THE JOY OF SURRENDER

I've had for a long time a certain image when I think about surrender. I see myself pulling colorful silk ribbons out of my chest and throwing them up to a sunny sky as I walk along. I haven't exactly understood why this image should represent surrender. But it just occurred to me the image is about joy. Surrender brings joy. Joy comes with surrender.

THE AFTERMATH

It's been six weeks since a man broke into my house in the middle of the night. When I realized the dark shape at the door was a man, I was out of bed before I knew it, screaming, "Get out of here - get out of here." I punched him and pulled him toward the door. I managed to get the door open, pushed him out, shut and locked the door.
     I didn't call the police until the next morning and when I thought about it I realized I must have been in shock. But it didn't feel like what I imagined shock feels like - everything got quiet inside me, I moved slowly, bewildered, trying to solve a puzzle I didn't quite understand.
     I went to a party later that day; it didn't occur to me not to. I told a few people what had happened, talked about how astonished I was at my aggressive reaction, pure reflex. Naturally, they commiserated and as they did I nodded, reassuring them that I was all right.  I felt all right. Something had happened, now it was over and I moved on. It's true for the first few nights I slept with the light on, but my need to do that was very quickly was over. 
   I sometimes saw the moment when I realized that dark shape was a man. I tried to feel what I must have felt when I was screaming and punching him but there was no emotion attached to anything I was imagining. I didn't quite believe that the break-in had happened and I shook my head in amazement that I had actually managed to push the man out the door.
      A few days ago, I realized I was jumpy, literally jumping at every sound, even during the day. And I heard a lot of sounds - my senses were in overdrive and I couldn't quite relax.
     It took me a while to associate my being so on edge with the break-in. It just didn't seem likely that I'd been fine for weeks and now suddenly wasn't. But I kept seeing the dark form that turned into a man and I felt the fear that I didn't feel then.
     I googled the symptoms of PTSD. It can emerge a long time after the traumatic event. In women, it's most associated with a violent event. There is obsessive thinking, a reliving the event again and again. As I read, it made complete sense that I had PTSD. But I didn't want to tell anyone or tell myself that there was a label for what I was experiencing. PTSD sounded so melodramatic it embarrassed me. But I realized there was another feeling in me that had nothing to do with PTSD although it was set off by it. I was really embarrassed by my having any reaction at all. I wasn't supposed to be rattled by anything. I shouldn't be vulnerable. I expected I would rise above such petty feelings as fear. Slowly I recognized that was ridiculous and then it came to me. I was demanding I be a block of ice.
     

LOST

I've been reading about a man who got lost in a forest. He had only the roughest idea where he was meant to go and when he finally noticed he wasn't see any of the landmarks he'd been told about, he kept walking, convinced what he was looking for must be over the next ridge. And then the next. And the next. 
     It took him a long time to realize he was lost and that he'd been lost for hours. This is evidently typical of people who get lost. The brain has made a mental map of what is supposed to be where and even when there's evidence to the contrary it doesn't register right away.  Hold off creating a problem, the brain seems to say - until the realization of being lost finally bursts through. Even then, realizing you're lost doesn't necessarily mean you're going to stop and take stock; pushing on seems to be wired in some people's DNA. It's why lost children are more often found than adults; a child when tired has the good sense to sit down, to stay in one place and increase the chances of being found.
     This comes out of a book I love, Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales. He gives many other examples of people who press on when there's clear evidence it isn't a good idea - experienced river rafters who plunge into a current well beyond safety limits, a group that climbs a rock wall in Yosemite despite getting a late start and not knowing the day's weather forecast, because they'd been planning the climb for weeks. Having set a plan in motion it's often difficult if not impossible to stop it, even when you ought to know better. But if the "reality" of being lost doesn't burst through your defenses, you're probably done for; those who do survive usually have seen the real state of things very quickly and can act on the reality. They're able to come into the moment, as it actually is. 
      Gonzales is writing about the psychology of those who survive physical disaster but the ideas and language are certainly a metaphor for all of life. In a sense, we're all living in that moment before we realize we're "lost." I think I know where I'm going and go along even though I also know that life is completely unpredictable and that the only constant is change. No wonder we all feel a certain existential anxiety, that creeping sense that we know nothing and don't have any solid ground to stand on.
     But there is something that can keep us from being overwhelmed by fear. It's our willingness, our readiness, to accept whatever new circumstances come. We can develop the great spiritual and psychological muscles of adaptability, which run on the faith that no matter what, we will be all right. 

MY SPIRITUAL AWAKENING - PART TWO

     Six months after I quit drinking, I was still in a fog. with the air so thick around me I had to consciously will myself forward in order to move through the day.  I was coming off tranquilizers as well as alcohol and, even though I knew how much I had ingested of each, I was still surprised by how affected my body was. I was so on edge I had to put a towel under the phone because even with the ringer turned low it still made me jump. My reading lamp was much too bright, but that didn't matter because I couldn't concentrate enough to read anyway. I lay on my bed most of the time, sending a constant stream of cigarette smoke up to the ceiling, blaming myself because I couldn't rouse myself to move, much less act. And I blamed myself, not for the past - I couldn't even begin to face that - but for not using this strange time to ponder Life's Significant Issues or come up with an interesting idea to explore. I couldn't take it in - that my drinking and using had actually done real physical things to me - and that stopping had only revealed the actual state of things. Surely, I hadn't really drunk and used that much?
     One day, bored with counting up all the times  
The Beatles mention the sun in their songs, which I assumed was because they were from a cold damp climate, and unable to work up an intense fantasy like the one in which I was the only person in the world who could save Marlon Brando, I was on my bed idly counting the ridges in the cottage cheese ceiling. My mind was blank, but not quiet; I could feel thoughts colliding below the surface as anxiety drove them forward. Then, something emerged: "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want." It was the beginning of the 23rd Psalm. Why has that come into my mind, I wondered. I'm not religious. I have no use for the concept of God. Nonetheless, I tried to remember what came next - something about still waters and green pastures. I got up and opened my paperback Bible, which anyone who claims to be familiar with the western tradition ought to have.  Like Shakespeare.

     The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
     He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
     he leadeth me beside the still waters.
     He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths
     of righteousness for his name's sake.
     Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
     shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou 
     art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort
     me. Thou preparest a table before me in the 
     presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head
     with oil; my cup runeth over. Surely goodness
     and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
     life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
     forever.

I brought the book back to the bed and read the words slowly. Then I said them out loud, and read them again. Suddenly, I heard the voice of the poet who had written these lines, who is thought to be King David; I heard him, the man, clearly across the centuries. He was longing to feel safe and protected from want and danger and evil,; he wanted not to fear death.  I felt how writing those words helped him lessen his fear and existential dread. He and his poem were very alive, and I found  myself trying to imagine what it would be like to be starving and come to green pastures, or be thirsty and find still waters. I tried to imagine there actually was something in the world that could restore me to equilibrium. 
     Most of all, I felt David's yearning, and suddenly I felt the yearning in me. I had never allowed myself to feel it because to feel it was to be vulnerable, which for me had always meant weak; I was a well-defended fortress and the smallest chink in the fortifications would send everything crashing down. But now, here on my bed and the sheets I hadn't changed in weeks, my yearning for something to help me wasn't threatening. In fact, I felt my reaching out as an expansion, a golden ribbon flowing out of me to connect me to the world. For the first time, I understood it was part of the human condition. For the first time, I knew it was all right to recognize this part of me. For the first time, I wasn't afraid to allow myself to be human.

DREAMY

One morning, quite early and without the aid of an alarm clock, I will rise up cleanly from the dreary, dirty sheets of my unmade bed. Slipping my feet into warm soft slippers, drawing a crisp pressed robe around my smooth, rounded shoulders, I will enter my orderly kitchen and brew a cup of strong aromatic coffee, which I will sip as I read the morning newspaper, each section and the ads. I will do the crossword puzzle straight through with the exception of two unknown letters. I will dress, washing my face in sparkling water, combing my shiny lustrous hair, doing each task calmly, quietly, precisely. I will pack a small neat suitcase, mostly sweet-smelling, evenly-folded underwear and safely- packaged toilet essentials. Dressed and ready to depart, I will pause before my large, spotless mirror and I will be content with the self-contained image reflected there. Then, silently slipping my key in the lock, I will softly close the door behind me, listening as metal meets metal, joining absolutely, and I will take pleasure in this, knowing that such perfect union must be esteemed. I will go to my car, a little blue roadster, and I will place the suitcase securely on the rear seat. I will slip another well-made key in its one perfect opposite, and when the smoothly tuned engine springs into life, I will drive off and disappear forever.

     I will drive until nightfall, the only car on miles of unblemished concrete stretching rhythmically through silent green valleys and across rolling molded hills. I will come to a medium-sized city, discrete in its boundaries, in a region I have never been. I will drive through the heart of this city, permanently noting the location of various places of interest, but I will stop a bit removed from the center, somewhere on its perimeter, distanced from the clutter and noise of the heart. 

     I will find and rent, at a reasonable sum, a furnished room with kitchen in a boardinghouse once grand but now declined genteel. I will sleep that night between clean sheets, although not of the best quality. My head will rest comfortably on the supporting pillow beneath it and the covers will be pulled neatly and evenly across my chest, my arms on top of them at my sides. Imprecise sounds will filter through the heavy, old but newly laundered curtains,. and I will hear each one separately and trace its source and understand it. I will listen to those sounds and know them.

     In the morning, I will dress quickly and go out into the street. Around the corner from my new home, I will find a diner, painted gray with green plastic on the seats and counter. As I eat bacon and eggs, toast and coffee, I will search through the job ads listed in the local newspaper. By lunchtime, I will be employed as ticket-taker at the local movie house, or saleswoman at the five-and-ten. My employer will show me what exactly my job consists of, and at each step I will nod my head and firmly fix it in my brain, so that I need only do it once or twice for it to be automatic. I will begin that very day and at its end my employer and I will express our mutual satisfaction.

     I will stop on my return to my new home at a small neighborhood grocery to purchase the few things I will want - the usual staples, a flavorful tea, imported biscuits, a particularly thin slice of veal. As I enter the boardinghouse, its proprietor and I will nod to each other, smiling circumspectly, respecting the other's privacy. In my room, I will slip off my coat and hang it on a wide wooden hanger made especially for coats like mine. I will arrange the kitchen in the manner most convenient for me and then I will prepare my dinner. The cooking odors will permeate the room, adding to its warmth.

     I will eat this meal on a mahogany table set before the window and, as I slice and swallow precise bite after precise bite, I will view the street below. Two or three old men are quietly talking and enjoying the evening air. Occasionally, they look off down the street at a group of children playing with a ball. By the men's posture and the movements of their hands as they talk, I can tell they are good men who have lived good lives, and I can see that they watch the children with pleasure and not regret. A young man and woman, their arms around each other, come out of a house opposite and amble slowly out of sight, leaving behind the sound of a laugh. A woman appears in a doorway and calls to one of the children, a boy of eight, and when he runs to her she offers him a slice of freshly baked chocolate cake.

     As I finish my meal and the evening shadows lengthen and seep out into the night, I will smoke a cigarette and I will watch the delicate smoke trail up and out my windows, joining the fresh night air which cools my face. I will wash my few dishes, clean the sink and wipe the counter space. I will neatly fold the dishcloth with which I have dried the dishes, and drape it over a rack suitably placed over the sink.

     Drawing from my purse a new purchased book, the characters of which are old familiar friends, I will draw my feet up under me on my easy chair, so comfortable it seems made for the curve of my back and the line of my bottom. For an hour or two, while the night spends itself in comings and going, I will read this book, turning each page silently and watching it fall flat against its companions. Then, I will stretch luxuriously, close the book and place it on a small polished table. I will undress. Again between clean sheets, I will lie on my back in the darkness, although not for so long this night as the last, and I will hear the imprecise sounds and I will understand them.

     Each day and each night will be like this. My life will have shape and form. My needs and expectations and desires will coincide perfectly with what my life provides. I will have everything.

NO, I DON'T WANT TO

"No, I don't want to." I've been thinking about how often that's my first response to just about anything. No, I don't want to work. No, I don't want to go to that party. No, I don't want to wash those dishes. No, I don't want to leave the house. It's not all the time and I'm much better than I was, but I suppose I'll go to my grave - of course, I'll go to the grave, saying no, I don't want to. That last one doesn't count.
     Over the years, I've come at this No from many different angles. It's fear and insecurity, my fear that the world won't welcome me - and this even though I can objectively see the world has, by and large, been a welcoming place. My NO is rebelliousness - I won't do what you expect of me, what everyone else has to do. It's laziness - I'm lazy and for reasons I will never fathom I just can't get motivated.  The NO is my emotional anorexia, my willful and compulsive choice to not do all the things that would nourish me - to deny myself the pleasure of work, a clean house, the energizing stimulation of everything the world has to offer. Each of these angles has given me useful information and sometimes has seemed like the answer to it all. But over time I've learned that none of them are or ever will be the key that will open my way to a new self, the one who never says a self-destructive NO, the one who is utterly changed. Any change is a slow and steady accumulation of many insights, it requires patience, and I've learned to value the bits and pieces of forward movement, instead of riding right over them, robbing myself any satisfaction simply  because they haven't  brought instant and total transformation.
     If I believed in miracles, I'd say it's a miracle that I got on to myself in the first place. But somewhere along the line, in another very slow process, I became able to look at the truth inside me. I constantly assessed my actions, thought and feelings, but those assessments grew out of the kind of inhibiting self-consciousness that comes from feeling there's a camera watching my every move and the eyes behind it see that everything I do is somehow wrong. But here was a new kind of watching and in it I suspended all labels of right or wrong. Whatever I saw was only neutral information, not the revelation of a truth that doomed me. If my reflex reaction was it feel it as doom, I could pause, step back and tell myself it was information I needed if I was ever going to change. I had to know the place I was starting from. I had to take the risk.
     How did I learn there's space between "me" and what "I" think? When did I see for myself the truth of what Viktor Frankl said, that I always have the freedom to choose my attitude? Well, that's part of a longer story and comes back to my favorite subject - the ability we all have to see ourselves from many angles and perspectives. It's an ability human consciousness gives us, our consciousness which is folded over and over again and, like the dough of a delicate pastry, has layer upon layers. Some of them are known to us, some are only hinted at, while others are beyond our awareness. William James said the mind is like a bird in its flights and perchings. The flights take place beyond our conscious mind; what we are aware of are the perchings, the specific landings of conscious thought. But all of it is part of the flow, the stream of consciousness. 
     His great phrase. Not mine.
     

SUSPENSION

I drove up to Sacramento a few days ago. It's a six hour drive straight up the 5 freeway and most people find it boring - once you're over the Grapevine, the drive is flat across the San Joaquin Valley with nothing but farmland running away from the road. But I like long car drives alone and I'm never bored. I note the landmarks I've made for myself on the many trips I've taken up this road, I try to figure out what's growing on those very small trees in an orchard I pass, I note that the heavy rains have turned some low lying land into marsh and I see a white heron. I wait for the road signs I'm compelled to say out loud. Don't ask me why but I have to say "Twisselman", "Avenal", "Coalinga", and most especially "Panoche" and "Little Panoche". I get to repeat some of them three times - on the miles-to sign, next-exit sign and finally this-exit sign. It's a ritual I've made for myself and does what rituals do: grounds me in the familiar, in repetition. And, not incidentally, makes me happy.
   What is it about long car trips? I like that no one knows exactly where I am.  Nothing is required of me; I'm free for any possibility. Sometimes, I investigate the little towns that are a few miles off the freeway: Lost Hills, Gustine, Maricopa. I ask myself if I could make a life in one of those towns, with their people who I imagine are so different than me. But I know I would get to know them, the woman who knits and can show me a new stitch, the teacher who has read some of the books I have, the bacon and eggs place that has two eggs poached easy cooking the moment I walk through the door.  The answer is usually yes, a life could be made here. If I had to.
     Driving a straight flat road requires only minimal attention and I like to let my mind wander. I have faith that something interesting will emerge - a remembered idea I had a few weeks ago I meant to write down, memories of the people I met when I was twenty-four, how to explain the modern world to Ben Franklin who has suddenly appeared in the passenger seat. (Over the years, I've often tried to look at my world through his eyes and see how strange and magnificent it all is.) I think about the state of the world and, of course, the state of me. What could be more interesting than that? And, when time is suspended, there are hours of the present moment to bask in.
     This love of time suspended is related to something else that comes to me, not often but from time to time. I'll be moving through my day and suddenly I'm possessed by a desire to throw it all away, chuck it, snap the cord, let it all go. I suspect many people have the same feeling, the same wish to get out from under all our obligations and responsibilities, our individual fears and desires. But I keep coming back to a particular moment, the movement of flinging as hard as I can, my hand at my heart and then with great speed, flinging, as if my life is a discus or boomerang. For an instant, I reside in that gesture beyond anything but pure being, pure energy., and even though I'm only there for a moment, it's among the most intense feelings I have.  
     I see how interesting the concept of suspension is. It's anatomy, psychology, philosophy. Very interesting. I'm going to forget it now. It's something to think about on my next trip north.

HONORING

I got word the other day that a professor of mine in graduate school had died. He had made a real difference in my life and I loved him. I was an adult when I went to grad school and I went thinking I would study ethics. But when I heard this man speak during orientation, I knew he was the man for me - even though I wasn't quite sure what his "subject" was. I studied many different things in his classes - "Moby Dick", Kant and David Hume, theories of symbolization, the photographs of Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis, and, especially for me, William James. Somewhere along the line, I realized the "subject" was consciousness - how we invest the world with meanings and values and how we come to those meanings and values. In one way or another, that has been my subject ever since.

     When I heard about my professor's death, I found it wasn't enough to call a friend and tell her about it. I wanted to reach out to his family, to tell them what he had meant to me. I'd met and corresponded with his wife but I had no idea if she was still alive or had moved from the house I'd met her in. But my need to connect was strong and so I called the school. The person I spoke to thought the wife was in a nursing home and frail, but she said she'd look for an address for their son.

     When I hung up, I realized I could google the son myself. I knew he'd turn up because he'd had some high profile jobs and, sure enough, when I clicked on the first thing that came up, I easily found his current email. I immediately sent him a note expressing how grateful I was to have known and studied with his father, and the feeling that came up in me as I wrote it lingered the rest of the day. It went deep and had many layers - the emotional connection I felt for a man who had had an impact for the good on my life, the sadness I felt at his death, and an unexpected pleasure that I had followed through on my desire to reach out to the family, called the school, then actually wrote and sent the note when it would have been easy to let the facts of time and distance gradually dissipate my initial impulse. The next morning, the son's reply was waiting in my inbox. He was gracious, said how important teaching had been to his father, and thanked me for letting him and his family know how I felt. 

     His response was perfect and it completed the ritual we all want to enact whenever a person who has touched us dies - a relative, a friend, a teacher, even someone we don't know. I hoped the son had been inundated with emails and notes from other former students; that hope was part of my own desire to express gratitude, and I found myself moved that I, who has been a loner so much of the time, in this case wanted to stand with others. I recognized it as the humility that's always a part of gratitude, of the acknowledgement that something outside ourselves has helped and influenced us, that we haven't done it all ourselves.

     It was only later in the day that I realized there was something else in the deep emotion that had stayed with me. I had loved graduate school, did very well there and knew even at the time that it was the absolute right place for me. Now, I felt the truth of it, felt the emotional memory in my body, the happiness I felt at school. I realized that in honoring my professor, I was honoring a part of my past that was filled with accomplishment and recognition and gratitude, a part that was among the best times in my life. I felt the truth of that time; I was that woman and I did those things. In honoring my professor, I had given myself the gift of my own best self, not as in fantasy but as I had been in life. And can be - no will be now, in this moment, and at any moment in the future. My best self is the great possibility in my life, always there, ready to be embraced.

MY SPIRITUAL AWAKENING - PART ONE

 I was talking to a friend the other day about spiritual awakenings and as we talked I realized how many of my own milestones I remember - particular incidents that moved me forward on a path I didn't even know I was walking. 
     I wouldn't have found my way at all if I hadn't been drinking way too much, enough for me to pass out every night, to shake when I lifted a coffee cup, to dread the phone ringing because I was certain something would be required of me that I couldn't possibly do. I'd become used to reeling off the walls in the dark of 3AM as I made my way to the refrigerator for one more tumbler of vodka or white wine. I was after oblivion; I couldn't bear to feel my sometimes hidden but always constant despair, my certainty that I would never be the woman I wanted to be or have any of the things I wanted, and thought I needed, or be recognized by the world for the many things I wanted to accomplish. I believed that no matter how hard I tried, nothing would change, so it was far better to put myself in a place where I didn't even have to try. Not to sleep but to be unconscious without the possibility of the pain of unfulfilled dreams.
     One night, as I stumbled my way to the vodka, I hung over the refrigerator door staring into the light. I was reaching for the bottle when I suddenly thought, I can't do this anymore. I had no idea what that meant but I astonished myself by pouring the vodka down the drain. I slowly walked back to bed. Something had shifted; something had been decided.
     But the decisiveness I felt at 3AM had faded by morning and very early I found myself getting dressed to go to the liquor store. The memory is very vivid - I'm sitting on the edge of the bed lacing up my sneakers when I again have the thought, I can't do this anymore. For an instant, I knew that was true; there was a flash of light, palpable and uplifting, a shaft of light that released all my tension and anxiety. But in the next instant I felt my stomach clench in fear - there was no way for me to move forward without the means of deadening reality, without chemicals to get me out from under all my fears and frustrations. I see now I was like a prisoner who, when the gates are thrown open, is afraid to leave the safety of her cell, to walk away from the certainty of what is known, no matter how harsh and painful it is. But once the gates are open - and you know that they are - there's no going back. I hated that I'd somehow brought myself to this crossroads. I felt tricked by my own resolve. 
     But something real had shifted in me that morning and I haven't had a drink since. I haven't done it alone - I've had all the help I could wish for, all the help I need - and now it's been years since the thought of having a drink or a drug has even entered my mind.
     I often think about what happened to me early morning, sitting on the edge of my bed. I had said many times, I have to stop drinking, but as soon as I said it, it went out of my mind. What was the point of trying when I knew I wouldn't succeed, I who couldn't keep any commitment I made to myself? If, for instance, I was driving on the freeway and said, I won't light a cigarette until the LaBrea off ramp, I had the lit cigarette in my mouth before I'd gone a mile. I knew anything that depended on my using self-discipline simply wouldn't get done. My constant reiteration of all the ways I disappointed myself and why there was no reason, no reason at all, for hope brought me lower and lower, and eventually I'd come to believe I was completely helpless, without resources of any kind, unable even to take care of myself. A terrible phrase kept going through me - I would become a ward of the state...a ward of the state. Or I would be out on the streets, a bag lady like the woman in Doris Lessing's impossibly sad story, "An Old Woman and Her Cat," which traces the step by step descent of a woman from middle class comfort to life on the streets and finally death with only a stray cat for company. I held on to that story as evidence for the prosecution - see, that can happen and it will happen to me.           
     William James describes grace as a sense of inrushing energy that feels as if it comes from somewhere outside ourselves. He wasn't so much interested in where this energy comes from. We can't prove the reality of the Unseen; we can't touch grace or the "reality" of He From Whom It Comes. But what we can see is the altered behavior and feelings of those who have experienced that energy. Accounts of those changes, whether religious or political - or spiritual - are all around us and for James they were stories of the power belief has. Belief is real to the person who has it, and that belief, that insight, often results in real change.    
     Thinking of it this way, I would say now that I, who was (and has remained) an atheist and thought all talk of "the spiritual" was California new age hooey, had a moment of grace. Something happened, and I stopped drinking. At the time I didn't know what to call it. It wasn't the result of my frantic search to understand myself, to uncover and analyze all the hidden forces that blocked me and led to self-destruction. It didn't happen because I used my will as a battering ram for change. None of that brought me any closer to the liberation I craved. But in that moment on the edge of my bed, my shoelaces in my hands, something new had come in. A light had flickered for a moment. The stunning thing was that I recognized it as something different, a new feeling I had never had before, a good feeling which wasn't ridiculous or threatening, in need of being quickly repressed. It was new and it was good. For a moment, that was enough.
     

IT CAN'T BE ME

Years ago I struck up a causal friendship with a woman I met through mutual friends. On the third or fourth time I saw her, she called her husband an idiot. I knew in that moment that she and I wouldn't go on to be friends. Her saying that and having no qualms about it was a signal to me of a very different sensibility, someone not very "evolved", someone who had little compassion. I know I was making a lot of assumptions based on that one word, but we send each other signals like that all the time.and over time I've learned to trust my instincts.
    A few weeks later, I was having a meal with our mutual friend who told me the other woman, sensing that I'd pulled away, wondered if the reason was that I was jealous because she was married. It made me laugh. Her husband did come into it, but not in the way she thought.
    This is a good example of something all of us do, sometimes repeatedly. We defend ourselves  - the problem can't be me so it must be the other -  she must be jealous or intimidated or something else.  It's always a self-serving reason, something that leaves us with  a certain superiority and allows us to walk away with no hint of being disliked and rejected.
     I notice I haven't been doing that for a good long time. I can only think it's because my confidence has grown, my ego isn't so tender. It gets easier to say, well, maybe she doesn't like me when I know that thought isn't going to crush me.  My fear of rejection used to make me interpret every look as a signal of dislike and rejection; I saw everywhere the thing I was most afraid of. But age and whatever self-knowledge I've learned on the path, as I've struggled through the events and ideas that caused deep seated pain, have helped me through the fear of rejection, the fear that I'll never be good enough, the fear that I'll never have what I want or find a way to express all I feel inside me. The fear that I'll never be a  combination of Susan Sontag and Audrey Hepburn, which I have secretly always wanted to be.  Most of the time the camera in the ceiling which was always judging me, the self-consciousness that came from all that fear - most of time it's gone. I can stay in the moment and go through the day without constantly assessing what the world thinks of me. I can just be who I am with all my faults and mistakes and lack of self-discipline. I'm no longer the victim of my deeply threatened ego and if someone doesn't like me  I remind myself of all the times I was the one who walked away. It's the way of the world. It's what it means to be human.
   

SARTRE, BEAUVOIR, etal.

I've been reading a book called At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. It's about the philosophers Sartre, Beauvoir and their circle during and after WWII - their lives, existentialist philosophy and more than a few affairs.
     Here's a long quote by Bakewell:

Freedom for (Sartre) lay at the heart of all human experience...as a human being I have no predefinednature at all. I create that nature through what I choose to do. Of course, I may be influenced by my biology, or by aspects of my culture and personal background but none of this adds up to a complete blueprint for producing me. I am always one step ahead of myself, making myself up as I go along.

   Sartre put this principle into a slogan: Existence precedes essence....roughly it means that, having found myself thrown into the world, I go on the create my own definition (or nature, or essence)...you might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. I create myself constantly through action, and this is so fundamental to my human condition that it is the human condition from the moment of first-consciousness to the moment when death wipes it out. I am my own freedom, no more, no less.

   I, Sherry, can see that if I alone create myself from what I do, I have a responsibility to act in such a way that I will want to be the person I'm always becoming. My actions will reveal who I am. No philosophy or religion or politics or other person can tell me what to do; I am the only one who can make my choices.

     What a responsibility! I can already feel anxiety. Will I make the right or the wrong choice? I think Sartre would say there is no right or wrong. There is only what we do which will lead to the next action and the next. 

     So Buddhist, so 21st century. Bakewell thinks it could be that existentialism will make a comeback. It seems to me that its ideas are already here.

     More about responsibility another time.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Very often, I find myself thinking about the fact that everything we think and see and do depends on how we look at things, and how we look at things grows out of ideas we've absorbed from our culture, our temperament, how we were raised and what our experience has been. We use those things to determine truth, which is filtered and measured against all that we already are. This is why two people can look at the same thing and come to opposite conclusions about it. In a sense, we are only our opinions. None of us has access to Truth with a capital T.

     One more time, I wonder how any of us understand each other and why we don't get into more trouble because of misunderstanding. Well, we do get into a fair amount of it. There are many religions in the world with their individual perspectives and we all know the devastation the clash of these perspectives, these opinions produce. People find a perspective, often a received perspective, and cling to it because it's so much easier than having to figure out the world on your own. People need to be sure they have the right perspective and will sometimes go to any length to defend it and make other people believe it.

     There is often a clash of perspective between two people. Most of us don't like to be challenged - we get defensive or dig ourselves in even more. Sometimes, there simply is no way across the gulf of clashing opinions. But usually, unless we're rigidly stuck in our egos, we can talk through our differences and reach some kind of understanding.

     But even though the fact that we make our own truths leads to many of the world's most intractable problems, it also means that we can arrive at new truths. We can look at things from a new perspective. We can learn. We can change our minds. For years, the fight for civil rights, womens rights and gay rights existed on the edges of our culture. But little by little, those movements grew until a majority of people found a new perspective. They changed their minds. 

     It seems ridiculous to point out that we can change our minds, that we can grow. But in the most profound sense, it's our glory. It's what enables us to transcend our fears and doubts. It's what enables us to expand our consciousness.     

     

INTENSITY

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again, forever -- Goethe

     When I first read this, I was floored. Goethe was one of a handful of exceptional men in his time, amazingly productive, full of accomplishment. Not only a great writer, he did pioneering work in color theory and anatomy, designed gardens, ran a theatre and served as a councilor to the head of a German court. He traveled, wrote 10,000 letters and had a calendar that was always full.  
     He was restless, possibly driven and I wonder if that's how he dealt with the dissatisfaction he must have felt at bottom. I see him whirling through his days, busy, curious about the world around him, social, but when he is alone depression - anxiety - emptiness - move out of the background he can mask through his busy days, and come to the fore, as if they are the default in his consciousness. I wonder if he would have traded his accomplishments for a life of well-being. I think not. He was part of a Romantic generation that saw poetry in suffering and he might have sensed how much his angst and restlessness led him to make his world as big as possible.
     It's the push and pull between a life of inner peace and a life of public accomplishments. It's our idea of the tormented artist who suffers for his art, or our suspicion that creativity needs the irritating grain of sand in order to make pearls. It's hard to picture a peaceful person doing much more than contemplating whatever has caught her eye.  
     I suppose I, too, am Romantic with a capital R. I value my restless mind, my curiosity. They keep me from getting bored. Passion and obsession get me going, make all the lights brighter so I can see more intensely. Words, images often come in a barrage and I feel that I'm on a taut string, vibrating with ideas. It's not peaceful but it's often productive. The question is, is it worth it?
     I've spent a long time cultivating inner peace and yet there is a part of me that hates that phrase. Not only because it's become a main stream cliche but also because a part of me can't imagine anything duller. I know a spiritual person would tell me how I'm misunderstanding. In fact, I can tell myself: inner equilibrium in no way has to block intensity and creativity. It can do the opposite - unblock all the feelings buried inside. But I want the Sturm und Drang, the thunder and lightening, the yearning for something I can't even see much less have. Intensity, intensity, as long as I'm alive.

ARNOLD BERNSTEIN

I love vintage steamship paper items from the 1920s and 30s - brochures and booklets, deck plans, passenger lists, menus, luggage labels and tags. They often have wonderful graphics, deco ship images a la Cassandre, the great French graphic artist, with strong clean lines, blocks of color, everything crisp and clean. I can't say why I'm so drawn to these particular pieces of paper; it's one of those mysteries of aesthetics, why we respond to one thing and not another, but there are times I think the "hit" I get from them, the aesthetic pleasure, is as sharp and deep as that from a great painting. 

     A couple of years ago I came across a brochure with a typed letter from the Arnold Bernstein Shipping Company whose ships sailed between Europe and the United States. The company's headquarters were in Berlin and the letter is dated 1934. I looked at the date and I looked at the name and knew instantly what probably had happened to a man named Bernstein in that time and place. I shivered as I put them carefully away and, from time to time, when I'm looking for something else, I come across them and stop for a long silent moment before I rush on to something else.

     Then, last weekend, as I was going through a stack of vintage luggage labels at a paper show, I came across a little trove of Arnold Bernstein Shipping Company ephemera - six different luggage labels and tags. There's a big one that could be marked "Wanted" or "Not Wanted" to identify which bags were to go to the passengers' stateroom and which to be held in the hold for the duration of the voyage. There is one for Plymouth and another for Antwerp, tagging which bags were to go ashore at which port. Two more are for a sailing from New York to Le Havre and New York to Plymouth. Amazingly, they're all unused and in very good condition.

     This morning, as I was putting them away with the letter and brochure, the papers in my hand were suddenly sacred relics, ritual objects that led me through the abstractions of history and into the real life at its heart. I saw Arnold Bernstein, the man. He was obviously prosperous and I imagined him in one of those huge Berlin apartments I've seen in the movies, with polished wood floors and beautiful carpets, paintings in gold frames on the wall, heavy drapes and dark wood furniture, fine china and silverware - all of it the essence of gemultlichkeit, welcoming, warm, inviting. He's at the dinner table raising a glass of red wine, surrounded by family and friends. It's an ordinary scene, almost trite, and that's the point. There's no hint at all of what is soon to come.

     I felt Arnold coming back to life, and he was suddenly very close, this man I knew almost nothing about. I wasn't thinking about his probable end. The man I wanted to touch was active, productive, deeply enmeshed in a thriving world. I found myself wishing, really wishing that he could know I was thinking about him. I want him to know that something of him survives, that across the years and distance, I have found this record of his existence: I have found him. I feel his heart beating, as if I'd placed my hand on his chest. It's not too much to say I feel love. 

     After I put my Arnold Bernstein archive away, I sat for a while thinking about our human capacity for empathy, this ability we have to feel another person's humanity across time and space, even without knowing them. In fact, it's one of our greatest gifts, that as sealed off as we usually are in our private egos and consciousness, from time to time, we crack open and a deep reservoir of feeling flows out of us, connects us with another, and loops back to enrich and expand us.  If I want more of that enrichment and expansion, I can remind myself to reach out to the many people that cross my path every day, to be kind, generous and tolerant, to see fully the person standing in front of me. But, sometimes, I don't have to remind myself. A deep empathetic connection arises spontaneously and carries me out of myself and into the world. Those are the golden moments for me, when all the barriers to another are gone and all I feel is love.

      

    

INTERPRETATION

The other day I made a plan with a friend to go to a movie. I can't remember exactly what we said, but he went to the theatre and I went to his place. There he is standing in front of the theater, eventually fuming and finally going in. Here I am, instantly understanding the miscommunication, leaping in my car and of course too late for the beginning of the show. I went inside anyway and afterwards we met up in the lobby. 
     This kind of misunderstanding has happened more than once. It isn't due to not hearing right; it's because two people, hearing the same thing, can have two different interpretations of what was actually said. Sometimes I think it's a miracle that we understand one another as well as we do.
     Here's something related: when I say "chair" I don't have to actually visualize a chair because the concept of "chair" is so embedded in my mind. If pressed, I come with the image of kitchen chair, painted white. I don't know why that's my particular archetype of "chair" but that image has put down tracks in my brain and probably will never disappear.
      When you say "chair," chances are your archetypal chair is different than mine. If pressed you may see a plush down chair, a pool chair, or one designed by Gustav Stickley. Who can why you have that connotation? But no matter what I see and you see, we both have the general concept of chair and can understand each other.
     We each have our own private interpretations, filtered through our own consciousness.  We interpret everything that comes to our senses as symbols; everything is filtered through our own consciousness. I can't touch a "word" but if I see w-o-r-d, I know what it symbolizes. The same is true of everything in our world. We understand it in accordance with our assumptions and opinions, the received knowledge of our culture, our own experience and temperament and all the resonances and connotations we've formed in the course of our lives. All of that gives a sense of internal continuity; it's everything we mean when we say "I."
    This may sound abstract but in fact it's the most stunning aspect of human consciousness.The world we receive isn't set in stone; it's what we make of it. Because it is we who invest the world with meaning we can over time change those meaning. We are free to revise opinions, gain new insight, come to a new perspective. We can change our minds.  We can imagine more than one reality, and form an opinion of our choices.  We understand the power of "should" and how it's at the heart of what we call our conscience.  We can give ourselves over to certain abstract symbols in which we invest the deepest meaning, ideas like honor and morality and sometimes we're prepared to give our lives for them. 
     This is how it is for all of us, and it's how it is for me. No matter how far down the trail of depression I go, or how much self-loathing I latch onto in any given day, I know I have the possibility of turning that reality into a completely different one. Experience has taught me if I find a way to turn my focus just the slightest bit the world will look very different, filled with new possibilities. No matter what my circumstances or how difficult the outside world is or how mired I am in all the things I'm often mired in, I can find a new perspective. Just knowing that is comforting. And even more - it's the ultimate freedom.

EPHEMERA

For a long time now, I've earned my crust of bread buying and selling thing which can be classified as emphemera - Vnctorian valentines, a 1920s oil company road map of Florida, a 1910 booklet of views of Los Angeles, a house plan catalog of 1950s ranch houses, a book of alphabets meant to be a reference for sign painters at the turn of the 20^th century, a circa 1900 catalog of chisels, hammers and rules.  Anything made of paper, including historical and vernacular photographs. By this time, other dealers know my specialization so it wasn’t unusual to get a call from a jewelry dealer in Palm Springs who had just bought from an old woman who said she had paper. It’s a long drive from Los Angeles, but the need for new stock is always pressing, and  I want the jewelry dealer to call me again if she comes across anything for me. I say yes without hesitation.

     Actually, I don’t mind the long drive. Being in the car, footloose at 70 miles an hour in the gorgeousness of Southern California, on the hunt for the big score (say, a Civil War photo album, with every soldier identified by name, rank and company, even better if they are Confederate rather than Union; this is an impossible dream) – it’s just about the best part of what I do. And there are antique malls and shops along the way – in towns with names that mean the West to me - Loma Linda, Yucaipa, Beaumont (“City of Antiques") and Banning. I stop at a few and find some things – an unusually nice tintype, a children’s picture book, a 1948 Renie street guide of Los Angeles. Not a bad haul.

     In Palm Springs, I have no trouble finding the house. It’s a 1950s ranch, shaded by an overhanging pepper tree, the kind of house I'm sure the next owners will update, introduce retro lines to give it the Palm Springs modernism look and, even though it’s on the far side of town, sell for twice what they paid for it.  I ring the bell and wait a few moments.  The door is opened by a woman who startles me; she’s thin and bloodless, so pale, I think immediately of a vampire visiting her nightly to feed. Small and delicate, about seventy and spry, with a very creased face, she’s wearing black tights, a flowing pink shirt and a wild paisley turban piled up high on her head.  I can’t see her hair but I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls down her back. She turns and I follow her in.  She has impossibly thin legs – for some reason, I think she may have been a dancer.  

     I’ve assumed she’s Mrs. Johnson, the woman who says she has paper.  But in fact, Mrs. Johnson is in the living room, a large old woman in a recliner, oxygen hose to her nose. She’s sitting still but I can feel the energy coming from her, the anxiety and irritability of someone in constant pain. I don’t need to be told she’s very close to death.  

     She waves me to a chair and I sit.  There are no introductions. For a moment, no one speaks and all I hear is the sound of the air conditioning and the oxygen machine.  I notice brown streaks on the wall behind her.  They must be paint but they look like feces; slowly it comes to me that there must have been something hung on the walls – mirrored tiles, a mural? – and what I now see is the glue residue. The carpeting is wall to wall and it's exactly the color of Astroturf. Artificial flowers are stuffed into huge vases; porcelain angels are every where.

     I've had a long drive and ask to go the bathroom.  The thin one looks confused, then leads me to a tiny room off the kitchen. It’s crammed with so many cartons I can hardly turn around. But when I do, I see the toilet – there's an old and rusted potty chair placed over it, the seat about six inches higher than the actual toilet.  I’m uncertain what to do but it doesn’t matter; when I try to lift it, it can’t be removed.  It’s dirty, as is the toilet beneath it.  I’ve been in so many houses and shops where people have apologized for the bathroom, but I’ve never encountered anything quite like this. Still, I’ve been in the car a long time and I have no choice. I’m not sure my urine will go into the bowl, but it does. 

     Back in the living room, no one makes any move to show me any paper.  The thin one brings out her costume jewelry to see if I want to buy it.  She’s holding out a big straw basket filled with dime store necklaces and pins and when I say it isn’t my sort of thing, she shrugs and disappears down the hall to the bedrooms. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t speak until the thin one returns, hopping as she pulls on slacks, struggling to get them over the tights.  It’s 105 out and she’s says she’s going to the market; maybe her thinness, the pale bloodlessness, makes her constantly cold.  Mrs. Johnson writes out a check for her. I’m still trying to figure out their relationship – friends, caretaker and patient, roommates? Mrs. Johnson tells me she’s already sold the house and is moving to a nursing home in Missouri to be near her son. The thin one, who hasn't left yet, says she’s staying in Palm Springs, that she’ll miss Mrs. Johnson because they’ve been together for many years. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t hear her, or ignores her, and I can see the thin one wants some kind of acknowledgement she doesn’t get, probably never gets. She jumps up and says she’s going to the kitchen and Mrs. Johnson asks for some of her chocolate stuff. This turns out to be a small can of Ensure.The thin one can’t read the label (where are her glasses?) and holds it out but Mrs. Johnson can’t read it either. I’m halfway out of my chair to help but she finally focuses.Yes, it’s the chocolate. The thin one picks up the check and leaves with no goodbye.

     The oxygen pump and the air conditioner drone on.  Mrs. Johnson says something about the move and her son, but she’s interrupted when a third woman comes through the front door.  She’s about fifty, with blond permed hair, a cotton shirt, shorts and tennis shoes.  Again, no introductions so I have no idea what her relationship to Mrs. Johnson is.  But when she’s told I’m the woman who drove down from LA, she goes to a bedroom in the back and brings back a wide dresser drawer; she says its the paper I’m supposed to look at. She puts it on the dining table (surrounded by three cabinets with china dishes neatly stacked and a whole new raft of angels). There are a couple of old Life magazines, a few snapshots, an old dance journal in very bad condition, some greeting cards from the Sixties and a few other uninteresting, which is to say, unsaleable things.  I’m very disappointed – it’s nowhere near enough to justify a two-hour ride.  Nonetheless, I offer $30 for the little I’m willing to take. I won’t lose money but I’m not sure I’ll make anything at all.  When I say goodbye, Mrs. Johnson flutters a wave; she’s still anxious and irritated, and I don’t want to think about what she has on her mind.

     In the car, I drive down the main drag in town. It’s so hot I don’t want to get out of the car, even to look through the antique shops I see. Anyway, this is Palm Springs – they’ll all have mid-century furniture with no paper at all.  

     On my way out of town, I drive up toward the mountain where the pricey houses are. Under the relentless sun, the streets seem lonely but cramped and crowded at the same time.  There’s new wood and glass and stucco, new yuccas and aloes and grasses wherever I look. I know if I drive around long enough, I'll find something of architectural distinction - but not today. Right now, this minute, I want to go home.  

     Months later, I come across one of the photos I bought from Mrs. Johnson. It's a black and white snapshot typical of so many I come across – a group of people at the beach, smiling at the camera.  I’m sure at one time there were many other photos, a whole album of them – the children, the pets, the new car, the trip to the lake. I can feel the emotion behind all these family photos – the pride of the parent snapping the baby in the cradle, the delight of catching the dog curled up with the cat, the attention paid to countless anonymous people posed in a driveway or against a bush in the backyard. Those moments are ephemeral, captured in a photo which will also become ephemeral, destined to wind up in the hands of someone who has no idea who or where the people are, the hands of a stranger.  

     I wonder about Mrs. Johnson and the thin one, where they are, and if they’re both alive. And I think about myself, about where I’ll be when I’m Mrs. Johnson’s age and who will be with me. I shudder at the thought that I may be alone. But after a moment, my mind moves on and I remember the mountains behind the houses in Palm Springs and the hills I skirted on the way to the freeway, rock and dirt a dusty gold in the summer light. They're a glimpse of the opposite of ephemeral; they will be here long after I and everyone I know is gone. Unexpectedly, I'm comforted. I'm connected to the natural order, and in the instant of that connection everything in me surges, expands, and before I even put it into words, I know the possibility of this connection and expansion is always with me, no matter what happens or doesn't happen in my life. I carry with me the memory of what connection feels like, and that memory, ephemeral, ungraspable, feels as solid as the golden hills. It's solid ground for me to stand on. I take a breath and  as I go back to whatever it is I'm doing, I know everything will be all right. 

INSIGNIFICANT/IMPORTANT

Many years ago, there was an initiative on the California ballot against nuclear weapons. No one thought it would have any effect, but it would put the state of California on record as being against the bomb. I hadn't paid much attention to the effort so I was surprised when one night I began thinking about the issue. What could be more important than trying to rid the world of weapons that could destroy the world? And with that question, I realized I should do something to get the initiative passed.
    I've never liked working with committees or groups. It drives me crazy when everyone talks at once or can't stay on the subject, not listening but wanting to be heard. Those kinds of groups rarely run a tight ship and I'm a tight ship person. This may mean that I'm controlling and want things to go as I say they should go. Well, there's more than enough evidence to make me confess that "may" isn't quite appropriate. 
     Nonetheless, I thought I should join the campaign. When I asked, what could be important, I felt a kind of moral evaluation taking place in my consciousness. If I really felt that few things took precedence over banning the bombs, how could I live with myself if I did nothing? Did I want to be passive and oblivious? As soon as I thought about it, I realized I'd be moving forward with the underlying sense that I had disappointed myself, chosen to be passive and oblivious, retreated into the familiar shadows which confirmed the worst judgments I made on myself. If I wanted to move into the future without this particular piece of baggage (there was always more inside to deal with), if I wanted to add to, or at least not take away from my very shaky self-esteem, it was clear what I should do. So, even though I knew my efforts wouldn't have any real effect, I found a group and gave some nights to stuffing envelopes and pasting address labels on them. I can't remember now how many nights I did that but I think I must have intuitively known how many were enough to satisfy that "I should do something." 
     I'm fascinated by that "should." We seem to be born with a moral sense. We know, if only unconsciously, what we think we should do, and if the gulf between should and what we actually do is too great, we know it. Those of us who aren't sociopaths may feel guilt which we can end by taking responsibility. We may spend needed energy on efforts of rationalization. We may simply know the particular feeling of letting ourselves down. We may just feel bad.
     If you want to know more about our moral imperatives, our ethics, you may as well start with Plato and Aristotle because there hasn't been a philosophy or religion or spiritual tradition that doesn't have ideas about right and wrong. It's one of the universal questions we ask ourselves. How do we decide what is right or wrong? How do we justify the choices we make? If you want to know more, vast, vast libraries will be happy to provide fodder for pondering for years to come.
     I did some work for the ban the bomb initiative even though I knew my actions, and the actions of many others, would have little effect. Gandhi said, "What you do may be insignificant but it is very important that you do it." Live up to your higher nature. Act free of expectations; do not pin your actions on the end result. We have no control over how the world receives our efforts. So do what enlarges you here and now and the rest will take care of itself.