Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Lunch with Xander

Exhausted at work, trying to kick the minor caffeine habit. I like the idea of habit and routine- but not the reliance or addiction it may encourage. I don't want to be addicted to anything. But I could use more structure, and more zing! in the morning. A couple glasses of water doesn't quite get you going like a steamy chai tea latte.

Yesterday was sunny, Memorial Day. I totally forgot to memorialize. Ironic?

A moment of meditation for all those who have served, and honor to my grandfather, who is thankfully still here to tell his war stories. My favorite one is about the guy who somehow knew the day he was going to die, wearing his coat on a hot day, feeling so cold. He was also from New Mexico-- which I consider to be the most mysterious state in the nation.

I had lunch with my friend Xander yesterday. I met him in Ulan Bataar, Mongolian, he was a social studies teacher at a local Mongolian high school and I was writing for the English paper, the Ulan Bataar Post. It was trivia night at the expat pub. I played with some Peace Corps volunteers who hailed from various remote parts of the country to do some organizational stuff in the capital. I helped my team with one answer. I knew the name of the Russian dog that had been sent to the moon, Laika.

Anyway, now Xander and I both live in San Francisco and instead of lunch in the remote countryside where we each were riding horses into the Mongolian steppe, we now walk around and patronize cute brunch eateries. While I much prefer tofu scrambles and freshly squeezed OJ to endless bowls of mutton dumplings, there was something a bit off in walking with Xander down Valencia Street. Where was the cool lake air? I am too tired to go into all the thoughts I had about Mongolia and loss and thinking to myself, Why can't I just walk down the street and have it be just that- walking down the street? Why does it become an elegy to past sacred experiences that are so distant and no longer?

Xander and I were looking for Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Every used bookstore had Orlando or To the Lighthouse....but Mrs. Dalloway is in hiding. I believe so deeply in supporting used and independent booksellers. But I'm afraid the Amazon is the only place Mrs.Dalloway cannot hide.

Back to work. Fingers heavy.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Why is it that so few people seem to love their work?

Am I making this up or is there some kind of pressure to wear a new outfit to work every day?

I find the prospect tiresome, and I resent it slightly. Today, in a mixed gesture of simplicity and "Does it even matter at all??" I decided to wear the same exact thing I wore yesterday. It made me feel peaceful, like I could do whatever I wanted, and meet no resistance internally or externally. I cruised into work in a good mood.

Over the next couple of hours, work got a lot less peaceful. I am trying to maintain my equilibrium and my tranquility. Growth and development can be an agonizing process. There are a lot of snaggles and kinks in the transformation. We are a very young non-profit foundation so I am learning a lot of lessons about organizational management (and mismanagement). I feel at times that my spiritual endoskeleton cannot support the weight of this non-profit's growing pains. Coming to work is like participating in another culture, observing new customs, procedures and protocols, rules of communication, behavior...everything is different-- and while I have never really worked in a conventional work environment anyway.. this is certainly a new experience, and one that I find very draining.

Sometimes I feel this environment to be very toxic. The problem with having grand visions and boundless idealism is the continuous stream of disappointment, the crushing blows of even the most minor reminders of reality's limitations. Ie, your staff is not going to work seven days a week, no matter how badly you want that. I see how painful this is for my boss. She is in her final stage of life and she finds it very difficult to imagine leaving this plane without a passionate disciple to step into her shoes. She has very unique feet. I can see how her shoes might fit her, and not anyone else. I don't want to squeeze into them. I am trying to wriggle out of that. I am not sure what I am doing here, besides earning enough for my sunny room in the Mission district and the cost of living in this world, and trying to make her anxious and angry moments less exhausting for her and everyone else. Is this what it takes, to support myself? At the risk of not supporting myself, in a less tangible, but more important way?

The lesson I am discovering today: While one must earn enough to pay her physical rent, she cannot overlook the necessity of paying her pyschic rent. And I am coming up short every month. In fact, I may be coming up short every single day.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Morning Question:

What is the difference between impulsiveness and spontaneity?

Monday, May 11, 2009

Writing Exercise

I'm in way too many writing groups, behind in all of them, reminded of how badly I want to write- and how I never seem to find the time. I have essays bubbling over in my head, with the words swimming against the current of life's constant occupation with the banal-- a few words have the stamina and weightiness in my mind to string themselves into sentences that yank themselves into existence- making their way thru my fingers toward the page. It's kind of sad- so I have little to share as of yet, but I thought I'd include a small writing exercise I did in one of my writing groups.

The exercise was to draw from a list of trees or animals (I chose trees), and write about yourself "When I was a young child, I was a (blank) tree...," "When I was a teenager, I was a (blank) tree...," and "By the time I reached my twenties, I had become a (blank)...."

I think we wrote this in five to ten minutes, so it's very rough. But I want to keep this blog active, so I'm going to cull from all corners of my life- including haphazard stream-of-consciousness jottings. So here we go.

* * * * *

When I was a young child, I was a birch tree. Just like a birch, I had supple limbs, boughs that bent like they would snap. They never did. Resourceful, I supplied myself from myself. My skin was paper. I began to write. It was fun playing with the wind.

When I was a teenager, I was a maple tree. Maple trees are temptestuous with the seasons, and many times over these years I would change colors, especially when the cold set in. My cheeks flushed crimson, knowing the turning hand of earth and those not yet men. Uncorrupted, I still trickled a sweetness, my laugh like syrup.

By the time I reached my twenties, I had become a fern- closer to earth, less conspicuous, a soft lining for the forest floor. I don't have a trunk anymore, I am made of less, spread out more, travel, remain rooted lightly. I lap up the light in all directions. I leave less of a trace. I am one who always seems to know which way the water goes.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Acupuncture and Refrigerators

Just back from acupuncture- tenderness in my inner ankles, in the place between my thumb and index finger, a tingling rush from the center of my head. The sensation is something like having an egg cracked on top of my head, and instead of a sticky, runny yolk, cascading down and onto my shoulders, there is a cool blue light, with a consistency of mist, spreading out all around my skull, soft and rushing quietly like a very mini waterfall pouring from the top center of my head. It feels sublime.

During acupuncture I often experience a series of break through moments. One is enough, and none is okay too, but of course I prefer multiple revelations to one, and prefer one to none. How do I describe the state I'm in whilst I'm in the chair? Not awake, not asleep. Not here, nor there. My eyes are closed, but I am still seeing things- flashes of light when the reflective surface of a car drives by the front window of the room, and light shines and reflects everywhere. In fact, I have no idea if this is really the case- because my eyes are closed I cannot see if there actually was a car that just drove by. It is just my guess.

Sometimes I do fall asleep, and I dream. Othertimes I am in the neither here-nor-there place, and I still dream, a different kind of dream. So perhaps dream is the wrong word. But there is sometimes a loose narrative, visual imagery, sensory involvement.. Last week I was tunneling through the universe, in its infinite darkness, following the inner spiral of a conch shell, elongated, and a creamy pink. Like the kind we find on the beaches of Shelter Island, where we go every summer, they are never complete. Often broken and lying around like ocean's porcelain set after an earthquake, scattered like tiles and shards of bone, I like to pick up the shells. I used to only want the fullest, most complete ones. But now I realize, the more broken they are, the more you can feel of the inside curvature, the smooth pink insides. And that was where I was traveling during last week's acupuncture session, along the smooth pink spiralling inside of an infinite conch shell, tunneling deeper to the heart of space.

What are the kinds of revelations I have? Today I experienced a sensation of being leveled very flat. Myself as I know it or feel it, is usually three dimensional, rising upwards and outwards in space, holding volume, being mobile. For a brief moment, I felt myself suddenly only a very thin horizontal layer, like I had been gently compressed, I didn't feel any weight on me, but I occupied only a space like a piece of paper lying flat on a desk. I was like that- a piece of paper- that experienced emotions and sensations, lying softly on a flat surface.

What came to me when I existed like that, as a sort of piece of paper? When I am 28, I will spend a long time in India. Maybe a few months or a year.. but I am sensing longer rather than shorter. It will be a transformational time. Every time is in some way transformational- and some more profound than others. So what I should've said is, it will be a profoundly transformational time.

Something else very important came to me. I needn't put so much pressure on myself. I thought I had to be doing something big now. NOW. Opening an art gallery, publishing a book, getting a MA or MFA, some kind of concrete forward movement to justify and show to the world at large that I was making an evidential progress- that I was not a waste of a person or a family's resources, that I had reason to keep existing. It is strange- to not choose to exist, and yet to feel obligated to justify your existence. Perhaps it is just me who feels this obligation- to prove that you are worthy of this life experience- anyway, this is a longer conversation thought I can tell, and I am already late to meet my friend two blocks away.

Refrigerator men are in the kitchen, our frig is having trouble, again. A big machine, it's so strange, its like a body- sitting there, stationery, stalwart. We open its door, and inside its constantly cold body, we store the things to put into our bodies. When it's sick, it can't maintain its body temperature, it buzzes louder and louder, calling for attention. Some men come, the refrigerator doctors, and do some minor surgery. Everything is better. Cold again. Its cavernous chest can now hold our things. Except the acupuncturist just to me- no more cold foods. Steamed vegetables, soup, warm things. Avoid juice (no juice!? I often wake up and CRAVE juice, in my mind thinking "mmmmm I want juuuuuuice...", and if I want fruit, dried fruit. So, foreseeably, if I am dedicated enough to follow her advice, I might not be using the refrigerator at all.

Questions of the early afternoon

Some things I am thinking about before I get ready to go across the street to acupuncture:

Does Costco culture make Americans less spontaneous?

Can you be successful at a job where you don't believe in the company's mission?

If you are not a new agey person and yet you see visions, how should you make sense of this experience? What should be done about it?

Is it wrong to buy goods you know to be stolen?

What, if anything, should we feel obligated to do if we are part of a neighborhood's gentrification?

Ok now I have to get ready to go. I will however try NOT to keep thinking about these things as I am lying back in the reclining chair at the acupuncturists, because that is my favorite space to let my mind go, and only feel the changing sensations in my body.

Talk to you later.

Friday, May 1, 2009

What has happened since?

It's a grey and drizzly day, which I am so thankful for. The weather has been so good, too good- debilitatingly good. I moved to California because I had notions of endless shorelines and radiant sunshine, and I was not mistaken. But productivity nosedived as I felt I owed it to myself to spend as many waking walking minutes in the sun as possible, to compensate for those couple of long winters in Scotland and captive living in NYC, no matter how long ago they were. It seems as if prior Vitamin D deficiency is a condition that could require a long convalescene..much time to repair....perhaps involving many trips to the Caribbean, Mexico, and anywhere else I need to justify spending endless amounts of time. Ok I will pass on Mexico until the whole Swine Flu thing blows over.

So, as this morning's grey curtains parted and afternoon dreary skies remain, I have already achieved something monumental: narrowed down health insurance plans to four options. This process has taken me months, unforgivably, but it seems impossible to foresee what will be the best line of defense against unknown events. But impossible or not, it has to be done. I do believe that whatever work you do, you should do it well, even if it's not your passion, because it can make a huge difference in someone else's day, if not life. My insurance help-agent saint or whatever she would be called, Rachel, has held my hand through the process, and finally made it manageable enough that I can now call my parents without dreading this inevitable topic of conversation. I can't believe I'm blogging about choosing health insurance so it's time to talk about something else.

Except one more thing- you know you have a good friend if he/she is willing to sit down with you and help you narrow down those four options to a single one- a plan of action. So, thank you Eric, and for our date on Friday afternoon to take care of this exciting business. I will buy him an icecream in compensation. Even with four possible plans, I am still bogged down in the existentialism inherent in choosing an insurance policy. He will steer me clear of these conversations that paralyze my decision making process on purchasing a plan: What is life? What is health? What is fear? How do I balance those, with cost? What is money? What is money to me when aiding or impeding to feeling safe? Feeling free? AI YA

Work. Work just got a lot better. I am now resident biographer of my fascinating boss. I am no longer strictly relegated to trolling around facebook and myspace, trying to make the vast world of social networking relevant and useful in promoting the activities of my non-profit. The first chapter is about how she would like to die.

Acupuncture. Acupuncture is, for better or worse (but probably a lot better) my new drug. Because I now have to get ready to leave for a networking event (on "networking" days I am always sure to wear my unique Camper boots that people can't seem to notice without making some kind of comment-- so that's my trick for getting people to talk to me. I'm not shy-- but I'm also not the first to make the first overture-- except when I met Tom, because he was wearing even more "flair" than me- I was indeed wearing my boots, but he one-upped me, because he was wearing a plastic sword in his belt.)

So, I will talk about acupuncture tomorrow. And my nightmarish day yesterday, which involved lots of losing. Losing a bike, my patience, my way, my words, almost my mind, (but only for a moment). I also took a bite into a melted chocolate truffle that exploded in a flying chocolate puddle all over my clothes. It felt like some kind of metaphor for my current life. I am trying to get to the sweet core, all at once, but instead it's very messy and unpredictable.

See you soon!