world problems and I know it’s exactly what that is, and I caught a little bit of flack for bitching about the truth of that, but you know: stress is stress and I was literally in a fit to be tied at that moment. “That’s a nice problem to have” is a phrase that can OFTEN be heard streaming from my lips and people reluctantly nod; that’s how I see the world: there’s silver in every cloud, but sometimes it takes longer than others to see it.

While I don’t have “money issues” per sé, I grew up with parents who really did (it was nuts) and so naturally, there’s a tape that runs through my head whenever a big purchase occurs or something of monetary value is inherited, or lost. Here’s how I see money: it’s constantly in flow, but I feel there must be a purpose to it: I would rather give away $100 to someone in need than set $100 on fire. So at the time, I saw all of that: the whole shebang, as setting $100 on fire.

But there is order now, the lesson in that chaos that my friend so eloquently shared and taught me.

And I am not a little humbled by the events which have unfolded in my life in recent weeks that have brought me to this realization now: that looking back on my palm reading with my dear friend that I’ve got some work to do, some new lines have appeared along my Mercury lines, “stars” or “lessons” as they’re known.

Despite the fact that I’ve done a lot already, I haven’t done The Thing; I haven’t sat and written The Book. The Story. The Memoir. The Lessons. I already have a title. “Hang Nail.” Ha! No, that’s the name of an emo-rock band I would create. I’m not going to share the title here. It’s not yet written.

We have the new freezer. It was delivered Monday. I had to leave the room. I can’t be present when people install large things in my house. I have some issue with fingers being pinched or toes being crushed; or people being pinned against walls because it’s hard to negotiate the piece in my home. It’s quite entertaining, this issue of mine and my husband has asked me to write about it. I will. All in good time, my pretty.

I posted this on my Facebook page about the new freezer,

Our freezer never recovered. It was at least 15 years old. It had been left open too long one too many times. Today, we bid farewell to that freezer.

And got a new one. With a light. With baskets. With control buttons in a panel on the outer door. With an alarm. With a tax rebate for its energy efficiency. It went from 76 degrees to 33 degrees in 30 minutes.

I love this country.

Many people took the comment in the spirit in which it was intended. As a comical, ironic reference to my first-world hubris and sick sense of entitlement. One friend asked what it is about us Americans and our freezers and second refrigerators in the garages, etc., and what it’s all for.

I had to nod with her question. I mean, what is it? Half defensive because of my consumerism and half defensive because I’m a shitty planner, I blame my extra freezer on my growing children’s appetites and my utter disdain for grocery shopping. If you want to bore any living hell out of me, send me to a grocery store. Really. Some people love it. I want to stab myself with pencil erasers.

So I ask, can a freezer be glorious? Or is it going to be a constant reminder to me of overconsumption and self-indulgence?

At this point, I simply can’t be bothered to wonder or judge myself for it. I’m American. It’s here, in my house, plugged in and preserving my sanity much like Han Solo when he was captured by Jabba the Hut. In fact, I just put a little bag of water in there marked, “Mom’s sanity — keep frozen.” Maybe I will go to it when I wake in the middle of the night and it will inspire me. We will see what happens.