Friday, January 27, 2006

A couple of hours later

My rage has subsided and the feelings I like are creeping back in. I am happy for him. It's not like I want him to suffer forever for "what he did to me." How could I possibly get any satisfaction out of that? His good fortune doesn't take anything away from me. And my wishing them both well doesn't take anything away from the pain I felt over him, which still reverberates in me when something happens to remind me of it.

It reverberates, and then it passes.

I'm not trying to deny or minimize what I was feeling a few hours ago (or a few years ago), and I still want to write more about it because it brought up some interesting thoughts and interactions with other people that I want to explore. I just wanted to note that it isn't taking me nearly as long as it used to, to get through those feelings. I hope this means I'm doing something right.

Maybe this what forgiveness is. But if I've really let go of all that, why do I still feel this wave of anger every time I think of him? It subsides, but it's always there. I'm glad it's diminished over time, but what I'd really like is for it to not come up at all anymore. Is that possible? Does it just take time? Or is it something I'm going to have to keep on my list of "material for practice" for the rest of my life?

Too much information

Whatever other problems I might have had in my life, my digestive tract has never been one of them. Every morning, like clockwork, and again every evening – unless I'm sick or otherwise stressed out in some major way, this has been my pattern for as long as I can remember. Until this week. I've spent the last two days doubled over with the wickedest intestinal cramps, feeling like a big handful of sharp gravel is trying to bully its way through – only it can't move, so it just keeps grinding around in there. Oy, it hurts.

Being a mostly pretty natural kind of gal I at first decided I would try to move things along by employing my cure for everything, which is to drink as much water as I can stand, and then drink a little more. It didn't help much, but at least I was feeling more hydrated. Finally, last night, after a day of shuffling around all hunched over as if I were carrying a bowling ball around in both hands, I broke down and bought a package of prunes and a box of senna leaf tea. These, along with three hours in a hot bath this morning and a gentle belly massage, seem to be doing the trick, though I'm still not quite back to my usual healthy self.

The only reason I'm even relating this sordid tale of woe is to set the stage for the real story I want to tell: the story of how I arrived at work half a day late, feebly waved off my coworkers' lukewarm exclamations of concern, arranged my poor little body in what I hoped would be a tolerable position, opened my email folder, and found a message from my ex-husband, letting me know that he is getting married again in June.

He sent pictures. Of her, and of her two spunky young sons and their adorable little dog, and of himself riding a scooter with them. Also, a picture of himself teaching a classroom full of darling little eleven year old boyscouts. Also, a picture of his dad (the only person in his family I ever really liked) standing in a grassy field, holding a bunch of wildflowers in his hand and wearing a yellow blossom above his ear.

The fact that he could think I would experience all this as anything but a knife twisting in my heart just shows how little he ever knew me. The fact that I already have, and have had for two days, a knife twisting in my guts just adds to the bitterness. The fact that I have still not let go of everything that happened with him enough to feel happy for him only indicates, I'm sure, what a shallow, selfish and unworthy person I am. These were my first thoughts.

I wish so much that I could somehow alter my personality so that the happy-for-him part would just automatically come first. But what actually does come first is the thought that the years I should have spent finding a new mate and having children, I spent instead trying to heal myself from all the injuries he inflicted on my soul when I was with him. These are injuries that are obviously still not completely healed, or I wouldn't be feeling this way. The result is that now I will never have a family. It's too late for me. But not for him.

How come he gets to fuck up my life so irrevocably, and then go on to enjoy, himself, every happiness I ever wanted? Or, to ask a more useful question, how come he has been able to get over his damage, and I haven't? Because I haven't, in a lot of ways. Not really.

And why does he have to TELL me about it? It's not like we're keeping in touch. We haven't spoken a word to each other since he moved back to Southern California almost two years ago, and rarely saw each other anymore even when he was still living here in town. On the other hand, would I really rather not know? And on the other hand, what do I care what he does? Why should I feel so angry?

I will be writing more about this.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Imagine that ...

... a baby rat. Not one of these, who are really too cute for words (sorry I can't refer you to the photographer – I don't remember where I got the photo), but the wild variety. These are also pretty cute, but black, and when you – walking into the bedroom dripping wet, hair a wreck (this story soon to be told as well), clad only in a yellow terrycloth towel and rhinestone earrings – when you walk into your bedroom like that, and find this small black baby rat soaking wet and stone dead in the middle of your bedspread, held ever so tenderly between the furry front paws of the large black and proudly grinning seven-year-old baby animal you love more than anything in all the world ... what do you do then?

I took it away from him and put it in the garbage. In his defense, I doubt he killed it himself. If he were good at, or even just interested in, killing rats – we would not have had the rat problem we had all winter and halfway through the summer last year. More likely he found it already dead, carried it around the yard in his mouth for awhile, and then brought it into the bedroom to eat. Lucky for my two loyal readers, the camera battery was dead, so you get to see a cute picture of living tan baby rats, instead of a wet dead black one on a blue blanket.

This is not the worst thing he's ever brought into my bed. The worst thing was a decaying deer skull with a few leftover bits of brain drying up inside, and a scrap of fur still attached to the scalp. This I found on my pillow a few summers ago, a glorious trophy he had claimed from the road kill I'd been smelling for several days, but had been unable (lacking the dog's amazing carrion-finding abilities) to track down and dispose of. I threw that away too. Also, the pillow.

So, about my hair: I decided it was high time to do something drastic. More or less in sync with the rest of me, it seems to want nothing more these days than to lie down and relax for awhile. I had been reading some fashion magazines ... and was somehow mesmerized by them to once again do to my hair the thing that I have not done in more than twenty years –

I'm almost too ashamed to say the word. It starts with a P, and it ends with ERM.

Well, I did it. I was convinced by the evil magazines that technology and imagination had evolved to such an extent over the last two decades, that my concerns about dryness, frizziness, poodle-osity, were completely unnecessary. I would lie in the chair with my head in a cloud of delightful smelling aromatherapy vapors, awakening in a few short hours (more or less) to a gorgeous head of lustrous, healthy, luxurious and extremely subtle waves. NOT POODLE CURLS. Not an afro. Not the kind of hair Ferris Bueller's sister might have had, if she'd been given to torturing herself with curlers and chemicals instead of bad boys in leather jackets.

Anyway. Once every twenty years is not so bad, I guess. Back when I used to drink, it would hapen every once in awhile that I would somehow forget myself and drink more than my usual one and a half beers. Every time, I would end up sitting in the bathroom, rubbing my numb lips with my numb fingers while endlessly peeeeeeeeeeing, and every time, the thought would occur to me, "Oh, yeah! This is why I don't like drinking." Maybe perms are like that, too. Every twenty years maybe I will get so fed up with my hair that I'll forget what it's really like to stink of amonia for days on end, to have to use deep conditioners every week, to wait and wait and wait for it to finally grow out – and decide, "What the heck. It can't be any worse than it already is!"

Of course I'm exaggerating. It's actually fine, just not exactly what I wanted. After two days at work, still nobody has noticed or said anything – possibly because I've kept it back in a braid both days. Would it be so bad to wear my hair in a braid for the next six months to a year? Probably not. Maybe after a few more days, I'll even start to like it.

The lesson learned is this: Always go with your gut. I knew when I saw her setting out those rollers that they were not going to give me what I wanted. But I'd brought a photo – several photos – showing exactly what I was going for, and I'd described it to her in great detail, and she'd assured me she understood and could deliver exactly that. I trusted her because she was the expert, and because I was tired of things the way they were. Now, things are different. Several thousand things, in fact. Meaning, each and every hair on my head is now different than it was just the other day.

How many hairs are there on an average human head, anyway?

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Briefly

This afternoon Mr. A was away so I got to do some things I usually only do when I have a long stretch of time to myself. One was, I sat on the front porch and watched the light move across the sky for a couple of hours. Another was, I walked the dogs down to the end of the road and back. Another: sat on a big round rock in the middle of the creek, watching the bare trees sway in the wind and listening to the water rushing around me until it got dark. Another: made a pot of mixed brown and wild rice, and ate it with leftover roasted vegetables from last night.

This last item was in some ways the most pleasurable of all. At least so far – after I finish writing this I intend to light up the fire pit on the back patio, fill the backyard bathtub, and take a brief soak before bed. But back to the brown rice. It's been forever since I've had it! Actually, I've hardly cooked anything for myself since I moved in with Mr. A last year. I don't especially like to cook, and he loves to, so typically he does the cooking and I clean up afterwards. But lately I've made some very nice, simple dinners for myself when he's been away, and they've been very enjoyable. When Mr. A cooks, he likes to have two or three different things on the plate, or he doesn't feel like it's a real meal. When I cook for myself, I like to eat only one thing per meal. Brown rice. Steamed cauliflower. Roasted butternut squash. Peanut butter toast. Yam fries. And of course the occasional grilled cheese sandwich. So plain and so good.

Also enjoyed today: a small handful of toasted pine nuts, a slice of prosciutto, a sliver of aged Parmigiano Reggiano, and a crushed melon soda.

Friday, January 13, 2006

On a lighter note

I ran across this yesterday while looking for a graphic online. Apparently, fish CAN learn tricks! I had always known they could recognize people, because I've had fish who would swim up to meet me whenever I walked past their bowl. I always assumed they only cared because I was the person who gave them their food. Now I'm wondering if maybe they were actually inviting me to play!

One of the testimonials on the website says something like, "My kids used to pester me for a REAL pet, like a cat or a dog. Now they're much more interested in their fish. Your program saved me a huge hassle – thanks, Fish School!"

I have five fish right now who live in a giant blue ceramic koi pot on our back porch. In the month or so since Mr. A brought them home they've gone from shy tiny creatures who wouldn't swim out from inside their pagoda, to funny little fellers with names and personalities and even special behaviors unique to each fish. I still think their main interest in me is as the giver of food. Now I'm looking at them in a new light, however.

In other news, this morning I grabbed what I thought was my last clean sweater, stuffed it in my bag, and rode to work. It was in a box of winter clothes that I know I washed before I stored them last year, but I hadn't opened the box until this morning and I was in such a hurry to get out of the house that I didn't notice until I started changing into it that it reeks of that stale boxed-clothing smell. Also, the collar is itchy – something I had known about but forgotten. Now I'm trying to decide between wearing it all day, or changing back into the second layer of the clothes I rode to work in. The t-shirt layer is sweaty, but the fleece zippie thing is probably okay. It isn't exactly work attire. On the other hand, it doesn't stink, and it doesn't itch.

One thing is for sure: this sweater is going in the Goodwill box as soon as I get home. Life's too short to wear itchy sweaters! Although, if that's true, why pass along the problem to someone else? Maybe I'll just chop out the collar and sew it up into some other shape. Or cut up the whole sweater to make a vest for the Jeeps. Or just send it to the @#$% Goodwill! Do I really have to take responsibility for all the problems of the world? No. Maybe another person wouldn't find it itchy at all! I do have a very sensitive neck.

Also: Someone I work with just gave me a pair of her son's old rollerblades! I'm excited to try them. I've never rollerbladed before.

Kinda nice to have a shallow, meaningless, angst-free entry for a change, eh? Well, except for the part about the sweater.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Pray for mercy

See this guy? He's turning 76 years old next week. He's blind and in a wheelchair. Last fall he had a near-fatal heart attack and would have died had he not been forcibly resuscitated three times. Next Tuesday, at one minute after midnight, the state of California is going to take him out of his wheelchair, carry him to a gurney, strap him down (as if he might get up and try to run away!), and murder him.

With stuff like this going on, is it any wonder sometimes I just sit in my room sobbing uncontrollably? When this happens to me, I often end up scolding myself. "What's wrong with you?" I ask myself. "Nothing bad has happened to you! You have no reason to be feeling this way!" This week, I more or less assigned the blame to hormones – I've been ferociously PMSing all week, not to mention, it might be coming up on time for perimenopause ... I don't know. Gotta check in with my mom about her experience. But aside from that, the brutality and self-righteousness of the society we're living in regularly makes me feel angry and afraid of the people around me, and sad on almost a daily basis. Just really, really sad.

The details of this particular situation are so sick and perverse that it's hard to believe they're actually going to go through with the execution. But it appears they will. Please take a minute to go find out a little bit about this man, Clarence Ray Allen.

Yeah, I know he killed people. I'm not saying that's okay. Actually, that's the whole point – it's not okay to kill people. Ever. No matter what the person is guilty of. It is a constant source of shock and heartbreak to me that so many religious people are so eager to line up on the side of vengeance, clenching their jaws and flexing their muscles, their hands full of stones ... Although I did note that the Catholic church (among others) is stepping up its opposition to the death penalty these days. That's encouraging.

I've lived in the Bay Area for eleven years and in that time there have been several executions at San Quentin, which is only about a half-hour drive from my house. Until now, for a variety of reasons, I've never gone to any of the vigils at the gate – I've always just stayed at home and meditated or prayed alone. This time I'm feeling like I want to do more. It's a relatively small number of people who are killed this way, and I know my little candle-in-a-cup won't change that. But to me this issue symbolizes so much of what I think is wrong with our culture that it seems like a good place to make a symbolic statement of my own. I want this violence to stop.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Not turning away

Here's another picture from flood day at the creek. I like it because of the tension in the Taterman's stance – just as if he's about to leap into action! Which he in fact did, moments after this photo was taken. He loves to play games and fetch tennis balls and sticks, but because of his messed up ankle I can't really let him do much of any of that; three or four throws and he can't even walk the next day. So it's good when the creek is high, because that means swimming, which is a lot easier on his joints and has the added bonus of leaving him with shiny clean fresh smelling fur.

Now that the holidays are over I've been starting to sink into a bit of a midwinter blah blah blah. Yesterday morning I woke up with another mini anxiety attack. I think it was because I had to get up two hours earlier than usual for a 7 am meeting, and my body does not like to have its routines disrupted like that. I was fine once I got out of the house, and then on the way home from work eleven hours later fell into a bleak, angry funk over some issues that came up for me during another meeting (having to do with money, and my contributions to the world, and my value as a human being, and my neverending struggle against the desperate desire to protect myself by hiding), which I dispersed via an hour-long crying jag starting the moment I walked in the door. Mr. A was amazing, as usual. He really is one of the kindest people I've ever known.

This morning I had another early meeting, though not so early as the one yesterday. The sun was up by the time I left the house but there was ice on the puddles – finally cold enough to try out the new wind-proof gloves that Mr. A gave me for Christmas. When that meeting was over I had an hour before I had to be at work, and since nobody ever eats anything at these so-called "breakfast meetings," I stopped at another cafe for some grub.

While I was sitting there in the sun in front of the cafe, drinking my tea and reading my book, a cab pulled up and an elderly man stepped out onto the sidewalk. As he shuffled by he gave me a big broad smile, pointed at the table next to mine, and said, "You'll save my spot, won't you?"

"I've gotchya covered," I said.

What a nice, open smile, I thought. Then I spent some time thinking about how simple it is just to smile, and how good it made me feel to be smiled at. I resolved that I, too, should make a point of smiling more. Not just smiling in general, at everyone, but actually giving people a smile. Specifically, just for them.

Then I remembered how, when I first moved back to Utah after living in San Francisco for two years, it used to totally freak me out when people would smile at me in the halls at work. "What was that all about?" I would ask myself angrily. "Why are they looking at me and smiling at me like that? What do they want from me?"

A few minutes later the guy came back out with his coffee. Again, he flashed me a huge grin, showing all his square, yellowed teeth. This time, the smile didn't feel quite real to me. When he started talking I found out I was right. He was smiling on the outside because he was hurting on the inside. He told me about how he loved the sunshine, and the desert. Then, how he'd just moved here from the desert a year ago. Then, how he'd lost his wife in the desert. Then, how he was here because his kids were here, but they didn't really have much time for him. Then he pulled out a copy of an article about him that we ran in the paper a couple of months ago, one of our "local interest" stories. I remembered the article because I was the one who laid it out. It was about his former career as a traveling cowboy musician. He invited me to read it, and I did. Then he pulled out a copy of a program from a musical event he played for at the senior center over the holidays, and showed me his name on the page. I knew a lot of the people involved in the program, so we talked about that for a bit, too.

As we were sitting there a few folks from the group home showed up for their morning snack. He reached out and shook hands with a tiny little woman with Down syndrome and when he let go of her hand, she looked at me, and I held out my hand and she took it and we stood there together for a long moment just holding hands and looking at each other.

Then she let go of my hand and said, "I lost my mom and I lost my dad. I lost both of my parents."

I didn't really know what to say to that so I just kept looking at her and nodded.

"They're in heaven now," she said.

"Well," I said, "heaven is a beautiful place to be."

"Now I'm gonna get me a new mom, and a new dad," she said, and nodded. I nodded back, and she turned and rejoined her group in the cafe.

There are so many lonely people in the world. Including me, sometimes. And everyone else too, sometimes, I suppose. I don't fight against it so much anymore when it comes up in me, and of course having Mr. A in my life means it comes up a lot less often than it ever used to. I'm grateful for that.

Meeting people like these two folks at the cafe this morning makes me feel like this is where I should be putting my energy – not sitting in meetings and schmoozing it up at fancy fundraising events I can't afford tickets to, but actually getting in there at the level of need and doing something myself, hands-on. I feel uncomfortable with this kind of direct action because there's nothing to hide behind – no business card, no donor packet you can just hand someone, no website to refer people to. There's no organization to buffer the contact between me and the other person. I have no official role. It's just me. And what if I'm not good enough?

Bah. Same old insecurities, same old excuses. That's okay, though. As I keep telling Mr. A (trying to help him through something hard he's dealing with right now), they're all just ideas. Just because they come into your head, doesn't mean you have to actually do anything about them. You don't even have to fight them off. Let them come. And then let them go.

So to me this means, just because I feel like curling up in a ball and disappearing, doesn't mean I have to actually do that. Although on the other hand, I also think sometimes it's okay to go ahead and do it after all. For example, I was glad that I allowed myself to spend some time crying last night. I felt so wretched and pitiful while I was doing it, and then afterward I felt totally clear and empty and calm. I really needed that.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Year of the flow

Lest anyone wonder (as I often have) whether the monotonously vine-ridden vistas of rural Sonoma County, California are entirely devoid of fabulous cutting-edge public art installations, I am pleased to present a photo snapped a few weeks ago while riding my bike along the banks of Sonoma Creek. I call it “The Hamburger.” What is it? Well, it’s a painting of a hamburger. Most likely acrylic, on an 18x24” masonite board. Artist unknown (it’s signed, but the signature was illegible). It appeared amongst the blackberry brambles and vincas and other unnamed underbrush on the creek side of the road a few weeks ago, just propped up casually against a trailing branch from an escaped grapevine, and I stopped to document the occasion. It was there for about a week, just long enough to inspire a pact with a friend to install more of this type of art around town this year, and then it disappeared.

It’s a good thing I took that photo when I did. Because even if nobody had stolen The Hamburger, it would definitely be gone by now, as the whole road and many of the houses facing it spent most of the weekend under several feet of rapidly rushing water. It's been raining for days. It's still raining. Old timers are calling it “the worst storm to hit the valley in a hundred years – maybe ever.”

So it’s been an exciting several days, what with the storm and the flooding and the holiday and the busted up water main and the bridge next to our house having to be shored up with giant boulders brought in by the county, thanks in part to those weasels who’ve been stealing rocks out of the creek for all these years. Plus, I went to my first professional sports event!

I’ll start with that. Mr. A's old boss invited us to go to a San Jose Sharks game with him and his family on Friday night. I'd been to a few minor league hockey games in Salt Lake City in the 80s and was expecting nothing more than a big fluorescently lit frozen arena full of drunken mulletted hockey fans and possibly, if I was lucky, a little blood (and/or a few teeth) on the ice.

The Sharks were a class act from the get-go, however. A few impressions:

1. I hadn't expected such a highly produced, multi-sensory, multimedia experience. There was a psychedelic light show, an apocalyptically loud heavy metal soundtrack, video monitors everywhere you looked, an air horn worthy of a cruise ship that made my whole body vibrate every time they honked it, and a giant shark's head suspended above the arena, with glowing red eyes that lit up every time something exciting happened.

2. The shark's head actually started out on the ice, though I didn't notice it until I saw the players come shooting out of its mouth onto the rink! Very dramatic. After that, invisible cables raised it high into the rafters where it hung for the rest of the game, flashing its eyes and occasionally releasing an ominous drift of white smoke.

3. The kid next to me was eating blue cotton candy. It smelled so good I almost bought some for myself. Almost.

4. A few people heckled when the national anthem was sung. But when the singer came around to the part about "the home of the brave," the entire stadium shook with applause, whistling, yelling, stamping of feet, and other signs of patriotic approval.

5. Many, many times during the game I found myself laughing uncontrollably with delight over the pure spectacle of it all. I had not expected to enjoy it all so much. I loved the way the energy would rise and fall through the stadium as the whole crowd "oohed" and "aahed" at the same time. I loved the thunderous (no other word for it) applause. I loved watching the players zoom around on the ice. Best of all was that song they play when the home team scores – I don't know what it's called but it goes something like this: da-DAdaDAdaDA (YAY!) daDAdaDA (repeat)." Got that?

I loved yelling "YAY!" with all the other hockey fans!

After the game we wandered around for awhile in the strangely secular Christmas carnival that was still set up in downtown San Jose. Hundreds of animatronic elves, teddy bears, and Santa's workshops, but not a single manger to be seen. We also watched some toddlers riding the miniature carnival rides, like a baby ferris wheel with only six seats, the "Jumpin' Star," in which the tiny passengers are raised to the dizzying height of about eight feet and then dropped suddenly and thrillingly to a height of oh, about seven feet ... and my favorite, "The Bear Affair," which featured giant carved-out bears that you sit inside of as you twirl gently around and around in circles. I love watching little kids having fun.

There was a great picture I could have taken, had I remembered the camera, of a haggard-faced bleached blond woman with big black mascara lashes leaning her chin on her hand under the harsh lights inside the ticket booth. The ticket window was mostly closed so only about half of her face was visible. Everything outside was so cheerfully, vividly colored, reflecting the blinking lights of the carnival and all those happy toddlers' voices, and then in the middle of it was this still, stark black and white slice of pure boredom.

Moving on, and stepping up the pace a bit: It took us almost two hours to get home because of the storm, and when we turned onto our road it was obvious that the whole street had been under water not long before. We got out of the car to look at the bank I was worrying about last summer. It had finally eroded all the way up to the edge of the asphalt and fast-moving little brown waves of flood water were lapping up over it even as the rain continued to fall. After we got home we walked back to see what the creek was doing at the back of our property. It had gone over the banks there too, and then had gone down several feet, and was in the process of rising again. On our way back to the house Mr. A noticed water pooling up in the back yard, so we spent another hour digging trenches to prevent the whole lake from flooding into the garage. It was 3:30 before we finally got to bed.

The next day we returned to the creek and saw that it had flooded again, even higher than it had the night before. The grass was plastered down and big swirls of mud and sand reached ten to twenty feet up into the field. The creek itself is utterly changed – it's more than doubled in width, cut the banks back several feet on our side and almost 30 feet on the other side, filled in old channels with rocks and sand, and chewed into the neighbors' field to carve new channels twice as deep as the old ones. There's now a new island out in the middle, with somebody's rotted old blue and yellow plywood boat marooned in a pile of rocks that weren't there just a few days ago. We spent several hours checking out the changes and it felt so good to be out in the air and the water and the rocks and plants and soil, that I made my only new year's resolution for 2006: I want to spend more time exploring the world outside this year.

On New Year's Day we got up at five and drove down to watch the sunrise from Mount Tam. Then we drove back down the mountain and went hiking at Rodeo Beach for a couple of hours, then had breakfast, then ran various errands, then took a long bath and a long nap. Then dinner, then sleep, then back to work.

As of this morning, the storm has let up temporarily, though the creeks are still high and it's supposed to start raining again tomorrow. Despite the destruction, I'm taking all this water as a good sign. Time to honor the flow, baby!

Happy 2006, all.