I’m wondering how many times it will take. I’ve had this realization countless times. I’ve written about it here. I haven’t searched to find out just how many, but I’m sure it is an cheek-blushingly high number. Posting to Facebook doesn’t cut it. Composing lengthy emails to friends gets closer, but it’s not it either. I use these as placeholders. I feel their inadequacy, even when I don’t know it.

I crossed paths with a quote by a playwright/screenwriter recently that, often, reflects how I feel about writing: “I don’t like to write, but I love to have written.” Sometimes, while in the moment, I do enjoy it. Mostly though, the work of writing is stretching, awkward, and laborious. It is rewarding, but not in a instant-gratification-sugar-high kind of way.

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”
-Joan Didion

Writing is similar to photography - it requires a consciousness. It asks me to be aware of life (and not just my own). It invites me to see it, record it, review it and breathe it in again a second time. The brilliant and magical part of it to me? The second time around is no less new.

those cheapie, plastic teeth that you pick up at Archie McPhee’s. 

You all are incredible in your willingness to let me just write and express the raw emotions I’ve been going through.  I had hoped that writing it out would help me move past it, and it did.  Granted, I’m not happy or eager to continue through this, and I’m sure I will still shed a tear or two.  And yet, I feel so much better.  I don’t feel fetal.  A combination of just letting it out like a good cry and receiving so much love and support - I feel good!

And today, I came across this quote by Henry Miller - which I’m certain is not a coincidence:

“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.

What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.“

Right now, as I type, there is a fund raising event going on in New York City. A world renown pianist is playing and a premier cancer surgeon is speaking and incredibly smart and talented people are giving their time to be there. I sent Dana a short note to read at the event:

Two weeks ago, we were plunged into fear and emotional paralysis at the healthcare crisis we were suddenly facing. Eleven days ago, on a dime, this initiative took our fear and anxiety and transformed it into a sense of hope and possibility.

The depth of gratitude and support we feel… there isn’t a way to express it. For the last two weeks, instead of darkness, our lives have been filled with the light new friendships and daily inspiration. And most of all, it means so much to us that it has created the possibility of our situation being the doorway for others like us finding help too.

The fact that… you are here tonight and that there is something all of us can do, right now to make it a healthier and better day for each other and ourselves… inspires deep hope. We are excited by the belief that this initiative can spread, friend by friend, to build hope for the many other individuals and families who have found themselves in a crisis like we have. It really does make all the difference.

If you haven’t already, visit the Friend of a Friend Healthcare Initiative.  And please consider passing it along to your friends. The more friends that are involved, the more people are helped!

I have such a deep sense of gratitude knowing I have friends like Dana & Auguste who would so quickly jump to our side and stand with us through this.
I’m excited by the energy and possibility of what could come from this effort - beyond Paul & I.  In the two days that this initiative has existed, I’ve heard 5 stories of friends and (how appropriate) friends of friends dealing with chronic dental health concerns without access to adequate care.

I’m going to be blogging my experience with this - not because I want to be a poster child for dental woes or missing teeth… rather because I hope my story will point to the many, many others who are going through this too.  And instead of feeling fear and despair in my situation, I have opportunity to feel possibility and hope… for myself and others who are in similar circumstances.

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.

–Frederick Buechner

Click here to learn more about the Friend of a Friend Healthcare Initiative sponsored by Dana Roc Productions.

The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine.

– Kate DiCamillo

The last two weeks have been hard. I’ve been depressed in a way that I can’t remember being since college. I can’t blame it on any one thing. It has been, with no particular rhyme or reason, Paul’s crazy long and exhausting (read: worry-making) work hours, our financial stresses, concern for providing the Amira everything she needs and deserves, grieving Freeni’s death, my health, the loss of my faith as I knew it and so on.  When I’m down, I’m a crappy friend.  I hide out and I don’t show up for even the basics of friendship and connection. And of course, knowing that I’m doing that makes me feel worse.

Mood cycles are incredibly self-referential, aren’t they?  Loop upon mood loops circling on themselves.  Happy tends to beget more happiness and feeling depressed tends to delve you further into more and deeper depression.  The trick is finding what works to cut the circuit ways on that particular path.  Hopping onto a new path can feel no less daunting than jumping off a cliff with no chute or safety net below.  Reality kicked in though when I realized I had already jumped off a cliff.  Spiraling down into depression is no less of a cliff dive than jumping off another cliff toward peace and happiness.  It’s a no win situation if you are avoiding a free fall.  But it’s a win-win, depending on how you choose to look at it.  Both jumps are free falls. Only one, though, allows for that adventurous joy-filled experience of the moment.  (Don’t know if that makes sense to you, it does to me.)  Anyway…

I don’t write when I’m on the spiraling downward loop-de-loop. And so the good news for me is that I am writing about this. It shows me that I’ve jumped onto the new path.  Hip-hip-hoorays all around. 

The sunshine is starting to break out here.  The trees are reflecting in the shimmering pond while the baby ducks practice their motorboating skills.  The swallows are darting and I can see the dogs wrestling and sprinting on the far side of the pond.  The red-winged blackbirds are balancing on the cattails and Amira sings while playing on the floor behind me.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-ee cummings

If you hear, ‘Look at you. You quit! You’ll never get this. Look how long you’ve been trying to be aware and you’re still a failure at it,” realize this is conditioned mind trying to control you - and recommit. If you play close attention, you are going to see how a process has been keeping you prisoner. You’re going to learn that when you’re present in the moment you don’t need to fear yourself, anyone or anything. A huge part of doing this work is getting to the point where it all falls apart.

We don’t need to get through the good times! We need to learn what to do when things don’t go well, when the voices get the better of us, when we feel like a failure and want to give up. What I hear over and over is that people start something they want to do, do whatever it is, feel great, stop (for reasons they rarely understand) and get the stuffin’ beat out of them by their conditioned voices for being a lose and a failure. It’s a cycle…

At a certain point we must without self-hatred, stand at the crossroads, hear the little voice that says “You can go in a new direction,” heed that voice and make a choice to end suffering.

Cheri Huber, Making a Change for Good

I need to write yet I rarely do.  Whether journaling my day or expounding on where my thoughts and heart travel, I fill my life with other tasks and priorities.

When I sat down to write this, I was about to go down a well-trodden lane in my life.  I wondered why I don’t just don’t write and was ready to reprimand myself both mentally and here on my blog.  Instead, before that could happen, this floated clearly into my mind and spoke not only out loud, but loud:  “You don’t want to let the cat out of the bag!“  Did I mention it was loud?

What cat is that? That cat would be me.

I’ve said various versions of this before.  But here it is.  I’m going to do it again. The cat. I’ve let her out. Again.  Because that’s what there is for me to do when a voice speaks out loud.

Despite the fact that Mother Nature is messing with us by bringing snow, rain, wind and cold these first two days of April… thanks to Ahmis, it’s springtime in the Moment home!  Last weekend, Ahmis trimmed her cherry tree back and offered me an enormous vase to fill up with branches upon branches of trimmings. I put them in water and in two short days, we have this!

Amira & I enjoy telling each other how beautiful the flowers are.  She makes me laugh when she sniffs them and tells me that they smell like tortillas.  I have giggled too each time she’s given herself a startled tickle on the nose by diving in too close to the blooms.

So, happy spring everyone, even if Mother Nature isn’t quite yet in the mood…

I went for a walk this afternoon. The dogs came with me.  They played rough and tumble, faking and then dashing another way. They play when it is just the two of them, but it seems to delight them even more to play when I’m with them.  Spine, Ahmis’s beautiful black cat, joined us for the walk. Spine makes me smile and laugh the way he can send Chaya running the other way with just a turn of his head.

I set out with my camera.  It was cold, but the sunshine was out and I thought it would be a good chance to take some photos.  It was.  I took quite a few.  They will show up here, I’m sure.

But what I couldn’t take my eyes off of today was the water.

The wind played on the surface of the water, while the sun, sky and earth took their turn at splashing their color onto the watery canvas.

The patterns, textures, and colors changed so quickly that it was likely walking through an art museum trying to take in thousands of masterpieces before they took down the display.  The watery art was created so effortlessly, quickly and then would disappear before I had a chance to take in my next breath.

As I started toward home, I walked slowly with my eyes closed.  I turned my face to the sun. I breathed the fast, crisp air.  I soaked, splashed and played in the moment. I wish you could have been there with me.

I had a dear friend say something to me today that was completely self-deprecating about himself.  If it was a one-time thing, that would have been one thing.  But this is ongoing.  It opened up a floodgate for me too though because his story is my story.  You’ll see what I mean as I keep going.  I’m going to share it because I’m guessing that our story may be your story (for some of you) too.

I was as straight as possible, not couching what I felt with niceties.  This is what I told him:

Your self-view is so distorted it’s embarrassing and sad.  Your years and years of hateful and negative self-talk have done a number on you and it makes me very sad and sometimes angry.  I hope you will start to take your negativity on and not let it rule your life anymore.  You are an amazing man with an amazing family who loves you so very much.  You have every reason to live like it.

I know firsthand what it is like to be under the spell of self-delusion that you believe to be truth.  People have asked me to see what is really true and I’ve insisted that they are wrong - and in my mind just told myself they are trying to be nice, or soothe me so I won’t feel so badly about what is really true about myself.  But we have trapped ourselves in our own minds, in our own self-delusions and live there instead of in the real world.  We don’t trust the people closest to us.  We disrespect them by rejecting what they say to us.  We live a horrible and tragic, but ultimately self-indulgent and selfish, existence.

It reminds me of CS Lewis’s writing about the dwarfs in the book The Last Battle:

“Aslan,” said Lucy through her tears, “could you — will you — do something for these poor Dwarfs?

“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.”  He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable.  Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”

Aslan raised his head and shook his mane.  Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand.  But it wasn’t much use.  They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly.  They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable.  One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf.  And they raised the golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.”

But soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot.  But when at least they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding nose, they all said:

“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

“You see,” said Aslan.  “They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief.  Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.

We are so afraid of being taken in by those closest to us who tell us we are incredible, amazing, beautiful and loved that we turn them away out of hand. We feel like it wouldn’t be honest to believe what they say.  We “know better” and so we mock them with our words and put down not only what they say but their self-worth and value too.  I know just how hard it is to give up what you think about yourself.  It feels so true and that we would be just duping ourselves if we believed what they had to say about us.  But, seriously, they aren’t the ones who are delusional.  We are.

Let’s break down the bars of these prisons we’ve built around ourselves.  One painful and difficult bar at a time.  The work is hard.  It’s painful… almost to the point of being physical pain sometimes.  But on the other side, is freedom, deeper love and relationships with everyone in our lives.  On the other side of those bars, in the REAL world, is more beauty than we can imagine.

I love you so so very much!  See you on the outside!
Janece

I borrowed a book from Ahmis, Awareness Through Movement by Moshe Feldenkrais.  There is a lot of fascinating material in this book… but some of the very first words in the book made it difficult for me to go any further.  While I read more, I wasn’t really able to take in more.  Apparently, I’m having to deal with first things first.

It started with these two sentences:

We act in accordance with our self-image.

Each one of us speaks, moves, thinks, and feels in a different way, each according to the image of himself that he has built up over the years. In order to change our mode of action we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us.

Feldenkrais is talking here from the context of the educational system he created called the Feldenkrais Method.  I know next to nothing about it… but what I’ve gathered so far is that how we move can influence how we are and who we are.  There is a level of awareness about our lives that becomes available to us as we become aware of how we move physically.  The method is used by athletes, dancers, artists and those simply interested in personal development.

Back to the two sentences above and let me add one more:

It should further be realized that as changes take place in the self, new and hitherto unrecognized difficulties will be discovered. The consciousness previously rejected them either from fear or because of pain, and it is only as self-confidence increases that it becomes possible to identify them.

I told Ahmis in an email today… after read this, I was impressed with three things:

1. We are whole and every way that we eat, think and move influences our minds and spirits… and vice versa.
2. We can be transformed in being aware.  Feldenkrais is teaching about doing this through physical movement.  I am struck that movement needs to be present in all aspects of ourselves… physical, mental and spiritual.
3. Journey! It’s all a journey and it’s good. There is no sudden arrival, quick fix, magic bullet or what have you. It’s a journey. I resist that idea, because I want instant results and transformation. At the same time, coming to grips with that truth, I can see an incredible amount of freedom and peace.

This has me thinking about where I am today.  When I look at my health, my flexibility, fitness and agility (or lack thereof)… I see so much how my self-image has informed and created where I am today. When I look at my creativity and spirituality, I see clearly how I have acted out my self-image.  It’s a make-me-sit-down-in-my-seat kind of realization.

I’ve allowed my self-image to sit in the corner, unattended to and neglected.  Even worse, I’ve abused, shamed and humiliated it.  I’ve been unaware and without movement. My health and my weight, my lost teeth and my lack of physical fitness, my tentative and squandered creativity, my lack of spiritual connection…  it’s all clearer to me why these things are what I’ve become over the last 10+ years.  I’ve chosen to not have a life of movement (in the literal and figurative senses).  It has allowed me to avoid certain fears and pain, but at a deep cost.

It’s interesting.  I started working out again 3 days ago after being away from it for a very long time.  My muscles are oh-so-sore and my body aches.  What kick started me back into exercising was a small but startling experience.  I was cleaning our kitchen and wanted to hop up onto the counter to clean the window box behind the kitchen sink.  I mentally began the hop and then physically felt my body say, “No.  It’s not going to happen.”  I might of been able to do it if I tried again.  I don’t know.  I was just so shocked that I couldn’t do it on impulse.  My body couldn’t physically support what I wanted it to do.  I haven’t been moving and so I couldn’t move.  I haven’t been practicing movement that allows for strength, flexibility and grace.

Your difficulty and my difficulty and the difficulty of every individual who ever desired to achieve something worthwhile, comes in the movement.

- Peter Nivio Zarlenga

I don’t think I would have seen it for what it was, had I not read what I did.  What happened right there was the physical truth revealing the spiritual one.  The literal became the knife that sliced clean through the stiff hoary hide of my self-image’s creation and what it has wrought.  I wouldn’t have seen it had I not been made aware.  My movement, even my inability to move, made me aware.  And now it has, as Feldenkrais said it would, brought up a whole new set of difficulties.  But these difficulties, these are the ones that make a difference (inside and out) as to what my life will be.  A part of me is both hestitant and daunted.  Yet, a larger and greater part of me feels excited… that excited you feel when you’ve bought your ticket, you’re buckled in, and you are at the tippy-top and you know the real ride is about to begin.

(photo: REUTERS/Jason Reed)

I know you didn’t do this just to win an election, and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime.

…

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year, or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you: We as a people will get there.

…

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, callused hand by callused hand.

…

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.

…

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.

…

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time.

– President Elect Barack Obama

I committed a crime against you and myself today.  I went through my day without my camera… and without a doubt, today was the most perfect fall day yet.  Gorgeous.  It was hot in the sun and chilly in the shade.  The colors of the trees were so bright and rich.  I kept finding myself shaking my head in wonder at the beauty of the day.  It wasn’t something I could get used to… it kept assaulting (in the best possible way) my senses.  It was so beautiful, it was hard to keep on my charted course from this errand to that.   There was an insatiable urge to stop everything and just worship and delight in the magnificence.  Amira & I did for some short magical moments.  But, I kept pushing us through our day and what we had planned.

Looking back on it right now, I don’t think I made the right choice.  Days like today are sacred.  I’m thinking now the errands could have waited a day.  Spending a day present to the intersection of heaven on earth, which today was, is worth a day’s worth of errand delays.  Don’t you think?

Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.

William Allingham