Earlier today my sister, Meghan, called from Santa Fe to check-in. She and her husband, Isaiah, and my nephew, Val, are there from Burlington VT to attend Isaiah's uncle's wedding.
Once again I tried to get into words one fraction of a corner of what is going on and going wrong round these parts of the sunny East Bay. Not only are the bizarre, Gordian circumlocutions reaching the point of inexpressibility, but the effort of keeping it all in consciousness in order to shuffle in a timely fashion between emergencies reduces the capacity for response. If you are feeling overwhelmed and having a hard time dealing with daily life, this may be the time to stop reading. I am about to attempt to give voice to the feelings beneath the layers of interlocked intractability stacked atop my spirit at the moment.
Aidan's death gave me my first window into really understanding (in the context of my historical difficulty with playing believable suicides on stage) how a person can awake to the reality that the voice of Life can not only be temporarily muted but unalterably silenced such that there is no real hope of hearing it again. Watching the arms wide, face open, beaming Hope lie down and Never again rise up creates an irreversible closure. It is possible to react and respond but not to prevent or change. The tomb with its rock rolled away may be visited but He is not there and won't be again. The possible responses to ending run the gamut from y to z in ways I imagine to be like the installation of a cochlear implant. It is possible to respond to deafness by drilling through the skull, and inserting cold metal and plastic leads between the skin and bone, and bombarding nerves with impulses. This cyborg wonder can lead to satisfactory functioning where there was none. Hallelujah! The true hearing of the Magic Flute will never happen again, even after the mind relearns how to process these entirely different spectra of inputs, because the variegated organic system developed during the body's sensitive period for absorbing all the nuance of sound is dead.
Easter People: A Message! He is not Risen! The idea of and stories about him go on in a beautiful and problematic way as do all Big Stories. But He will not be available for embracing, no matter how many other people, large or small, you embrace as his image and in his name. What is undying (athanatos, the Greek term for god) and incarnational is the presence of the Spirit which enters the valley of Soul-making, not the flesh and smell and taste and warmth of the treasured person. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
So never mind.
All those preparations for later are laughable. The occasional emergencies you used to handle with grace, because "this too will pass"/change or "knowing nothing need be done - you begin", have only one time frame for response. Now. While you are still breathing and before it gets worse.
And culture helps. The contemporary pool of the collective psyche frames cosmos in these same terms:
So, D for Death.
And Dissertation:
When the year I lost to Pacifica not hiring enough staff was finally returned to me in the form of a no-fee extension (until Dec 31, 2007), enough time had passed that the Federal Loan people had moved me into repayment, as though my work were over. Not a problem, you might say, just reestablish your eligibility. Great, but after all the paperwork B.S. is finished to do just that we discover that, because all higher ed loans for our family are consolidated (as instructed - to avoid the Congress approved rate hike) Lisa must also be in school and earning nothing to get my in-school deferment in place. This wasn't required before but it is now, apparently. So we now have another round of paperwork to prove that Lisa will have no work or income as of her last day at Mercy, etc. before there is hope of stemming the tide of late fees and oppressive emails.
And did I mention that there is hope of getting help finishing the first two chapters - my Proposal after which I will be classified as making "acceptable progress" so my loan money will begin again?
Not a problem. There is a professional who comes highly recommended who guarantees our intensive process together over two days will result in those two chapters at 40 pages each. She charges $1000/day. I'll ask her to charge less but she, of course, doesn't have to. I get so beyond tired asking for help to try to get my head above water and then having to explain all this.
And Dollars:
So its time to choose between finishing my $70,000 degree and having money to make the driveabout possible, for which I have taken on recording three additional national conferences (Portland, Tulsa, and San Diego) between now and the time we leave. Everything we want to do takes money which we have less of every moment we move further from usual employment and closer to being away. Paying for Diss help, van changes and repairs, gas, storage, tech costs and Internet access, etc. while preparing to pay for Lisa's teacher training, rent, health insurance, etc. in the Fall. Lisa's last day as an Admin. Ass was today, though she'll go back a few more times to help out.
And Departure:
From our home of eight years by the end of this month. Selling/passing on furniture and clothes and taking pictures for Craig's List and sorting old papers and carrying things next door to the room given us for storage by our godssent neighbors John and Ingrid and searching for lost items that were there when I put them down for a moment yesterday and washing the dishes and taking out the extra trash and all the usual things times six but not the usual patterns because we're leaving so food in the fridge but not too much and somebody to sublet our sublet of a friend's place until we can get back to Berkeley in the Fall and going over there to measure and take pictures and plan where things will go and
And the Driveabout:
Ever spend almost three months packing, repacking, and living in a van with one other person and at least two different ideas of how to grieve and spend time off or with family and writing every day or getting away or together or apart? Would you want to be in there with me after reading this?
And Demonstration:
In order to be promoted to Yondan (4th degree black belt) I am obligated and privileged give a demonstration at the annual CAA Division One Gasshuku at Sunset Cliffs Aikido in San Diego on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. In order to do this it has been my pleasure to plan it, coordinate rehearsals with the dojo's and every one's schedule, rewrite it, lose the folder with my most recent notes in the confusion of everything else, and in my spare time do the soul searching required whenever Aikido needs demonstrating in a personal and specific way in front of people. What is a fourth degree black belt in Aikido exactly? How is that different from other levels of experience? Am I that?
And Development:
Huston Smith invited me last month to begin having tea with him every week and discuss ideas. There's no way in the world I'd turn that down. He nominated me to be a part of the Pacific Coast Theological Society which meets today and tomorrow. I pick him up at 3:15. The prep for that involves reading the papers that will be presented and manging to look presentable in order to be introduced around. Overwhelm is not reducible to a series of attacks by the cosmos. Especially in the U.S. we suffer too from an overabundance of blessings.
When Lisa and I return I'll be the primary bread winner while Lisa is in Montessori Teacher Training. This means a reliable income of at least $40-50k, largely set-up now and while traveling in other parts. In order to study, write, build the Process Arts, and create community on purpose I make $16k a year right now. Any suggestions? Must write resumes, update the website content / email addresses / I.T.infrastructure on which I depend for information support and professional credibility.
And Domains:
So that makes this the perfect time for our long abusive registrar of domain names, Registerfly, to finally collapse and get defrocked, sued, and investigated, thereby trapping our primary domain name Abcglobal.net where it cannot be transferred and cannot serve to forward any emails using that domain and makes certain that nobody can find our website after we returned from making a big splash at a major industry event, gave everyone our email and website addresses, and sent out a report and appeal for support letter directing everyone to that same website.
So, I reel. When I was younger I began talking, in response to the official diagnostic voice known by the title "ADHD", about my consciousness regularly being flipped off and on again - the slate of my mental chalkboard being suddenly erased. Slate wiping during these weeks is worse than it has been since puberty. I forget things constantly and trying to remember why I am in this room with this particular aardvark in my arms. Hamlet, speaking of aardvarks, seems more comprehensible, unfortunately, and I wander in my memory of questionable versions of his soliloquies I've offered as audition pieces over the years.
I am amazed at how much energy goes into making the outer world resemble the inner world (I suffer therefore you will suffer) and then goes into trying to change the outer world (fascism) so that it does not resemble the inner world (chaos and no control over death). I hurt, says the Ego. Therefore the world is a place of hurt, otherwise I wouldn't be hurting. Therefore it's OK to spread that hurt around. After all, the Truth is that the world is a place with hurt in. This isn't Fair so I'd best get what I can of whatever is left to suck on while I wait. Yike. "As above, so below; as within, so without." No wonder we hurt each other out there in the "Real World."
My Lent covered only a week or two, since I'm avoiding the ritual of the 40 days in favor of actually living in Death itself for however long this is going to take. A week ago, Saturday, was a day that effectively ended a week of dwelling in fear, often nameless, that had a voice similar to the question my sister asked today: "What happens when you can't actually do more?"
What if the Distress I feel drowning me, being insufficient over the years to actually change my behavior, leads to the Deconstruction of me? What if the distress of consuming our planet / home / body, being insufficient to get us to actually consume less, is leading to the demise of what we might define as humanity? The Modern MonoGod's Ohm (power - syllable) circumscribes contemporary consciousness within the spectrum stretching between Overwhelm and Opacity. Everything, whether "good" or "bad" arrives at so many levels and paces that it is not possible to integrate deeply in response to anything in particular. When some filtering or change is required the system / cosmos / principle is unresponsive.
The Sunday that followed was a day of fools and palms and children and tears. My little boy was there last year and was promised to the future now going on before me without him. I wish I were crazy enough to act out the play of it, rushing about crying "have you seen my son? He was just here a minute ago?" Still, that day walked in beauty. Then Monday was a return to fear and desperation.
What is there to...
How can I...
What is left to me...?
Alexander cuts the Gordian Knot Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743 - 1811): Alexander durchschlägt den gordischen Knoten, Öl auf Leinwand, 113 x 145 cm, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts. Source: http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/lect/helden/12.htm
| posted by Unknown @ 4/13/2007 02:34:00 PM
|
Once again I tried to get into words one fraction of a corner of what is going on and going wrong round these parts of the sunny East Bay. Not only are the bizarre, Gordian circumlocutions reaching the point of inexpressibility, but the effort of keeping it all in consciousness in order to shuffle in a timely fashion between emergencies reduces the capacity for response. If you are feeling overwhelmed and having a hard time dealing with daily life, this may be the time to stop reading. I am about to attempt to give voice to the feelings beneath the layers of interlocked intractability stacked atop my spirit at the moment.
Aidan's death gave me my first window into really understanding (in the context of my historical difficulty with playing believable suicides on stage) how a person can awake to the reality that the voice of Life can not only be temporarily muted but unalterably silenced such that there is no real hope of hearing it again. Watching the arms wide, face open, beaming Hope lie down and Never again rise up creates an irreversible closure. It is possible to react and respond but not to prevent or change. The tomb with its rock rolled away may be visited but He is not there and won't be again. The possible responses to ending run the gamut from y to z in ways I imagine to be like the installation of a cochlear implant. It is possible to respond to deafness by drilling through the skull, and inserting cold metal and plastic leads between the skin and bone, and bombarding nerves with impulses. This cyborg wonder can lead to satisfactory functioning where there was none. Hallelujah! The true hearing of the Magic Flute will never happen again, even after the mind relearns how to process these entirely different spectra of inputs, because the variegated organic system developed during the body's sensitive period for absorbing all the nuance of sound is dead.
Easter People: A Message! He is not Risen! The idea of and stories about him go on in a beautiful and problematic way as do all Big Stories. But He will not be available for embracing, no matter how many other people, large or small, you embrace as his image and in his name. What is undying (athanatos, the Greek term for god) and incarnational is the presence of the Spirit which enters the valley of Soul-making, not the flesh and smell and taste and warmth of the treasured person. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
So never mind.
All those preparations for later are laughable. The occasional emergencies you used to handle with grace, because "this too will pass"/change or "knowing nothing need be done - you begin", have only one time frame for response. Now. While you are still breathing and before it gets worse.
And culture helps. The contemporary pool of the collective psyche frames cosmos in these same terms:
- opacity (unresponsive to your preparations and thirst for fullness of Life) and
- overwhelm (fires to put out all the time with a dearth of moisture and a level of complexity so intense that finding any root conflagration on which to focus becomes impossible.
So, D for Death.
And Dissertation:
When the year I lost to Pacifica not hiring enough staff was finally returned to me in the form of a no-fee extension (until Dec 31, 2007), enough time had passed that the Federal Loan people had moved me into repayment, as though my work were over. Not a problem, you might say, just reestablish your eligibility. Great, but after all the paperwork B.S. is finished to do just that we discover that, because all higher ed loans for our family are consolidated (as instructed - to avoid the Congress approved rate hike) Lisa must also be in school and earning nothing to get my in-school deferment in place. This wasn't required before but it is now, apparently. So we now have another round of paperwork to prove that Lisa will have no work or income as of her last day at Mercy, etc. before there is hope of stemming the tide of late fees and oppressive emails.
And did I mention that there is hope of getting help finishing the first two chapters - my Proposal after which I will be classified as making "acceptable progress" so my loan money will begin again?
Not a problem. There is a professional who comes highly recommended who guarantees our intensive process together over two days will result in those two chapters at 40 pages each. She charges $1000/day. I'll ask her to charge less but she, of course, doesn't have to. I get so beyond tired asking for help to try to get my head above water and then having to explain all this.
And Dollars:
So its time to choose between finishing my $70,000 degree and having money to make the driveabout possible, for which I have taken on recording three additional national conferences (Portland, Tulsa, and San Diego) between now and the time we leave. Everything we want to do takes money which we have less of every moment we move further from usual employment and closer to being away. Paying for Diss help, van changes and repairs, gas, storage, tech costs and Internet access, etc. while preparing to pay for Lisa's teacher training, rent, health insurance, etc. in the Fall. Lisa's last day as an Admin. Ass was today, though she'll go back a few more times to help out.
And Departure:
From our home of eight years by the end of this month. Selling/passing on furniture and clothes and taking pictures for Craig's List and sorting old papers and carrying things next door to the room given us for storage by our godssent neighbors John and Ingrid and searching for lost items that were there when I put them down for a moment yesterday and washing the dishes and taking out the extra trash and all the usual things times six but not the usual patterns because we're leaving so food in the fridge but not too much and somebody to sublet our sublet of a friend's place until we can get back to Berkeley in the Fall and going over there to measure and take pictures and plan where things will go and
And the Driveabout:
Ever spend almost three months packing, repacking, and living in a van with one other person and at least two different ideas of how to grieve and spend time off or with family and writing every day or getting away or together or apart? Would you want to be in there with me after reading this?
And Demonstration:
In order to be promoted to Yondan (4th degree black belt) I am obligated and privileged give a demonstration at the annual CAA Division One Gasshuku at Sunset Cliffs Aikido in San Diego on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. In order to do this it has been my pleasure to plan it, coordinate rehearsals with the dojo's and every one's schedule, rewrite it, lose the folder with my most recent notes in the confusion of everything else, and in my spare time do the soul searching required whenever Aikido needs demonstrating in a personal and specific way in front of people. What is a fourth degree black belt in Aikido exactly? How is that different from other levels of experience? Am I that?
And Development:
Huston Smith invited me last month to begin having tea with him every week and discuss ideas. There's no way in the world I'd turn that down. He nominated me to be a part of the Pacific Coast Theological Society which meets today and tomorrow. I pick him up at 3:15. The prep for that involves reading the papers that will be presented and manging to look presentable in order to be introduced around. Overwhelm is not reducible to a series of attacks by the cosmos. Especially in the U.S. we suffer too from an overabundance of blessings.
When Lisa and I return I'll be the primary bread winner while Lisa is in Montessori Teacher Training. This means a reliable income of at least $40-50k, largely set-up now and while traveling in other parts. In order to study, write, build the Process Arts, and create community on purpose I make $16k a year right now. Any suggestions? Must write resumes, update the website content / email addresses / I.T.infrastructure on which I depend for information support and professional credibility.
And Domains:
So that makes this the perfect time for our long abusive registrar of domain names, Registerfly, to finally collapse and get defrocked, sued, and investigated, thereby trapping our primary domain name Abcglobal.net where it cannot be transferred and cannot serve to forward any emails using that domain and makes certain that nobody can find our website after we returned from making a big splash at a major industry event, gave everyone our email and website addresses, and sent out a report and appeal for support letter directing everyone to that same website.
So, I reel. When I was younger I began talking, in response to the official diagnostic voice known by the title "ADHD", about my consciousness regularly being flipped off and on again - the slate of my mental chalkboard being suddenly erased. Slate wiping during these weeks is worse than it has been since puberty. I forget things constantly and trying to remember why I am in this room with this particular aardvark in my arms. Hamlet, speaking of aardvarks, seems more comprehensible, unfortunately, and I wander in my memory of questionable versions of his soliloquies I've offered as audition pieces over the years.
I am amazed at how much energy goes into making the outer world resemble the inner world (I suffer therefore you will suffer) and then goes into trying to change the outer world (fascism) so that it does not resemble the inner world (chaos and no control over death). I hurt, says the Ego. Therefore the world is a place of hurt, otherwise I wouldn't be hurting. Therefore it's OK to spread that hurt around. After all, the Truth is that the world is a place with hurt in. This isn't Fair so I'd best get what I can of whatever is left to suck on while I wait. Yike. "As above, so below; as within, so without." No wonder we hurt each other out there in the "Real World."
My Lent covered only a week or two, since I'm avoiding the ritual of the 40 days in favor of actually living in Death itself for however long this is going to take. A week ago, Saturday, was a day that effectively ended a week of dwelling in fear, often nameless, that had a voice similar to the question my sister asked today: "What happens when you can't actually do more?"
What if the Distress I feel drowning me, being insufficient over the years to actually change my behavior, leads to the Deconstruction of me? What if the distress of consuming our planet / home / body, being insufficient to get us to actually consume less, is leading to the demise of what we might define as humanity? The Modern MonoGod's Ohm (power - syllable) circumscribes contemporary consciousness within the spectrum stretching between Overwhelm and Opacity. Everything, whether "good" or "bad" arrives at so many levels and paces that it is not possible to integrate deeply in response to anything in particular. When some filtering or change is required the system / cosmos / principle is unresponsive.
The Sunday that followed was a day of fools and palms and children and tears. My little boy was there last year and was promised to the future now going on before me without him. I wish I were crazy enough to act out the play of it, rushing about crying "have you seen my son? He was just here a minute ago?" Still, that day walked in beauty. Then Monday was a return to fear and desperation.
What is there to...
How can I...
What is left to me...?
the undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Alexander cuts the Gordian Knot Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743 - 1811): Alexander durchschlägt den gordischen Knoten, Öl auf Leinwand, 113 x 145 cm, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts. Source: http://www.kzu.ch/fach/as/gallerie/lect/helden/12.htm
