The important stuff to listen to is the stuff that’s not said
The stuff that feels too personal, too close to the bone, too heart-breakingly tender for words.
The stuff that shadows her eyes for a nanosecond, that furrows his brow fleetingly, then retreats - hidden, because she or he doesn’t want to be questioned.
The stuff that makes the jaw clench and the toes curl and the fingers fidget.
Once witnessed, it doesn’t even need to be acknowledged. Nine times out of ten it is best not to speak one’s awareness of another body’s eloquent language… the sentence fragments of drumming fingernails, rolling eyes, or mashing of the lips together as if to snuff actual words that may try to escape and may wound on their way out - either the speaker or the spoken to.
Simply witnessing, and registering that there is pain allows us to sense first hand that not only are we in a community of humans all over this planet, but that no one comes through unscathed. No one gets outa here without some sort of gaping hole in the heart.
One of my favorite Native American teaching stories came to me by way of Jane van Loon, an artist and colleague in Somatic Experiencing who lives in Santa Monica. Here’s how I recall the story:
A youth dances into the village, boastful and bragging that his heart is the most beautiful to behold. Pulling it out of his chest and holding it aloft for all to see and to marvel at its pristine, unmarred surface, he says, “See how it glows with life and vibrant vitality! Not a blemish on it!”
Indeed, the villagers ponder it and rub their chins, scrutinizing this perfect specimen.
An old man comes into the circle and quietly pulls out his heart. Gently holding it in his hands, turning slowly for all to see. He beseeches the gathered to behold the artistry and patterns of his old scratched, patched, nicked, and patched again heart. “This scar over here is where I first beheld the beauty of the world, and cried because it couldn’t last, I couldn’t hold it forever. Over here is the gash where I fell in love and lost my love. This here black hole is from when I realized that people kill people for passion and for power and for no reason at all except insanity. That swirl is from seeing the gorgeous dawn that no one else was awake to see…” And on he went, giving a tour of his profoundly sculpted and polished heart.
The people nodded knowingly, rubbing their chins and then turned to the youth, feeling quite sorry for him. They let him know he was welcome back to their village any time and to come back for sure after his heart had been worked on a little more by the master craftsman called Life.
And so it was…
If you are irritated by every rub, how ever will you be burnished? ——— Rumi
May every rub of your heart be met with gratitude that you're alive, wonder that you were able to endure so much, and awe that having your heart broken open is, indeed, how the light gets in. (Thank you Leonard Cohen)
Evidently, heart break also is part of the dues we must pay to join "Club Men" (and "Club Women!") Take this advice from me: It is NEVER OK to club a woman!
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Things I Loved About My Father
Things I loved about my father…
His Greco-Roman profile, pleasing physical proportions, strong hands, and his creativity. He was an artist, oil painter, photographer, and musician. I’m not sure I remember him playing clarinet, but heard him tell of playing in Fred MacMurray’s band in the 1930s.
He built a play house for me when I turned five. At least that’s when the cement threshold is dated: October 6, 1953.
He was game to hold and feed the Betsy Wetsy Doll I was given that Christmas I was five… until it peed on his lap and he stood up yelling, “Jesus H. Christ!” It scared me when he yelled.
When he shaved his moustache, he was less scary looking.
When he was sober, he drove well.
He never actually struck Mike the Irish Setter that I can recall. He only threatened with an angry face, cursing in Spanish and an arm drawn back as if to hit the dog - probably for barking when he had a headache.
He let brother Mel and me help with the 1890s printing press. You had to turn the five foot diameter spoked iron wheel. He lifted me so I could reach high enough to pull it down and make the mechanism move. We printed Christmas cards one year.
Once he found and collected from the bottom of a canyon in Elysian Park a whirligig merry-go-round thing-a-ma-jig. He set it up in the back yard, saying someone had thrown it away. He fixed the gear box and we kids would spin around and around - getting strong muscles in the bargain - until one of us had to puke on account of the spinning world going by too fast.
He was forward thinking and bought a modern house by a now famous architect in a wonderful part of Los Angeles called Echo Park. It was raw land and naturally beautiful.
He became friends with the Weston family and picked the best dance teacher around Los Angeles for me to study with because Edward Weston had photographed Carmelita Maracci for the Encyclopedia Britannica and Dad thought her to be the best teacher. I did love to dance.
He loved his Jaguar Mark IV with its walnut dash, gray leather bucket seats and split bench in the back with a pull-down arm rest. I liked riding in it and the smell of the leather.
I’m glad I got to ride on his shoulders at the circus when I was three. I was too little for the huge crowds and the gigantic elephant poop.
I loved the scent of his drawer in the dining room table that smelled of art gum, pencil leads, and charcoal blenders made of felt. He kept Kodak aluminum film cans - yellow with green screw-on lids. Some were filled with mercury and he taught us how to coat pennies with it and smash it to bits and watch it reassemble when we tipped the shoe-box lid to see it move. It really earned its name: quick-silver. He also kept ball bearings in one of the film cans - such a pervasive metallic smell.
I loved the smell of turpentine and linseed, oil paints, and cray-pas drawing implements.
I loved the sound of his huaraches squeaking as he walked, and the scent of saddle soap he put on the leather to keep it soft. The rubber tire-tread soles lost their smell when they got old.
He used to read out loud the Burma Shave signs along Highway One while we drove to Garapata Creek in Big Sur at the beginning of the summer and again at the end of the summer when we went to pick up brother Mel where he worked at the Weston’s trout farm.
He made the best poached egg on toast with lots of butter and just the right sprinkle of paprika.
He took us camping in Death Valley and to Malaga Cove on weekends to stay all day by the tide pools and rocky shore.
The last Halloween he lived with us, he made me up to look like a Gypsy. Even though my face was a completely different color, with high cheek bones and a straight nose, everybody said, “Hello, Melinda,” because I was unmistakably the skinniest person in the whole fourth grade.
His Greco-Roman profile, pleasing physical proportions, strong hands, and his creativity. He was an artist, oil painter, photographer, and musician. I’m not sure I remember him playing clarinet, but heard him tell of playing in Fred MacMurray’s band in the 1930s.
He built a play house for me when I turned five. At least that’s when the cement threshold is dated: October 6, 1953.
He was game to hold and feed the Betsy Wetsy Doll I was given that Christmas I was five… until it peed on his lap and he stood up yelling, “Jesus H. Christ!” It scared me when he yelled.
When he shaved his moustache, he was less scary looking.
When he was sober, he drove well.
He never actually struck Mike the Irish Setter that I can recall. He only threatened with an angry face, cursing in Spanish and an arm drawn back as if to hit the dog - probably for barking when he had a headache.
He let brother Mel and me help with the 1890s printing press. You had to turn the five foot diameter spoked iron wheel. He lifted me so I could reach high enough to pull it down and make the mechanism move. We printed Christmas cards one year.
Once he found and collected from the bottom of a canyon in Elysian Park a whirligig merry-go-round thing-a-ma-jig. He set it up in the back yard, saying someone had thrown it away. He fixed the gear box and we kids would spin around and around - getting strong muscles in the bargain - until one of us had to puke on account of the spinning world going by too fast.
He was forward thinking and bought a modern house by a now famous architect in a wonderful part of Los Angeles called Echo Park. It was raw land and naturally beautiful.
He became friends with the Weston family and picked the best dance teacher around Los Angeles for me to study with because Edward Weston had photographed Carmelita Maracci for the Encyclopedia Britannica and Dad thought her to be the best teacher. I did love to dance.
He loved his Jaguar Mark IV with its walnut dash, gray leather bucket seats and split bench in the back with a pull-down arm rest. I liked riding in it and the smell of the leather.
I’m glad I got to ride on his shoulders at the circus when I was three. I was too little for the huge crowds and the gigantic elephant poop.
I loved the scent of his drawer in the dining room table that smelled of art gum, pencil leads, and charcoal blenders made of felt. He kept Kodak aluminum film cans - yellow with green screw-on lids. Some were filled with mercury and he taught us how to coat pennies with it and smash it to bits and watch it reassemble when we tipped the shoe-box lid to see it move. It really earned its name: quick-silver. He also kept ball bearings in one of the film cans - such a pervasive metallic smell.
I loved the smell of turpentine and linseed, oil paints, and cray-pas drawing implements.
I loved the sound of his huaraches squeaking as he walked, and the scent of saddle soap he put on the leather to keep it soft. The rubber tire-tread soles lost their smell when they got old.
He used to read out loud the Burma Shave signs along Highway One while we drove to Garapata Creek in Big Sur at the beginning of the summer and again at the end of the summer when we went to pick up brother Mel where he worked at the Weston’s trout farm.
He made the best poached egg on toast with lots of butter and just the right sprinkle of paprika.
He took us camping in Death Valley and to Malaga Cove on weekends to stay all day by the tide pools and rocky shore.
The last Halloween he lived with us, he made me up to look like a Gypsy. Even though my face was a completely different color, with high cheek bones and a straight nose, everybody said, “Hello, Melinda,” because I was unmistakably the skinniest person in the whole fourth grade.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Yoga and Relationship
I've been a yoga teacher for twenty-five years. A former student asked me: How can yoga help me with my relationship? How can I "help" my partner to change and to feel the serenity I feel when I come to class? I've been contemplating this question. Do we want our beloveds to change? (If so, we'd better prepare for disappointment!) We have charge only of our own selves. I think that's the reality... only our own dear selves. Perhaps we can use the longing for things to be different "out there" as fuel to create "in here," the "serenity to accept the things we cannot change..." Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see..."
My beloved husband does Svaroopa(R) yoga's Magic Four poses only when he's in pain. (The Magic Four are reliable for lengthening the spine and releasing chronically held tension in the body and in the mind.) He doesn't know a mantra from a match stick, nor his sacrum from a satchel. He's tolerant of my morning rituals and I of his... which includes his deep dip, first thing, into email.
Most days in recent years, he's a volunteer in service to kids in hospitals and at various camps for kids with life threatening illnesses. His persona is bigger than life at these venues as a very funny magician teaching kids to do magic (besides the very real magic they perform every day just by BEING). He teaches these kids rope tricks and they, in turn, teach their parents, siblings and friends. Empowerment is a gift.
There was a time when I bemoaned the fact that we were on different tracks. How lovely it would be to share with him this revelatory experiment in consciousness that meditation and yoga offer. How lovely it would have been to take him along to La Jolla to do teacher training with me. Hah! No way! That's not the man I married. So he worked in game shows and I taught yoga and did bodywork. Now, he does great things to help kids feel better about themselves, while I still see the occasional client and continue my daily sadhana (spiritual practices).
We're on parallel but not too distant tracks. We do some sessions of camp together. He respects my unusual practices of chanting and meditating and even joins me in two of the Magic Four some mornings - if his back is hurting. Generously, he agreed to giving over our garage at the old house for twenty years, so I could teach yoga classes there.
Neither of us really wants the other to change... but over the forty-four years of our marriage, each of us HAS changed... each of us has become more tolerant of the other's preferences. Do I wish he'd practice better posture at the computer? Sure. Do I want to make that a battle ground? Nope. If he gets too crimped he knows the tools. Legislating how he "should" live creates friction, which unlike tapas, which in Sanskrit, the language of yoga, means "heat from friction," and is one of the yogic practices for shifting unhealthy habits, doesn't seem to burn away the behavior I wish he'd change... it only leads to cooling down our very real enjoyment of each other and the warmth and ease of relating.
There are plenty of "common grounds" where we can enjoy the sweetness of relationship... so he has his sadhana and I have mine and we communicate about how we're growing in our chosen fields of practice and where we're hitting pot holes. I have yoga & bodywork buddies; he has camp and game-show buddies. We can "talk shop" with them. But we share the nitty gritty with one another. It's safe to be ourselves in relationship.
My beloved is always going to be my best friend and lover. He's not destined to become a yogi this lifetime and that's fine with me. I'll keep plugging away at cultivating my relationship with my "Big S Self." That way, I don't feel disappointed all the time. There's a LOT in the world to be disappointed about.
Lilly Tomlin was quoted: "No matter how cynical you are, you just can't keep up."
The Pollyanna in me (or is it my Big S Self?) says: "This world is so beautiful, it makes me cry... tears of joy."
Namaste
My beloved husband does Svaroopa(R) yoga's Magic Four poses only when he's in pain. (The Magic Four are reliable for lengthening the spine and releasing chronically held tension in the body and in the mind.) He doesn't know a mantra from a match stick, nor his sacrum from a satchel. He's tolerant of my morning rituals and I of his... which includes his deep dip, first thing, into email.
Most days in recent years, he's a volunteer in service to kids in hospitals and at various camps for kids with life threatening illnesses. His persona is bigger than life at these venues as a very funny magician teaching kids to do magic (besides the very real magic they perform every day just by BEING). He teaches these kids rope tricks and they, in turn, teach their parents, siblings and friends. Empowerment is a gift.
There was a time when I bemoaned the fact that we were on different tracks. How lovely it would be to share with him this revelatory experiment in consciousness that meditation and yoga offer. How lovely it would have been to take him along to La Jolla to do teacher training with me. Hah! No way! That's not the man I married. So he worked in game shows and I taught yoga and did bodywork. Now, he does great things to help kids feel better about themselves, while I still see the occasional client and continue my daily sadhana (spiritual practices).
We're on parallel but not too distant tracks. We do some sessions of camp together. He respects my unusual practices of chanting and meditating and even joins me in two of the Magic Four some mornings - if his back is hurting. Generously, he agreed to giving over our garage at the old house for twenty years, so I could teach yoga classes there.
Neither of us really wants the other to change... but over the forty-four years of our marriage, each of us HAS changed... each of us has become more tolerant of the other's preferences. Do I wish he'd practice better posture at the computer? Sure. Do I want to make that a battle ground? Nope. If he gets too crimped he knows the tools. Legislating how he "should" live creates friction, which unlike tapas, which in Sanskrit, the language of yoga, means "heat from friction," and is one of the yogic practices for shifting unhealthy habits, doesn't seem to burn away the behavior I wish he'd change... it only leads to cooling down our very real enjoyment of each other and the warmth and ease of relating.
There are plenty of "common grounds" where we can enjoy the sweetness of relationship... so he has his sadhana and I have mine and we communicate about how we're growing in our chosen fields of practice and where we're hitting pot holes. I have yoga & bodywork buddies; he has camp and game-show buddies. We can "talk shop" with them. But we share the nitty gritty with one another. It's safe to be ourselves in relationship.
My beloved is always going to be my best friend and lover. He's not destined to become a yogi this lifetime and that's fine with me. I'll keep plugging away at cultivating my relationship with my "Big S Self." That way, I don't feel disappointed all the time. There's a LOT in the world to be disappointed about.
Lilly Tomlin was quoted: "No matter how cynical you are, you just can't keep up."
The Pollyanna in me (or is it my Big S Self?) says: "This world is so beautiful, it makes me cry... tears of joy."
Namaste
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Muthas Everywhere
Blogging, slogging over the bounding keys
Walking over hill and dale is tiring out my knees
Still, I’m writing, if only to prove I can
This Mother's Day, remember please: Won’t happen without man.
Walking over hill and dale is tiring out my knees
Still, I’m writing, if only to prove I can
This Mother's Day, remember please: Won’t happen without man.
Monday, May 2, 2016
Play Time
Stuart Brown, M.D., of the National Institute of Play postulates that life without play becomes warped. His interest began, with an exploration of what made former Marine Charles Whitman snap and become a mass murderer, shooting from a tower in Texas, and killing sixteen people in 1966.
Dr. Brown's inquiry into what made Charles Whitman tick showed that he was never allowed to play with other kids. His father brutally beat young Charles, if he so much as balked at practicing piano at age five. Neighbors never saw him playing outside or with other children. If he explored the front yard at all, his father beat him. His kindergarten teacher said he was "too good" - sitting in a corner waiting for instruction, instead of joining in the chaotic puppy-pile play more typical of five year olds.
Play features hugely in the development of empathy, compassion, and kindness in humans, rats and most other socialized beings. Wrestling, rolling down grassy hills, and exploring make us uniquely mammalian, and maybe humanely human.
Scientists don't need to tell us how important play is to brain development and well being. Simply reflect on the last time you really played... was it a board game or computer game? Charades with friends? Soft ball, tennis, golf, shooting baskets, keeping up a balloon? Just goofing around with folks of different ages from your own or similar age? How did you feel in the wake of that playtime?
Over the weekend, I got to play fully. My husband and I celebrated our forty-fourth wedding anniversary April 30, and we took time to play with friends at dinner Friday, and to attended a story-telling event at our daughter's house Saturday night. "Anniversary" was the theme. Sunday found us happily tired and toasting each other over a beautiful sunset and an episode of The Phil Silvers' Show... remember Sargent Bilko? Lots of laughs.
Play-fully is the way to go when weaning from coffee - which I felt I had to do this weekend. The grouchitude is real for me, when the caffeine coffers diminish in my system. How was my weekend? it was GRRRRRRRrrrrr... but also Grrreat! Let's see what happens with my sense of fun when my system balances out. I'm guessing I will feel even more playful.
Here's a link to one of Stuart Brown's TED Talks:
http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital
Dr. Brown's inquiry into what made Charles Whitman tick showed that he was never allowed to play with other kids. His father brutally beat young Charles, if he so much as balked at practicing piano at age five. Neighbors never saw him playing outside or with other children. If he explored the front yard at all, his father beat him. His kindergarten teacher said he was "too good" - sitting in a corner waiting for instruction, instead of joining in the chaotic puppy-pile play more typical of five year olds.
Play features hugely in the development of empathy, compassion, and kindness in humans, rats and most other socialized beings. Wrestling, rolling down grassy hills, and exploring make us uniquely mammalian, and maybe humanely human.
Scientists don't need to tell us how important play is to brain development and well being. Simply reflect on the last time you really played... was it a board game or computer game? Charades with friends? Soft ball, tennis, golf, shooting baskets, keeping up a balloon? Just goofing around with folks of different ages from your own or similar age? How did you feel in the wake of that playtime?
Over the weekend, I got to play fully. My husband and I celebrated our forty-fourth wedding anniversary April 30, and we took time to play with friends at dinner Friday, and to attended a story-telling event at our daughter's house Saturday night. "Anniversary" was the theme. Sunday found us happily tired and toasting each other over a beautiful sunset and an episode of The Phil Silvers' Show... remember Sargent Bilko? Lots of laughs.
Play-fully is the way to go when weaning from coffee - which I felt I had to do this weekend. The grouchitude is real for me, when the caffeine coffers diminish in my system. How was my weekend? it was GRRRRRRRrrrrr... but also Grrreat! Let's see what happens with my sense of fun when my system balances out. I'm guessing I will feel even more playful.
Here's a link to one of Stuart Brown's TED Talks:
http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)