Am I a Freak?

I mean in the traditional sense, not the fashionable one. I mean, why is it so hard to understand me? Why do I keep bumping up against expectations, defying them, even when I long to belong? 

I smile at a neighbor. They ask if I'm feeling better. NO, I say, irritated now. Why can't I be polite?

A friend suggests that I have as much good as possible, specifically to forgive a very recent deep wound. Oh? Well, even if I was on my way, now I burn with bitterness. Why can't I be like

Thich Nhat Hanh, who was kind even to enemies, or

Martin Luther King Jr., who was forcefully non violent, even when provoked, or

oh, choose any saint or hero. I am not That. Nor am I normative. 

Some people are afraid of me, of my emotions, and that causes me to hate myself. I was drawn to theatre, that fictional space where you get permission to live with full intensity. I was drawn to psychology, where I learned that even people who look normal have a remarkable inner life full of stuff I recognize as my own. 

I like foam. beer foam. oatmilk barista foam.

I like the drama of a changing stormy sky. 

Someone I see nearly every day bids me stay well when she leaves. But I'm not. You too, I seethe.

Am I really so much more bothered by ordinary misunderstandings than most people? or am I just too insistent on voicing my complaints? Last year I started a zen zoom group called Complaint Company, where the instruction is to lean into what bothers you. It's fun and tragic and moving, and pretty popular. But not everyone loves it and at least once someone says I'm gonna break the rules and be grateful, or some such thing. 

From Thich Nhat Hanh's famous poem: Please Call Me By My True Names

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

He advocates compassion and a loving heart, and he is the arms merchant.

This morning, after our daily meditation at the Zendo, our host commmented on anger, sorrow, something good I can't remember (see, see?), and frustration, and bid us meet All That with strength and wisdom. That I can strive to do.

Am I a freak? No, except in the fashionable sense.

January 26, 2022

Does Not Apply, or Fall in Love

Spotting a bauble the toddler bursts into action. The detective chasing a bandit bounds up the stairs. A woman late for the train sprints through the closing doors. I see it or I read it and I think, does not apply, but not before I feel myself doing it.

I never realized before how much I imagine motion. Not that I could ever run and jump normally but I still felt the potential of the actions in my body. Now, though, the dis-synchrony has grown sharper and become a koan. Normal life does not apply. Normal expectations have vanished. I can't pretend I will grow stronger, can't motivate myself with a plan of action, can't wait until the illness recedes. There is little in my future that I can reasonably look forward to. Even worse, I don't feel a part of this world. Sometimes I feel a creeping bitter jealousy about the simplest actions, even as I thank, thank, thank all those willing to do for me what I cannot do. 

How do I live then?

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How Healing Happens

Last week I wrote about how trauma makes it harder to empathize because we organize to defend against danger. Then on Sunday at a little gathering at my house a vivid counterpoint blasted through decades of suppressed shame. 

I was wearing my neck brace, unadorned, with a ruffled collar in the style I favor. Several weeks earlier my friends had helped sew a cover for the brace because I felt the silicone brace to be obscene. The problem was that the cover was super hard to put on and take off, so on this day I defiantly left it bare. My daughter's girlfriend, who is a trans woman, whom I had not met before, whom I will call xo, exclaimed, "I like the medical aesthetic." 

What? There is a medical aesthetic? And then we embarked on a lively discussion of prosthetics. It was a bit like coming out.

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Outsider Grief Relief

As my own story of illness and dying takes the focus here, I'm going to retire the page, OGRe Home. But she will not go gentle; she must be heard before she cedes. 

"OGRe Home is a community for Outsider Grief Relief. Grief arises from exclusion. We try to exclude what we cannot accept, but we fail because the unacceptable always pushes its way back in. If we can't accept our weakness or dependency, we diminish our crips and our mothers. If we fear our unbounded sexuality, we punish or mock our queers. Then, we're shocked when the crips and queers take to the streets, or that nice woman of color who was supposed to stay on the other side of town actually marries our sister."

I have long longed to be included and I've carried the idea that those of us who have been excluded can understand and support each other. Now I'm not so sure.

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Taking the Poison

Joanna Macy: Ever Widening CirclesYou know how when the jackhammer stops you realize how much your body was participating? It stops, I relax, relieved, now I can write. But then it starts back up again and, oh the pain, can I write through it, with it? It doesn't do any good to try to feel what I felt when it stopped; it just adds a layer of frustration. It doesn't do any good to pretend I don't hear it; that adds a layer of tension and dishonesty. When I'm pretending I'm not noticing, and then there is no flow. Writing about it, on the other hand releases me to make connections, thus:

Some of us want to leave the country. It's just too much. The oligarchs seem to have all the resources, the patriarchy is entrenched, the good don't win, the earth is wailing as we gang rape her. New Zealand looks so much better from here. But recently I listened to a podcast with the very old and very wise Joanna Macy in which she drew inspiration from Rilke as she faced difficulty. Some words from a sonnet to Orpheus:

Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell.
As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What's it like, this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses

Macy talked about what we do if a dear child or our mother is dying. If we love we stay, we try to stay, we don't avoid the pain, and neither should we love the earth less because we fear it to be unhealthy, or even our democracy. Even that. Or our poisonous culture.

I love to say I don't watch TV, don't have a TV, but that requires that I mildly pretend to myself that I am immune from formula, from a hunger for suspense, for romance, for good guys triumphing over the bad, and it is nearly always guys. Looking for a new show to binge, my friend recommended Rectify, and so I watched the whole 20-plus hours, watched the wronged white guy get supported by his family, his black friends who held no resentment for his comparative freedom, and countless lovely women who were smitten by his awesome depth and fascinating awkwardness. Yeah, because I fell for guys like that, wasted a lot of time projecting my own qualities onto them and then trying to obtain them by getting them to love me. It doesn't do any good to try not to do that. I can only ring the bell of pain. And as I do that I hear my voice, and there, I'm free because I already have what I want. 

Now I'm working on understanding Game of Thrones. So far the best part is that instead of checking phones, they have to wait for ravens to deliver news from other realms. What seems problematic are the gorgeous happy naked whores being trained by men to pleasure men (someone tell me they fix this in the next 20 hours!), the equation of honor with blood lineage, the constant butchery and treachery in the name of revenge and justice, and of course the damnable disproportionate screentime for men. If we don't see it, we can't interact with it at all. There are virtually no non-pretty powerful women anywhere in film or TV. Behold the first two lines of the cast page:

70% male

The whole page has 19 women, all beautiful, and 31 men, many old or fat or strange looking. Actually I'm remembering that there is an old woman who played a maid, but she is not included in this cast page. Anyway, seeing this line-up activates the not-enough software installed by the symbiotic glamour industry. I feel mad, gloomy, anxious, want to get highlights, want to disappear. Move back and forth into the change. I am still here, existing as I am, as are the beautiful women around me who don't look like the Hollywood ideal. If I keep showing my face as it is that isn't nothing. It is an intervention. I turn myself to wine. And maybe get some highlights? 

Joanna Macy and others have noted that even as our country is being devoured by the forces of greed there are many communities growing out of a different model, one that acknowledges interconnection and strives for justice and the true equality of appreciating difference. We can ground our attention there while we partake in the poisons. We can notice our breath as we feel jerked around by the unceasing demands to look, to buy, to one-up the other customers. I am a customer, yes, but I am also the mystery at the crossroads of my senses. Thank you, Ms. Macy and Mr. Rilke.

April 2019

You Be You

Last Sunday I gave a dharma talk* at the Village Zendo on the matter of becoming yourself. Like many Zen practices, it's an absurd and paradoxical goal. You already are who you really are, and yet things get complicated by the mind. 

The previous weekend we had a panel discussion with two Black Zen teachers who talked about how it is to be the only Black person in a community, how it is to deal with racist projections and expectations. James Lynch spoke of the importance of caring for yourself, not defining yourself by how others see you. And Malik Hokyu talked about confronting the objectifications that arise, how hard it is to locate their source. 

For the most part, Zen practice focuses on clearing away the delusion of a separate self, and there is no doubt that the more we sit the more we can drop our dependence on identity. But when we see each other, we see the marks of identity: skin color, gender expression, clothing or hairdo, disability if visible, body type and so on. Our minds are built to categorize and predict, so it is impossible to eliminate the expectations and judgement that shape the way we interact with each other. 

When you are a person who is marked as different from others, the usual process of forming an identity gets tangled; what gets reflected may not feel true. When I was growing up, moving from army base to army base, there were no other Russian disabled kids. I felt like a misfit, and so I struggled to imitate the customs in each place. Only in the woods by myself could I feel alive and genuinely connected. By high school I figured out how to construct an identity as a quirky drama girl that allowed me to behave in odd ways and still be popular. People saw in me what I wanted them to see. 

But this sort of thing initiates a split between who we feel ourselves to be and how we are perceived by others. and that split drives us to Zen, or psychotherapy, or destructive acting out. The bad news is that healing the split actually requires meeting the aspect of self that we try to cover. 

For me, that is weakness. My disabilities are serious but not visible. I've figured out how I can adapt movement so that I can dance, adapted my household so that I can eat (hint: don't bring me a jar unless you will open it for me), adapted my personality so that I see myself as a hero not a victim. But underneath there is still an aspect that is the toddler who can't walk, the kid who can't keep up, the adult who gets tangled up trying to get an item out of my pocket without a wrist to bend. And that aspect feels shameful because I have learned that it is better to cover it. 

Fortunately or unfortunately life always serves up what I reject. This year I've developed a quaver in my voice, something sticky in my throat or diaphragm. I believe it reads as fear, which is not ok at all, right? The more I try to control it the more prominent it gets. So the good news is that I have no choice but to embrace the fear, and fear of fear. I breathe, do what I do as I am, notice how people respond, sometimes say something about it, watch it come and go. 

It doesn't seem like good news when something comes up to challenge our identity. But actually taking down who we think we are or who others think we are, over and over again, is what makes us grow, and even to become fearless. That's the paradox. Rejecting nothing, including everything, that's how you can be who you really are. 

After I wrote this, I listened to an On Being podcast having to do with just this, exposing what we are taught to be ashamed about. So, for me it's whatever a vocal quaver indicates, but it could be anything. What would our culture look like if we all had the courage to out our true selves? 

*The Dharma talk has a slightly different focus, on the matter of being alone.

January 2019

Rise up, Old Woman!

Julianne, photo by Nicolas Genin"Well, she is more contemporary," the young lady clarified when I looked mystified. We were at a networking event for filmmakers and actors, and I had boldly raised my objection to the disappearance of older women.  She responded by kindly offering hope that things were changing, and presented Julianne Moore as an example of an aging star.  Thinking hard, she filled out her list of two by including an actress in her 30s.

Her 30s.

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I am I: A Tribute to Margaret Cho

Inspired by Cho's gestures, energy, and mission, a group of dancers celebrate human diversity in all its splendid manifestations.  

Conceived and Choreographed by Irene Ruiz-Riveros
Video Directed and Edited by Elena TaJo
Music by Steve Elson

I am I: A Tribute to Margaret Cho screened in June of 2010 at Anthology Film Archives as part of an excellent series curated by New York Women in Film and Television.  Running time 5:37 minutes
 

An Oasis of Peace

Wahat al-Salam Neve ShalomWahat al-Salam in Arabic. Neve Shalom in Hebrew.   Oasis of Peace.  The name evokes both longing and sadness. Just an oasis?   In a human desert of outright wars and subtle destructions of the spirit, there is a place where people from opposing sides of what is arguably the most difficult conflict on earth choose to live in peace.

I wanted to visit this place because I am a very jaded psychologist--an optimist disappointed with the failure of ideals

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Gay Pride, Woman Shame

Along with so many others, I cheered for New York State last weekend--for our Governor who showed courage and resolve, for all the beautiful people who could now marry their beloved.  At the Gay Pride Parade on Sunday, we were all bubbling in a soup of triumph and ecstasy.  Most of you know that several years ago I decided to divorce my heterosexual spouse because the unfairness of the whole thing, especially the "Defense of Marriage Act," was unbearable. 

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