Sanctuary

1.1.07

I wake this morning, New Years Day, exhausted from last night's tornado that swept through my being and leaves me shaking. For some reason, whether watching the Wizard of Oz, or from some unconscious year end tally or realizing this is the year I turn 50, I had a major existential breakdown. This year has been filled with changes, in relationsihps, in work, physically and psychically. I have been reading, searching for information right and left, inside and out and last night it hit me. The big question: Who am I? Am I here? Do I matter?

We are advised by counslors and gurus and religions to find and nuture our souls within, to take care of ourselves first and then give the oxygen mask to our loved ones. We are told to look at our own issues, soothe our sorrows and past wounds and not look for answers in relationships. So we address these elemental pains of abandonment or abuse or neglect or just the basic thrust from the womb into the cold bright world with various subtances or activities or years of therapy or prayer or medication.

Yet, who are we but the sum of our relationships? Am I not a wife, a mother, a friend, an educator, a neighbor? Have I not been a daughter, a lover, a seeker, a student? Do I not strive to be better at all of these roles or do I accept my limitations and those of my loved ones and conserve my energy for soul searching and that perfect fifth? What greater pain in the world is there than reaching out to someone you love and finding they are not there? Either dead, un-available, moved on or encased in the armor of their own soul's wounding? This IS our most painful moment. Our never ending quest is to connect honestly and fully with other humans, yet we are advised not to invest too much in the outcome, to ride the waves of our parallel or disparate journeys with a firm grasp on our own tillers. I'm not sure it's possible.

Rilke wrote a poem:

"Occasionally someone rises from evening meal,
Goes outside, and goes, and goes, and goes...
Because somewhere in teh East a Santuary stands.

ANd his children lament as though he had died.

ANd another, who dies within his house,
Remains there, remains amid dishes and glasses,
So that his children must enter the world
In search of that scantuary which he forgot."

I wonder what the East represents here and thought this morning as my own sun rose that perhaps it represents dawn, the new day. Our New Year's icons often include a baby, representing birth, hope, life ahead. In turning to the East, to sanctuary, is our traveller returning to that place of safety, the mother's womb before we greet the day of life? Isn't that what we seek most, the warmth and security of a place that nutures and protects us? Isn't that what we crave in our relationships? Certainly he was not talking about going out on a shopping trip to the Orient? Or was the East for him, Prague born, the seat of civilization, Jerusalem? Again, another symbol of birth, our origins?

This time of year people send out the seasonal cards, best wishes, greetings, poses of a variety of familial or solitary bliss. With the family pet, in front of the tree, on vacation, dressed like elves, in a studio. The camera catches us as we wish to be seen or at least that is our intent in posing, but sometimes it sees something else. Like a clenched fist, or a mis-placed gaze. The red-eye effect brings out teh devil in us. A stray hair that hides a peculiar look. A yearning gesture couched in a certain body placement. Yet, with these imperfections we send them out, these symbols of our connections, our relationships. We want people to know who we are, how we relate, what matters.

Do I matter if I am not important to people? Am I truly here if I leave no footsteps behind? Who am I if not the sum of my relationships?

Blue Song

by Tennesse Williams

I am tired.
I am tired of speech and of action.
If you should meet me upon the
street do not question me for
I can tell you only my name
and the name of the town I was
born in --but that is enough.
It does not matter whether tomorrow
arrives anywmore. If there is
only this night and after it is
morning it will not matter now.
I am tired. I am tired of speech
and of action. In the heart of me
you will find a tiny handful of
dust. Take it and blow it out
upon the wind. Let the wind have
it and it will find its way home.

Readiness to Change

12.29.06

I took a run this morning through the neighborhood park for the first time in years. Trying to squeeze in my exercize during school break with the kids sleeping in I ventured out early for some pavement pounding and was surprised at the number of people out. Dog walkers, slow amblers, ancient Chinese couples with placid faces, a tersely visaged Hasidic woman in her long skirt and jogging shoes, a gorgeous Russian couple smiling in the sun, a couple of youthful looking Hispanic men with wide waists, an old man walking backward with his cane, a grandpa with a tiny grandson hopping along behind him, blond hair shaking with each step, a black woman with many gadgets attached to ears and arms, a muscled man with his dog who smiled at me broadly. I take in deep breathes, feeling strong and surprised at how easy it is to use my body this way after years of spinning, stepping, dancing and Latin Grooving.

The Health Education model used by so many these days is called Readiness to Change: based on the belief that no matter what a person's professed interest in getting better, changing habits, improving health, unless they are ready to change, no amount of health education will work. We have various measures of this state of mind and encourage people to be aware of where they lie on a scale of 1-10, to get them really thinking about if this is the right time for them to expend the time and energy and often resources to turn their lives around. I look at my fellow joggers, walkers and runners and see people who somewhere decided to take care of themselves, to use their human bodies as well as they can. I think of myself and my constant effort to improve various areas of my life and wonder why is change so hard?

I work with people who want healthier bodies that don't hurt, don't embarass them, don't give them chronic diseases. They ahve lost and re-gained hundreds of pounds in their efforts, but now have given up and are resorting to surgery to shed unwanted weight. I sit with them, encourage them to look at how they got to where they are, how they will have to change their lives to maintain their new bodies, how their relationships may change, how they will see themselves in the world. My boss asked me yesterday, why I think some people don't lose their required 10% of their body weight during thier 6 months with us and I said simply, their habits serve a purpose they dont' want to give up. They are simply not ready to change.

And I wonder if this comes from simply fear of the unknown. We may not want to give up our bad habits because we love chimichangas or our cigarettes our our porno or our gambling because they make us feel good. It's pretty simple. But each of us has a wake up call one day in which we have to look at those habits because suddenly, they don't feel so good any more. So we go on a diet, quit smoking, turn off the porn or the poker and deal with the empty space the activity no longer fills. And what comes flooding into that space is the very thing that drives us back to the habit: the boredom, loneliness, depression, anxiety, fear. These feelings which are so hard to manage well drive us to want distraction, so we don't have to feel discomfort.

So what is so hard about sitting with these feelings of dis-ease? As children we embrace and express all of our emotions ranging from glee to typhoon like tantrums and we survive, well at least those of us whos parents allow us to. Now we sit with adult bodies housing many original unmet needs from childhood, or at least that's what the therapists say and we're not allowed to squeal in delight or rant with rage, tremble with fear. We keep our stoic faces (especially the men folk) and proud stances and walk around fooling everyone as we try to fool ourselves.

Then we have a heart attack, or a spouse leaves us, or a job is lost, or a child dies and we have to wake up. And we do. For a moment. The question is, do we then go back to sleep again? When fate or destiny calls, shakes up our lives, do we listen or do we turn away? Do we look at the newly developed stomach pains or spots on our legs or night terrors or morning dreads and say, "what goes on here?" Or do take a Mylanta, apply creams, swallow sleeping pills or up the caffeine content of our coffee? Do we dare look in the mirror and say "who goes there?"

I look around at the people I love dearly and wonder how they have made their changes. One has moved from continent to continent, ever seeking, never finding. One has created a child through surrogacy, a dream come true. One had an affair, left a marriage, re-mated and at 45 had her first child, is blissful. Another has moved her whole family to Africa and is raising ehr sons there. Huge changes on the outside, but are they any different inside? That's not for me to say. My experience of them is not much different than it's ever been. So what does change really mean?

Our bodies are constantly in flux, sloughing skin cells, laying down new neural pathways if we work hard at changing thoughts, re-channeling them. But do desires, hopes, dreams and fears ever change? Is it only how we manage and re-direct them that we can control our dis-comfort? When a smoker gives up cigarettes adn puts on 50 lbs, have they reallay "changed?" If he were to meditate for 20" daily, would he really different or just using other activities to occupy that space that smoking used to? He might indeed have more energy, taste foods differently, have a different social life around non-smokers, feel better for his ability to breathe freely again. They say if you smile it will make you feel happy. So if we think good thoughts, does that make us good? So much of how we feel in life is affected by our relationships, so when those are problematic all we can really do is change our relationship to the relationship. And in so doing, perhaps they change. For when one partner alters his steps in the delicate dance of courting or mating or staying intimate, the other must move, adapt or get out of the way. One foot in front of the other, over and over again until the new dance becomes routine. Ready or not.

Projections

12.28.06

In his pop culture titled book "Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life," James Hollis opines that most of our anxiety and depression is generated by our projections, which arise "from a neglected dynanmic value within us: usually it is essentially unconscious, but has a certain energy, which, when we have not attended it consciously, escapes repression and enters the world as a hope, a project, an agenda, a fantasy, or a renewal of expectation." He goes on to suggest that, "Being accountable for the content and issues embodied in our eroded projections is probably the chief service we can bring to our jobs, our partners, our children...This principle of cleaning up our own backyard can as much apply to the conflicts between faiths, between nations, between social systems as it does to those between individuals....How many wars are generated by the power of what we will not face in ourselves? And who among us is strong enough, or ethical enough to say that we are our own problems?"

As I read about new settlements proposed for the West Bank again (in exchange for dismantling the illegal one, jeez when will this ever stop?), Iran's continued in-roads to Iraq, our own incursions into Afghanistan and elsewhere, massacres around the world I think about what social issues are not being addressed by our leaders rummaging around in others' back yards. Vietnam and Iraq seem good examples of our need to muck up other people's belief systems in order to justify our own. John Updike, in his latest book The Terrorist, features an Imam who cultivates a young Muslim convert to Jihadist truck driver. Updike editorializes in this novel that what the extreme fundamentalists of Islam hate about America the most is that we have stolen their god, meaning, I believe, that our values, our commodoties have become so ubiquitous and seductive that even the most devout of their flock desire our satellite dishes, our Baywatch, our freedoms, even while decrying them. The teenager recruited to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel struggles with this conflicting desire for normalcy a la Animal House and a higher sense of godly purpose and chooses to join the Jihad when humiliated by his American peer group. Only at teh last moment does he allow his compassion for a couple of children in a car driving along side his truck open his heart enough to release his finger from the trigger. One potential crusader for Allah lets go for a split moment of an agenda and retrieves his own belief system long enough to divert disaster.

So, as we run around the world, waging wars, securing access to resources, mandating various "human rights" requirements on our aid or development packages, pontificating about our freedoms and denying global warming, I wonder what we're really not talking about. How about poverty rates in some states that rival developing countries? Sexual abuse of children and child pornography? Obesity rates claiming close to 60% of our adult population? Poisoned water, polluted air, rampant environmental abuse, depression, road rage, alienation of our species being?

In self-help books we are advised to look within and not without, when feeling malaise. But isn't it so much easier to blame the spouse, the job, the house, the malfunctioning elipitical trainer than our own weaknesses and unaddressed shadows? We may praise Hussein's death sentance, but didn't we not too long ago support him? We decry voting violations in Nigeria but what about our own black population who found polling places mysteriously closed on election day? It's much more fun to point fingers than look in a mirror and our Jerry Springers make celebrities of those of us who are willing to wave our dirty panties for all to gawk at.

I listen to Radio Nueva Vida, an evangelical Christian station in spanish (for practice, not inspiration) and am constantly reminded that if we believe in Jesus, if we put our faith in the Lord all of our prayers will be answered. Is this some form of biblical psychotherapy? Can Jesus, God, the Lord, really be that energy in ourselves that we need to acknowledge and polish like a bronze bowl, preparing for teh sustenance we must go out and seek daily? I was not raised with religion, but the more I read about psychology, astrology, religion and introspection the more I believe that what we are continually seeking is the answer within, not without. Something goes amok, however, in our socialization process, at least in this culture with which I am most familar. We stress conformity, co-dependence and coddling. If this is a result of a market economy, those qualities serve us well to keep Costco (saw my first one today) busy and the stock market robust. But if these reflexes are innate human characteristics, or most likely to emerge when basic needs are met, then is there really any hope for us to break out of our ticky-tacky houses, look at our back yards and honestly asses the weeds, the bare patches, the hopeful sprouts of new growth, the dying flowers? When so many of us are trapped (some say that 50% of us qualify as depressed or anxious) in these pre-fab houses, denying our "neglected dynamic values" is it any wonder we spend so much on our military distractions?

As I face my own projections, hang them on the clothes line in my back yard to dry, can I do my own mending, my own tailoring, my own alterations or do I hire a tailor, visit the dye factory or maybe just throw out the whole mess and buy a new wardrobe? Shall I blame the seamstress, the weaver, the salesperson, the packaging, the pricetag for the ill-fit? Or dare I let the wind sweep away the wrinkles, unloose the clothespins and carry away the old vetements, revealing flesh to the sun with all its imperfections and mutable possibilities?

Returns

12.26.06


Today would be the first day of returning unwanted or broken gifts. It is also the day of returning to one’s home after vacation and I feel a huge sense of relief. Being 5 days without my usual routine, I am aware of how important some of the little things in life have become, ½ hour of daily practice, my morning tea in an old chair from Michigan, my dance class, sitting on the front porch after a long day looking up at the night sky. The weather in AR prohibited some of these things and not having my cello and other hobbies at hand was also a problem. But this is the first time traveling where I felt, I absolutely could not live here and that was strange. There’s always been a side of me that loves to imagine finding whatever I need where I am, in a strange city or country, sort of like a cosmic Where’s Waldo picture I might have landed in. A university town usually has a music deparment, therefore string instructors and dance teachers; good coffee shops and eclectic clubs, cultural offerings so I always think I could safely land in one of these. But this time, even in 2 such places, I could not. Perhaps it was the incessantly grey weather or the overwhelming sense of drowning in big box stores and franchise hell. Certainly the lack of alcohol didn’t help either. My husband’s family is dear, loving, welcoming and always happy to see us, so that wasn’t it either. The kids were happy to see cousins and to enjoy the holiday festivities. But I felt adrift.

The Phoenix airport had announcements in English & Spanish and I found myself pulled again, to this other place in my mind. And wonder why a language has such an effect. I use it daily at work with my office mate, Rocio, and listen to my evangelical station, Radio Nueva Vida, on all my commutes, so perhaps missing it for these few days was part of my dis-orientation. What’s strange is that it’s not even a part of my past in any big way, except for loving and studying so many languages in high school and college then spending time in Cuernevacas in college, living with a family, and of course having a crush on Abelardo Albaran, some teen I must have met at a bar or as part of an exchange program. Then, I never really used Spanish again until public health school working with Mexican Migrants on the Eastern shore of Maryland. It came back quickly but then got put away again until a few years ago when I came back to public health and my last job. Now I don’t get to use it as much as I would like, but am looking forward to starting my own class at Kaiser fairly soon.

So, what does this language lure mean? It used to be French, I used it in Zaire and then more recently at the French production company where I worked in Hollywood. Something about slipping out of one’s own idioma and into another makes you focus and what you really want to say or need to hear. There is also a different feel to these softer tongues, both in the mouth and to the ear. One shapes one’s mouth differently (is there anything sexier than a francophone’s pouty lips saying “tu peux faire ca pour moi?”). I can’t quite figure out what it is about spanish that equally speaks to me; perhaps it's more the vocablulary (lluvia de ideas for brainstorming) than the sound of it, but there is something a bit more mellow and soft than English and her germanic roots.

In coming back, returning, I feel comfort and also desire to keep moving. I was saying to someone how as we get older seem to have nostalgia for our roots, whence we came. I miss NY, her energy, I miss the Mediterranean, her soft sea swells. I miss the Caribbean, her sandy shores and the many marinas we moored at. I wonder if it's as much the places that I miss as the feelings I had in them. I no longer have a "home" that I can go back to, and having sold my half of the last vestige of my mother's memory, I don't know where to turn exactly for that sense of belonging. There is a feeling of it here, in LA, with my family, but something is missing, something elemental and elusive. I keep thinking Mexico, for some reason, having fallen in love with this mountain town in Guanajuato, but was it just a moment in time, feeling that familiar flutter afoot as I explored something new? Was it more the memory of being on my own, as a youth, ever searching, never finding that I am just so used to? Or did I feel a pull to a place that reminded me of both Greenwich Village, Prague and Marbella all at once?

Do we at middle age begin to question our past as we contemplate our future and yearn for the familiar while also craving the new, the challenges of the unknown? This photo of the cemetary we visited in Arkansas reminds me of the vastness that is both our past and our eternal future in death. We inch ever away from one and towards the other and along the way find our fellow traveling souls, equally on their search or standing on the sidelines watching. Do we return to the earth whence we came or do we dissipate into the grey skies overhead, only to rain down again on our ancestors and likely heirs?

Roads I have Run

12.25.06

Christmas morning doesn't so much dawn as fizzle in on those little foggy cat feet we read about. More grey skies and wet streets welcome my pounding feet as I take my jog through what feels like barren land although it is highly developed. They have cut down all the trees to put in this housing complex and then they plant little saplings in front of each lot, like whisps of hair on bald pates. It is quiet as I run, no people, no cars, not even a stray dog and it feels like there is no life around me. I wonder why this is as I run by house after house, all looking the same. And I think of the roads I have run over the years, not many as I'm not avid at this sport, but I am taken back to Vermont, to Virginia, to Mexico to streets where I felt humanity around me as I trotted along. As my lungs fill with humid air and I feel my thighs pumping in a new way, I feel centered and grateful that I have this vehicle that houses me so well. When my mind becomes a battleground of competing desires, worries, hopes and fears I am grounded in this animal place that I can find any time.

Poor grandma, at 88, does not have that privilege any more. Her body is frail; this morning after her fall two days ago she doesn't have the energy to drive back to the rest of her family. Her face is etched with anxiety and pain and I feel so sorry that she is loosing control over the one thing we value so much: indepdendence. She has to rely on her children now and may even have to leave her apartment for a higher level of assisted living. I hope when I'm at that age I have my strength, if not of body of character to carry me through.

The kids will wake soon and their excitement will follows us on the 3 hour drive. I have put the kibosh on major expectations for presents this year, tryingi to center us all on experiences instead. Hanah's been spending hours making clay presents and Noah has just reveled in the skateboard park, so I feel our "vacation" has been a success for them. I have managed to find moments in each day to connect to my thoughts, my energies, my loved ones and those moments are my happiness.

As I run, I think mostly of people and where we all are in our lives, how we interweave in our dreams, our talks, our connections, sharing this tapesty of life we attempt to weave together. Sometimes we pull out threads and disrupt the pattern. Sometimes we rip the cloth and cannot repari it. And sometimes we find a wonderful new skein of yarn, or a new color, a different texture and dare to create something distinct, unique and marvelous. Perhaps we keep pieces of the old cloth around, or interweave it into the new, or perhaps we toss it out completely to start fresh again. The world is a huge heap of tossed fabric, re-cycled weaves and tattered clothes. May we all find something warm, someting wondrous, something that fits to wrap around our weary shoulders and hold our hearts on this day and onward.

Concrete Dancing

12.23.06

I awake to find that Michael's mother has fallen in the night on the way to the bathroom and cut her arm on the way from vertical to horizontal. At 88 she's tottery and my sister in law and I talk about how we try to preserve our elder's independence. We are all so "busy" in our lives we must farm out our parents to "homes" to care for them and I am reminded of my own deliquence in not nursing my mother in her final days. What is then, this thing we call famly?

I take a run in this housing development with evocative names like Wood Duck road and Morning Mist Lane and find myself at the edge of a road that bears a sign warning that imminent domain may soon extend it through the pristine farmland adjacent. I stop my job and do some jumping jacks as I look out over the rolling land, grey-green velvet folds of dried grass and strewn hay. My legs aren't used to this form of ambulation, but it feels good to sweat in the cold, feel the air and sun against my face.

We take Noah to a skateboard park and I am enchanted by these long limbed boys as they sail through the air, twisting like whirlwinds as they catch their boards underneath them, performing twists with the ease of an Alvin Ailey dancer. The concrete layout includes dips and bowls and ramps and rails and Noah's in heaven as he watches the other boys (and a teen girl) doing their tricks. He's a late starter and watches the other ones intently; we are such visual learners. Hanah and i inhabit the jungle gym; she makes me Mulagatawney stew and Jam with the sand piles and then fights off the abominable snow man. I love watching her and the other kids, various ages as they dance around each other, seemingly with a radar for crossed paths, inevitable crashes, missed connections. These are precious ages and our parks function to germinate their play, their explorations, whether paved with concrete or grass or ergonomically correct re-cycled tires. The boarders, in their silent soaring moments, raise my spirits and kindle hopes for tomorrow.

Waking

Skin tearing on grandma's elbow as she crumples slowly to the ground.

Cold cheeks in winter's sunlight.

A sudden welcome warmth as Hanah's bladder empties down her long jeaned legs.

Scraped ribs when Noah's skateboard escapes him.

Peppermint licks on my tongue after lunch.

Hot tears brimming behind black sun glasses.

Soft fatigue in a square foot of sunshine cups me as I doze on the jungle gym.

I awake and have no idea where I am.

Resting Places

12. 22. 06

We end the evening with a dip in the hot tub and Noah braves the supposedly heated pool. A couple of car rigs are pulled into the parking lot as this is also a truckers’ layover. Some teen girls giggle their bikini’d way into the supposed sauna which offers a mere elevated temperature and the whole feel is time-warp in the dusky light. Hanah poses pool side, fluorescent light “bathing” and I enjoy the feeble Jacuzzi jets against my lower back. The whole pool/patio area has been enclosed from the outdoors so a mustiness prevails everywhere. The next morning I have to laugh as I see 2 automatic cereal dispensers offer up Froot Loops and Raisin Bran alongside the gloopy sugary donuts. I put on my anthropologist cap and settle in for the duration.

An early morning run/trot takes me alongside the freeway on a back road which offers some quiet from this intersection of all things Franchise. It’s not much different from the market places/mercados of the world except everything is gargantuan in size, buildings outsized with matching vehicles. Inside Walmart I am hit by the white lights and glare of plastic, polyester and polyurethane products and search desperately for a simple greeting card. Michael noted that there are now carts for people to sit in while shopping if walking the aisles is too strenuous. You can go from your car to a motorized cart and never expend enough energy to break a sweat. This is why my job in barriatric surgery is secure.

The drive up to Fayetteville takes us through low lying pine woods and winter landscapes, past dormant fields and farm land. We leave the strip malls behind and travel the road with our fellow truckers and holiday seekers.

Three hours later we arrive at M's sisters housing development called Clabber Creek. Needing to stretch our legs we walk down the road to a neighboring cemetary and tell stories about the dead denizens. I'm drawn to the newly dug gravees, those that hold the children or the young men and women, wondering what happened. The sun sets warmly on the cold horizon and Hanah comes up with a description: " As we walk toward the cemetary the setting sun casts a beautiful glow over the Christmas trees." Some horses marvel at this quartet of bipeds who actually use their limbs to transport themselves along the highway and we wave to them. A lovely white farm house, complete with red barn, fills the bucolic setting with its holiday lights and Noah enjoys this winter wonderland.

I scrunch my cap down further as we set out to a Razorbacks Basketball game tonight. Of all the sports that Michael likes it's the one I enjoy the most as I can actually understand it. I love the squeak of rubber as the players' feet dance about and their handsa are marvelous in their gestures and their large size. They beckon each other, point to placements, invite moves, toss, catch and slam dunk. Muscled shoulders and calves remind me of our wondrous bodies when we use them so well. Times out and half time feature the cheer leaders hoisted in the air in their little elve outfits and mascots bop around in outsize costumes, gesturing the crowd into supporting the home team. A teen next to me spent the whole game crocheting 3 scarves or reading the bible, never once looking at the game. She was there with her avid fan family but found her own way to be with herself as well.

Seeking an after game drink we venture to the main strip of this college town and enjoy some home brews. I'd forgotten what energy buzzes around these 20=somethings. It's fun to be reminded of youth's ventures.

Seeking Simplicity

12.21.06



The insanity of this culture washed over me as we arrived in the Las Vegas airport on the way to our family visit in Arkansas. Slot machines bleeped and purred, Minority Report-like plasma screen posters on the wall used CGI to promote magazine covers while TV monitors bombarded us with news. I couldn’t hear my husband 3 feet away from me and found myself just tuning out to everything in an effort to find some peace inside my head. Now, on the airplane the kids thumb through Skymall magazine, mini-consumers in training and Noah points out an air gun that shoots marhsmallows. I try to contain my dismay at yet another example of our ability to combine food wastage with weaponry but get side-tracked by another item for sale, the Automatic Breakfast Cereal Dispenser for only $79.99! With this handy dandy piece of battery run tom foolery “fixing the days first meal will never again be a messy, time consuming chore.” It’s a “healthy gift for the whole family,” as “controlled portions also keep the pounds off.” My jaw drops in a state of dis-belief at the audacity of this ridiculous device. Have people no idea how to use a measuring cup!????!!!!

Yet, while I decry this technological madness, what relieves me of the tension it generates is my very own piece of it: my Mac and I-tunes playing Bach’s Cello Concertos as a distraction. So where does the continuum of technological appropriateness cross the line from time or space saving to the sheer obscenity of the ABC Dispenser? Why is my mini-van any less offensive than a Hummer if I could be driving a Mini-Cooper? How do we live in this culture and hold on to our values as the temptations to make life simpler with all our available gadjetry keep pulling at us like the vendors in a Moroccan souk? Email saves us a trip the post-office; voice-mail the hand wrenching labor of penning a note to someone; IM-ing eliminates the struggle to pick up a phone and speak to someone; text-messaging avoids the effort of completing a whole sentence or capitalizing letters.

All our inventions are aimed at making life simpler or safer, yet do they make us happier? The kids have just as much fun on a rusty swing in Mexico as the ergonomically designed, plastic textured one in Beverly Hills. I get to my destination just as quickly in a high tech hybrid as a 20 year old Volvo. My coffee tastes exactly the same whether I use the latest Bose speaker enhanced Morning Brew Automatic Alarm system as a French Press. There are still 24 hours in a day, whether I mark them on a Patek Philippe or my trusty Timex.

Our houses fill with stuff. We re-gift at Christmas, passing around the proverbial fruit cake that no one really wants. We chase the latest plasma whatever it is, but the story being broadcast hasn’t changed. Hanah sits here patiently waiting for me to finish my “memoir-ies” so she can play with my photo booth, but has as much fun with a mirror. There’s a magazine called Simple that hawks yet more “things” to help stream-line your life. Something's wrong with this picture. Where do we find the quiet, the time, the space to rest, to create and contemplate? Isn't there a way to take the box of cereal from the cabinet and pour it in our appropriately sized bowl without passing it through an $80 contribution to the plastic landfill of the future?

We arrive at a re-furbished Howard Johnsons complete with cable and wireless so the kids and mom have their technologies at hand. I sigh and settle in, accepting that what allows me to rant here is the very thing I rant about: progress. All this "stuff" is just the fruit of our never ending quest to keep telling stories, stay connected and communicate in an every busy, noise filled world. I will just try harder to find the beauty in a day, to ignore the glaring neon signs and locate a simple flower, a perfect 5th, the scent of pine on a wet winter day.

Blame

12.15.06

At a staff meeting today one of the dieticians reported an encounter with a client who threatened to kill her if she didn't help him. Turns out he's a psych patient at Kaiser as well and we discussed how to deal with patients who turn on their providers when they get bad news or just need someone upon whom to vent their spleen. It's disconcerting to think that we might face someone in our effort to do well and kindly in the world who can only see their pain and in their mis-guided attempts to be relieved thereof, decide that dumping it on someone else is the only way to cope.

I wonder why some of us blame others for their pain and others blame themselves and then some take a look at the pain, dissect it and take responsibility for that which is theirs to own and assign rightfully that which isn't to the appropriate cause. When we're miserable in a relationship, we tend to blame the other person for not giving us for what we need, even if we forgot to ask them or deep down know that they can't. When someone tells us something we don't want to hear, like we're pushy or self-centered, we might blame them for being judgemental rather than looking at our behaviour and taking stock. Or if a doctor tells you you have terminal cancer, rather than live with that awful awareness, one could choose to take him down in the parking lot with a rifle.

They say that women turn anger inward (depression) and men turn it outward (agression). I've known both genders who do either, but I have found the gender tendency to be fairly accurate. As women we are responsible for creating and sustaining life, a pretty powerful job, so it makes sense we would take on our shoulders a fair load of that which goes on in our lives. But somewhere we teach our girls that it's not okay to express anger or their needs, or that it's only okay with certain polite language and after everyone else's needs have been met. Most of my clients are women, caretakers, pleasers, don't-rock-the-boaters. Some have been abused sexually, emotinoally, physically. And all seem to take out their anger, their sadness on themselves with self-destructive behaviours. Much of their psychological work is to move the blame and shame for their pain to the rightful perpetrators, the parents, social workers, culture, spouses or whomever have hurt them. They may lose the weight of years of self medicating with food, but will they rise out of these skins with their pride, their passions, their power intact?

We do teach blame in this nation. There's always someone to sue, some 800 number to call when we have a complaint, human resources, the help desk, a lawyer. Rather than own our negligence in putting a hot cup of coffee on our lap and scalding ourselves, we blame the restaurant who provided the brew. The blame game seems like yet another opiate to keep people dis-empowered. If there's always someone else to lob responsibility on, we never grow, we never learn. We can slide through life never knowing what it's like to feel the pain of making a mistake, learning from it and getting better for the lesson.

Noah takes on too much responsibility for life's mishaps; Hanah not enough. I wonder where that comes from. Same gene pool, same parents. But different mix, of course. There's a certain power in owning one's actions and children seem to be born with a goodly amount: all they have to do is cry and someone meets a need. On the other hand, when things go wrong they tend to own responsibility for that as well. It seems a challenge to balance the two and to teach that skill to the next generation.

We push victimhood with all of our self-help books and guru led workshops. Our leadership blames jihad rather than our global arrogance for hatred of America; economic constraints rather than military priorities for lack of education funding and bovine eructions rather than man made global warming. Is it the alcoholic mentality who places one's destiny in a higher power? Or is it the tunnel vision of a political elite protecting their own. Or is it some deeply inate human trait that finds some advantage in blaming others than looking inward?

When my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, amongst other diseases, all she could hear was that she had alcohol induced diabetes. When the truth finally sunk in, she knuckled my head one night and said it was all my fault, albeit jokingly. This from a woman who smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day for 34 years. I have often wondered why she lay that on me, the daughter who begged her to stop, to take care of herself. Was it easier to put the choice to slowly kill herself on someone else's shoulders than her own? Or was she saying, as she had during our childhoods, that raising us as a single mother was a hardship requiring the aid of cigarettes and a nightly bottle of chardonnay? What if she had stopped one day and looked at herself, her choices and decided differently? Where would she have placed her blame for teh pain in her life? Her husband who left her for the babysitter? Her undiagnosed OC mother? Her stern, unbending father? A culture that shackled her youthful passions and talents in an era where women decorated their men?

What if she, the man who would kill his dietician rather than face his unhealthy eating choices, we all could look in the mirror and say, "yes, I have made un-wise choices, let's see what I can do now." Could we listen to our deepest truths? Could we ask for help instead of lashing out, bombing indiscriminately, stuffing 4 pizzas down our throats, pushing away our loved ones? Could we? Would we dare?

The House Across the Street

12.1.06

In the house across the street, the new outsized version of the mini-mansion, there is a light on in the foyer. It's soft and yellowish, back-lighting a huge potted plant of some sort that sits in front of the window. From my vantage point on the front porch here, there is an eerieness to the empty feeling behind the scene that has been staged for passers-by to view. The home sits empty, although dressed inside to show, with a price-tag of $1.9 million in a neighborhood of $800,000-$900,000 abodes. It stands out among the 1920's era structures like a wedding cake among cupcakes and I wonder who will choose this neighborhood at that price tag. It is a walk-to area with schuls and temples abundant, but on a street with no orthodox families and at 4 bedrooms it begs a prolific couple. We are the only family on the block and most of the neighbors are either single or retired. Melrose avenue and its busy traffic flow of tourists and high school students creates parking and petty robbery issues on the street but it's otherwise quiet and within walking distances of parks, shops, the library and post office. All in all, a nice place to live.

So why does this picture window conjur up in my mind the family I wish to see move in? Will it be a pre-made crop of kids, dog, cat and harried parents? Newlyweds in the film business with a penchant for restaurants within walking distance? A retired fabric designer in need of a large "family" room for entertaining near the granite countered kitchen? My kids want to buy lottery tickets so we can win enough money to move in despite my firm contestation against quadrupling a mortgage payment and having more to dust. It's only 600 sq. feet larger than our home, but feels bigger because of the open floor plan. Plus it has a pool. It might be nice to have more space and the kids will need their own bedrooms soon, but, the idea of more surface area does nothing for me these days. It's just more room for stuff and clutter and more yelling up and down stairs to call people to dinner. I grew up in a 3 story, 5 bedroom house that felt as small and tight as a dark shoe box. But the summers spent on a 56' boat felt more open and light than the entire building that housed my winters.

I drive by the mansions being built in Beverly Hills and the additions being added in our neighborhood and think about space, what it means to inhabit a few walls. How some families grow up in a one room hut with no privacy and others in football field sized, marbled halls. How our built environments are now being blamed for stress, chronic disease and obesity. How a hostess in NYC forbids her guests to wear shoes in her apartment due to her new floors and prohibits brown and red foods lest something fall on the white furniture. How where we live, shapes how we live. How, during times of stress, some people re-decorate or move the furniture. How leaving one place for another can be symbolic of and conducive to personal growth. But also how exchanging one home for another can highlight the addage: "whereever you go, there you are."

We are a migratory animal, ever seeking resources, food and shelter, opportunities adn freedom. We leave our families for college, jobs, love, a change of scenery, a rebirth, improved status, safety. Most of us no longer grow up in the same house for our entire childhoods and now with so many blended families, kids get split between homes and parents. We collect so much stuff that if we can't house it, we rent storage units for the overflow. We now build garages knowing they will be converted to office space and entertainment centers. There seems never to be enough space, yet what do we really do with all this extra room? Fill it with extra furniture or larger appliances? But do we invite more people to come over? Do we cook bigger meals, take longer baths, sleep more hours or do more hobbies with all this extra air around us? Why do we feel we need more and more structure to accomplish the very same thing we can do in a smaller space? It all seems just to create more distance between the occupants and more clutter around which to navigate.

I hope the people who move in across the street have lots of children to fill those bedrooms. I hope they bring life with them and Hannukah candles or Halloween pumpkins in that window. I hope they cook latzkes or fried chicken or rice and beans and sit around the big kitchen island every night and talk about their day, their weekend plans. I hope the front door slams as the eldest heads out for a date on Melrose. I hope the electric garage door opens to reveal a woodshop for carpentry projects. I hope the new occupants kiss each other goodbye in that foyer as they bustle the kids off to school and themselves off to work. I hope their labrador sits on the front porch in the morning sun and yawns at the postman. I hope they like their view of the house across the street. It is modest by compare, but houses a family there.