Self Knowledge in the Context of Self-Care

California is really a few different states. The one in which I spent the weekend, just outside Cazadero, outside Jenner which is just north of Bodega Bay, where The Birds was filmed, is misty, moist, cool, red-wooded and oaken. Mosses on the north side of the trees, lichen on the boulders, Stellar Jays streaking from tree to tree and an absolutely gorgeous retreat center made it a very nourishing weekend. Add in thirty people gathered to meditate and learn from a master explorer of inner consciousness, Claudio Naranjo and yummy, thoughtfully prepared meals and it tops my list of recent retreats.

Mr. Naranjo, originally from Chile, has made a lifelong study of consciousness and shares simply, generously and humorously. Very nearly an octogenarian, he exhibits the lightness of being and curiosity of a child. He brought the Enneagram to the United States in the 1970’s.

Steve Hoskinson is one of the senior faculty members of Somatic Experiencing and taught us experientially how to re-calibrate our nervous system toward what’s right in the world, rather than what’s wrong. He sent us by twos out into the beautiful grounds of the Ratna Ling Retreat Center. One of us was to be the explorer for ten minutes - wandering where ever s/he wanted to go just to observe the natural world, while the support person was to follow along and simply take delight in the playful exploration of the partner. Then we switched roles.

What we learned was that it takes very little to reclaim some resiliency in the nervous system. Our world is so chaotic, fast paced and overwhelming that we can lose touch with normal human pleasure and instead make due with substitutes - like ticking things off our ‘to do list.’

Claudio and Steve both acknowledge a childhood instinctual nature that some psychologists call organismic intelligence - which could also be called self-regulation. We can lose our animal wisdom and capacity for pleasure - what my mom used to call “creature comfort” - when we become too domesticated. Turns out we need nature to help us downshift from high states of anxiety to greater ease and simple pleasure. Trauma disconnects us from our environment. Healthy, non-addictive pleasure helps integration in the presence of sufficient support. Wandering where ever we’re drawn in a natural setting, with a caring other person, can be a very wonderful corrective tonic.

Working in pairs or in triads we also explored inner space and responded to probing questions. “How has fear prevented you from living the life you want to live?” “How has your worry about how others perceive you gotten in the way of your full expression?” “How are you suffering? What is your pain? How are you dissatisfied?”

Ultimately these explorations with supportive witnesses brought us to a place of greater ease and an ability to be in the present moment - as if a heavy chain-mail coat had been removed and movement was no longer so difficult.

Integration is happening. Driving home will be a time of re-collecting the gems of the weekend.

In Training

A kid’s excitement couldn’t be greater than mine this moment. I'm going south-bound from Burbank on the Amtrak towards San Juan Capistrano to meet my writing buddy Kelly. I find a parking space easily, rescue a June Bug while waiting for the train to come, and have a lovely conversation with a couple from the mountains around Tujunga.

First stop Glendale. We’re zipping along handily past the same hills I view from the freeway, but this perspective is lower and disrupted by more buildings. I see businesses along San Fernando road that I don’t usually notice because I’m driving.

An air of freedom permeates my internal space. I love this hands-free Zzzzziiiippping!

Ooooh, passing a north-bound short train is dizzying. It takes my breath away.

Glad to note there is a Lu and snack car downstairs. Who  wants to eat those snacks? Not I.


Glendale has more sophisticated parking options and a classy station - new? or renovated WPA project? Hard to say. I like the spanish tile roof, round portholes on the ornately carved wooden double doors and symmetrical towers. They have Natural Gas Refilling and electric car rebooting stations!

Next stop Union Station. I thought about taking the Red Line Subway there from Universal, but decided I’d take my chances on finding parking in the lot south of Burbank Airport. I won the lottery!  

Crossing under the old Figueroa Street Bridge I note it's where my grandfather stood in 1934 and watched a box-car going end-over end down the storm swollen Los Angeles River which had washed several train cars into its hungry waters.

I see the new Metropolitan Transit Authority tower. We’re coming past the east side of Chavez Ravine. What a time it was when the O’Malley family brought the Brooklyn Dodgers to L.A.  So many folks lost their homes in the shuffle to make Dodger Stadium and attendant parking in Elysian Park... a blight on the city’s humanity. Ditto the attempt to put the Convention Center in the same park. 

In 1964, a Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park coalesced around Grace Simons, after whom the Grace Simons Lodge was named. A legal battle ensued to save the green space from commercial interests. We, the citizens of Echo Park, put on a show in the spirit of the best Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney tradition. “Hey, my father has a barn... let’s put on a show and let people KNOW how important the green space is for future generations!” Actually, we used Saint Athanasius Church across from the Lake on Echo Park Boulevard - in the very same building where I used to take modern dance lessons from Ann Barlon. Our show, "That Was the Park that WAS," played for three performances over one weekend and earned enough to start the legal defense for the trees. My friends, Gusti Bogak and Sarah Miller and I choreographed a dance to Mick Jagger’s throbbing, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” which, at least WE three thought, was the highlight of the show.

Skits included one that showed a family of six trying to enjoy being squeezed into a four foot by four foot cubicle for a picnic underground with roots hanging from the dirt ceiling representing all the “natural space” left in the once great city.

The content of the skit was perhaps influenced by the Cuban Missile Crisis the year before. I remember my bus route to Thomas Star King Junior High School passed home after home with dug-up front yards where fall-out shelters were being constructed. Survival of the world as we loved it was certainly in the collective psyche. Harry Belafonte made famous a song that spoke directly to me. “Come Away, Melinda...” included the lyric: "Daddy, Daddy, come and look and see what I have found, a little ways away from here while digging in the ground." "Come away, Melinda. Come in and close the door, that’s nothing but a picture book before they had the war.”

The Citizens Committee DID manage to save Elysian Park and the Convention Center plan was moved to down town.

Leaving Union Station... next stop Fullerton. Now, I’m riding backwards. Not so fun. I move to the seat next to a young woman sitting across from me. That’s better. I prefer seeing where I’m going to where I’ve been.

Passing J.B. Hunt cargo containers all stacked alongside the 5 Freeway, I wonder how many containers come to the Port of Los Angeles from China every day? I was thrilled Wednesday to find some oval ceramic serving trays in cobalt blue and white, as a birthday gift for my friend Annet. They were made in Poland! I’m not too keen to be supporting an economy (China’s) that owns so much of our U.S. debt.

I’m also wondering how Kelly’s trip is going. Escondido to San Juan Capistrano may be an equally lengthy (two hour) trip.  Cannot wait to meet her there where the swallows return year after year.

In our own back yard we have returning birds... a ducky couple who love the pool and who lay eggs along side it on the deck without benefit of nest. NTB (not too bright).

This year, there is a pair of crows who prefer bathing in the small fountain which flows into the pool. They breakfast regularly on the barely ripening strawberries. It’s a toss-up who will be first to enjoy the fruits of our labors... the crows or the squirrels. We humans don’t stand a chance. (The train is passing a trailer park with a few scraggly trees. I feel ashamed for complaining about the bounty of our beautiful garden being stolen by wild animals. I imagine living mostly on asphalt is a hardship not recognized as “eligible for battle pay,” but it should qualify!)

Being divorced from the lovely emanations coming from Earth is an equal opportunity destroyer. We don’t even know what we’re missing. The 1.5 gauss emanations are cost-free and are the best anti-inflammatory “substance” known to carbon-based units like we are. Perhaps The Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” album was prophetic.  Our rubber soles insulate and isolate us from Mama Earth’s electric kisses.

How lucky, am I that my Cousin Lynn recently gave me three pair of leather-sole shoes which she has out-grown. Leather conducts the anti-inflammatory emanations; rubber does not. Cement sidewalks and tile do; asphalt roads do not. Grass and dirt do; raised wood floors do not. Grounding technology can help us reclaim our connection. (google: earthing.com)

Hey! Fullerton already! There’s Anaheim Stadium, where my beloved was honored on the field twice - once for completing over 100 apheresis donations for the Red Cross and again as a “Volunteer of the Year” for Padres Contra el Cancer.

A gal across the aisle has a bag that says, “A magical journey... Brasil.” She and her companion speak German. The fellow who finally got off at Fullerton spoke “Fuck.” “Fuckin’ 60 degrees one day then fuckin’ 90 degrees the next... fuck this shit. I’m fuckin outa here!” And so he was... I’m glad for the 8 year old boy, who was listening to an audio program just one row away, that Mr. Fuck Mouth got off the train before the young lad had removed his head-phones.

Slow going past the armpit of back-road Orange County... but wait! There’s a green  house with plants being tended, and a park with sycamores and two young teens on scooters. Mobility and independence are still primary currency for the young. Hooray!

Santa Ana Station is reminiscent of Union station in its use of roof tile, colorful Spanish tile trimming and terazzo flooring. My favorite recollection of Union Station was the day my high-school buddy Judy and I went to say good bye to Wendy at Union Station as she was heading back to Yellow Springs, Ohio (WOW there was a sight... a trash dump [temporary, I hope] with back storage areas of pipes, palettes, pots  and giant truck tires. This really IS the armpit of O.C!)

Anyway, that day in 1965 at Union Station, I saw a man dressed in an immaculate white suit who had eight pieces of matching luggage in a semi-circle around him. We were all sitting in those plush leather seats with wooden arm rests that are iconic Union Station Waiting Room Furnishings. Wendy, Judy and I were signing one another’s year books. He noticed the question in my eyes as I looked at his many suitcases. He said he was going to Mississippi to visit family. Then he said something that has stuck with me all these years. He said, “It’s better to have what ya don’t need than to need what ya don’t have.” 


Next life-time, I aspire to travel light. This life time, I'm taking all I can... so as not to need anything.

************************************************************************

I made it all the way to San Juan Capistrano, where I’d never been before, had a marvelous meeting with Ms. Kelly, brunch, a tour of the old Mission and a sleepy ride back to Burbank. I highly recommend train traveling and getting a glimpse of the swallow’s nests on the old mission’s rafters. That made ME want to return to SJC too!

It's SNOT for Me to Say...

Did I say salt tears are the best laundry aid for getting out the grief stains? 

I’ve not been following my own advice.

When I don’t do my grief work, the tears leak out in inauspicious ways. This week they manifested in a doozy of a head cold. I’ve been a snotty girl. Yes, I was around a three year old little guy with dual rivers of green slime flowing down his upper lip, but I think my body was made vulnerable by ignoring some sad feelings that really wanted to be discharged - cried out.

In the profession I’ve chosen, supporting others to re-negotiate trauma, it’s optimal to stay current with my own challenges. If I neglect my personal practices too many days running, the mental clutter can tip the balance into physical symptoms. 

Virginia Wolf had the right idea... A Room of One’s Own. USING that room is important! Whatever space I have for my own time-out to heal, I must make the time to use it on a regular basis or the accumulated stressors push me out of my center. 

When I travel, it’s more of a challenge to carve time for yoga and meditation, but if I DON’T carve the time, I’m not much use as “hub of the wheel.” I get wobbly and the whole wheel wobbles... whether the spokes that relate to me are family members, friends or clients.

Sometimes I have to RE-prove to myself the value of self-healing practices. Last week was one of those times. Being up north and loving the whole process of preparation for our grand daughter’s third birthday celebration shifted my priorities. It was more fun to stay up late talking and doing tasks than it was to get up early and do my healing routines.

Just past the Summer Solstice, I’ll be attending a workshop that promises to be wonderful. Claudio Naranjo, Steve Hoskinson and Cynthia Merchant are presenting “Caring for Others in the Context of Self-Care.” How timely is THAT?? The Ratna Ling Retreat Center space north of Bodega Bay looks amazing. I’m grateful for the time and space to retreat and recreate. I think it will provide space to do some more grief work around mom’s death.

In the mean time, I’m intending to complete writing the memoir about growing up in the 1950’s and ’60’s in Echo Park and am so looking forward to a day with my writing partner next week.

Hooray for support of ALL kinds!

May you lean into support where ever it manifests... and ask for it if it doesn’t seem imminently evident.

It’s SNOT fun to be sneezy!

Laminated Lamentations

How many many folks do you know who lead with their wounds? In our family we have a few. Perhaps each of us speaks “woundology” (thanks, Carolyn Myss for this term) when we’re over tired, unduly stressed or in need of an excuse for our poor choices or performance in the human arena, and “The sun was in my eyes” was already taken that day.

There are times when I feel wretched and woe-be-gone, or wake up feeling “broken all over again” (Geneen Roth in Feeding the Hungry Heart), lamenting losses from my early childhood, but mostly I’m grateful for the gifts I’ve been given and try to celebrate them - even the ones that came wrapped in bits of torn flesh. All those gifts have brought me to where I am today. Although it may sound egotistical, most days, I’m happy in my (healed) skin and I don’t have any plans to do away with myself.

My husband and I know families at camps where we volunteer whose losses are so profound that it makes us wonder if there is a beneficent God or rather a Joe Btfsplk type character with a dark cloud over his head walking beside them. (Thanks, Al Capp, for this icon of bad luck.) Yet, these same families reach their arms back to help others on the path who are newly bereaved - even while they are still bruised from life’s cruelest blow - the loss of a child. Where they find the stamina to help others while they themselves are still so raw, I’ll never know. (I hope.)

Camp certainly gives perspective to my “hang-nails,” so it is all the more surprising when we’re broadsided by a family member whose predictability can be timed. How LONG will it take “A” to complain that “B” never calls, never writes and never lets “A” know what’s going on? How MANY times can “X” squeeze into the conversation that horrible loss of forty five years ago? 

Don’t worry. If you are reading this, you are NOT one of those family members.

I don’t believe you ever get “over” some losses, but I find it mysterious that some folks seem capable of “going-on” with their lives and can find meaning and be of service while others are so shattered that not only do they carry around a suitcase full of sad, but they seem to have been frozen in time - as if the past is right here, right now, in the form of laminated lamentations.

As Venus is about to “transit the sun,” I’m wondering if it is the star’s configuration at the moment of our birth, or ancestral imprints, karma, or previous trauma history or all of the above that determines how “big owies” will shape us.

One of my go-to quotes for friends who've recently lost a loved one reminds us that grief is a natural part of life; that grief experienced as a flow that ebbs and flows can set us free to get back IN the flow. We cannot afford to wall ourselves off and stay in the back water eddies.

Get ready to weep tears of sorrow as bright as the brightest beads, and like the bright beads you string to wear round your throat at the burial, gather your tears and string them on a thread of your memory to wear around your heart or its shattered fragments will never come whole again. 

                                --- Laurens van der Post

Something about completing the natural response to loss - which is a grief process - makes us whole again.... and maybe even better than "whole." Perhaps we stand to gain so much more from every "gift" life hands us... compassion, resilience, spiritual understanding and wisdom.

It is awe inspiring to witness human resilience. When I see others thriving in the face of horrific challenges, how can I not try my very best to persevere despite my small grievances? 

I’m FRESH from the absolute delight of celebrating our granddaughter’s third birthday (got home just hours ago from the north part of California). Once home, I got clobbered by phone calls from two such family members as mentioned above. The contrast is astonishing. The three year old joy maker and her mama know how to thrive and be thrilled by simple pleasures - even while faced with an uncertain situation. (The kidlette's dad is dogged by some losses. We're all hopeful he can heal them.) 

Meanwhile, I'll strive to make lemonade (or make lemon merengue pie, as my beloved says) rather than laminating lamentations to make a rigid wall to keep out life. It's a work in progress. My recipe still has more bitter than sweet... but Im working on it.

My heart goes out to those who get stuck in grief - or rage or terror. I hope we all may find our way out... letting the river of tears flow and flowing right along with it to the Sea of Tranquility.

From there... let's see what happens when Venus goes across the sun, shall we?

Ash in the Sand

Flash in the pan

Ash in the sand

Cash in hand?

Don’t be rash, man!

Smash the band

Trash what’s planned

Unabashedly panned 

Crashes are banned

Flashes are fanned

Clashes be damned

Trenches are manned

Matches are bland

Crutches aren’t grand

Brash is the man

Crass is the ham

Rush in the Spam!

Brush off the lamb

Blame the Brioche

Don’t get too close

Won’t drink Rooibos

Frankly, verbose

Saintly, he rose

Faintly she throws

Daintily we voice

Crazy our choice

Brash new boys

National noise

Kalashnikov toys

Passionate poise

Crashing gate ploys

Kissing eight hands

Flash in the pan

Ash in the sand

This word play is fun, Melinda... but it doesn’t MEAN anything!!

True... but it’s where my mind wants to go after a day of scattering Mom’s ashes in the hills of Echo Park and at her most familiar camping beach.

Well, you can’t sum up ninety two years as a “flash in the pan!”

True... but in geologic time a century is an eye-blink... and there she was... ash in the sand, and...

Cash in hand? Really, now...

The Day Use Parking Fee at Leo Carillo...

It’s no use... trying to convince you it’s drivel is a hopeless endeavor. I might as well be throwing ash in the wind.

Exactly! We had a lovely day to say our final good b’ye (God be with ye) and what remained of her physical bits looked lovely on the wind - wraith-like and utterly temporal. The parts that stick in our hearts and minds - the spirit of our mom - will be inside us for eternity!

“To understand is to stand under which is to look up to which is a pretty good way to understand!”   ---Sister Corita Kent

Busy Getting Dizzy

I’m a BA candidate with a B+ average at Cal State Los Angeles, doing research on playgrounds for a paper in the Child Development Department about playground design. This is Tuesday, March 11, 1975.

This is my twelfth park in four days. I sit and observe children’s patterns of play.

What I notice is that the merry-go-round is used more than any other piece of equipment in the sand box, followed by the swings.

Merry-go-rounds seem to be used a lot - mostly as a transition between slide and swing and back again. Just now a four-year-old jumps off her swing, runs to the M.G.R. and takes a few revolutions around before jumping off and climbing up the slide, sliding down the slide, taking a few more turns ‘round the MGR and finally hopping back on a different swing.

Fast Forward...

May 17, 2012. I’m walking home from the Post Office and wander through the local park. Two BA’s, two daughters and one grand daughter later I observe that this park and, come to think of it, all the parks have done away with merry go rounds. Most of the sand has been replaced by black rubber matting. Jungle gyms have more plastic than metal parts and there are a lot more hover mothers in twenty first century parks. Not much free time for kids simply to play their own way. My friends and I seemed to thrive on benign neglect - imagining all sorts of important events, people, improbable crises and solutions to myriad problems. Spinning around, I think, aided our creativity.

I wonder what happened to take away such a popular piece of equipment. Training the vestibular system through spinning - orienting/disorienting - seems crucial to good brain development. Even the chains on the swings are now rubber or plastic-coated and do not easily lend themselves to spinning the swing seat round and round. 

In the 1950’s we were thrilled to be busy getting dizzy - going around on the twirly bar, the merry go round or spinning on the swings until we were completely dizzy, falling down, laughing. 

My good friend Jacky was a trouper. My dad found a discarded two-seated whirly-gig and brought it home. It had a lever handle - horizontal to the ground in front of each seat . The handles connected to a gear box in the center. You’d sit and push/pull the bar to make the device go round and round - forwards OR backwards. Jacky and I would sit on that contraption and spin around endlessly - until she had to throw-up. Then she’d rest a bit and we’d twirl again! 

I wonder if anyone has done a study to correlate ADHD, ADD or Asbergers with lack of dizzy time. Maybe humans NEED to get dizzy in order to develop our brains for the break-neck speed at which we travel.

Bring back the MGR!

Or maybe we just listen to the political pundits for our dose of dizzy.

faith

melancholy in the desert.

remembering mama barbara this mother’s day - my first in 63 years without her. 

lucky me, to have had her a good long time.

my life has been settled back into my own hands.

i am free to decide what i want for myself, what i want to do with my remaining years 

including where and with whom i want to live.

here at shakti fest in joshua tree i have an epiphany under the owl tree. i’d like to tell you about it.

last year this same luminous pine housed four owls. maybe owl was my mama’s totem animal. she had quite the collection. you know, perhaps, the experience of inadvertent collections? someone gets you an owl. dutifully, you display it in your surround. a visitor sees it and surmises you like owls, so next occasion gets you another, and so it goes.

mom had owl paintings, pins, sculptures and scarves.

so, in an effort to connect with the spirit of my mama, who may or may not have loved owls, i sit under this owl tree on a rock ledge - in the posture of an ancient egyptian hieroglyph - with my hips higher than my knees - nearly standing - and feet in the sand. my back is erect.

i’m contemplating a teaching i steeped in this morning about shruddah - the sanskrit word for 'faith' that really means where we place our foundation. i take it quite literally. where do i place my butt - my physical foundation? here i am at the base of this great tree that gave me some juice -or at least entertainment in the form of owls last year.

the contemplation leads me to muse what do i want to do with the rest of my life, now that i’m not bound to take care of my mama who died in february?

it feels as if i’m waiting for the bus. the bus carries all of us out of this life into the great unknown. the bench is populated by persons of every age - new-borns to centenarians - as well as every color, nationality, custom, belief, gender, and status. in short, every human in the whole world is sitting on a bus bench somewhere - waiting. when it comes right down to it, perhaps the only free will we have is to choose where we put our butts - our foundation. what do we have faith in?

i flash to a recent time of playing a game with my soon to be three-year-old granddaughter. we like to sit on her mama’s exercise bench with our backs against the wall and read the paper while we ‘wait for the bus.’

here, under the owl tree i do some grief work. after some belly gripping sobs borne of just recently being made a “motherless child,” because my mama’s bus came for her, my eyes look up from writing my thoughts to behold a lone chair sitting in the middle of the dry river bed directly in front of me, about a short city block away. 

how utterly absurd! who would want to wait for the bus there where water hasn’t flowed for who knows how long? that chair, that bus bench is saturated with desert heat - sun bleached white fabric with faded red flowers. basic lawn chair with skinny black arms and legs just there where some person sat for some purpose i do not know. 

blessed owl tree in whose shade i sit, please give me some wisdom. 

waiting for the bus at the bottom of a lifeless riverbed - thinking it a prime plot of foundational real estate - would not be my first choice.

the absurdity of that chair gives me giggles which become gales of laughter flowing like fresh water, welcomed after salt tears. 

contemplating further, i realize some advantages to the metaphor of the desert scape. there is something so primal, direct and bare-bones essential about it. life that can sustain itself with so little nourishment is life which inspires. if such beauty as these joshua trees, ocotillos and blossoming nopales cacti can be born of such dearth, then what the hell is my problem?

perhaps it is only a problem of perspective. i have to go sit in the chair - let my butt “sit a mile” in its moccasins.

aah, it is soft and enveloping - the mammy’s lap. I can melt, reassured. all will be well. earlier this day i could find no comfortable place for myself. my bony butt was sore from sitting on overly hard surfaces for too long a stretch of time. this chair is so different from my yoga correct-filled-with- striving-to-be-loved for following protocol and custom and what everyone else wants. i’m in want of nurturing. this chair is the prescription. i slouch into its comforting softness.

i sit and feel the heat bake and bleach me. i see why someone placed it precisely here. there is a notch in the distant trees where the sunset can be viewed to best advantage. still, it strikes me as a funny piece of real estate for a bus bench to wait out the end of one’s life. laughter feels wonderful.

my mother’s death does not come empty handed. the gift held out to me is an invitation to do my own heart’s bidding, for no other reason but for the LOVE of doing whatever i want to do.

the epiphany is that i get to place my foundation where ever it pleases me. the challenge is to decide which parcel of real estate is just right for my butt... or, to put it more delicately, what do i really and truly want to do??? the answer(s) will come.