if it was the truth

from m archive by alexis pauline gumbs


that was the challenge. to create oneself anew on a regular basis. it started with every seven years (also called the new cell cycle) and accelerated for the talented. to every three years, every year, every season, every month, every day until the prestige came from re-creating a self unrecognizable (to both your former self and the expectations of others) multiple times in any given day. they said it was towards the evolution of the community. a community that could not depend on previous expectations would have to evolve new needs. their individual shapeshifting was towards less collective dependence on a former world. let the new world meet us faster where we are! the people sometimes said to affirm a particularly brave reinvention.

they went from mostly not knowing their neighbors to perpetually not knowing themselves. which seemed more useful. and like the rare urban neighbor with the time to watch their transforming neighbors walk in and out their doors differently every day, the social media applications were even more useful for creating narrative out of the random moments of self-documentation offered by the digitally literate.

maybe that's where they went wrong. the watching. because at some point the point changed from transforming need and evolving skills to performing further and further newness. as if novelty itself was the measure and the outcome and the point again. and eventually it distilled down to the same people looking different every day and going to the same places they always went just to provoke contrast and doing the same things they always did (eventually just the work of looking for and financing new costumes). so the challenge was called off around the time when it got most boring.

it wasn't worth the use of fossil fuels.


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but that was before. i am trying to describe to you what it was like when the doers decided to rest. when they carefully placed what they knew in the easiest places to find it and sat down. i don't know if wind systems really take deep breaths on their own, but it felt like it. the stillness was profound. and for a while all the talkers could hear were their own voices resounding like always, but pretty soon they had to listen for the source of this strange silence where the rhythm of other people's doing had been. it was the sound of a voice bouncing with nothing to take credit for. nothing left, finally, to steal. it was hollow and horrifying from that perspective.

and the former doers retained their restraint. some of them shaking in their seats. some of them repeating mantras and biting the insides of their cheeks, but quite a few of them just honestly passed out in the deeply earned and dreamless sleep of the overused.

you should have been there. you had to be there to really feel the contrast. all that frantic energy, all that back-and-forth friction and the robust remarking that tried to drown it all out. and then the moment it just stopped. and if it was truth you wanted, you could find it on the floor, in the kitchen, lying on the street just so. if it was truth you wanted, here it was. i mean make yourself at home already.

the third commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"it's only when the fearful 'i' is not pushing and pulling at life, freaking out and grasping at it, that full engagement is possible. we become more fully engaged in our lives when we become less self-absorbed. as we have less and less allegiance to our small, egocentric self, less and less allegiance to a fixed notion of who we are or what we're capable of doing, we find we also have less and less fear of embracing the world just as it is."

"in the charnel ground, we meet both wretchedness and splendidness -- the totality of our experience as human beings -- and discover that we need both to be a genuine warrior. the splendidness of life lifts our spirits, and we go forward with enthusiasm. when we hear pleasant news or meet with inspiring teachers, when we enjoy the company of good friends or find ourselves in beautiful places, when we feel that everything is ideal and hunky-dory, then naturally we feel joyful and at ease. but should all of this good fortune make us arrogant or complacent or indifferent to the suffering of others, wretchedness humbles us. it cuts through any sense of superiority or entitlement, through any delusions that comfort is somehow our birthright. on the other hand, if there is too much wretchedness - too much misery and despair - it makes us want to collapse and never get out of bed. so the sweetness of life and the harshness of life complement each other. splendidness provides vision, and wretchedness grounds us. just when we're ready to give up, a kind word or the sight of the ocean or the sound of beautiful music can save the day. just when we're riding high and becoming arrogant, a sudden misfortune or bad news from the doctor or the unexpected death of a loved one can abruptly bring us down to earth and reconnect us with our tender heart.

when life is uncomfortable, when we're highly agitated and don't know where to turn, that's the most difficult time to stay present. but that's also the time when doing so can be the most rewarding. it's a challenge to practice staying present when we're despondent or distressed or overwhelmed, when our backs are against the wall. but right then, when we're in a tight spot, we have the ideal situation for practice. we can do something radical: accept suffering as part of our home ground, part of our enlightened mandala, and relate to it straightforwardly. we don't awaken in some paradise where the circumstances are made to order. we awaken in the charnel ground."

"wanting to escape pain is the reason that many people start on a spiritual path. it can be a good motivator, because it drives us to look for answers. the problem is, most of us spend our entire life going from one promise of relief to another, never staying with the pain long enough to learn anything from it.

but sooner or later, we all encounter intense emotion that we can't outrun. it may be fear that arises in a truly disturbing situation or the feeling of being very hooked and about to be swept away. one sign that you've already started charnel-ground practice, whether you realize it or not, is if you perk up when strong feelings come alone and then, instead of trying to get rid of them, you move toward them and get curious. when you're open to inviting difficult emotions to stick around long enough to teach you something, then you're already in the frame of mind to do this practice."

"if we're doing this practice in earnest, the emotions and habitual patterns we're working with can hit us with such force that it takes everything in us not to run. sometimes i felt like odysseus, lashed to the mast so i wouldn't follow the sirens' song. it was as if a giant magnet were trying to drag me away from staying present. i would just begin to sit with an intense feeling when a little voice in my head would start saying things like 'you'd better check to see if you turned off the stove' and 'maybe this is bad for your heart.' our old habits are worthy opponents. even if we're eager to have everything fall apart so we can do charnel-ground practice, when we actually do it, it puts us through a lot. we need strong motivation to stick with it because the desire to escape is so compelling."

the second commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"taking the . . . vow to help others implies that instead of holding our own individual territory and defending it tooth and nail, we become open to the world that we are living in. it means we are willing to take on greater responsibility, immense responsibility. in fact, it means taking a big chance."- chogyam trungpa rinpoche

"compassion is threatening to the ego. we might think of it as something warm and soothing, but actually it's very raw. when we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to never close down to anyone, we quickly find ourselves in the uncomfortable territory of 'life not on my terms.'"

"opening the door reflects our intention to remove our armor, to take off our mask, to face our fears. it is only to the degree that we become willing to face our own feelings that we can really help others. so we make a commitment that for the rest of our lives, we'll train in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of our own reactivity, our own survival mechanisms, our own propensities to be hooked."

"we probably learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. we have to recognize when something doesn't work and - this is important - not take it personally. instead, we can follow chogyam trungpa's suggestion: live your life as an experiment. adopt an attitude of 'i'm not sure what will help in this situation, but i'm going to experiment and try this.'"

"the ending of a previously close relationship throws us right into the midst of fundamental uncertainty - and that definitely hurts. we've met our edge. we find ourselves caught up in behaviors we assumed we had outgrown years ago. sometimes just the thought of the person makes us close down. but often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what chogyam trungpa called 'the genuine heart of sadness.'"

the first commitment

quotes from living beautifully with uncertainty and change by pema chodron

the three commitments:

1- committing to not cause harm
2- committing to take care of one another
3- committing to embrace the world just as it is

"the first commitment is about refraining from speech and actions that are harmful to ourselves and others. it liberates us by making us far more aware of what we're feeling, so that whenever the urge to lie or slander or take something that isn't given to us comes up - whenever we have the urge to act out our desires or aggression, or escape in any form - we refrain."

"refraining from harmful speech and action is outer renunciation; choosing not to escape the underlying feelings is inner renunciation. the precepts are a device to put us in touch with the underlying uneasiness, the fundamental quality of being alive. working with this feeling and the neurosis it triggers is inner renunciation."

"there's a practice in buddhism called sojong that gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we are in terms of refraining and, when we feel that we've really made a mess of things, to put that behind us and start anew. traditionally, sojong takes place twice a month, on the full and new moon days. the day before, each person reviews the preceding two weeks and reflects: what have i done with my body? what have i done with my speech? what about my mind: is it steady or all over the place and never present? as much as possible, we explore these questions without self-criticism or blame. . .

sojong itself is a little like the fourth and fifth steps in a twelve step program, which call for making 'a searching and fearless' self-inventory, recognizing where we've gone off course, then sharing this with another person. sojong is a kind of antiguilt process that allows us to assess ourselves honestly, acknowledge what we've done and where we are, then let go of self-judgment and move on. . .

you don't have to say this aloud to a group or another person, but most people find it easier to let go of self-judgment if they share their observations with someone else - a friend, perhaps, or a spiritual adviser. however you do it, the aim is to be fully honest and, at the same time, to shed feelings of guilt."

"nobody's perfect in keeping the commitment to not harm. but still, students often ask me, 'how can i make this vow with any integrity? if i'm going to break it at all, then what's the point?' patrul rinpoche, a buddhist master who lived in the eighteenth century, basically said there is no way to escape harming. he devotes an entire section of his book the words of my perfect teacher to all the ways we cause harm: countless being suffer from making the clothes we wear, from bringing us the food we eat. beings suffer even when we walk. 'who is not guilt of having crushed countless tiny insects underfoot?' he asks. our situation is inescapable because of our interconnectedness with all things. what makes the difference is our intention to not harm. on an everyday level, the intention to not harm means using our body, our speech, and our mind in such a way that we don't knowingly hurt people, animals, birds, insects - any being - with our actions or words."

"sakyong mipham recommends that as we sit down to meditate, we contemplate our intention for the session. our intention might be to strengthen the natural stability of mind by training in continually coming back to the body, to our mood right now, and to our environment. or our intention might be to make friends with ourselves, to be less stern and judgmental as we meditate, so we might train in noticing our tone of voice when we label and lightening up and not being too tight or goal oriented in our practice."

"it's a tricky business - not rejecting any part of yourself at the same time that you're becoming acutely aware of how embarrassing or painful some of those parts are. what most of us have been doing is gearing our lives toward avoiding unpleasant feelings while clinging to whatever we think will make us feel good and feel secure. from a conventional point of view, this makes perfect sense. but from the vantage point of remaining with our direct experience, the vantage point of opening to the tentativeness of life, this strategy is self-defeating, the very thing that keeps us stuck.

there's an exercise that can help us reflect on this knee-jerk tendency to cling to what makes us feel good and push away what makes us feel bad:

sit quietly for a few minutes and become mindful of your breath as it goes in and out. then contemplate what you do when you're unhappy or dissatisfied and want to feel better. even make a list if you want to. then ask yourself: does it work? has it ever worked? does it soothe the pain? does it escalate the pain? if you're really honest, you'll come up with some pretty interesting observations."

"pleasure and pain drive us all the time. the attraction is simple: we want pleasure; we don't want pain. our attachment to them is very strong, very visceral at either extreme. we can get that clenching-in-the-gut feeling of being hooked both when we crave something - when we're consumed with wanting or needing - and when we're averse to something and try to push it away."

"this has been going on through the ages. they criticize the silent ones. they criticize the talkative ones. they criticize the moderate ones. there is no one in the world that escapes criticism. there never was and never will be, nor is there now, the wholly criticized or the wholly approved." [shakyamuni buddha]

resurrection

excerpt from freshwater by akwaeke emezi

the ada's surgery happened the spring after asughara's failed attempt, just five months later. before then, we used to think of the body as belonging truly to the ada, as something that we were only guests in, something that the beastself could borrow. but now that we had been spurned from the gates, now that we were sentenced to meat, it was time to accept that this body was ours too.

. . .

when ewan left and asughara allowed saint vincent to take the ada's body and start binding her chest -- all of these things were in preparation for a shedding, the skin splitting in long seams. the first time the ada wore the binder, she turned sideways in a mirror and saint vincent laughed out loud in relief, in joy, in the rightness of the absence. the ada was wearing faded purple jeans, and the soft of her belly swelled out from under the cutting bottom edge of the vest. but she could endure that, even the sharpness around her armpits. the flatness was worth it. the ada pulled a short-sleeved t-shirt over the vest and ran her hands up and down the mild curve. it felt like armor, like we were bulletproof, like saint vincent was being built up in layers of determined fiber. the ada wore the binder every day and washed it by hand in her small bathroom sink. once, she made the mistake of putting it in the dryer, weakening the elastic. saint vincent suffered with each fraction of looseness she had caused, so she was more careful after that.

before asughara put us in the emergency room, we had been searching for doctors to alter the ada, to carve our body into something that we could truly call a home. saachi finally realized, in her panic over the ada's suicide attempt, exactly how much of her daughter actually belonged to her, which was to say, not much at all. the ada was slipping from the human mother to us, to a freedom saachi didn't trust. after all, how could she keep the girl safe if the girl wouldn't listen, wouldn't obey, if the girl was us? we were grateful that saachi had at one time cared for the ada, had kept her alive as a baby and been an excellent guardian as far as she could, but what did she know of graces or beastselves or ugly, unwelcome embodiments or the sacrifices a snake must go through to continue its timeline, the necessity of molting, the graves built of skins? we ignored her as gently as we could -- this body was ours, not hers; this girl was ours, not hers, she had to understand where her jurisdiction ended and how pushing further was blasphemy.

the ada used a therapist to assist with our carving plan and we discovered that humans had medical words - terms for what we were trying to do - that there were procedures, gender reassignment, transitioning. we knew what we were planning was right. even the things that the ada used to dislike about her body had mellowed out once we let saint vincent run. then, the broad shoulders and the way they tapered down to narrow hips and small buttocks finally fit. men's clothes draped properly on this body -- we were handsome. we considered removing the breasts utterly and tattooing the flat of her chestbone, but that decisiveness still felt wrong, one end of the spectrum rocketing unsteadily to the other end -- it wasn't us, not yet. so we chose a reduction instead of a removal; we cut down the C cups of blatant mammary tissue to small As, flat enough to not need brassieres, to not move, to be a stillness. the ada wanted to include her human mother in the carving and we allowed it because, we supposed, vessels are loyal. but saachi was against the surgery -- she called the doctors and threatened them till they pulled out; she fought with the therapists, fought to have us seen as unstable, sick. she called saul, who she never spoke to, not since the divorce, and told him, outed us to him.

"your daughter is trying to cut off her breasts," she said.

the ada was furious but we remained calm. we understood what was necessary -- humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power. they do, however, understand forceful things, cruelties -- they obey those. so we terminated saachi's contact with the ada doctors, we excluded her, exiled and excommunicated her. this was when she stopped being an emergency contact; this was why she had no access to the ada's doctors when asughara tried to kill the body. for a woman who looked to drown her loneliness in her children, it was a brutal thing to do, to push her out. but we had to strip her of power, to remind her that a mere human could not thwart us, that she stood no chance. we do not return your children until it suits us, if ever.

when we found the next doctors, the human mother knew nothing about it. the ada brought in pictures of small chests, small enough to where we didn't think of them as breasts, small enough to where we could feel reverted to a time when we weren't capable of biological things, when we were neutral like we should have been.

. . .

saachi arrived the next day and said nothing about the surgery, asked no questions. we approved of her decision. she accompanied the ada to the post-op appointment, to the clean, organized waiting room, then back to the exposed brick of the ada's apartment and her yellow kitchen. she helped the ada change the dressings and caught her arm when the heat from the shower made our body faint. it was a relief; we were grateful for the reprieve, not for us, no, but for the ada. malena was there as well, witness as she always was, and the ada smiled to see her mother share heinekens and dominican cigars with this her saintridden friend. as for us, we were fascinated by the white tape that hid the cuts, by the fine stitching, by the new body. we juggled the ada's chemistry and decided to purify her: we ran through her cells and rejected alcohol, meat, dairy, processed sugars; we made them cramp her stomach, hurt her head, and twist her intestines. this was our body and it would become what we wanted, now that the reconfiguring was done.

before the surgery, the ada had told her friends that she couldn't wait for when she could wear dresses again. they were confused. they stared at her bound chest and boy clothes.

"why would you go more feminine without boobs?" they asked. "most people get it done to be more masculine."

the ada shrugged and we moved in her shoulders. it was simple how we saw ourself, dresses creeping up the thigh, gashing open at the front to show chest bone -- tulle and lace and clouds of clothes. just like how having long hair weighing down our back made us want to wear buttons up to our throat, men's sleeves rolled up our biceps, handsome, handsome things. none of this was a new thing. we had been the same since the first birth, through the second naming, the third molting. to make the vessel look a little more like us -- that was the extent of our intent. we have understood what we are, the places we are suspended in, between the inaccurate concepts of male and female, between the us and the brothersisters slavering on the other side.

after our first birth, it took only a short time before we realized that time had trapped us in a space where we no longer were what we used to be, but had not yet become what we were going to be. it was a place that always and never moved. the space between the spirits and the alive is death. the space between life and death is resurrection. it has a smell like a broken mango leaf, sharp, sticking to the inner rind of our skin.

the prophecies that came later, from malena and others, they explained this -- the shifting, the quick skinnings and reshapings, the falling and revival of the scales. but by then it was too late for the ada to do anything except try to keep up with us, try not to be drowned in the liminal fluid we swam in. it tasted sharp as gin, metallic as blood, was soaked in both, down past the red into the deep loam. ogbanje space. we could rest in it like the inside curve of a calabash; we could turn in on ourself, wind back to our beginning, make those final folds. sometimes they call this the crossroads, the message point, the hinge. it is also called flux space, the line or the edge -- like we said, resurrection.

morning cleanse

from how to meditate by pema chodron

"when you say 'everything is a dream,' another way to say that is, 'there is just so much room.' we have an enormous amount of room to move around in. our minds are really vast. we're not constricted by anything. but the opposite is our habitual experience. our experience is usually quite claustrophobic, and we carry with us a very strong sense of burden, of things being solid. if we can loosen the grip of our thoughts, regarding them as dreams, we've just made the world and our ability to experience this world evermore larger."

"the instruction i've been giving for years is: when you're meditating, and even in your everyday life, notice when you're hooked. notice when you're triggered or activated. that's the first step: you acknowledge that emotion has arisen.

next, i advise students to drop the story line and lean in. just pause, and for a second connect in with spaciousness, with openness. i call this the 'pause practice.' it's like taking a time-out for yourself. then you lean in to the quality or the texture or the experience, completely touching in to the emotion, without the story. how does the sadness feel? how does the anger feel? where is it in your body? you let the feeling of the emotion become the object of your meditation. and the reason that i've been so committed to teaching on this is emotion itself is a radical and very potent way of awakening.

without a doubt, this is where everyone loses it. we have so much fear of our emotions, so much aversion to them. you get caught in the momentum of the emotion, and it sweeps you away as if you were in its control. but i've found that we can take another approach, which is to enter the emotions that arise in our practice. emotions are actually very empowering; i call working with the emotions 'accelerated transformation.' when you experience difficult emotions in your sitting practice, and you let go of the words and the story behind the experience, then you're sitting with just the energy. and yes, it can feel painful to do this."

"one of my granddaughter's conclusions was that we're changing all the time; everything about us is always changing. my granddaughter said, 'when you hold a fixed idea of yourself, you have to leave out all the parts that you find boring, embarrassing, difficult, or sad. you leave out the emotions you don't want to feel. and then when you do that, when you leave out all those parts, when those parts are not acceptable, then it eats away at you underneath. these unacknowledged parts are like a hum in the background that's eating away at you, and you have to find an escape to get away from that. and my mother's escape was alcohol.'

in order for us to be fully present, to experience life fully, we need to acknowledge and accept all our emotions and all parts of ourselves -- the embarrassing parts as well as our anger, our rage, our jealousy, our envy, our self-pity, and all these chaotic emotions that sweep us away. looking for an exit from experiencing the full range of our humanity leads to all kinds of pain and suffering. meditation gives us the opportunity to experience our emotions naked and fresh, free from the labels of 'right' and 'wrong,' 'should' and 'shouldn't.'"