One Thought at a Time (how I lost my monkey brain)

Aleathia says:

This week I treated myself to acupuncture for the first time in 20+ years. It isn't because I had fallen out of faith in this practice, but living in a small town it is much more expensive than when living in a city. There were colleges close by and graduating students would be able to practice acupuncture on live people and it would cost the people only 10 bucks. That was an immense deal for someone who was living check to check and had no insurance. It was point of care health on a tight budget.

I decided to start going again because my Seasonal Affective Disorder has been getting worse and worse after age 40. I expected this year to be the worst with there being so much transition in my life. Change happens. I get that, but it doesn't mean that I can fully grasp it. The comfort in my life had come from the predictable nature of it even if it was adversity, it was consistently crazy and I could count on that. I went in to address the Seasonal Affective Disorder as well as my chronic back pain and fatigue/anxiety/depression. Because I was very willing, my acupuncturist decided to "reset" my whole system and work on the back pain. When it was done colors were brighter, I felt light as a feather, and strangely.....depressed.

It seems as if the session might be counterproductive, but it wasn't. I did feel very tired and out of sorts for the last few days. I questioned if I made the right decision to have this work done; I questioned who I was without the rapid fire mind I walked in with. I spent the last few days going against the grain of this supreme calm state my mind and body was in. I literally was a salmon swimming upstream...kicking and fighting this peaceful feeling. It took everything I had this morning, but I went for a walk. On this walk, to still feel productive, I brought one of the 9 books I am reading. Do you see where my life is right now?

I have been reading "The Sanity We Are Born With" by Chogyam Trungpa which takes a Buddhist approach to looking at psychology. I have tried reading Chogyam Trungpa in the past with little result because the information is quite dense though not hard to understand. Mostly, it is mind blowing and a girl can only handle so much of that at once. But over the years I have read many Pema Chodron books who was a student of Chogyam Trungpa. I decided I was ready to pick up with the lama was putting down.

While walking I read this passage:

"The ideal state of tranquility comes from experiencing body and mind being synchronized. If body and mind are unsynchronized, then your body will slump--your mind will be somewhere else. It is like a badly made drum: The skin doesn't fit the frame of the drum; so either the frame breaks or the skin breaks, and there is no constant tautness."

Sometimes a very simple paragraph will set you on a journey. This is common sense information, right? Body and mind on the same page = good times. What I realized this morning was that I have spent so much time in mental chaos and my body has been in a separate chaos. Two things cased in the same skin doing completely different things and I wonder why I'm tire all the time. Acupuncture cleared my mind. I have had a feather lightness to my body and a sense of emptiness in my mind that is foreign and has caused me to feel like I needed to create as much physical noise as I could muster to combat the silence in my mind.

This need to fill every moment of my day possibly comes from the last year of being single. I have always struggled with what people think of me or how they might judge me. I felt as if being single at this age meant I was used up with nothing left to offer. This is a hard pill to swallow when you know you are full of life and adventure and new beginnings. I was afraid to appear lonely even though I am rarely lonely. I imagined that I should feel lonely having spent a life in the company of others but I feel more full of life than I ever have before.

The mind thinks one thing at a time even if we think we are doing "two things at once" they are just single thoughts very close together. I need to remember this. I need to not fill my day so full that I don't enjoy all the things I'm putting into it.

Thanks for reading.

Aleathia

The Meaning of Love

Aleathia says:

The last few months have made me acutely aware of the need to redefine the meaning of love and the body people called family. My life has been spent seeking love without knowing really what that means to me. The love I received as a child had so many strings attached to it as well heavy influences from my environment and the social circles around me. I had no control over the love I received or how it was given. I had little control over the love I wanted to give because in order to give love, someone has to want to be on the other end of it.

Love is abstract at best. We "love" pizza. We "love" going to the beach. I "love" you. In our language and in our time, it feels as if love is just another verb without much weight or meaning. To understand this is pretty disappointing especially if it has been your life's work trying to find a love that feels true.  In my experience that initial chemistry between two people is so very intense and over time fades into what most people label as "comfortable" and then is further transformed to mean "love".  I have been in a series of committed relationships over the last 26 years in which this very scenario has played out. In the end of each of them, love is the farthest thing from what was felt or experienced.

My existential crisis comes from trying to understand why it is socially acceptable for the fading of that chemistry between two humans into banality that is then labeled "love" or "they are good together"? Why do people stay together when they no longer have that fire in their belly for the other? What makes us settle for less than what we want or desire out of a relationship? Are we truly honest with our inner selves about what love means to us or what it looks like?

I have been listening to a lot of music lately and my friend turned me on to Alt-j. A line from one of their songs has really weighed heavy on me:

"I want to love you in my own language"

How significant is that? I say this line to myself every day in an attempt to wrap my mind around its meaning. If I love someone in the language of my own heart, it may not be a language their heart understands. Maybe love is finding another person whose heart speaks the same language as yours. I feel like that chemistry should not fade. I should be able to look at someone I love and it fill me with a certain joy that is only attainable with love. I feel like my body and my skin should respond to their unique touch and that if the love is there the other person would be observant enough to feel and read the response of the other. I know, you are saying, she is a dreamer. I have been called much worse in my lifetime, but it is not such a tall order to want to feel electrified and comfortable at the same time. Love should make you feel free.

Having made this definition of love for myself I found another line that has touched me. I was recently watching Sense 8 and one of the characters said:

"Art is love made public"

This idea has transformed my approach to art...the way I look at it, the way I respond to it, the way I make it. So if art is love made public then art is the feeling of being free in the face of strangers. This idea is profound to me and it is the place that I want to be...living in a free and open way; loving in a way that sets my skin on fire and brings me a comfort that allows me the freedom to be my own true self.

These last few months after the fallout of my relationship has given me boundless opportunity to connect with new people, reconnect with old friends, and connect with the true nature of my being. My perspective of the world is changing. I am growing into my own after living a life meant for others. I am reaching. I am taking it all in. I am finding joy in places where none existed before. I am placing no boundaries or judgments on people and things. I have never felt more alive as I do right now.

OM-7/27/2014 Buddhism, 10 Precepts

Aleathia says:

Life, as we know it, is a series of decisions.  Each of these choices moves us down a slightly different path that we might not see veering left or right at the time of happening.  Each choice thus has a positive or negative action/reaction that effects everyone we come in contact with.

In Buddhism, one of the first things I learned was The Four Noble Truths.  Birth, Suffering, Old Age, Death. It is simplified, yes, but that is how I look at it.  Our lives are one long string of suffering.  Some seek enlightenment from this suffering and others just turn the wheel and keep moving in circles.  It is hard to live by the vows I took so many years ago.  There are 10 Grand Precepts:

No Killing (I do well with this one)
No Stealing (Never on purpose)
No Misusing Sex (I'm good and proper)
No Lying (I am truthful 99% of the time)
No Abusing Intoxicants (We shall talk about this)
No Talking about Others Faults (epic fail)
No Elevating Oneself and Blaming others (could still use some work)
No Being Stingy (this could use work)
No Being Angry (uh-oh)
No Speaking Ill of the Three Treasures (pretty darn good at it)

If I start at the top with No Killing it is pretty easy.  I have never been one to want to see things die.  I have tried to save animals and people at own risk to my own health.  It is no wonder I chose a life in healthcare though today's modern medicine it could be questioned if we do harm with all the medications and treatments rather than letting the body work itself out.

No Stealing.  Hmm.  I did used to be a pen klepto in a bad way, but I was never a shoplifter or an out right thief.  I think stealing is pretty shitty.

No Misusing Sex.  This would be sexual relations that hurts me or someone else.  I have to say that in the past I have done this, sadly.  I am human after all.  But I have never engaged in activities to directly hurt someone with malice.  These happenings would be in the younger years when I was rife with stupidity.

No Lying.  Oh my.  When I was 8 years old everything I said was a lie, on purpose.  It was a stand against my stepfather.  I was beaten for it everyday too.  He tried to break me and it never worked.  Eventually he gave up and then I quit lying.  I felt like I had won.  I didn't win much.  I have never been good at lying anyway.  I have one of those faces where it just shows up in neon.  My father chose my name because it means "Truth".  It is hard to get away from a name like that.  Honesty is always the best policy.

No Abusing Intoxicants.  Ok.  I was young once and did a fair amount of abuse, but after I had Chloe it really wasn't hard to put it all down.  I had responsibility.  Growing up in a house of addicts and alcoholics I was used to seeing what sort of life it would bring and naturally chose the other direction.  This isn't to say that I didn't drink along the way, but I wasn't abusive with it.  In the last year, in a stay of support for Michael, I have not had a drink of alcohol.  It is strange that I would miss it having never really loved it in the first place, but I miss that feeling of letting go sometimes.  I am fully aware that I am fully immersed in reality as it should be, but hell if I don't miss letting my hair down from time to time.  When Michael and I drank, at our worst, I spent less time with my kiddo and more time hung over.  When she started mentioning it, I knew there was a problem and quit drinking.  But why isn't there a middle road?  I have been an all or nothing person most of my life.  It is frustrating and lonely there like a self imposed prison.  This needs revisiting for the both of us.

No Talking About Others' Errors or Faults.  Oh dear lord.  Work brings out the worst in me in this aspect.  I do this all the time even though I know it is bad on a professional level as well as a spiritual level.  I am one of those people that can find the good in others when most people cannot, but there are some people that I cannot do that with and it creates a freight train of negativity.  I need to be better at this.  This concept feeds a few others and puts me in a vicious circle.

Not Elevating Oneself and Blaming Others.  I don't often play the blame game.  I'm pretty good at taking one for the team but I would be liar if I said that I didn't lay blame here and there.  Most of the time it is reactionary when I don't know what to do.  This requires a bit more thought and patience.

Not Being Stingy.  I have to say when I was younger I would give away everything I had to make other people happy or make them want me around.  Maybe that was giving with strings which isn't true generosity, but most of the time I felt good about the giving.  I am still that way in some aspects.  I do want the people around me to be happy, but in my older age I have gotten more stingy with everything.  I think my excessive generosity as a kid burned me more than once.  Burns leave scars.  I need to open my heart a bit more.  I have been contemplating this quite a bit.  I could give more of my time to a charity.  I could do some good.  I have a lot to offer.

Not Being Angry.  Oh Nelly.  This is a tough one, isn't it?  Everyone gets angry.  I have never been a fly off the handle angry person though.  I am the slow smolder take over the oxygen in the room sort of angry.  I bottle up until I can't take it anymore.  In the last 3 years, with Michael, he has been patient and encouraging. He helps me let it out.  I suppose I have fear that if I express my anger then the people around me would leave me.  This might be imagined or learned from my mother, but it is rooted deep inside me.  This fear is pretty strong.  I have been a woman without a voice for a long time; always with a burning ember.  I get angry mostly at work these days.  See the talking bad about others precept.  These two hold hands.

Not Speaking Ill of the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha).  Oh, how could I talk bad about them. Never crosses my mind, ever.

This whole rant came about because yesterday Michael and I got to talking about how life has become a perpetual groundhog day.  We do the same things over and over.  We never let our hair down since we quit eating gluten and quit drinking.  I did not have to quit either of them, but chose to do this in a show of support to Michael because I love him.  What we have done is put ourselves in self-imposed prisons.  We have gone too far.  Now we aren't sure if we can even eat gluten or if in fact he has an allergy or if it was his gastritis.  We are going to try a controlled experiment with eating gluten when I have some days off (in case I'm in the bathroom all day).  We are doing this because these days being gluten free means having very few choices at restaurants and very few options of places to go.  We can't go on dates anymore.  We end up going the grocery store for our dates.  Boring as hell, right?  The drinking part is up to  him.  He wanted to quit for health and because he thought he was causing problems with us, which wasn't true in my view, but I supported it.

In the end, there has to be a middle way for all of it.  There has to be some way to survive in a proper way without feeling like life has halted completely.  The coming months will be interesting.  I'm looking forward to bending the bars.

Quills and Frills-6/21/2014 Writing Prompt

Ally says:

The River Fell in Love

Maybe it was the boots. Or the clothes, or the current.

It probably didn’t matter. The first time the water closed over his head, he almost laughed, a smile underwater, the green swish swash of the river slipping between his teeth and patting his tongue, but then he came back up, spitting an arc of green water into the sky. It hit the setting sun at the peak and then broke apart splattering like rain back into the low waves. Each drop chasing after its sister, pit, pit, pit.

The fluidity of water always amazed him. The way it came apart and back together, the way it finds itself, recognized its other, like mercury does.

All the water in the world leaked out of a cracked meteorite when the earth was a firestorm – a raging baby ball of a planet. It was cooled by this liquid life, flowing out like the yolk of an egg cracked over the pan. Water, water everywhere.

He titled back, trying to float. A body at rest. His feet, boot-clad, dipped down and back and down and back, a boat – his whole body a vessel adrift. Inside he was mostly water and he could feel that water pushing against his skin, calling out to its other. The river and his water-blood reached out, touching fingertips, tearful like teenage lovers being wrenched apart.

His head went under again. The river smiled. The river played him a song – not one of lovers or heroes, which is usually the only kind of song the river likes to play but instead under a fat yellow moon the river played him a song about a boy, afloat; a boy, under a blackness punched through with starlight. A boy just like you, the river sang.

His feet go down first, weighed down in his river-soaked socks and boots. It pulls at him teasingly, like a lover begging him not to leave the bed at the sound of the telephone in the kitchen. Stay, she says. Wait, she says, giggling and he laughs too, stalks of river grass pulled from the bank tickle his cheek.

Stay, she coos, pulling at the sheets that have tangled his naked waist, tripping him up, running a long sharp finger down his spine. Not enough to hurt but enough to leave just a white scrape through the finest layer of his skin. A mark.

A claiming.

The sky shimmers now, light shifting, reflected again and again, in each individual drop. His shirt floats up over his head and he tries to shed it but it proves too stubborn. His legs twist with the current and again the river smiles, lifting her boy in a dance. A tumbling dance. Over and under and over and under and dip and lean and bend and sway. He is a good dancer and learns the steps quickly and the river is pleased and pretends she is as vast as her mother, the ocean, and she does the same pirouette – the same cartwheel, head, legs, head, legs that she has seen her mother do. Twirl, my beautiful boy, twirl.

The boy jerks, spasms, once, then again. The river reaches inside, kisses him, on the lips, into the mouth, down the throat, the river kisses deep again and again. The boy closes his eyes and when he opens them but the moon is gone, the water dark on all sides, the planet indescribably old.

He feels the river hug him, hard, pressing against his sides. He tries to turn away from her kisses, but she twirls him again, and tells him she is in love. She pulls off one shoe and he bobs for a second, close to the surface. He can see the moon again, briefly, before the moon becomes just another spot that floats before his eyes, just another drop of water separated and then rejoined in a message whispered between this world and the Nothingness. High above, the moon looks down at him and smiles. The moon is always happy when his daughters find new love. Everyone deserves to be loved, the moon, thinks, tilting his eyes from the fading boy and returning his gaze to all that never ending blackness. 


Aleathia says:

In 1993 my friends took me to a hot spring for my birthday that required a river crossing.  I nearly drown.  It was an eye opening experience that spawned a novella which will someday turn into a novel.  But today, you get a poem.



Vestige

I am a flesh accordion
being put away for the night
as cold water seeps over and under
my feet simultaneously.  It is mercury.
I rise up, levitate, as if a cheap trick
at the magician’s fingers.

I am a river bottom vestige
when my body quietly slips
beneath a watery sky,
from ink to ink, writing an epitaph
on the rocks with my knees
about a life not yet lived.

Aleathia Drehmer