Today my practice felt difficult. It seemed long at the beginning, hard in the middle and cluttered, busy. I got through it and I'm glad but it put me into this domestic frame of mind where I felt I had a thousand chores to do and not nearly enough time to do them.
To address this urgent and uncomfortable feeling, I gave myself the morning for chores. As I was cleaning the bathroom I couldn't help but think of my Grandmother and at the same time, notice I am still removing the final traces of my tenant's habits.
I like my bathroom to be clean, spotless by most people's standards. I don't think I'm overly careful about the floor but you would probably be safer eating your lunch in my bathroom than you would at most public tables - actually, I'm sure of that. You'd probably be safer eating lunch in my bathroom than most people's kitchens and that includes, sometimes, my own.
As I scrub and rinse the white porcelain basins I think of my Grandmother doing the very same thing. I think of the spiral of water as it spins down the drain, sometimes pushed along by my hand, how it reflects the spiral of the galaxy, the whirlpool in the river, the pattern of seeds on a sunflower or a dandelion. I remember my Grandmother's hard work and today I thought about what she would have used to clean with.
She would have had vinegar and baking soda and not much else.
Now I know that is very fashionable right now but I use scouring powder (which she did have at the end of her life) and sometimes I use bleach - which she also had and loved.
People seem to think there was never any reason to move from baking soda to bleach to whatever is in the scrubbing bubbles can and that annoys me more and more.
Chemical cleansers were part of the first wave of feminism geared to the lower classes. If your Grandmother cleaned her own house, chances are she moved from spending hours scrubbing with all her might using vinegar and baking soda and yes, a brush and boiling water to using a soft cloth, hot water and scouring powder. The change cut her time and effort down by at least a half and maybe quite a lot more.
Organic does not mean magical. If you choose to use organic products you need to remember your Grandmother. Chances are excellent that she tailored her formulas and her methods to her specific place and time and also to her family and their patterns of use. She spent hours on this - you cannot get the same results by sloshing half a cup of vinegar into the sink and splodging it around. Organic cleaning is an advanced method as much as anything else and it will (and should) eat your time. It ate your Grandmother's I promise you that.
Many of us are old enough to have Mothers who are grandmothers now and even older. I noticed pretty early on in the return to organics and environmental responsibility that my Mother's response was to clean less often and conserve more water and more of other resources.
This was not done out of laziness. My Mother's response typifies the kind of response that is deeply feminine. When we recognize a solution as being too flawed to ultimately be workable we work around it. In the case of my mother, it's a kind of domestic cap and trade.
I've found I do it myself. I use cleaning products that are not organic in order to buy myself the extra hours but I don't flush the toilet after around 11 until morning and I look at other conservation measures. I don't buy plastic wrap -limit plastic products period. I live somewhere walkable and walk to do most of my errands. This didn't start out by choice but it has become my preferred method of combining exercise, conservation, frugality and eco-kindness. Anything that gives you four distinct benefits for one effort is worth it. As far as statistics are concerned, I am in the 13 per cent that eats right and gets more than enough exercise on a regular basis. This is not because I am good or smart or disciplined, it's because I built it into my life such that I really don't have any other choice.
I think we tend to expand to fit the space we're given. This applies to luxuries too. I think we eat too much because we're offered too much, we hire housekeepers and maintain distance from the detritus of our daily, (intimate) lives, because we can. People offer to take over our unpleasantness for money. Whenever someone offers to buy your discomfort - be wary. It's probably not a good idea.
We sit on the couch cause the couch is there.
For some of us it requires drastic measures to change that - it didn't for our Grandmothers because they grew into their habits over time. When an older woman is reluctant to make a change, I think it is possible that as often as not it's because the way she does things as they are has hidden benefits and the loss of those benefits would mean losses in other areas of her life.
The woman who has figured out how to use organic cleansers and doesn't want to change? Well, leave her alone. Also leave alone the woman who uses bleach and bounce and all the rest of it because I will bet you anything she's making up for it somewhere else in her life and probably doing a pretty good job of it too.
Feminism is whatever benefits women, the same is true of environmental consciousness. Just because it doesn't fit your view of it, doesn't mean it isn't valid.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
yoga diary day two
It's been sixteen consecutive days I've been doing yoga in the morning.
Things seem to be going better - change is stirring/ My posture is improved. I can't, literally can not eat as much junk as I used to. And I am (maybe foolishly) trusting myself to proceed at my own pace. Which is slower than most people, I admit.
Today, I have two things to work on - the search for work and my art proposal. They'll take the whole day.
That's ok with me. Time is passing. This is just a note to mark a place. It is a place to say there are shifts occurring and nobody is more surprised about that than me.
If you've ever felt the urge to do yoga? Listen to it. You can use a DVD to start, you don't have to be a member of the beautiful yoga people, Lord knows I'm not.
I have a DVD from a studio in NYC and one from California, I think and I am going through a beginner's daily flow practice every single day. I'm finding it just as beneficial as my studio membership in Austin, maybe more so. I practice before breakfast, I spend an hour at it and I can tell I have a long way to go but even in 16 days, I think I've come further than I expected.
Back to breakfast and work.
Things seem to be going better - change is stirring/ My posture is improved. I can't, literally can not eat as much junk as I used to. And I am (maybe foolishly) trusting myself to proceed at my own pace. Which is slower than most people, I admit.
Today, I have two things to work on - the search for work and my art proposal. They'll take the whole day.
That's ok with me. Time is passing. This is just a note to mark a place. It is a place to say there are shifts occurring and nobody is more surprised about that than me.
If you've ever felt the urge to do yoga? Listen to it. You can use a DVD to start, you don't have to be a member of the beautiful yoga people, Lord knows I'm not.
I have a DVD from a studio in NYC and one from California, I think and I am going through a beginner's daily flow practice every single day. I'm finding it just as beneficial as my studio membership in Austin, maybe more so. I practice before breakfast, I spend an hour at it and I can tell I have a long way to go but even in 16 days, I think I've come further than I expected.
Back to breakfast and work.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
yoga diary
You'd have to go a very long way to find someone as inwardly resistant to going with the flow as I am.
To give you an idea, I've been back from Austin for 18 days now and haven't completely unpacked. In fact, I am taking clean socks and underwear out of 2009's luggage, the largest case of which sits unzipped on a plastic tub beside my desk. Once I have decided something's happening, I don't change course. I may go over the rapids, hell - I have gone over the falls more than once but changing course is not something I do.
Still, I made a promise to myself this year and it involved creating a kind of acceptance of flow in my life. I promised something small and non-threatening. I promised I'd do some yoga every day.
It's day 18 of that promise and so far, I've kept it. It's not the keeping that matters though, it's what it's doing.
During my daily yoga hour this morning a door opened and started me thinking down logical paths, currents, rivulets - flowing toward more sane, sensible attitudes to life, letting the light back in.
I will never be a yogini by any stretch. I'm frustrated by the work of it. Every single day I come close to talking myself out of it. One of the very best ways to do that is to tell myself I don't have time.
Well, while I was doing yoga - solutions popped up, ideas popped up and a media memo rewrote itself. I saved myself about half a day's effort.
Wanted to say that before I got down to it because in saving myself that half day's work I also realized where I am in the process of work for a whole bunch of other pressing things - so, down to it.
Yoga works.
Maybe I should rethink this "flow" thing.
To give you an idea, I've been back from Austin for 18 days now and haven't completely unpacked. In fact, I am taking clean socks and underwear out of 2009's luggage, the largest case of which sits unzipped on a plastic tub beside my desk. Once I have decided something's happening, I don't change course. I may go over the rapids, hell - I have gone over the falls more than once but changing course is not something I do.
Still, I made a promise to myself this year and it involved creating a kind of acceptance of flow in my life. I promised something small and non-threatening. I promised I'd do some yoga every day.
It's day 18 of that promise and so far, I've kept it. It's not the keeping that matters though, it's what it's doing.
During my daily yoga hour this morning a door opened and started me thinking down logical paths, currents, rivulets - flowing toward more sane, sensible attitudes to life, letting the light back in.
I will never be a yogini by any stretch. I'm frustrated by the work of it. Every single day I come close to talking myself out of it. One of the very best ways to do that is to tell myself I don't have time.
Well, while I was doing yoga - solutions popped up, ideas popped up and a media memo rewrote itself. I saved myself about half a day's effort.
Wanted to say that before I got down to it because in saving myself that half day's work I also realized where I am in the process of work for a whole bunch of other pressing things - so, down to it.
Yoga works.
Maybe I should rethink this "flow" thing.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Poetry and being heard
Went back to writing poetry this morning.
Thought about how the man in question would have sought this kind of thing out a year ago. Now I wonder if he'll bother to look at it at all, despite its presence on my Facebook page. Really, I'll have to start keeping it to myself anyway if I want to publish again, in magazines, I mean. And I do. Giving it away gets me nowhere and I've been nowhere long enough.
It occurs to me that the purpose of writing a poem is to express a complete thought. Usually it is a complete and fairly unusual thought, something you might want to think about but would not want to discuss. Usually something that couldn't be discussed.
Peripheral issues that thought stirs up could be discussed, but not the thought itself. That's what poetry is for, it is a single, clear observation that sets off resonances that create other observations in the reader. It is not a dialogue. It is more like a painting.
Been doing the ground work for a labyrinth project, slowly, slowly. Seems I do have all the time in the world to do these things, certainly more than I want, and it has occurred to me that walking the labyrinth is like making a poem (yes, poets call it that) or a painting but doing so with your body on the earth and doing it in a way where you leave no real trace and therefore put no ego into it.
You draw a symbol on the earth with your intention and that is how the earth is moved, changed, healed - it is how time is altered. It's a single statement, an idea too complex to discuss around which all other ideas about your life are formed, how you move on the earth, what you bless by your motion and your footsteps, how you pray, your intentions made manifest.
I have fallen in love with a man who is cloudy, muddied by the material aspects of life and all the complications, he cannot see clearly and yet he would be an artist. What he doesn't seem to realize is that the reason he works with images he gathers when he is not at home is because he cannot see while he is in his own body, on his own land, in his own place. He is up to his neck in the things that build illusions of permanence yet pass even as we are maintaining them - the car maintenance, the deadlines, the family crisis - waiting for these things to pass as they sweep his life into their current and out to the river of eternity.
Not that these things aren't important, even vitally so but to see them as the only things that matter - that way lies oblivion far too early.
Of course it is all too easy for us to see the things that blind and wound others. I am equally muddied, quite sure of that but because it is all within me, I can't see it. So I carry on, trying to act and speak from my higher nature, whatever that is and no doubt failing every day.
Someone I know quoted Mark Twain today, the one about setting sail for adventure because in 20 years you will only regret the things you did not do. Well, I have lived that way. I can say that with some certainty and although there is truth in that value there is equal truth in the fact that staying in one place, having family and friends who root you, understanding that place and loving it well, loving it fully - that is a different kind of adventure and one with value of its own. In fact, I would say one value is equal to the other. Many times it seems to me the value of being truly rooted in the love of one place for a lifetime is the greater adventure. It grants you the opportunity to see deeply into human nature, into your own nature and into the land you inhabit. None of us will ever live long enough to understand these things fully and they are worth knowing.
There is also the fact that Mark Twain never mentions the aftermath of adventures - coming home to the shut up household, the loneliness of traveling and returning alone, the longing for the people and places who are never permanent.
And what happens when you finally do find a place that stirs in you that deep love of home? The place where you could spend a lifetime and still have every day be an adventure? What happens then?
Like all travelers you cannot stay. Life itself is a temporary visa and there is heartbreak in knowing that truth. There must be much comfort in being somewhere you can say you have loved all your life and in making it your own. It makes me feel quite shallow, damaged and ashamed never to have found that before Austin and bereft to have found it now and not to be able to engage in that deeper adventure.
I suppose a part of me is in mourning and honestly - I'm so tired of hiding it.
Here is the poem I wrote this morning. Since it's already out there, there's no point saving it for paper publication.
in 2100 the dead will have a union.
or a consortium, the point is, they will speak
with one voice and keep a little money aside
enough to hire lobbyists
and make their voices heard.
they will have the vote
freedom of speech
and fair representation in 48 states
they will ask that all the bathtubs in home supply and department store displays
be hooked up to the plumbing
enough to make the taps work and the water run
but not to drain.
the flow will go only one way.
they will ask that you turn down the light
on your computer, in your living room
in the streets and alleys at night
and go to bed when you say you do, for a change.
they will ask that these things be made a part of the law
and we will see no reason not to
what reason is there?
not to grant last wishes.
They will speak as one group and define their members
only enough for us to know they were here once and they remember everything.
They will not say what it’s like to be where they are but
they will answer any question we can ask, while they hear us
if we phrase it exactly right.
They will remind us, they know where we have been
and have been where we are going
their rights will become bylaws and ritual will grow again
like weeds and grasses on roads where cars no longer go
we will wear black for a year
we will speak in hushed tones when we speak of them
we will think their earmarks and filibusters are tyrannical
but we will not say
only look at each other and see their place in our pasts and our futures
drink sometimes, dance and deny it.
And I know all this because I live in a place where it snows every day
and the snow is on the television
and in your hair
the wind blows every day
the wind is in your ears and on your telephone and it says things that are random
if you are still sane and quite specific otherwise
and those rights and regulations
in a place like this
are as close as your hand to your face
or your pillow to your cheek
on those long, silent nights when the phone doesn’t ring
and you cannot find a candle.
Thought about how the man in question would have sought this kind of thing out a year ago. Now I wonder if he'll bother to look at it at all, despite its presence on my Facebook page. Really, I'll have to start keeping it to myself anyway if I want to publish again, in magazines, I mean. And I do. Giving it away gets me nowhere and I've been nowhere long enough.
It occurs to me that the purpose of writing a poem is to express a complete thought. Usually it is a complete and fairly unusual thought, something you might want to think about but would not want to discuss. Usually something that couldn't be discussed.
Peripheral issues that thought stirs up could be discussed, but not the thought itself. That's what poetry is for, it is a single, clear observation that sets off resonances that create other observations in the reader. It is not a dialogue. It is more like a painting.
Been doing the ground work for a labyrinth project, slowly, slowly. Seems I do have all the time in the world to do these things, certainly more than I want, and it has occurred to me that walking the labyrinth is like making a poem (yes, poets call it that) or a painting but doing so with your body on the earth and doing it in a way where you leave no real trace and therefore put no ego into it.
You draw a symbol on the earth with your intention and that is how the earth is moved, changed, healed - it is how time is altered. It's a single statement, an idea too complex to discuss around which all other ideas about your life are formed, how you move on the earth, what you bless by your motion and your footsteps, how you pray, your intentions made manifest.
I have fallen in love with a man who is cloudy, muddied by the material aspects of life and all the complications, he cannot see clearly and yet he would be an artist. What he doesn't seem to realize is that the reason he works with images he gathers when he is not at home is because he cannot see while he is in his own body, on his own land, in his own place. He is up to his neck in the things that build illusions of permanence yet pass even as we are maintaining them - the car maintenance, the deadlines, the family crisis - waiting for these things to pass as they sweep his life into their current and out to the river of eternity.
Not that these things aren't important, even vitally so but to see them as the only things that matter - that way lies oblivion far too early.
Of course it is all too easy for us to see the things that blind and wound others. I am equally muddied, quite sure of that but because it is all within me, I can't see it. So I carry on, trying to act and speak from my higher nature, whatever that is and no doubt failing every day.
Someone I know quoted Mark Twain today, the one about setting sail for adventure because in 20 years you will only regret the things you did not do. Well, I have lived that way. I can say that with some certainty and although there is truth in that value there is equal truth in the fact that staying in one place, having family and friends who root you, understanding that place and loving it well, loving it fully - that is a different kind of adventure and one with value of its own. In fact, I would say one value is equal to the other. Many times it seems to me the value of being truly rooted in the love of one place for a lifetime is the greater adventure. It grants you the opportunity to see deeply into human nature, into your own nature and into the land you inhabit. None of us will ever live long enough to understand these things fully and they are worth knowing.
There is also the fact that Mark Twain never mentions the aftermath of adventures - coming home to the shut up household, the loneliness of traveling and returning alone, the longing for the people and places who are never permanent.
And what happens when you finally do find a place that stirs in you that deep love of home? The place where you could spend a lifetime and still have every day be an adventure? What happens then?
Like all travelers you cannot stay. Life itself is a temporary visa and there is heartbreak in knowing that truth. There must be much comfort in being somewhere you can say you have loved all your life and in making it your own. It makes me feel quite shallow, damaged and ashamed never to have found that before Austin and bereft to have found it now and not to be able to engage in that deeper adventure.
I suppose a part of me is in mourning and honestly - I'm so tired of hiding it.
Here is the poem I wrote this morning. Since it's already out there, there's no point saving it for paper publication.
in 2100 the dead will have a union.
or a consortium, the point is, they will speak
with one voice and keep a little money aside
enough to hire lobbyists
and make their voices heard.
they will have the vote
freedom of speech
and fair representation in 48 states
they will ask that all the bathtubs in home supply and department store displays
be hooked up to the plumbing
enough to make the taps work and the water run
but not to drain.
the flow will go only one way.
they will ask that you turn down the light
on your computer, in your living room
in the streets and alleys at night
and go to bed when you say you do, for a change.
they will ask that these things be made a part of the law
and we will see no reason not to
what reason is there?
not to grant last wishes.
They will speak as one group and define their members
only enough for us to know they were here once and they remember everything.
They will not say what it’s like to be where they are but
they will answer any question we can ask, while they hear us
if we phrase it exactly right.
They will remind us, they know where we have been
and have been where we are going
their rights will become bylaws and ritual will grow again
like weeds and grasses on roads where cars no longer go
we will wear black for a year
we will speak in hushed tones when we speak of them
we will think their earmarks and filibusters are tyrannical
but we will not say
only look at each other and see their place in our pasts and our futures
drink sometimes, dance and deny it.
And I know all this because I live in a place where it snows every day
and the snow is on the television
and in your hair
the wind blows every day
the wind is in your ears and on your telephone and it says things that are random
if you are still sane and quite specific otherwise
and those rights and regulations
in a place like this
are as close as your hand to your face
or your pillow to your cheek
on those long, silent nights when the phone doesn’t ring
and you cannot find a candle.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Back in Canada
I am in Ottawa again and looking out over a frozen landscape. It will stay that way for the next four months. I was thinking this morning, as I made my breakfast, about women and "extra sensory perception."
I do not believe there is anything unnatural or extraordinary about the way most women, if they let themselves, know what is happening with the people in their lives as it happens. This occurs in so many species, we would have to be fundamentally damaged for it not to be true of us. Distance doesn't matter, time and space are not part of the dynamic - when someone close to you emotionally and/or physically or even mentally, takes an action that will have an impact on your life, you can't help but feel it.
As I felt the tiny drop in my head - the distinctive sound/feeling of someone reading an email from me and composing a reply, I felt myself begin to brush it away and paused. It occurred to me that we are all capable of reading the future because we are all aware of the present in much deeper ways than we realize. When we say we would like to be able to read other's minds or read the future, we really mean the dramatic or good parts.
I wonder, if we let ourselves accept that we always know if we only choose to look - would it make a difference? Would our lives be any easier?
I do not believe there is anything unnatural or extraordinary about the way most women, if they let themselves, know what is happening with the people in their lives as it happens. This occurs in so many species, we would have to be fundamentally damaged for it not to be true of us. Distance doesn't matter, time and space are not part of the dynamic - when someone close to you emotionally and/or physically or even mentally, takes an action that will have an impact on your life, you can't help but feel it.
As I felt the tiny drop in my head - the distinctive sound/feeling of someone reading an email from me and composing a reply, I felt myself begin to brush it away and paused. It occurred to me that we are all capable of reading the future because we are all aware of the present in much deeper ways than we realize. When we say we would like to be able to read other's minds or read the future, we really mean the dramatic or good parts.
I wonder, if we let ourselves accept that we always know if we only choose to look - would it make a difference? Would our lives be any easier?
Saturday, December 11, 2010
When is a reversal not a reversal?
I feel better today.
I still can't write about half the stuff that matters to me. I'm still stuck in the same situation, (if I ever was stuck) but I feel different.
Yesterday I walked to Barton Springs. It is a natural spring that feeds a swimming pool and a spring (that should have been the water source for the city but never mind). It was sacred to the people from this area and I can see why.
I walked to the springs, put my hand in the water, thanked the water and took a sip. And today, I feel cleansed. That might sound crazy but it is the closest thing to a ceremony rooted in the land that I've been able to have here. And it matters.
More later.
Things are going to be ok.
I still can't write about half the stuff that matters to me. I'm still stuck in the same situation, (if I ever was stuck) but I feel different.
Yesterday I walked to Barton Springs. It is a natural spring that feeds a swimming pool and a spring (that should have been the water source for the city but never mind). It was sacred to the people from this area and I can see why.
I walked to the springs, put my hand in the water, thanked the water and took a sip. And today, I feel cleansed. That might sound crazy but it is the closest thing to a ceremony rooted in the land that I've been able to have here. And it matters.
More later.
Things are going to be ok.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Winter
In Austin, winter comes in little spikes and then goes away again. By February, summer clothes will be all a person needs here. Right now, there are days when a jacket is a good idea and nights when scarf and gloves make sense but it will never be as cold as it is in Victoria or Ottawa or even New England and the sun shines every day.
I never thought I'd understand snowbirds. All my life I've wanted two things, my freedom and security. Seems to me now that alone, those two things cancel each other out. In order to feel safe enough to consider options, a woman really needs to be married. I was foolish to think it could be any other way.
The paradox of life is very much with me now. Things, places, situations, relationships - yes, they can become yours forever but even your forever won't last. As much as you love anything, everything - life is a temporary condition. It feels permanent but it's not, an element of loss is built in for everyone just because we all, one way or another, love each other.
So we keep our eyes on the things we want to keep - that's the only sensible way.
I can't help but notice the rest of the world is slowly catching up to some of the choices I've been forced to make in order to make my own life livable. I read an article about living in a smaller house today. Apparently it is becoming chic. I have lived for so long in an apartment that is under 500 square feet that I'm no longer comfortable with the idea of living in a space larger than 1200 square feet with someone I love. I look at houses and apartments to imagine how life might be for us some day and find that most of the ones I reject have one thing in common, they are too big.
More than anything else, if and when I am finally able to live with someone I truly do love, I want to live close.
So the year draws to a close and who knows if I will be able to keep my love, freedom doesn't matter so much to me anymore, now it's love and security. Maybe it's a function of the season but really, I think I'm just finally realizing what matters.
I never thought I'd understand snowbirds. All my life I've wanted two things, my freedom and security. Seems to me now that alone, those two things cancel each other out. In order to feel safe enough to consider options, a woman really needs to be married. I was foolish to think it could be any other way.
The paradox of life is very much with me now. Things, places, situations, relationships - yes, they can become yours forever but even your forever won't last. As much as you love anything, everything - life is a temporary condition. It feels permanent but it's not, an element of loss is built in for everyone just because we all, one way or another, love each other.
So we keep our eyes on the things we want to keep - that's the only sensible way.
I can't help but notice the rest of the world is slowly catching up to some of the choices I've been forced to make in order to make my own life livable. I read an article about living in a smaller house today. Apparently it is becoming chic. I have lived for so long in an apartment that is under 500 square feet that I'm no longer comfortable with the idea of living in a space larger than 1200 square feet with someone I love. I look at houses and apartments to imagine how life might be for us some day and find that most of the ones I reject have one thing in common, they are too big.
More than anything else, if and when I am finally able to live with someone I truly do love, I want to live close.
So the year draws to a close and who knows if I will be able to keep my love, freedom doesn't matter so much to me anymore, now it's love and security. Maybe it's a function of the season but really, I think I'm just finally realizing what matters.
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