adultry

not to be discussed

publically.  born of boredom;

sun-baked land dries up

Denial

reoccurrence – what

does that mean?  how can something

that never happened

happen again?

openess

stay in the middle

between indulging and

repressing dissolve

 

March 30 – One Year, One Day at a Time – Feeling separate

Odd, Jordan has moved in and instead of feeling closer to my family, I feel more distant.  I think this is happening for the same reason I have had trouble writing at the end of each day.  I can write a haiku in five minutes.  It is present moment, what I see, how it looks and how it presents itself to me.  And through them, through the haiku there is a glimpse of my feelings, but still at a distance.  I want to keep everything at a distance.  Jordan, Jimmy, my friends, not Katie and Amelia.  For some reason I feel closer to them than ever.  Maybe because they are women.  I am not quite sure what to think of the last sentence I just wrote.  Breasts, because they have female parts.  Surely not that.  Is it that Katie and Amelia are both so plain-spoken, by that I mean so open, so direct, so real.  Katie just says what she means and feels, at least about Jordan.  And Amelia only knows how to be direct.  Love that about her.  “No like it.”  “Pop’s hair all gone.”  “Awww, Travis miss us.”  “All my grandparents.”  And let me tell you she has a gaggle of grands.

So lunch today, actually brunch, with two woman with whom I feel the same affinity as I do with my daughter and her daughter.  Straight forward…I want more of that.  Carole and Janice were so engaged.  We were all so engaged in what we were sharing.  Each of us spoke and responded from an authentic place.  I told them the same thing I told Jimmy last night.  “Since I learned about cancer I have, I have very little patience for small talk.  I think you know what I mean.  Making nice, nice about nothing.  Sharing superficial information about your life to avoid any revealing things you might share with another.  Never do that.  Better to be friendly and vapid.  Uck!

Oh I cannot leave brunch without mentioning how incredible The 2nd Line is.  The service was impeccable,  the food prepared with pizzazz and love, and the restaurant itself, stunning…great colors, very open, lots of light and small enough to be intimate, but not too loud.  Perfection.  Carole and Janice treated me to lunch.  So sweet.  I mean that.  I really appreciate their love and support.  And the laughter we shared.

Home to a quiet house.  Jordan working at the computer.  Jimmy nowhere to be seen.  Turns out he was asleep upstairs and did not hear me when I yelled at the top of my voice, “Jimmy are you up there?”

“Jordan, have you seen Jimmy?”

“No.”

“Okay, well I am going to get  cup of coffee.  Do you want to go?”

“I am going to the theatre, but I will meet you at Starbucks.”

I decided, while getting in my car, to call Jimmy on his cell phone.  “Hello.”

“Where are you,” I ask?

“Upstairs.”

“Okay, I am coming in then.”

I called Jordan, “Jimmy was asleep upstairs.  I am going in to have coffee with him.”

“Okay.  See ya.”

Jimmy made a pot of espresso and we sat down for a few moments together.

Then Jimmy taught class, I wrote and almost got caught up on the Good Wife.  After tonight I will just be 2 episodes behind.  I hear that the next episode is a walapalooser.

And now the wind down, the movement toward be, a little reading maybe.  Good day.

so damn hard

ego wants to keep

it defend it make it stop

changing too damn bad

Me and Egon

furrowed brow twisted

mind tormented by willful

mess blowing through me

Authenticity and Authority

My husband has heard me say it again and again.  “I want to be more authentic.”  His reply has always been, “No one could be more authentic than you.”  From his perspective I live sharing as much of myself as I can with my family, students, and friends.  But I know there is still a gap between who I am and the person I present to the world.

“Pretty is as pretty does” was one of my mother’s favorite truisms.  I swallowed the first part hook line and sinker.  I took her to mean that the prettier I was the better I would be. She never explained the “does” part.  As a child and adolescent, people stopped my parents on the street to comment on how pretty I was.  I felt awkward, but tried to be polite by saying thank you.  But I was not grateful for their attention.  Even at a young age I intuitively knew that physical beauty is not as important as who a person is on the inside.  What choices do they make?  Are they generous, kind, loving, supportive….those things and more?  I was not raised to be kind, compassionate and loving.  Far from it.  I was taught to be aloof, tight-lipped, self-protective and wary.  But, no worries, I was pretty.

I developed early.  By age eleven I was fully grown and had fairly large breasts which made me incredibly self-conscious.  I knew that boys were attracted to me not because they knew and liked me, but because of my body.  I hated it.  I can remember praying to be ugly so I could just be smart and everyone would leave me alone.  I excelled in school and had a deep desire to make something of my life, but I lacked the life tools I needed to stay out of trouble.  I   took the easier softer way and started trading on my good looks.

I am sure I am not the only woman to ever use her looks as a tool to get ahead.  I often thought of myself as a prostitute even though I did not sell myself for money.   I lost touch with my spirit and spent more time focusing on my outward appearance.  I am having an incredibly difficult time writing about this part of my life.  I wanted to be a good person, someone who truly cared about others, but the more I obsessed about my weight, my shape, my hair, my make-up, the I thought about cultivating empathy.

Eventually I lost contact with the deepest part of me, the part that knows true joy comes from giving to others, from caring and sharing without fear of impunity.

Spending time with Joan Halifax Roshi stirred something at the core of my being.  When she told us she had stopped taking personal money some twenty years ago, I realized how much time and energy I have spent making and protecting money.  I do not believe money is inherently bad, but we have certainly mastered using it to bolster ourselves at the expense of others.

Money like external beauty is impermanent.  It comes and it goes.  The effort we put into protecting both takes time away from learning to be authentic, to have raw honesty, true expression of ideas and beliefs, and a willingness to be wrong so that we can learn what is truly right for each one of us.  I do not want to live out the rest of my days with a mistaken identity.  I am not the wrinkles between my eyes or around my mouth.  I am not my sagging breasts or the cellulite on my thighs.  I am light and love and joy.

No I am not going to stop doing yoga or cease putting expensive creams on my face.  Not today.  I will however vow to notice when my sel-absorption separates me from myself and from others.  I vow to be aware of those times when I am not kind, not generous, and not authentic.  I want to cultivate the kind of authority that arises out of true knowing, knowing that the blessings I have in my life are a gift.  May I have the courage to share freely what I have with others.

Freedom from Hell

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” – Kierkegaard

‘Arrival in Auschwitz is a defining moment in your life. The doors open, you are thrown out, greeted by barking dogs, screaming figures with whips, a stench of burning flesh and a glow of fire. Everything happens at breakneck speed. “Out, out, out!” You are driven off running. You are taken to a building, stripped, put under cold showers, driven into the next hall where they shave off your hair. There are no towels so you are still wet and cold. Then women prisoners smear your body with a mop dipped in green fluid which stings. In the next hall you are thrown some rags and wooden clogs. In the final hall there are women sitting at tables with funny pens in their hands and before you know it needles are piercing your skin. That is when you become a number [39934]. Whistles blow and there is a roll call. Thousands of women are rushing to stand in line. For hours you stand in the rain and people fall to the ground dead. Then you are driven into a hut and you think, “At last, I can lie down.” But you can’t. There are 1,000 women trying to lie down on the bunks. You are lucky to find a corner to cling to. Welcome to Auschwitz. Welcome to hell.’

Kitty lost 30 members of her family in the Holocaust. Her father was betrayed and shot. Her brother died fighting at Stalingrad alongside the Russians. She and her mother came to Birmingham, to an aunt and uncle who’d escaped Europe before the war. Her uncle’s greeting: ‘In my house I don’t want you to speak about anything that happened to you.’ Adjustment took time. ‘I didn’t know how to hold a knife and fork. I was slopping my food out of a bowl. I used to take the bread my neighbours had thrown in their dustbins

A lust for revenge kept Kitty alive at one point: revenge for the friends she lost in Auschwitz and those shot or clubbed to death if they lagged on the death march. After liberation, she was part of a group that rampaged through Salzwedel town. But confronting a cowering German family, a knife in her hand, she knew she could not hurt them. Today, her work takes her throughout Europe, and when she talks to German teenagers, ‘I tell them, “It is not your fault. You are not to blame.”’ They must notice that every sentence she says is imbued with rigorous honesty. Perhaps they also sense the stark dignity shaping her compassion. -By LOUETTE HARDING about Kitty-Hart Moxon

Who can imagine the horrors of the concentration camps?  What must it have been like to at last be free? A child learns to walk by letting go of the chair where her mother sits excitedly anticipating the first step.  Who is standing by to hold your hand as you leave behind what has become a way of life, the living Hell of being a prisoner waiting to die, but determined to live?

If you have ever been abused, mistreated, or violated in any way, if you have witnessed atrocities first hand and lived to tell the story, you know the irony of freedom.  Those who did not survive, who were killed or took their own lives, those who lived but could not cope with the anxiety of freedom, those men, women and children are ghosts hanging on to your coat tails.  They ride with you to the grocery store, the bank, as you drop your children off at school.  They come to you in your dreams.  You see them in the faces of those you pass on the street.  One word brings them back.  Do you feel guilty?  Perhaps.  Grateful?  Hopefully yes.  But most of all I think one feels compelled to tell the story, to share with others what you have experienced and what you know about yourself and the world as a result.  Stories have the power to transform lives, your own and others.  Tell your story.  Honor the ghosts of your past, even those who persecuted you for it is in the forgiving that we learn to live again.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” – Ghandi

Why I Write

I write for myself and for my friends.  I write to say things to my family I cannot speak aloud, to clear the clouds of misfortune.  I write to elevate my own thoughts and the minds of those around me.  I write to speak the truth.  I write to proclaim that each and every one of us has a right to be heard. I write because I want to be honest and clear.  I write with earnestness and joy knowing that sometimes, often, I do not make sense.  When I write I know I am alive. If I do not write, I feel like a failure.  I write so that I can hold a candle to the world as I see it and not as others depict it.  I write for my grandmother, who could not or would not speak.  I write to play.  I write for fun because it is like frolicking in a flower festooned valley.  I write because I dream and I know there is more.   I write when I don’t take my anti-depressant, out of fear and desperation.  I write to make sense of the world and to illuminate my world.  I write as if I were playing a fine violin, bowing my way across the pages of time and space.  I write to tell my story so that others may live.  I write of wonder and pain and fear and joy and confusion.  I write, when I write, because I believe it is what I have always been meant to do.  I write for all the survivors of sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, cancer and the like.  I write my pain in hopes of touching yours.  Writing is like playing with fire knowing that any moment I could go up in smoke. When I write I walk the tight rope between what I know to be real and what the world tells me is real.  Will I fall?  Is that why I do not write?  I write to love others and myself.  I write to express anger, hatred, revenge and loneliness. I write to become a dagger that will pierce my father’s heart. I write, screaming at my mother, demanding she tell me what really happened.  I write pleading for understanding and reconciliation. I write so that I will not forget that my son died and yet he lives.  I write to bring chaos into the world in hopes of restoring it to sanity.  I write to cry and laugh and joke.  I write to pretend I am someone who I am not and to be more of who I am.  I write for God, for the Divine mother in me and for the women of the world.   I write to spin a yarn.  I write like a wolf howling in the night hungry for love and companionship.  I write to be alone but not lonely.  I write because I am a writer and that is what we do.  It is our language.  It is my connection to my soul and to the universe.  Writing is my life.

Not Just Alcohol…Moderation in All Things.

Ii find it hard to believe that only alcoholics are concerned about how much they drink.  I have practiced and studied yoga for over 30 years.  Yoga cultivates a keen awareness of how things we consume affect us. the cultivation of subtle awareness amplifies the smallest change in the body.  For instance, soon after starting yoga, I quit smoking cigarettes.  At that time, I smoked one to three cigarettes a day.  Hardly an addiction, but I noticed smoking interfered with my ability to breath during yoga. I wanted to breath deeply.  Later I gave up red meat, not because I wanted to be a vegetarian, but because I felt that my digestive system bogged down, and was overworked by my meat consumption.  I have, on multiple occasions,  given up caffeine, mainly because it makes me anxious, and I do not like to feel jittery.  I am drinking coffee now with little or no effect.  I do not drink more than one cup of full-caffeine and one with half-caffeine. per day. I choose to moderate.

I have long questioned my drinking, because I believe it is my responsibility to maintain health and well-being.  I owe it to myself, my family and to the planet.  I also believe moderation is a practice that cultivates discipline and self-awareness.  I want to be the person who deals with life without self-medicating.  Such behavior, over-consumption of alcohol and other mind-altering substances, only temporarily represses  the consequences of events that will, at some point, have to be dealt with.

I also contend that even the moderate, non-alcoholic drinker has, on occasion, over consumed or, as we say in the South, “has been over-served.”  Never disregard the ability of the mind to play tricks with you.  When in doubt about any habit you have, anything you do on a daily basis, ask questions, stop the behavior for a time and see how you feel. Over consumption in any form over a long period should be  stopped.  Take sugar.  Sugar is poisoning us.  It is responsible for the dramatic uptick in diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and obesity.  How much is too much sugar.  Be responsible for your own behavior.  Take care of your side of the street.  When you find yourself judging the behavior of another, turn your finger back in your own direction.  “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Gandhi

Here is some more information about  Moderate Drinking.

What is Moderate Drinking or Alcohol Consumption?
by David J. Hanson, Ph. D.

What is sensible or moderate drinking? It depends on whom you ask. The U.S. government defines moderate drinking as consuming no more than two drinks a day for men and one for women. And even that has changed. Until recently, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s definition permitted men to drink up to four drinks on a day and still be considered moderate drinkers. 1

A drink in the U.S. is a 12-ounce can or bottle of beer, a five-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5 ounces of liquor (either straight or in a mixed drink). Each contains the same amount of alcohol — six-tenths of an ounce and they are all the same to a Breathalyzer. 2

Moderate drinkers tend to have better health and live longer than those who are either abstainers or heavy drinkers do. In addition to having fewer heart attacks and strokes, moderate consumers of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine or distilled spirits or liquor) are generally less likely to suffer hypertension or high blood pressure, peripheral artery disease, Alzheimer’s disease and the common cold. Sensible drinking also appears to be beneficial in reducing or preventing diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, bone fractures and osteoporosis, kidney stones, digestive ailments, stress and depression, poor cognition and memory, Parkinson’s disease, hepatitis A, pancreatic cancer, macular degeneration (a major cause of blindness), angina pectoris, duodenal ulcer, erectile dysfunction, hearing loss, gallstones, liver disease and poor physical condition in elderly. 4

Standard Drinks
Standard Drinks graphically illustrates information on the equivalence of standard drinks of beer, wine and distilled spirits or liquor. Its accuracy has been established by medical and other health professionals.
The risk of dying in any given year is 25 percent lower for those who consume moderate amounts of alcohol.

Below is an excerpt from Recover Options:  http://www.recoveryoptions.us/resources/moderate-drinking

WHEN DOES MODERATE DRINKING BECOME PROBLEM DRINKING?

The answer to this question depends not only on how much alcohol a person consumes, but also on how drinking affects their behavior; i.e., what actually happens when they drink. For example, drinking too much causes some individuals to become irritable, argumentative, and angry, while others become quiet, withdrawn, and depressed. Also, some people develop medical problems related to drinking at much lower levels of alcohol consumption than do others.

For healthy adults, drinking more than the maximum single-day or weekly moderation limits defined above is considered “at-risk” or “heavy” drinking.  About 1 in 4 people who drink above these limits qualify for a diagnosis of Alcohol Abuse or Alcohol Dependence, and the rest are generally at increased risk for developing alcohol-related problems.

When evaluating a person’s drinking pattern, it is important to take into account not only how much alcohol that person consumes on a given drinking day, but also how often he or she has a “heavy drinking” day—that is, more than 4 drinks in a day for men or more than 3 drinks in a day for women. The more alcohol consumed in a typical drinking day and the more frequently that heavy drinking days occur over time, the greater the chances of experiencing significant alcohol-related problems.

PROBLEM DRINKING  (ALCOHOL ABUSE)

Problem Drinking (also known as Harmful or Hazardous Drinking) is defined as alcohol consumption that exceeds the moderate limits as specified above and causes significant problems for the drinker and/or others, even if these problems are not dramatic or severe. For example, drinking that causes hangovers and/or creates conflict with others are potential signs of problem drinking or alcohol abuse.

Problem drinkers generally do not experience an overwhelming compulsion to drink, do not drink excessively on a daily basis, are not physically dependent on alcohol, and do not neglect responsibilities at home or work due to drinking. For a list of early warning signs of Problem Drinking (Alcohol Abuse), click here.

ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE (ALCOHOLISM)

This is a much more serious condition. Alcoholic drinkers are typically unable to control their drinking once they start (i.e., they have no “off” switch for drinking) and often continue to drink, despite suffering severe and sometimes life-damaging or irreversible consequences. Many experience cravings, urges, and an overwhelming compulsion to drink.

Some alcoholics experience withdrawal symptoms when they try to stop drinking, but others do not. Withdrawal symptoms may include, for example, agitation, extreme anxiety, insomnia, shaking, headaches, and vomiting. Some alcoholics drink every day, but many have an episodic binge pattern in which they drink heavily for one or more days in a row, then stop for days or weeks at a time before starting another binge.