as it were

meanwhile, snowbellsI do my part in the war effort by listening to podcasts. This one on Ezra Klein delves into the complexities of economic sanctions.* His interviewee, Adam Touze, peppers his parentheticals with "as it were." This is not as familiar to me as "like" or "uh" so I listen as if it has meaning. 

As I write, errant tabs accidentally fire updates. Bombing my mind. as it were. if you will. if I may. 

Today my daughter is taking me for a ride somewhere, downtown maybe. So I'm going to copy bits of what I wrote on the Village Zendo listserve in response to a beautiful question: What supports you in times of suffering?

My father is a Russian born in Kiev. His father, a professor, was seized and murdered by Stalin. My father remembers Kiev under siege, and feels it again now as he watches the bam bam footage.

as it were. 

He joined the U.S.military because he believed in this country, its democracy, its inclusion. So we lived on military bases during the cold war and were shunned for being Russian. Now my daughter asks if everyone will hate us. No, I say, Russian is many things, too complicated to be an enemy.

We watch the poetry of Tarkovsky (Stalker) and I feel supported. Humans flailing, looking for hope. I am like that.

My friend writes of dancing ash and co-dependent bundles, and I feel supported because his turns of phrase spin me into a new dimension. He writes about writing: "let the page overhear as a benevolent sponge." His words legitimize the hours I’m spending reviewing my diaries. Maybe not so benevolent, in my case. The stories I lived had the power to wound again. as it were!  Now the words begin to blur, lose their meaning, lose their might.

A friend of a friend, Chad, just fled Ukraine. Chad made a beautiful film featuring a Ukrainian artist traumatized by Chernobyl et al.  Russian Woodpecker won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2015. I watched it on Vimeo for 99 cents, and I felt supported.

I feel supported as I email with my father, hear his analysis and heartbreak, and as I read your accounts of wars in your history. We are like that, built to fight. Is there such a thing as fighting for good?

My friend, Kansho, gave a dharma talk (not yet posted, will link when it's ready). He spoke of of the danger of making meaning and also the danger of abandoning it. A bomb is a bomb is a... 

I am grateful to this sangha and our teachers for holding our face to the fire, and especially for the way that art in its many forms calls us to witness, to hold each other, no matter what. As it is.

March 2, 2022

* Here I learned the term: weaponized interdependence. no modifiers needed.

Meander

 My day begins with a large dose of dally. Oh, how I've craved it all my life, resented the interruptions, the deadlines, the too much to do. Tyranny of To Do, is how I've seen it. If only, I've said to myself, if only I could just lie down and watch the clouds for hours. Thoughts are like clouds, they say. Watch them pass. So I do. Sometimes they pass; sometimes they gather. Formations come from mist, then disperse, then form again, according to the weather of my mind--the structures there, memories and tendencies, encountering new sensations. 

I put on Melanie DeBiasio as a warm up for breathing and then Glen Velez for the real Wim Hoff. Then comes Melanie again

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Do Things Exist?

Madame Vivian V and her grandmother. Photo by Jessie OhIt's all about Getting Things Done, right? If we get things done we can feel accomplished, worthy. I've studied the organizing self-help literature exhaustively and tried a panoply of systems. I've mindmapped, I've bucketed, I've wandered, I've prioritized and I've panicked. I've let it all go and gotten depressed. I've put myself back on a schedule, felt better, then constrained, then pissed off, so I ditched it all again. I have a structure now, which developed after I ruthlessly looked at what I actually do, how long things take, and what my body needs. It's an ongoing process, continually adapting to change within and without.

But what about the thing itself? Creativity is fickle. When you try to tie it down, it slips away. Sometimes I give myself related tasks, like learning a program, and then it bubbles up in a small act of resistance. Creativity itself is resistance, isn't it? You know how things are supposed to be done but there's a little voice that protests: "It doesn't have to be this way." But I get stuck in how to give life to the alternative.

Going back to Artist's Way recently, I remembered the importance of practicing flow by writing whatever comes to mind. Later I remembered why I stopped--so much drivel! At one point I burned my diaries. Because there is something deeper than the chatter of the mind. When I sit still in zazen I sense it. When I watch water hitting rock I feel it. When I walk in nature I know it. The camera never captures it. What is it, really?

Last night at 3am I was bathed in some kind of idea, really awash in it, and it seemed so important that I actually wrote on a post-it: Excess. This morning, what? Maybe it has something to do with learning from an old friend that millennial speak now includes: "oh Mom, that's so extra!" Why is that a bad thing? I guess for the same reason that people tried to be cool back in the day. And for sure the aesthetic of nothing extra appeals to me. Why else do I give things away, burn things, abandon things? But there is something really great about excess, something beautiful. Look at drag queens for example. The same stuff that can be imprisoning for women becomes glorious in excess. Watching a play recently I couldn't take my eyes off Madam Vivian V. She was huuuge, towering over the other players in platform stilettos, and confident as only a queen can be.

But I digress.

Or do I? I meant to write a post on time management, but the existential title plopped out and then I followed it and somehow arrived here. We could say that existence itself is excess, especially for the humans. Or we could say that nothing is ever really added or subtracted. Anyway how can Madame Vivian claim so much space when many women my age apologize with their bodies for even being in the room? Millennials telling us we are too much. It’s an old message, freshly packaged, newly poisonous.

Oh yes, we exist. As for things, I don’t know.

February 2019

And, Rest!

Oops. I forgot the most important thing.

In my enthusiasm to Reckon, Refuse, and Respond, I neglected to include what makes it all possible: Rest.

Rest is what enables us to listen deeply to what is true, and Refuse what is false. Rest is what enables us to think clearly and Reckon with this political disaster. Rest is what gives us the energy to Respond in an effective way. Rest is what Donald Trump never does.

It is easy for me to get confused on this point. Growing up as a weakling with a disability I needed drive to keep me from collapsing into something that I understood I could not get out of. It served me well back then. When I couldn’t achieve popularity I studied hard and excelled academically. Later I studied popularity and achieved some. And along the way I pushed and pushed my body--to dance, to stretch, to keep going no matter what.

It’s taken me a very long time to understand that there is a whole other aspect of living that cannot be comprehended in the drive mode. Sitting zazen (meditation) certainly makes it clear, injuries make it clear, mistakes make it clear. Tasting creativity pulls me toward that aspect. In Feldenkrais practice there are these oft repeated messages:  Do less. Find a way to do it without strain. Let go of effort. Try it and see. And then after a series of strange movements:  Leave it alone and rest!

Oh, that.

The confusion comes when I’m doing something important, and something in me tells me it can’t be done or it is wrong or something like that. I then feel fear that I won’t be able to do it, so I start to push. But I don’t have the energy and I feel resistance, so I push harder, drink coffee, can’t sleep, have less energy, drink more coffee, don’t feel what I want to feel, push harder… You get the idea. It's a cycle.

Rehearsals for Fountain of Oldth have been alive and interesting. But when we decided to have an open rehearsal it became all about transitions and cues, ‘running through’ the whole show, getting feedback. It felt wrong to me, and that’s when I started pushing. The open rehearsal wasn’t a big failure or anything but it triggered a pretty serious relapse of chronic insomnia. And that’s when I remembered this. Rest. Listen. Follow the thing that matters, not just the thing that calls out most loudly for attention.

I'm doing my best to keep up with letter writing, petition signing, protesting with community, but I also want to bring attention to the deeper things, the things that made all this happen, like misogyny in the form of contempt for vulnerability. I want to stand up for vulnerability in all its forms--getting old, being a woman, being disabled, being poor. And that doesn’t just mean fighting for rights. It also means breathing into that soft underbelly and listening to the birds, for example, or really taking in the sight of the bright new buds sprouting everywhere now.

And then, sprout. 

 

 

 

Reckoning

I've written and dumped a few blog posts since It happened.  Oddly, I started with Reasons for Hope, then hope gave way to lament, so I parked hope and wrote First, Lament, but by the next day the fever had subsided and I felt empty, so I wrote nothing.  Nothing spawned new layers of understanding, and then more confusion, and then a sense of community, because actually we are all fucking confused, and maybe that's a good place to start.  

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One Lovely Blog. Or not.

Plans collapse.  Last week, I planned to write a Pedestrian Plea about high art, and then the hurricane hit.  This week, I planned to participate in One Lovely Blog, and then my teenager provoked another crisis.  Or maybe I provoked it.  Don't even talk to me if you have not raised a smart willful teenager in recent times.  Yes, it is worse than it used to be.  Much, much worse.  Someday I'll remove the gag order I've placed on myself, but not today.  

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What's the Rush?

Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:44PM by Elena Taurke

Maybe it was on the millenium or maybe it was 9/11, but on some momentous mark, I resolved to Stop Rushing. Years passed, charged by, actually, as I watched, bewildered, my resolution crushed by the stampede of moments.  Resolution wasn't enough.  I had to ask:  

What's the Rush?  No, Really.  What is it?

First of all, I don't have time to stop rushing--too many other things to do.  The Tyranny of ToDos, I call it.    Except who put the damn things on the list?  

Don't start with me!  I've tried dropping the list.  If I don't have a list, the world runs me down.  My daughter's needs and the bits and pieces of life fill the entire container and I'm still rushing to keep up.  

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Yes, it IS about Time

It's never really about time or money,  said a wise but mistaken psychotherapist.  

Yes, it IS about time, really.  Time is change, for one thing, and change is our only true master.  Now I write, but in 25 minutes it will be time to go to the podiatrist.  Later it will be time to go home, time to go to sleep, time to wake up, time to work, time to cook, time to do the dishes.  Time seems to move too fast, meaning that I am too slow to change.  I wish I could be time, as Zen Master Dogen teaches; I would be the clock, the moving part, the changing thing.  The problem is that I need time to truly absorb this lesson and I'm in too much of a rush to stop and…. 

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Duet With Doubt

When my friend Marta asked me to do a little (no pressure!) dance at a little (really, no biggie) Festival, I panicked.  Riddled with Doubt is what I was.  During the same week my mother sent a poem that she had written On Doubt.    

Duet with Doubt screened at the Sans Souci Festival of Dance, including their Texas State University tour, the Austin Woman's Film Festival, and  the Baltimore Women's Film Festival.

A woman confronts her shadow. Reading her mothers poem, On Doubt, the woman engages with the unsavory presence and discovers how to start working. (2:10 min)