Cirque du Malaise

This week was about workaholics, and figuring out if we are one. I didn't need to read a chapter or do any journaling to solve this one. I'm not. Nope, that's not something I've ever been accused of. My mom is a workaholic, and so is my brother. I got my dad's genes. We like to sleep late. And we're good delegators.

This week was also about noticing how, now that we're at Week Ten of The Artist's Way (wow), things have indeed shifted. I took inventory, and was pleased to note some positive changes over the last few months.

1. I haven't had to rescue a cat out of a tree in quite a while, thank you Jesus.
2. I have developed a quasi-successful amateur meditation practice.
3. I'm fully engaged in mindful eating these days. In fact, I haven't had processed sugar or wheat in almost two weeks.
4. I've been experimenting with fierce and unwavering sobriety as a pathway to mindfulness.
5. I've been spending more time outside.
6. I've been reading a lot.
   

   A dreamboard I made this week.

I've also been indulging my frivolous creative side as if it's a fragile child that needs a lot of attention. I took a cue from Vanessa and started making all my gifts. That's been fun. For me. Maybe not so much for my poor friends who are now getting homemade salt scrubs and repotted cacti from me on their birthdays.

And most importantly, I haven't been giving myself a hard time when I forget to meditate, or "accidentally" eat wheat, or indulge in the occasional other sort of vice.

And I guess I've been feeling more creative, especially in regard to writing. I spent some time this week creating the following three new pages for this blog:

• Words I like
• Words I don't like
• Books I love

Appreciate feedback, always.

For my artist date this week I made a miniature herb garden for my back deck.

In my Buddhism class, we are very focused on suffering in regard to the Noble Truths.

I got a great opportunity to witness my mind's own unique brand of suffering this week.

I have a place that is my go-to spot for alone time, reflective time, soul searching time, et al.: Tennessee Beach in the Marin Headlands. I often hike out there by myself and sit on the leg-swinging bench and contemplate life and whatnot. Just a few weeks ago, I went on an exhilarating, height-fear-defying climb on the hill to the right of the beach, and surveyed the world from way up high.

But last weekend while I was out there, something awful happened.

A really beautiful, creative, much loved 17-year old girl named Alicia Lee apparently fell to her death from the cliff I had been standing on a few weeks ago. She was camping with friends overnight, and she simply disappeared into the darkness. It took them a few days to find her body in the great Pacific. She had drifted north to Muir Beach... another of my soul spots.

I didn't know Alicia Lee, but I did indeed run with the suffering on this one. It's so easy to feel empathy for other people, isn't it? I was spun out for a good several days. Vowed never to go to Tennessee Beach again, vowed never to go anywhere involving heights again, cried for her family, felt simply awful for her friends. Obsessed over the news reports, and had bad dreams.

In the end, the truth is, I didn't know Alicia Lee. And I had to get back on my horse. So I did, with my friend Aaryn, on Monday night.

We got a late start at dusk. Tennessee Valley was appropriately mysterious and gloomy. On the walk back, everything was a haunting utter green. The coyotes were screaming in the not-so-far distance. The owls were maniacal. We were the only human beings on the trail.

I'd like to say that I felt Alicia Lee's spirit out there. But the truth is, I only felt my own experience of suffering... and letting go of suffering.

Because the truth is, I'm fine.

Yesterday was the vernal equinox—the first day of spring.

As a real wildwoman of a healer I happened to meet this weekend usefully noted, “Winter is hideyhiderton time, but spring is showyshowerton time.” In other words, the time when it all comes to light. The days are longer; the crocuses are blooming (and the poppies and the irises, out at Tennessee Valley!); the animals are coming out of hibernation and acting crazy… and so are we.

According to the Christian calendar (which was so usefully and not so coincidentally built around nature’s own calender), we’re coming right up on the time of Christ’s resurrection. That’s right, Easter. Resurrection is a powerful symbol this time of year. And this week’s Artist’s Way chapter came right on time.

This week, we had to read back on our morning pages thus far and note any revelations, insights, droning incessant complaints (check), and what odd. Wow was that humbling. Here are some things I think (and write) about pretty much daily.

1. My weirdo bad dreams about tidal waves and people I love turning into monsters.
2. I need to get better at speaking with conviction.
3. I'm pretty much obsessed with getting enough sleep.
4. Loneliness and fear are big troublemakers in my life.
5. And more things that I am, believe it or not,  slightly too embarrassed to share.

It reminds me of a statistic I once heard about how 99% of our thoughts are thoughts we’ve already had before. Only that rare brilliant 1% is ever a new thought.

Part of the point of doing exercises like this is to learn how to put it all behind and start again. Resurrection, Phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes, this winter didn’t kill me… it indeed made me stronger.

And I’ll leave you with everyone’s favorite Anais Nin quote, that I myself was reminded of at the radical healing circle whatchamahoosee I was invited to:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

So true, isn’t it? I adore Anais. 

Lately in my Buddhism class we've been focusing on suffering (in regard to the First and Second Noble Truths, not just for the hell of it). Particularly while meditating, we're asked to hone in on our attachments and aversions.

Luckily for me, I don't have to search too hard for a source of suffering in my sitting practice, because I am blessed to have a nifty little thing going on called Pulsatile Tinnitus.

What is Pulsatile Tinnitus? Well, imagine that your heart is in your ear. That's what it sounds like. I can hear my pulse. In my ear.

And yes, I've gone to the doctor (Western, Eastern, you name it). One particularly wise MD set my mind at ease by assuring me that it's probably due to a wee little anatomical deformity in my head, and that I probably don't need a CAT scan, and that I probably won't drop dead of an aneurism anytime soon. Probably.

Luckily, I can only hear it when I'm sitting still in a quiet environment. In other words, every single time I meditate.

If I wasn't a classically aversive personality type it wouldn't be such a big deal. And if I hadn't always been queasy about heartbeats in the first place. Being a nurse is like, number one on my list of professions I could never handle.

So I asked my meditation teacher for some advice. He gave me two options:

1. Ignore it and focus on something else. This one's tough because it's rather hard to ignore something that's happening inside your own head.
2. Use it as a focal point of my practice, and as a way to study aversion.

There you go.

Lucky me, I have a built-in, ready-to-go aversion every single time I sit down to meditate!

And here's a beautiful Hafiz poem we heard tonight:

To Build A Swing

You carry

All the ingredients

To turn your life into a nightmare—

Don't mix them!

You have all the genius

To build a swing in your backyard

for God.

That sounds

Like a hell of a lot more fun.

Let's start laughing, drawing blueprints,

Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you

With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz

Will sing a thousand words

You can take into your hands,

Like golden saws,

Silver hammers,

Polished teakwood,

Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients

To turn existence into joy,

Mix them, mix

Them!

One of the things that is emphasized over and over in The Artist's Way is how we have to get past the tactics that our parents and other early critics used to condition the innate creativity out of us. In this week's chapter we did an exercise called "Early Patternings" to quote/unquote try to excavate what happened to our poor, abused early artist.

I'm extremely well behaved about reading all the chapters, following all the rules, and doing every single task. However, the "early patternings" stuff simply doesn't resonate with me.

As far as my early artist goes, there weren't a lot of scathing critics. My parents—both being young hippies and aspiring artists themselves—weren't exactly the types to look down on creativity. In fact, a lot of my earliest memories were about doing artsy things with my parents. We didn't have any money, and we lived in a severely rural part of New England, so most of our entertainment was self-made.

They sent me to a communityWaldorf-style school when I was 3. They (tragically) let me and my brother dress ourselves from the time we could walk. They indulged my harebrained delusions of becoming a ballerina. They didn't blink an eye when I said I was going to go to art school and major in pottery.

Early on in the process of doing The Artist's Way I wrote this letter to my mom. I have been wavering on whether or not to send it. Judith doesn't really like the mushy stuff, and she's pretty private. So if you too don't like the mushy stuff, and you don't want to be a part of me outing my mom, better stop reading now.

Judith was 27 in this picture. That's right, 11 years younger than I am now.

Dear Judith

I remember being very young and sitting at the kitchen table coloring with you. You always encouraged us to do creative things with our time instead of watching TV or playing with stupid plastic toys. We were constantly undertaking projects like making our own Christmas tree ornaments or baking cookies or painting murals on the walls of our rooms. At some point you brought home an old piano that someone had been getting rid of, and we all took turns really sucking at playing it.

Your own creativity was always an inspiration to me. You made clothes; you gardened; you cooked; you quilted; you made jewelry; you had that awesome Quaker-esque weaving loom that took up half your bedroom.

I am so grateful to have grown up in a home where creativity and art was encouraged and the consumer bullshit was kept to a minimum.

And beyond that, thank you for sending me to Syracuse, for being supportive of my decision to go to art school and to get a degree in photography and ceramics. Thanks for not being the kind of parent who encouraged or demanded that I pursue a more "practical" career. You've never once given me advice to do anything other than what I am already doing, and while it has taken me quite a while to find something I actually like to do, I appreciate your patience and your occasional financial support over the years.

If I could have one wish it would be to see you get back to your own creativity and re-embrace your abundant talent and passion for making things. I know that it's your calling.

Love,

Joslyn

In my last blog I went on and on about how, when I finally succumbed to the plague for the first time this season, I took pristine, unwavering, ferocious care of myself and immediately started to feel better.

But alas, that wasn't the end of the story.

On day two of my plague, I decided to brave leaving the house in order to go to my Buddhism class at Spirit Rock. I bundled up, made a thermos of hot herbal tea, turned the heat as high as it would go in the subie, and off I went.

That night, our class was all about the First Noble Truth: There is suffering.

As I sat through the dharma talk, I got colder and colder, and snifflier and snifflier, and felt more and more like dying. The next morning, I woke up with amplified, exponential plague.

I totally get that suffering is optional.

I totally get that it's the story we create around our experience that causes suffering.

I totally get that, with practice, we can step back and disassociate ourselves from the suffering.

I know all these things in theory. But in practice it's a whole different story. I'm not sure if it's ironic or apropos that the morning after the dharma talk on suffering, I felt more suffering than I've ever felt in my life (yes, I'm exaggerating, obviously).

And not just because I had the plague and didn't feel good.

There was suffering above and beyond what was actually happening in the moment. There was having the plague, and then there was feeling sorry for myself because I had the plague, and feeling sorry for myself because I had the plague and no one was bringing me soup, and feeling sorry for myself because if I can't even handle the common cold, what would happen if I got cancer?  In short, it was a meltdown of my own making.

Here's what it comes down to, I suppose... no matter how ferociously we take care of ourselves, and no matter how controlling we are about protecting our health and wellbeing, at some point, we all get sick. The things that make us suffer are unavoidable. It's how we choose to suffer that's in our own hands.

Because having a cold is one thing. And melting down about it for hours is another.

Which brings us to another key concept of Buddhism: compassion.

And by the way, the story did have a happy ending by the time the next evening rolled around:  Karen brought me coconut milk soup. And that made it all better.

This week I heard a brilliant expression that I have decided to co-opt:

Ferocious Self Care

I am pretty big on self-care in general and have noticed (as I'm doing The Artist's Way) that I kind of spoil myself rotten most of the time.

For instance, even though I know that wheat is the most evil substance known to man, I'm a big fan of eating cookies in the middle of the afternoon to palliate the soul, and that sort of thing. I also get consistent acupuncture, take Chinese herbs, start my day with warm lemon water, obsess about reflective journaling, practice yoga (kind of, shut up), have a fledgling daily meditation practice, and get bodywork on a regular.

So, taking care of myself is not something I think I'm particularly bad at. But taking FEROCIOUS care of myself is a whole nother matter.

Soon after I first heard this expression, I came down with a nasty head cold that totally floored me. And that's when I discovered what Ferocious Self Care really means.

It means that you cancel everything (no matter how allegedly important it may seem and how guilty you may feel for doing so and how much you truly believe that everyone in your life is counting on you and will fall apart if you don't show up... cuz guess what, you're wrong), and you go home and make beef barley soup, from scratch, and lie around in your sweats under a down comforter watching bad TV and not thinking about anything productive.

For heaven's sake, why is it so hard to take pictures of soup?

It also means you sometimes have to practice tough love with yourself so you don't get sick in the first place. That means making healthy choices, not compulsive choices.

I don't have what you'd call a tough constitution. If I had been born in the olden days I for sure would have been one of those people who died of the common cold. One day a sneeze, and the next thing... death. A tragic "she caught a chill" kind of thing.

And I am an extremely whiny sick person. I get into major self-pity downward spiral mode, fast. I'm not into the whole "power through it" thing. I roll my eyes when people say they're going to go to a hot yoga class and "sweat it out." When in doubt, I believe in sleeping it out.

Luckily, thanks to my talented acupuncturist (thank you Rebecca), my gourmet advisor at the hole (thank you Maynard), and my favorite guilty pleasure, Theraflu (thank you, pharmaceutical industry), I'm on the road to recovery.

This week's Artist's Way chapter was about turning my old boring story into a proactive new plan.

And in a moment of synchronicity (something we Artist Way savants are always watching out for) I was complaining to a friend who I haven't seen in ages and she said, "Oh shut up, your story is so boring!" (Thank you Amy, love you!)

My story IS boring. To myself most of all. I think we all feel that way, on some level.

The trick is to figure out how to shift it.

The particular story that Amy was referring to is my story about how I am always so poor, never going to have any money, whine, cry, complain. Every time I hear myself say "Oh I wish I could, but I can't afford it," I want to roll my eyes at myself. I can think of a handful of times this week alone that I've said those words.

The thing is, I really can't afford it. It's not just crazytalk that I'm making up for attention.

But there has to be a better way to approach this story. Maybe it's true that I am resigned to a lifetime of struggling around money. But I could stand to have a better attitude around it.

In an effort to shift my vision (thanks for that platitude, Walter)—and out of another task we did this week in the Artist's Way where we mapped our jealousy issues (good times)—I am working on having a different attitude.

So next time you ask me out to dinner, instead of saying "Oh I wish I could, but I can't afford it" please expect me to say "I already have some soup on the stove at home. Maybe next time!"

And check me if I don't.

The Buddha once asked his monks, "Which do you think is greater: the water in the oceans or the tears you've shed while wandering on?"

I went to see that movie Up In The Air, about three months after everyone else, as usual. The theater was empty... except for me and the super lame couple who came and sat down right behind me.

What is that all about?

Anyway, everyone in the world was right: it was excellent.

I was a little disheartened by it, though. The whole thing about me and George Clooney being the two last single people on earth is kind of depressing, especially since I don't particularly find him attractive.

The New York Times (a rag I rarely read but heard someone throw out in a snobby sort of way the other day, so thought I would mention it in a bit of underhanded, snide irony) called the movie a "stealth tragedy", and I love that. It's sort of how I feel about my life at the moment.

I'm sure everyone has this moment in their life—and pushing 40 seems like just about the right time to have it—when you realize that not only have you not achieved the things you thought you were going to, but you are never going to. Maybe you achieved other things. Maybe, when you were growing up in backwoods Massachusetts and dreamed of being a writer, you had no way of knowing that the internet would even exist, never mind that you would make a living writing for it.

Or maybe, when you were little and thought that Boston was the most exotic, cosmopolitan place you could imagine, you would have been shocked to learn that you would spend most of your adult life on the Pacific coast.

On the other hand, that bustling family of little boys you imagined? Yeah, not so much. Strange how things transpire.

Life is a stealth tragedy, or, as the Buddha called it, Samsara: the somewhat aimless wandering between life and death, the cycle of birth and rebirth until we get it right, the polar opposite of nirvana.

Samsara, by many accounts, literally means "wandering on." So here I go, wandering on...

I overheard a conversation at Spirit Rock last week that perfectly encapsulates what I hate about the world of spiritual phonies.

As spoken by dude to a girl he just met: “You have cute energy, you know that?”

Really? Cute energy? Do you maybe mean that she’s cute? Or that she has a cute personality? Or that she has a cute voice? Or a cute way about her?

Or do you really mean that her energy is actually cute? What does that even mean? Are you talking about her aura? Why don’t you just go ahead and ask her what sign she is?

JD Salinger would roll over in his grave.

I am pretty sick of hearing about people’s energy and other people’s opinion of it. It’s such a copout of a way to describe someone. It reminds me, actually, of this amazing video by Taylor Mali that, if you haven’t ever watched, you should watch immediately:

Like, You Know

Wherein he makes fun of the way kids these days talk. And by “kids these days”, I mean us.

In an effort to improve my level of articulation, I have gotten in the habit of playing back my voicemail messages before I go ahead and send them. It’s painful and interesting to hear your own voice. You realize how often you say the words “um”, “like”, and “wicked awesome.”

However, I vow from this point forward never to use the word “energy” to refer to another human being’s vibe again. And for that matter, I won’t use the word “vibe” either.

And that's a declarative sentence for you.