Tuesday, October 31, 2006

fury

no no

yes yes

no

yes

no no no

yes yes yes

I hate you

yes

no

chafe chafe chafe

Sunday, October 29, 2006

the best way to be happy

Okay. I'm feeling glum and dumb. I'm thinking nobody loves me, everybody hates me and I went for a stroll, looking for worms. I came to the library. I expect public libraries to carry interesting magazines but, mostly, they carry mainstream choices. I expect to find obscure literary journals but I don't. I would like to find some Alice Oswald poetry or, at least, a poetry journal that might publish her poetry. Wouldn't that be an amazing thing to find at the Mountain View Public Library this afternoon?! There is no Alice Oswald, not anywhere here.

Before I disclose the best way to be happy, let me relate a library tale.

Back in the Pacific Northwest (where I lived until, like twelve days ago, fifteen days if you count from the time I left the old home and headed for the new), I used the King County Library System. At the Lake Forest branch of the King County Library, they carried a magazine called Christian Woman but they did not carry Ms magazine. I choked. Were there more Christian women in Lake Forest Park than there were feminists? Each time I was at this little library, I maintained a watchful eye on Christian Woman. I was curious to see who came to read it. After months of surreptitiously waiting to see someone, anyone, pick it up and read it, it slowly occurred to me that some kinda Christian folk had asked for the magazine. You know how the religious right can get so insidious, right? Nobody wanted to read that magazine. Nobody ever checked it out. Nobody ever picked it up for a glance. Some Christians, I surmised, had asked the library to carry that magazine.

I had to go to another suburb, to a larger branch of the King County Library system to read Ms. magazine.

The old warrior/lawyer in me fantasized legal action.

The mature adult in me (such as there is) told me to chillax. What did it matter?

One day, unable to follow my inner voice's sound advice, I went up to the desk and asked to speak to the branch manager. Calmly and with what I hoped would come across as genuine warmth but which I confess was somewhat feigned, I pointed out that the branch carried the Christian Woman but not Ms. I asked the branch manager if she thought there were more Christian Women in Lake Forest Park than feminists. I said I thought it was, like, discriminatory to favor an overtly religious magazine over a socio-political-cultural magazine directed at a female audience.

She make some comments about limited budgets and how she had to make choices. "You understand, don't you, Ms. Fitzpatrick, that we can't carry all magazines."

"Oh yes, yes indeed, I do understand," I said, maintaining my feigned cordiality. "But I also understand that you did, indeed, make a choice to carry this Christian magazine. I would just like to understand how you came to not carry Ms.

A battle won. The King County Library/Lake Forest Branch now carries Ms. magazine. I have no foundation in fact for believing my complaint caused the change but, gosh, it was a relief to be able to stop fretting about the absence of Ms at my library.

So. Back to sunny Mountain View's beautiful library. I've already been here many times. With this library system, I can use a service called 'Linc' to get almost any book ever published loaned to me for free from, basically, all the libraries, public and private, in the Bay Area. This is such an awesome service. Back in King County, it took weeks to get books from interlibrary loan. Here in Mountain View, books arrive in a day or two. I pretend that I am a woman of great wealth and that I own one of the most fabulous collections of books in the world and that all these books are mine.

Each time I come to the MV library, I circle the periodicals, checking to see if there is an interesting magazine that I had previously failed to note. I don't know what this might be but I keep looking. While I peramble (I don't know if that is a word but perhaps it should be?) through the very small periodical section, I always check to see if they carry Christian Woman. Praise the goddess, they do not. Christians have not yet chosen to assault the women library patrons of Mountain View. The absence of this magazine assures me, of something.

So. That's what I was doing in the Mountain View Public Library periodical section this afternoon, looking, vaguely, to find something to read that would distract me, from, well, being me.

And there she was: the goddess in the form of Oprah. On the cover of the November 2006 issue of 'O', The Oprah Magazine (I wonder how she deals with her megalomania: in her world, does, like, anyone ever suggest to her that she can be, well, a tad smug?), Oprah was, as always (what is it like to decide to publish a magazine named after yourself and then to also decide that every cover will bear your image because it, like, sells more magazines? When will she be rich enough?). . .well, there was Oprah on the cover, leaning forward (if you have a nice chest, flaunt it on your magazine cover), a gentle tigress. Demure and hot at the same time, flashing a broad appeal.

And the lead story was entitled "The Best Way to do (almost) everything" and then the cover lsited some representative topics. The first topic was "make yourself happy".

Praise the goddess, I told myself, this is why I came into the library. I came in here for two reasons. One, of course, was to get over my disaffection for Oprah. I confess that I did not know I needed to think about Oprah until she beckoned me from the November cover of her homage to egomania. The other reason for coming into the library was to discover how to make myself happy.

Well, I'm a ramblin, I know. There is no denouement to my story. The article includes lots of trivial bromides about how to pick the right bottle of booze to bring as a hostess gift and how to tell a joke or be sexy or how to drop five pounds fast. But there was no specific advice offered on how to make one's self happy. . . unless it is to know how to take vitamins (the article did not explicitly recommend swallowing but I do) and to know how to do the crossword puzzle (who'da thunk that some of the hordes reading O were back home fretting about how to do crossword puzzles well? The world is an interesting place).

I see now that my day is unified under a single theme: I am on my own. Not even Oprah can save me.

Addendum: Everyone can make themselves happier, of course, by losing weight so I share Greta Blackburn's secret (she is quoted in 'O'): As Greta puts it, eating a proper diet is her secret to crashing off five pounds in two weeks. Eat almost nothing the first week and then eat less the second week. Before you know it, Bob's your uncle, Mary's your aunt, you've lost some fat.

Also, fyi, they do carry Ms magazine here in Mountain View.

sometimes

Sometimes everything about me hurts and I wish I could escape myself. How I thrash, until I remember that thrashing hurts. Then I try to be still and just let myself feel the pain.

Then I thrash some more.

I do not like this.

Friday, October 27, 2006

wildflower redux

In my last post, I forgot about wildflowers.

When I lived in the Ahrimanic wormhole that I just described, I believed that no one loved me and, worse, that no one would ever love me again.

I just couldn't handle people because, well, mostly because the people I loved most dearly had let me down. I mean, if my daughter could no longer love me, how could I expect anyone else to?

I fell into the wormhole because I believed I was all alone in the cosmos, for all eternity.

But, in spite of my rigid determination to never love or be loved again, people began to appear in my life like unstoppable wildflowers. You know how wildflowers can pop up just about any old where. One day a meadow can be only grassy green and the next day it can be a field of white, wild daisies or blue bluebonnets.

At first, I told myself these wildflower people were noxious weeds, sent to trick me into feeling love again. How I struggled to suppress these noxious weeds. As I resisted people, I thrashed in the wormhole and got hurt over and over and over.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I allowed myself to step outside of my suffering for fleeting moments, to enjoy the wildflower person who had shown up. Quickly, I would resume my suffering. It was so scary, it seemed the height of risk, to enjoy another human being's company after losing my daughter. But people kept persistently showing up, like wildflowers that take root along an urban freeway.

wildflower v. noxious weed

I am emerging from several years of recovery from emotional illness. When I suffered most, I did not believe I would ever find a time when my life was more than wound. I seemed to unceasingly fall in an infinite black wormhole in the cosmos, no beginning, no end. Inside this wormhole, where I lived for several years, there was lots of rusty barbed wire that perpetually snagged me. Also, there were electrical shocks, caused by loose,live wires. As I fell, I would bump up against an open electrical cord, zapped, one moment, scrape my heart on rusty barbed wire the next. A rusty snag, a sharp shock. Also, broken glass everywhere, sometimes covering me with a fine, painful dust. Sometimes the gritty dust got in my eyes and my eyes bled along with my heart. No one was in there with me. It was hell. And I didn't think I would ever emerge.

And now I have.

I am well. I am fragile but, also, not fragile. I can get caught in the fear of going back to the wormhole one moment and then in the next moment I am mesmerized by sunny bliss. Maybe I am in a new kind of wormhole, one with both heaven and hell.

I should like to live only in heaven.

Monday, October 23, 2006

poetry may speak for me today

Wislawa Szymborska
She won the Nobel Prize in 1996 for her poetry.



AMONG THE MULTITUDES

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other.

I could have different
ancestors, after all.
I could have fluttered
from another nest
or crawled bescaled
from another tree.

Nature's wardrobe
holds a fair
supply of costumes:
Spider, seagull, fieldmouse.
each fits perfectly right off
and is dutifully worn
into shreds.

I didn't get a choice either,
but I can't complain.
I could have been someone
much less separate.
someone from an anthill, shoal, or buzzing swarm,
an inch of landscape ruffled by the wind.

Someone much less fortunate,
bred for my fur
or Christmas dinner,
something swimming under a square of glass.

A tree rooted to the ground
as the fire draws near.

A grass blade trampled by a stampede
of incomprehensible events.

A shady type whose darkness
dazzled some.

What if I'd prompted only fear,
Loathing,
or pity?

If I'd been born
in the wrong tribe
with all roads closed before me?

Fate has been kind
to me thus far.

I might never have been given
the memory of happy moments

My yen for comparison
might have been taken away.

I might have been myself minus amazement,
that is,
someone completely different.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

happiness is low glycemic fruit

There is an organic farmers' market near my new home on Sunday mornings. Organic, low glycemic fruit (berries!) for my oatmeal. Spinach I trust.

My days are bright and happy. It seems to take less each day for me to feel more bliss.

I rode the train from Mountain View to Palo Alto to go to a movie. I know the steady glow is sunny California but I catch myself thinking I have brought the dazzle. Here inside my life, I can think whatever I wish.

Recently, while chatting with Tall and Taller, I was speakng of self love. I believe the key to living in the golden tunnel is self love. This is a new approach for me. For most of my life, I thought the key to a love-filled life was loving other people first. Now I come to find that the more I love myself, the more others love me. Well, I didn't say all of this in my chat with T & T. What I actually said to the guys was something like this: when I turn down dessert, I used to think of it as a deprivation, a denial of something but now when I say no to dessert, I think of it as self love. Saying no to ice cream has become a positive. Saying no to ice cream can make me happy.

It has taken me years, literally just over two years, to change my eating habits. Now I am amazed at how disciplined I can be about food. My whole relationship with food has changed and I love the change.

I've been trying to understand what shifted for me two years ago, when I decided to get very serious about eating for my health. I would like to remember what motivated me.

I do remember arriving in Halifax in August 2005 for an Open Space on Open Space conference. I stayed with a consultant, Cathy, I had met online. On the drive from the airport, she asked me about what I liked to eat and I heard myself telling her exactly what I wanted to eat, telling her how I was working to control diabetes. Cathy, her husband Ron and her neighbor Elizabeth all took my health needs seriously, actually, maybe even a little more seriously than I did. At the end of my week in Halifax, Elizabeth actually had a dinner party in my honor. Nobody ever had a dinner party in my honor before. Before the dinner, Elizabeth asked me lots of questions about what I could eat for dessert and what I would like her to serve. I told her my favorite healthy dessert was low glycemic fruit (berries) and whipped cream. After my dinner party, Elizabeth, who I had just met at the beginning of the week, pulled out a huge crystal bowl full of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. And all the people who had gathered just to be nice to me were thrilled. Those berries were like jewels. And there were so many of them, more than all of us could eat.

This gesture from Elizabeth really moved me. She had paid more attention to my healthy dessert than I ever had. But I have paid attention to the desserts I allow myself to have ever since. Elizabeth's love for me helped me love myself.

Berries are little spendy for me but now I always let myself buy them when they appear before me. When I saw organic raspberries and strawberries this morning at my new farmers' market, I pretended the cosmos was welcoming me to this sunny new home.

Now I am wondering what is the glycemic index of pomegranates? Sprinkling red pomegranate seeds on a bowl of lettuce makes an ordinary salad seem like another bowl full of jewels.

I am actually enjoying food more and more as I eat less and less.

Self love: the secret to healthy eating.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

I am happy now

Joan and I ended our friendship yesterday. Serenity now did not work as well as I might have wished. She said she will never speak to me again and I think (hope?!) she meant it. I don't think Joan goes in for hyperbole the way I do. I am always saying never. . . and never meaning it.

On a happy note, I am happy now. I am happy now. I am happy now.

I now live in California. The opportunity to move flashed before me in June and I accepted it almost without htinking because it felt right. Thank goddess, it still feels right.

I still love road trips. I have had some very joyful times on the road with people I love. And I managed to squeeze some love into my trip with Joan.

She almost singlehandedly unloaded my truck, even though I didn't want her to.

She bought me candlesticks and candles as a housewarming gift (one of them shattered, I am sorry to report) and she extracted my promise to light candles for myself every day.

She crooned a dozen love songs to me along the way.

And then something happened and in a minute, our friendship was at an end. The fact that our friendship is over feels just as right as this move to California. I regret losing her but I felt like I had to erase myself in order to be acceptable to her.

So. A little sad. A lot happy.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

oh my gosh, I'm happy

After the hot tub, we took long naps. Joan slept almost three hours. I was so hungry I was ready to chomp on toilet paper. I tried to wake her several times and then finally I insisted she come out for dinner.

We went to a storefront Italian joint called Antonio's. The walls were painted to look brick and stucco walls, Italian. There was a leaning tower. There should have been chianti bottles holding candles on each table.

And there was a live Frank Sinatra impersonator.

Oh my gosh, oh my goodness, what a great time. Fly me to the moon. New York, New York. The best is yet to come. The guy wasn't very good and he had to read most of the lyrics off the karaoke (sp?) prompter. Joan made me be quiet a lot because she loves this kind of music: she had been singing it to me all day. The Sinatra guy sang "I can't help falling in love with you" and Joan cried through the whole thing. Her husband Mike sang it to her in a karaoke bar when they first dated.

Dinner was okay. But the evening was awesome. I am in love with Joan. I am so glad she is here with me and that she made me savor the journey to my new home.

She tipped the impersonator ten bucks on the way out the door. The guy obviously never expected a tip: he didn't even have a tip jar! He tucked the sawbuck into his suit pocket. I think that was my favorite moment: the tip made the crooner so happy.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

are there wrong thoughts?

When I know other people, which I tend to do on an ongoing basis, I always come up against this phenomenon: I think things about other people that they do not want me to think. It is my tendency to say what I think anyway. Then, when I say the things other people do not seem to want me to think and they take umbrage, I feel quite burned. I don't feel burned by the other's displeasure. No. I feel burned by my Self. I tell myself I am too much, I am not kind enough, I am not good enough. I berate myself for having thought things that other people do not wish me to think. And I can become a muddle.

Sometimes, though, I feel clear and strong and I know that it is perfectly okay to think, well, whatever it is that I think.

But is it always okay to think out loud?

This is a puzzler for me, an ongoing tension. Right now, I am in a space where I am afraid to talk to some friends, afraid I will say things they will not like to hear and they will stop loving me. Am I living from fear?

Being is doing

That's it, that's what I wanted to say: being is doing.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

it's all world work arnie public housing

OK. I am sitting here crying about a tiny thing that just happened to me. I will try to write my way back to happy.

I have lived in a public housing apartment for the past three years. For folks who don't know much about public housing, most public housing buildings that do not accept children are society's warehouse for the mentally ill. When, during the Reagan years, 'they' decided to get the mentally ill out of hospitals, no meaningful provisions were made for meaningful social support for the mentally ill. The lucky ones end up on public housing. The lucky ones manage to hang on to their apartments and their independence but it is a lot of work.

I landed in my public housing apartment after a life crisis that rendered me very emotionally sick for a long time. By the time I moved in here, I didn't really care what happened to me. I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to stay alive. For my first year in this apartment, about all I did was breath, pee and grocery shop. Simply holding myself together enough to stay alive was literally all I could handle.

I was so alone in the world at this time. I had, literally, months go by without talking to any human beings other than a bus driver or a grocery cashier. I assiduously avoided getting to know my neighbors because I knew that most, if not all, of them were just as troubled as me. Yes, I might have a pleasant encounter with a neighbor who was having a good day . . . but it was just as possible that I might nod hello to a neighbor having an emotionally unstable day and I could unwittingly trigger an unhappy encounter.

Gradually, I grew well. I am well and happy now and, glory be, I am moving into a regular apartment in Mountain View, CA.

One of the things that has always set me apart from my neighbors is my education. I am overeducated. My sentence to public housing and destitution was always temporary. For virtually all of my neighbors, their sentence to public housing and destitution is permanent.

My building is full of vulnerable, fragile human beings, many of whom have more family and friends than I do. Virtually all of them have mental health problems far more serious than mine. Even as I write this, I am full of love for my neighbors. I am proud of many of the ones I now know. Some of my neighbors have to fight every day just to stay alive and some of them have been doing it for ten and, even, twenty years. My life is so easy, so rich and so full compared to theirs.

When I learned, in May, that I would be leaving my building, I made a conscious choice to get to know my neighbors just a little bit. Until this time, I had formed very limited, nodding relationships with just two or three people in my building. I decided to expand these relationships. I invited Arnie, a six-foot, four-inch, enormous neighbor with schizophrenia out for coffee. I thought I would be moving out of the building by the end of July and I thought our friendship would have been over by now.

Well, it has taken me longer to exercute my move than I thought. I am definitely going to be out of this building by the end of this week.

I have spent a lot of time with Arnie and his sidekick, Al. It is pretty boring hanging out with them.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Love from people you will never meet!

Love seeping through paper and parchment and ink!

Love seeping through the cosmos via the internet, inter alia.

Love, love, love.

I am feeling love now but half an hour ago, I was in emotional pain, crying at a bus stop.

It is a beautiful day here in Seattle. A crisp chill. Lots of crunching as one walks along, leaves skittering. The sun is dazzling. I took a long walk to a big box store to buy cleaning products to do the final cleaning on my Seattle apartment (I now live in Mountain View, CA!). Then I walked some more to a bus stop to catch a bus back home.

A beautiful day. A fine walk. The dazzling sun. I was happy.

When I got to the bus shelter, I sat down so I was bathed in the sun rays. I kept my shades on and basked in the sun like a cat. It felt so good. I had been chilly as I had walked from the store to the bus stop. Warming up in that sunlight was so lovely. I had thoughts about the move to California. I thought about a piece of my book I've been working on. I thought about seeing friends from Seattle later this very month in San Francisco: one of my dearest Seattle friends will be in San Francisco and will visit me in just two weeks. Then I began to pretend that all of my Seattle friends take business trips to the Bay Area and all of them see me. I pretended I took future trips to Seattle and saw my old friends. I thought about the new friends I will find in California, about my writing plans. I thought about unpacking my kitchen in Mountain View. I was happy in a nice, simple, low-grade way. The bright, warming sun seemed to assure me that all is well, that I am safe and I am loved.

Then I remembered my daughter. I think of my only child every day, of course,at least in passing moments. Just over five years ago, she said she was never going to see me again and she has stuck to her plan, shattering me. Losing her almost destroyed me and, of course, sometimes I still wish that it had, that my life had ended so I didn't have to revisit the pain of losing her ever again. It was just a tiny moment but in this ugly, tiny moment, all of my heartache burned me anew.

The sun was still shining. I was still happy about my move and my book and all my loving friends. I cried hard, wiping the tears as they fell below my sunglasses.
I used to live in this hole of heartache. It used to be that when I fell into it, I might stay in it for weeks, days and, even, months. It always feels exactly the same: as if life is nothing but pain and suffering and that I will never get over losing my Katie and I will never know happiness again.

As I sat there in my petty heartache, I thought "This pain has been with me for hours". Then I realized that only a few moments had passed. I also realized that the bus would come soon, that the sun was still shining and I had stopped crying.

The bus did come. I am back home. All is well.

Being brokenhearted about Katie so briefly was like a cloud passing in front of the sun. It feels so good to be happy but the vapor of my painful loss is still with me.

I still want her back but how lovely that it only hurt a little awhile.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

mothering is world healing work

I spent my day running lots of errands. I was away from Seattle for almost six weeks and I had a zillion things to tend to, to catch up. Normally I would conduct household errand chores throughout a month's time so it was unusual for me to stalk through the daytime world of household maintenance.

I was in several stores and service establishments, which all seemed full of females. Well, more females than males. And, maybe it was just me?, many of the women seemed to be tending young children. Pre-school children. School-aged children would be in school.

Trader Joe's was giving away samples of egg salad sandwiches. I overheard a little girl whining for a sample. "Let's take a close look at what they are giving away, honey," the mother said with love but also with a didactic pragmatism I recognized from raising my child.

The grocery store is rife with teaching opportunities. When my daughter was adjusting to the concept of numbers, for example, I might say "Would you like me to buy some apples?" And if she said yes, she'd like apples, I might say "We will buy as many apples as you can count." Then I would review 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc for a moment. And then Katie, my daughter, would begin to count. When we first started this game, we bought one apple. The second time, we bought more. Then, of course, there was the lesson of green, yellow, red apples. What color are bananas? Then, when she was sussing out the concept of reading, I would offer to buy the peanut butter if she could find it on the shelf. "Pah,pah! Pah,pah!" I would say as I tried to say the letter 'p' phonetically. I would show her a 'p', say 'pah,pah, pah, pah 'p' sounds like 'pah'' and she would search the store shelves for a 'pah'. Grocery stores with toddlers are a lot of fun.

So when I heard a mother ask her daughter to take a close look at the free samples, I was curious to overhear the lesson that was obviously underway. "Look closely," said the mother, to encourage her toddler daughter. "What do you see?"

"I see eggs! I can eat eggs!" the child chirped happily.

"Look some more," said the mother, a note of careful attention in her tone. I was eager to learn what the child was supposed to see.

"Bread. I see bread," the child said excitedly. "I can't have the sample because I can't eat the bread. It looks like wheat."

I was proud of this mother. I was happy on behalf of humanity that mothers (parents, all parents, of course, even the guys) love children and that mothers seek to teach their children with as much love and tenderness as they can muster. This mother in Trader Joe's could have said "You can't have the sample because you can't eat the bread." Instead, she invited the child to look at the world just a little more carefully. She invited her child to practice self care. Instead of feeling left out of the free sample, the little girl was proud that she had identified a food she could not eat.

I loved this mother and child in Trader Joe's this morning. And I loved the guy making the egg salad sandwiches just because he was standing there. Why not?!

Later, as I checked out of another store, another little girl in front of me was wailing, tears pouring down her cheeks profusely. It was an impressive display. Clearly, however, the little girl was getting herself worked up without being actually upset. I loved this little girl, who was wearing a princess crown and sash over her pink t-shirt and short pink skirt. She was obviously doted on by her mother (the crown and sash!) and she obviously wasn't really upset. She was mostly enjoying herself wailing and getting attention from many people in the front of the store.

"Is your mother tormenting you, honey?" I asked her as cheerfully as I could, to indicate that I knew nothing was REALLY wrong.

The little girl merely sniffed. Her mother sighed, happily, and said, "Oh, we are having a crisis. She can't remember where she left her royal bracelet!"

The checkout girl was humming her sympathy for the little girl. I clucked some more sympathy. The little girl sniffed on.

I loved all of these people, too.

On the way home, on the bus, it came to me that I had just witnessed the culture of love. Women's work is world work. Nurturing is world work. The world will be whole when everyone knows that.

Monday, October 02, 2006

There are no shields

I've been thinking quite a lot about the friends I do have. I can maintain friendships with people who hurt me but when I hurt others, I instinctively close myself off from them. . . not to spare them further pain but to spare myself the pain of having to accept that I can be unkind. My hate ray dream is alive within me. There is no shield for hate rays. There is no shield for love rays. There are no shields.

Except, maybe, love might be the only shield.