The Mouth of the Sky

Hi, friends. I'm sorry I haven't posted for nearly a month. Much has been percolating inside this summer, as I'm sure is the case for most of us. I have been staying at my sister's place in Pesotum, Illinois, where she has just started a therapeutic riding center called Healing Horse Stables. Today was the 2nd class through the Champaign Park District, with 8 riders and 4 horses and many volunteers making it work. I was nervous, just like I was for the first class last week. I don't deal well with so many variables--riders, horses, different saddles and bridles, stirrup lengths, side-walkers (in case some riders are unsteady), barrels to twine around and balls to throw in buckets. So I just sweet-talked the horse I was leading, kissing her nose when we stopped, telling her what a good girl she was being. I survived being in the maelstrom of all that chaos by focusing on the horse. When I was most nervous, I closed my awareness down to just her--her brown eyes looking around, her sweet horse smell, her need to get out of the way of other people and horses.

I suppose if there's a bigger idea here it's that this is one way to get through the chaos of our everyday lives: narrow the focus. There is so much, both outside of us and inside of us, clamoring for our attention. And though we often believe we should be in control of it all--especially what's going on inside each of us--sometimes we need to let go. We need to know that we're not in control of everything, and we don't have to be. The storms will rage, inside and out. The rivers will rise and overflow; the wind will pull down tree limbs; we will get lost in the fog. Maybe what we need when this happens is one thing to lean into, just one. One song, one bowl of ice cream, one horse, one walk, one hug. To let the rest happen as it will.

And then maybe we, like the sky in this picture, can sing out light when the time comes. We can always hope.

A June Day in My Homeland (Pesotum, Illinois)

9:00am  The alarm goes off. I am going to the very small church where my sister goes, my presence requested so I can add to the size of the choir (from 6 members to 7) because they're singing a special song. I am a mostly-Buddhist, who-knows-what-else-ist, but I love these kind people and this small church so I go. My 4 year old nephew comes over to sing too, though who knows whether he's singing the actual song or one of his own, and nobody minds because he is so cute.

Noon-ish  Lunch with church people; I sit next to my nephew (John John, or JJ) and he shows me silly cartoons on his iPod. Welcome to 21st century childhood.

2-ish  We return home to my sister's Therapeutic Riding Center. It's in the 80s and there's a strong Illinois prairie breeze. I bounce between the 7 dogs in the house and the horse-training going on outside. I sit in the sun and the wind so the flies don't bite me.

3-ish  I decide to meditate! On the other side of the house, where no one goes. Among the tall grass. It is 30 minutes of what meditation should be. I can imagine for the first time doing a whole hour every day. The only sounds are the wind and one of the horses running in his pasture. I finish filled with love for my friends and the world.

4-ish-6ish  I sit in a reclining chair on the porch. The windchimes play. The dogs come in and out the dog door, and my sister waters plants and chats on occasion. I think maybe I should get up and do something. I don't. I leave my phone in my pocket.

6ish-10  We drive into town to have dinner with my brother, his wife and 2 boys. They are fun and silly. We look at old family pictures together--from when we were kids, and then older ones going all the way back to the late 1800s. One relative, nicknamed "Leafy," looks so Irish I have to laugh, and there are many pictures of her. It is overwhelming. One letter is a typed statement by my great grandfather of how he will behave over the next year, and it includes not flirting with more girls than he can handle at one time.

10ish-11ish  Return to the country, the horses, the dogs--and then I take a walk down the road in front of my sister's house. No car passes. Fireflies call to each other over the fields, corn and soybeans and tall grass beside the road. The moon lights the landscape nearly as much as each homestead's lights, which are islands in the big flat rich fields. I keep walking past being tired; I keep telling myself "just a little bit longer." The wind is a friend. I think of Robert Frost's poem, "I have been one acquainted with the night" and I feel like a Midwest sprite and I let my hair blown around me.

11ish-midnight  Writing. Just journaling. My three dogs sleeping next to me on the couch. The windchimes outside. And then a sweet and hilarious friend messages me, and we chat while I can barely keep my eyes open.

Some time after midnight  Bed. To dream of dogs and horses, fireflies and fairies, wind and stars.

My Meditation Spot

This is where I get to meditate at my sister's Therapeutic Riding Center, Healing Horse Stables, in Pesotum, Illinois. This is beside her house, with a pasture behind that contains a curious and sweet stallion named Manue. As my sister Dorey and I were wandering through the side yard, noting the spots in the long grass where deer must bed down for the night, we came across a small area paved with bricks. "This is your meditation spot!" she said, and I knew she was right.

People meditate differently, and suggest different books and approaches. For me, the most important thing is just to sit quietly, my eyes closed, for a pre-determined period of time. Today it was 20 minutes. When I meditate, I don't try to "clear my mind," or attain an enlightened state, or stop worrying--I don't try to do anything. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. My mind and feelings dart around, from thought to thought. I notice that I'm thinking or feeling something, and then I take another deep breath, focusing on it. And then my mind goes again. And again I notice it moving around. But I don't judge where my mind goes, or what I feel. I don't try to analyze it. I come back to the breath.

For me, the key words in meditation--my informal mantra--are nonstriving and nonjudging.

And what usually happens for me? Why is it worthwhile to do this, knowing I am unlikely to attain enlightenment in those 20 minutes? Mostly: I remember that it is a whole and good thing to simply be myself, sitting quietly in the universe. I let go of the constant internal commentary that tells me I should be doing something productive. I quiet the voices that tell me my job is to solve my problems and the problems of others. The problems are there, yes. But for these 20 minutes, I give myself permission to notice them and not do anything about them.

There is so much struggle in this world. We believe everything will be better once we cleanthekitchenwalkthedoggradepaperspaybillschangethelightbulbovertheoutsidedooranswerthatemailmakemoremorey. For me, meditation is a break from this mindset. It is a peace, an acceptance, to quote my friend Nyssa Hanger, of what is.

Other things may happen for you when you meditate. Or not. They may happen every time, or just occasionally. And all of that is ok. I believe it's worth trying, and doing even if you don't make it a regular practice. You are worth the time it takes to center and understand yourself. You are of worth, even when you're not actually "doing anything."

Some cool quotations

When I was in graduate school, I walked into my mentor's office for the first time and was overwhelmed by the quotes he had on his walls. Every wall had postcards, slips of paper, yellow-lined paper, hand-written and typed quotes. It was a bit like a scene from A Beautiful Mind, and I didn't know what to make of it.

Now I'm about at the same age my mentor was then, and I, too, am obsessed with quotes. I love coming across words written by someone else that resonate with something important inside me, words and ideas that support, clarify, or amplify things I, too, have been thinking. I spend whole days ruminating on quotes. Through my years as a teacher, I have taught the same poems enough times that lines float through my mind.

I am not, like some people, able to recall relevant quotes when I need them. I can't even remember authors' names half the time. But right now, I feel like reading is taking a walk through a gorgeous landscape, and the quotes are the things I simply must take a picture of to remember and think about later.

So having said that, here are a few quotes I've really enjoyed recently.

from Ranier Maria Rilke:

All tenderness you may feel for your childhood is good.

*

There are the hurts. And, always, the hardships.
And there's the long knowing of love--all of it
unsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see:
these are better unsaid.

*

How delicious it is to wake up in a place where no one, no one in the world, guesses where you are. Sometimes I have stopped spontaneously in towns along my way only to taste the delight that no living being can imagine me there. How much that added to the lightness of my soul!




from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Quick Word on Gaslighting

(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you.)

--Walt Whitman

I was talking with a friend the other day--a smart friend who has been through therapy more than once and has thought a lot about psychological issues--and I used the term "gaslighting." This friend gave me a blank look, so I tried to explain it.

A brief explanation isn't easy, trust me. If you want a fuller explanation, I highly recommend you read this short blog post. Basically, "gaslighting" has come to mean when you substitute your own reality for someone else's. It most frequently happens when one person says, "That hurt" and the other person says, "No it didn't."

That's a simplification, of course. Variations on this include someone saying, "You hurt my feelings" and another person saying, "You're just too sensitive." So...instead of recognizing that someone feels hurt, we take away that person's permission to feel hurt. We tell her/him that s/he SHOULDN'T feel hurt. We try to fit FEELINGS into a right/wrong scenario.

We start this with children: Susie hits Bobby and he cries outrageously, dramatically, pouring it on. A parent says, "Oh come on, it didn't hurt that bad." And the parent is probably right: the reaction is outsized compared to the actual pain.

But guess what? We're not kids anymore. And that strategy of dealing with other people's pain is very unhelpful when we're trying to be psychologically astute, mindful grown-ups in relationships with other grown-ups.

So I propose the following:

1. You are ALWAYS allowed to feel whatever you feel--hurt, sad, happy, relieved, scared, whatever.
2. When someone tells you s/he feels ANYTHING negative, DON'T respond by implying the feeling is somehow unearned. I'm not saying you have to take full responsibility when you didn't intend to hurt the other person. Just say this: "I'm sorry you feel hurt." If you're especially courageous, try, "I'm sorry I hurt you" or "I'm sorry what I said or did hurt you." This situation is NOT about right and wrong. It's not about who has the moral high ground. It's simply about someone having feelings.
3. When you feel hurt (or anything else), recognize that FEELINGS are NOT the same as ACTIONS. You are absolutely allowed to feel anything at all, to whatever degree you feel it. But feeling angry DOES NOT justify you yelling at or punching someone else. And those kinds of behaviors don't lead to any kind of understanding, nor to any cessation in the feeling you're having.
3a. Again, FEELINGS DO NOT EQUAL BEHAVIOR.
3b. I would also add that often, anger is related to hurt; that what makes us angry is, in fact, feeling hurt.

In other words, don't gaslight. If someone else is hurt by something you said or did, be courageous enough to face that hurt with compassion. You didn't intend to be hurtful, and you know it. If you don't understand why the person is feeling hurt, gently ask for an explanation. Apologize not because you did anything "wrong," but because you genuinely feel sad that the other person is hurt. (Incidentally, one reason people gaslight is because they feel guilty for having hurt someone else; more of that poisonous judgment, only this time directed inward instead of outwards.)

And if you're feeling hurt, try to communicate that feeling without blame. This is why therapists suggest "I" language to couples: "I feel hurt" is a very different statement from "You hurt me." It is easier to move away from offense and defense--and towards nonjudgmental connection--when each person is responsible for clearly articulating how s/he feels.

There is, of course, more to say on this subject, including the fact that our language doesn't help when we're trying to express that someone else's pain also makes us feel pain. "I'm sorry" is woefully inadequate, when what you really want to say is something like, "I suffer because you are suffering."

We will all screw up and hurt someone else. It's inevitable, and we can't lead our lives trying to be "perfect" so that never happens. But when it does, we can let others and ourselves off the hook by simply saying, "I'm sorry you feel hurt."

The wonderful corollary to that is: "I'm joyful you feel happy." Here's to more of those comments for all of us.

"Theme for Form & Technique of Poetry"

First, if you don't know the amazing Langston Hughes poem, "Theme for English B," go read it now. It's ok. I'll wait.

Now I'll just provide a short introduction, and then you can read an imitation of this poem written by one of my students in Form & Technique of Poetry this past semester. This is our beginning poetry writing class at USF, and yes, one of my assignments is for them to write an imitation poem. It's not only a great way to learn techniques; it's also a long-standing literary tradition, and many publishing poets still use it as a way to get a poem started. Also, it often produces terrific student poems, as the original poem both frees them from their worries about being profound and challenges them to think in ways they hadn't before.

So this is one of many wonderful student poems I got to read this semester. Like so much of my students' work, it showcases issues we still must face in America in 2013--for example, the issue of race and higher education. And of course it gets me thinking about the links between (to steal Taylor Mali's phrase), "stage" poetry and "page" poetry. But mostly this poem just makes me sit back and recognize the unique wisdom each one of our (often very young) students brings into the world, and reminds me that my job involves me being a part of that. How very lucky I am.

Theme for Form/Technique of Poetry

 by D’von Edwards

The professor said,

                  Go home and imitate

                  one of the great poets that inspires you

                  and let yourself run through the words--

                  in this way, anything that comes out will be yours.

As if it’s ever that simple.

I am eighteen, black, born in Miramar, Florida.

I lived there. I loved there. I thrived there.

I survive here. 

I am the only colored student in my class.

After lesson I prefer to take the route home I know best

on pothole ridden back roads

past unscrupulous characters,

through empty parking lots

and up into the bowels of Castor Hall

where I sit at my desk and go back to Miramar to write this:

As if it’s ever that simple.

Some of the very lines I write

I used in rhymes in a life past.

It’s not the same though.

If they’re confined to a page they aren’t free to be me.

They don’t crack with excitement at the thought of a challenge

or burn with righteous indignation

nor do they bleed with enough sarcasm to exsanguinate my insecurities.

They don’t eat, sleep, drink, smoke, or know of being in love

or tell you they are plagued with the paradox of being home sick and sick of home.

If they aren’t me who can they be?

Maybe they belong to the person that credits their worth

with credits and comments and numbers and A’s and B’s and C’s .

And for the hell of it, I’ll add a line about bad bitches with double D breasts,

and it will belong to the same person who will put a third to complete the trilogy

of misogyny, lewdness, and failure.

That is me, but the words on the page are yours,

do with them as you wish.

This is my imitation poem for Form/Technique of poetry.

A small, good thing

The other night, after I received bad news--the kind of news that confirms to your weakest self that the thing you really badly wanted to be good at you aren't, or at least you aren't good enough, which amounts to the same thing; the kind of news that comes on the heels of other events also seeming to confirm this basic unworthiness about you; the kind of news that worms its way into the weak heart of you and makes you feel stupid for even hoping that you might be good enough for something wonderful to happen (and I know the specific kind of news that does this to each of us is different, depending on our own circumstances, and that what exposes my rottenest core wouldn't be so huge to you, and vice versa)--after I received this news, the miraculous happened and I actually took my own advice to take a walk.

I snuck into the garage with my socks and sneakers and sat on the steps to put them on, because walking with my three not-very-bright aging spaniels is more about picking up poop in plastic bags using a flashlight and trying vainly to untangle leashes than about mindfulness and equanimity. And then I half-slid down my steep driveway and turned onto the sidewalk, blindly trying to think about nothing while the various parts of my mind shouted or whispered or screamed in a conversation that went something like this:

Part A: You should change everything about yourself, and then you'll get what you want.
Part B: Someone else will be happy because of this; someone else will feel blessed. That's a good thing.
Part C: FUCKTHEWHOLETOADSUCKINGSHITBAGOFAWORLD
Part D: I want my mommy.
Part E: Stop being such a baby.
Part F: Give up.
Part G: If you let anyone else know how how upset you are, it will make them sad. So just shut up.

I could go on. Every letter of the alphabet had something to say. But you know how those old tracks go.

And then--the neighbor's orange cat saw me and came running over to me. He's a very friendly cat (and I call him a "he" though I don't know the cat's real gender because I love him, and even a possibly inaccurate "him" is more of an endearment than an accurate "it") so he immediately twined around my legs, and I, of course, squatted down to pat him.

He rubbed his head against my hand and I patted his back, feeling his fur soft and still thick from winter under my fingers. Usually when I see him, I pat him until my knees start to hurt and then stand up. But that night, I couldn't stop. I patted him obsessively. I spoke to him the way I do to animals, saying hey-pretty-one and aren't-you-a-sweetie and who's-a-pretty-kitty in low, soothing tones. My knees ached and my thighs hurt and I didn't want to stop, so I just sat down on the sidewalk in front of my neighbor's house. It was after 10pm, and no one was around, or looking out the windows. Though I didn't care. I patted that cat like he was a life raft. He pushed his head against my stomach, rubbed his cheek on the edge of my sneaker. He purred and purred.

Finally I stood up and told him I had to go for my walk, and he should go home. But he didn't. He followed me, walking with me like a dog. I took about 20 steps and he didn't stop. I bent down and picked him up, and he pushed his soft head against my chin and cheeks; he held my face with his paws and pressed his nose to mine. I smelled that he was an outside cat, but I could feel that he was fed well. He was not desperate, a creature I had to worry about; he just wanted to be patted.

Eventually I put him down, and eventually he stopped following me, turning back towards his own house. And I went on the rest of the walk, knowing I had been given a gift: my need and his matched up at just the right time, each of us getting something we craved from an undemanding stranger.

The conversation in my head didn't stop. I wish I could say it did, that this encounter was so magical it knocked me out of my pitiful self.

Here's the thing: it was still magical. It was still a gift. It didn't solve anything or fix anything, but I was grateful anyway. The good and the bad aren't about balancing each other out, any more than a strawberry balances out a flat tire.

It's just: there is the strawberry. There was the cat. As Raymond Carver would say, it was a small, good thing.