side of the road

hadn't listened to lucinda williams for years... but shoog and nell brought her back this spring 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
my favorite song of hers, covered by first aid kit

craving and clinging

from be an island by ayya khema

"having a self-image is detrimental to insight, because it is based on the illusion of permanence. everything constantly changes, including ourselves, while a self-image presupposes stability. one moment we may be a sensual being, the next moment an irritable one. sometimes we are at ease, at other times we are restless. who are we? any permanent image of ourselves can never have a basis in fact. such an image will block our insight into the underlying tendencies, blinding us to those that do not fit."

"next we come to clinging to existence (bhavaraga). that is our survival syndrome. we cling to being here, unwilling to give up, not ready to die today. we must learn to be ready to die now -- which does not mean wishing to die but rather accepting death as an ever present possibility. wishing to die is the other side of the coin of clinging to existence. it is trying to get rid of 'me' because life is too difficult. but being ready to die now means seeing the fallacy in clinging to being someone, and abandoning it.

clinging to existence leads us into dependency. we want everything to work out well for us, and we resent it if that does not happen. this creates irritation and sensuality. we often forget that we are only guests here on this planet. our visit is limited and can be over at any time. clinging to being alive projects us into the future, so that we cannot attend to the present. there is no life in the future, it is all ideation, conjecture, a hope, and a prayer. if we really want to be alive and experience things as they are, we have to be here now, attending to each moment. this entails letting go of clinging to what will happen to us in the future, particularly the question of whether we will continue to exist. existing in this moment is enough. then there will be strong mindfulness, real attention, and clear knowing."

"there is no way that a relationship can work unless heart and mind are both involved. there must be a loving feeling and an understanding. unless both arise in meditation, real concentration cannot happen. we may sit on the cushion year after year, yet our practice will not flourish. the deliberate mind movement of giving up has to precede the meditation. otherwise ego will get in the way. it will rear its ugly head and say, 'i know better. there are other ways to meditate.' the ego will insist on comfort: 'i don't feel comfortable, so this must not be right. i'd like something more pleasant.'

unless we learn to renounce all wanting and resistance every time we sit on the cushion, the spiritual path will remain an utter mystery. the buddha's teaching leads in one direction only -- the total elimination of self-delusion. to get there, we have to work on ourselves, little by little, all the time.

renunciation means letting go of ideation, letting go of the mind-stuff that claims to be the one who knows."

"but rites and rituals are not confined only to religious activities. in our relationships we have certain prescribed ways of acting towards our parents, our children, our partners. how we relate to coworkers, friends, and strangers, how we want to be affirmed by others -- all are connected to preconceived ideas of what is right and proper in a certain culture and tradition. none of them contain any basic truth, all are mind-made. the more ideas we have, the less we can see reality. the more we believe in customary, traditional behavior, the harder it is to abandon it when it is not skillful. if we imagine ourselves to be a certain kind of person, we relate to all situations in that way. so ritual is not solely about the way we put flowers on a shrine. it can also dictate how we greet people, if we do so in a certain stereotyped manner rather than simply with an open heart and mind."

******

"freedom is often misunderstood as the ability to do anything we want. we have probably tried that already and found that it doesn't work. even if we were to follow only our desires, we would soon be satiated and then feel unfulfilled.

freedom means nonattachment, which is not indifference but rather the penetration of absolute truth. to see that clearly, we let go for one moment of anything that we call our own, anything that we like or consider important. we examine it until its fleeting nature has become quite apparent. then the moment comes when we can say, 'i don't have to have that, i can do without it.' that is a moment of truth. having a moment of truth is always possible, but such moments don't come automatically. we have to inquire into our clinging and work at loosening it. letting go sounds easy, and it is, but only after it has happened. before that, it entails much self-examination.

a moment of signless liberation can be experienced in another way. suppose, for instance, there is an unpleasant feeling in the body that creates a reaction of 'i don't want it. go away now!' when we really penetrate into the impermanence of that feeling -- when we see how it has no basic reality or significance and, for just a moment, let go of our rejection and say, 'it's all right, it is only a feeling' -- we get a taste of signless liberation. when we see that there is nothing that really lasts, that all is fleeting, flowing, moving, and changing from one moment to the next, we have a moment of freedom. we can practice that with our thoughts, our feelings, or our physical sensations.

as a first step we can become aware of our attachment to the body. usually, we are concerned whether the body looks good, is dressed appropriately, feels well, eats right, and is comfortable enough. but when we consider the body's fleeting nature, our attachment may wane. we may experience instead a feeling of equanimity. we have no preference whether this body of ours exists or not. this is a moment of real peace, but it doesn't happen by itself. we have to remember again and again that life is not guaranteed but merely supported by kamma-vipaka (the results of one's intentions) and that it may run out at any time. that's the reason why the buddha recommended the daily recollection 'i am of the nature to die.' we are of this nature all the time, which means right now, not twenty years from now or whenever we feel ready.

everybody knows they are going to die -- there's nothing new about that. the buddha did not teach anything inaccessible. he asked us to investigate the known in a new way, to get a deep-down feeling that this body cannot remain, no matter how hard we try to keep it. it's a foregone conclusion that we are fighting a losing battle. of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't look after our bodies. the body has to be washed, fed, and given medicine. that's all we have to do. and if we can't keep it going indefinitely, that's all right.

one moment of real inner seeing is liberating. the experience of relief and release is totally convincing. it arouses a sense of urgency to practice to the end -- to be deterred no longer by the opinions of others or external situations. liberation is not so difficult that an ordinary person cannot experience it. were that so, the buddha's teaching would be in vain.

to get a glimpse of wishless liberation, we can notice the dissatisfaction - the [suffering] - that arises in the heart and mind whenever we want something. when we drop the wish, we experience relief. the [suffering] does not necessarily arise because we can't fulfill our wish; most likely we can. it's an old axiom that if we want something badly enough, we will get it. the problem is that most people don't know what will bring them happiness. the [suffering], however, lies in the desire itself, which creates tension, a feeling of expectation tinged with worry.

the desire also creates a thought process that is no longer concerned with the here and now, but with the future, with the hope of gratifying the desire. a mind preoccupied with the future cannot attend to the present moment. it lives in the imaginary delusion of what might happen when its desires are fulfilled. of course, the future hardly ever turns out the way we hope, but, since the real [suffering] lies in the wishing itself and not in the outcome, freedom from this kind of wishing is called wishless liberation.

when we deliberately drop our wishes for things, the release and relief generate a feeling of strength. the mind obeys, abandons its old patterns, and a feeling of self-confidence ensues. the more often we drop our wishes, the more powerful the mind becomes. the word 'power' has the connotation of power over other people, but here it means power over ourselves. it explains the sort of vibration that emanated from the buddha and why people flocked to him. we could compare such potential to a powerhouse from which energy can be drawn.

it is useful to aim for a moment of wishless liberation. our wish could be related to eating, to entertaining ourselves, wanting to go somewhere, buying something, getting information, or talking to someone. whatever it may be, we can drop it deliberately, knowing that we don't really need it. letting go of something we want requires willpower. but as soon as the mind has dropped its wishes, we can experience the ease of contentment.

to get an inkling of voidness liberation, we can deliberately empty the mind of all it contains, realizing that it has no absolute significance. the less we carry in the mind, the less tired the mind becomes. usually our minds are full to the brim, which is a great burden for us. voidness liberation means that there is an absence of all formations (thoughts and reactions). when, for a moment, we have let them go, we can notice how relieved we feel, and we get a taste of voidness liberation. then we let thoughts and reactions return and realize the difference. immediately irritation arises, which usually escapes our awareness because we're used to a mind full of formations. we experience the heavy, debilitating, burdensome nature of thoughts only when we are able to compare our usual mind states with momentary emptiness. this may be the first time that we notice the constant sense bombardment we commonly experience.

the most insidious irritations arise through thinking. thought is a constant process with which we identify and then act upon. we can't act upon everything we see or hear. if we see a beautiful sunset or hear some great music, there's nothing to do about it, except to like it. no need for a reaction, which may easily result in new problems. even the most innocuous situations can cause friction if we identify with our thinking process. once we express our views, hopes, and beliefs, the argument starts, and tears start flowing."

ANTI-LOVE POEM

by grace paley from fidelity

sometimes you don’t want to love the person you love

you turn your face away from that face

whose eyes lips might make you give up anger

forget insult    steal sadness of not wanting

to love    turn away then turn away    at breakfast

in the evening    don’t lift your eyes from the paper

to see that face in all its seriousness     a

sweetness of concentration     he holds his book

in his hand     the hard-knuckled winter wood-

scarred fingers    turn away   that’s all you can

do    old as you are to save yourself    from love

names

excerpts from the short story collection sour heart by jenny zhang

(from "the evolution of my brother"):

i look at the poem again and then go through some other files, including one called "fight on dirt," a painting of magenta, lime-green, and teal-blue stick figures on brown mud. i see another file named "power rain," which i remember seeing a long time ago but never opened. i wondered briefly back then what "power rain" was -- massive droplets of rain, each one fat enough to contain an armed soldier ready for combat, hitting the ground, causing tremors in the earth?

i open up the file and realize the full name is actually "power rain jurs." sour tears well up in my eyes and fall into my mouth. i feel self-conscious and stupid crying for myself -- for my shame, for my regrets, for how quickly a childhood happens. i wish i had acted better. i wish i had been the kind of sister who was patient enough to show my brother the proper spelling for "power rangers."

whenever i'm home for a few days, i start to feel this despair at being back in the place where i had spent so many afternoons dreaming of getting away, so many late nights fantasizing about who i would be once i was allowed to be someone apart from my family, once i was free to commit mistakes on my own. how strange it is to return to a place where my childish notions of freedom are everywhere to be found -- in my journals and my doodles and the corners of the room where i sat fuming for hours, counting down the days until i could leave this place and start my real life. but now that trying to become someone on my own is no longer something to dream about but just my ever-present reality, now that my former conviction that i had been burdened with the responsibility of taking care of this household has been revealed to be untrue, that all along, my responsibilities had been negligible, illusory even, that all along, our parents had been the ones watching over us - me and my brother - and now that i am on my own, the days of resenting my parents for loving me too much and my brother for needing me too intensely have been replaced with the days of feeling bewildered by the prospect of finding some other identity besides "daughter" or "sister." it turns out that this, too, is terrifying, all of it is terrifying. being someone is terrifying. i long to come home, but now, i will always come home to my family as a visitor, and that weighs on me, reverts me back into the teenager i was, but instead of insisting that i want everyone to leave me alone, what i want now is for someone to beg me to stay. me again. memememememememe.


(from "my days and nights of terror"):

my father said they needed "american" names on their resumes when applying for jobs; they had to have names that were pronounceable to white american english speakers because they already had faces that were considered vile to look at and who was going to hire someone with their faces and their names? i thought my mother and my father had beautiful faces but my father corrected me, not in america. we're ugly, and it's that simple. they look at us and think we're cretins. you think they like us going to their schools? you think they're okay with us working in their offices? taking their jobs? you think they're happy to pick up laundry and takeout from businesses we've opened up? you think they want to go to the corner store and see our eyes and our teeth and our skin looking back at them from behind the counter? no! they don't want us here. they don't want to look at us and they sure as hell don't want to have to try to pronounce our chinese names. x-u. q-u-i. they don't want to see that! the more my father went on about how much they hated us, the more i started to suspect maybe he was the one who hated us. on the first day of school in america, i was so frazzled and fearful of everything that i accidentally left off the second e and i became mande with one e and so i started my first day of school in america with a mistake. i was a failure right from the start.

*      *      *    

i had prayed for this kind of soft joy, this kind of contentment, a day like this followed by more days like this, and finally having it was like being born, only instead of not remembering what it was like to be born, i was fully cognizant and participating in my own creation and suddenly it was clear to me why we don't remember what it was like to be born -- because it would give us too much insight into what it will be like to die. to be present for your own birth was suicide. to know the true wonder of suddenly existing was to know the true fear of suddenly ceasing to exist. they had to occur together and there was no prayer for what i knew in my flaky soul -- that there was no way to escape the fear. it would always be there, amplifying joy and stealing from it. still, it was tempting to sink into it, to roll around in its outer rings where occasionally the fear converted to a kind of happiness that turned an entire afternoon into an image that would stay forever, loom forever, return forever.

be nobody

chapter from be an island by ayya khema

being happy also means being peaceful, but quite often people do not really want to direct their attention to that. peacefulness connotes 'not interesting' or 'not enough happening,' the absence of proliferations or excitement. yet peace is very hard to find anywhere. it is difficult to attain, and very few people really work at it. peace seems to negate life, to deny our personal supremacy. only those who practice a spiritual discipline care to direct their mind toward it.

our natural tendency is to cultivate our superiority, which often falls into the other extreme of inferiority. so long as we have our own superiority in mind, we cannot find peace. all we find is a power game: 'anything you can do, i can do better.' or at times when it is quite obvious that this is not so, then it's 'anything you can do, i cannot do as well.' there are moments of truth in everyone's life when one sees quite clearly that one can't do everything as well as the next person, whether it's sweeping a path or writing a book.

a feeling of superiority or inferiority is the opposite of peacefulness. a display of one's abilities, or the lack of them, will produce restlessness. there is always the reaching out, the craving for a result in the form of other people's admiration or their denial of it. when they deny it, there is warfare. when they affirm it, there is victory.

in war there is never a winner, only losers. no matter who signs the peace treaty first, both sides lose. the same applies to a feeling of being victorious, of being the one who knows better or who is stronger or cleverer. battle and peace do not go well together.

one wonders in the end, does anybody really want peace? is anybody really trying to get it? we must inquire into our innermost hearts if peace is what we really want. such an inquiry is difficult. most people have a thick steel door in front of their hearts. they cannot find out what is going on inside. but everyone needs to try to get in as far as possible and check their priorities.

in moments of turmoil, when we are either not getting the supremacy we want or we feel really inferior, then all we desire is peace. when our unrest and feeling of inferiority subside, then what happens? is it really peace we want? or do we want to be somebody special, somebody important or lovable?

a 'somebody' never has peace. there is an interesting simile about a mango tree. a king went riding in the forest and encountered a mango tree laden with fruit. he said to his servants, 'go back in the evening and collect the mangoes,' because he wanted them for the royal dining table. the servants went back to the forest but returned to the palace empty-handed. 'sorry, your majesty,' they told the king, 'the mangoes were all gone, there was not a single mango left on the tree.' the king thought the servants had been too lazy to go back to the forest, so he rode out to see for himself. what he saw instead of a beautiful mango tree laden with fruit was a pitiful, bedraggled tree. someone had broken all the branches to take the fruit. as the king rode a little farther, he came upon another mango tree, beautiful in all its green splendor, but without a single fruit. nobody had wanted to go near it. it bore no fruit, so it was left in peace. the king went back to his palace, gave his royal crown and scepter to his ministers, and said, 'you may now have the kingdom, i am going to live in a hut in the forest.'

when one is nobody and has nothing, there is no danger of warfare or attack, and there is peace. the mango tree laden with fruit did not have a moment's peace; everybody wanted its fruit. if we really want peace, we have to be nobody. neither important, nor clever, nor beautiful, nor famous, nor right, nor in charge of anything. we need to be unobtrusive and have as few attributes as possible. the mango tree with no fruit was standing peacefully in all its splendor, giving shade. to be nobody does not mean doing nothing. it means acting without self-display and without craving for results. the mango tree had shade to give, but it did not display its wares or fret whether anyone wanted its shade. this ability allows for inner peace. it is a rare ability, because most people vacillate from one extreme to another, either doing nothing and thinking, 'let them see how they get along without me,' or being in charge and projecting their views and ideas.

being somebody, it seems, is so much more ingrained and important than having peace. so we need to inquire with great care what we are truly looking for. what is it that we want out of life? if we want to be important, appreciated, and loved, then we have to take their opposites in stride. every positive brings with it a negative, just as the sun throws shadows. if we want one, we must accept the other, without moaning about it.

but if we really want a peaceful heart and mind, inner security, and stability, then we have to give up wanting to be somebody, anybody. body and mind will not disappear because of that; what subsides is the urge to affirm the importance and supremacy of this particular person whom i call 'me.'

every human being considers [themself] important. there are billions of people on this globe, how many will mourn us? count them for a moment. six or eight, or twelve or fifteen, out of all these billions. maybe we have a vastly exaggerated idea of our own importance. the more we understand this, the easier life is.

wanting to be somebody is dangerous. it is like playing with a fire, and it hurts constantly. and other people will not play by our rules. people who really manage to be somebody, like heads of state, invariably need a bodyguard because they are in danger of their lives.

among the countless things in our world -- all the people, animals, and natural and man-made objects -- the only ones we have any jurisdiction over are our own heart and mind. if we really want to be somebody, we could try to be that rare person who is in charge of his own heart and mind. becoming somebody like that is not only very rare, it also brings the most beneficial results. such a person does not fall into the trap of the defilements.

there is a story about achaan cha, a famous meditation master in northeast thailand. he was once accused of having a lot of hatred. achaan cha replied, 'that may be so, but i don't make any use of it.' an answer like this comes from a deep understanding of one's own nature. it is a rare person who will not allow himself defiled thought, speech, or action. such a person is really somebody. he does not have to prove it to anyone else because it is quite obvious, not to mention that he has no desire to prove anything. there is only one abiding interest and that is one's own peace of mind.

when we have peace of mind as our priority, everything in the mind and all speech or action is directed toward it. anything that does not create peace of mind is discarded. we must not confuse this with being right or having the last word, however. others need not agree. peace of mind is our own. we can all find it if we make the effort.

inferiority

excerpts from those who leave and those who stay by elena ferrante

he said only:
"it was predictable that it would end like this."
"why?"
"you remember when i told you that lina scared me?"
"yes."
"it wasn't fear, i understood much later."
"what was it?"
"estrangement and belonging, an effect of distance and closeness at the same time."
"meaning what?"
"it's hard to say: you and i became friends immediately, you i love. with her that always seemed impossible. there was something tremendous about her that made me want to go down on my knees and confess my most secret thoughts."
i said ironically: "great, an almost religious experience."
he remained serious: "no, only an admission of inferiority. but when she helped me study, that was great, yes. she would read the textbook and immediately understand it, then she'd summarize it for me in a simple way. there have been, and still are today, moments when i think: if i had been born a woman i would have wanted to be like her. in fact, in the carracci family we were both alien bodies, neither she nor i could endure. so her faults never mattered to me, i always felt on her side."

*                          *                          *

it happened that around that time mariarosa came to florence to present the book of a university colleague of hers on the madonna del parto. pietro swore he wouldn't miss it, but at the last minute he made an excuse and hid somewhere. my sister-in-law arrived by car, alone this time, a bit tired but affectionate as always and loaded with presents for dede and elsa. she never mentioned my aborted novel, even though adele had surely told her about it. she talked volubly about trips she'd taken, about books, with her usual enthusiasm. she pursued energetically the many novelties of the planet. she would assert one thing, get tired of it, go on to another that a little earlier, out of distraction, blindness, she had rejected. when she spoke about her colleague's book, she immediately gained the admiration of the art historians in the audience. and the evening would have run smoothly along the usual academic tracks if at a certain point, with an abrupt swerve, she hadn't uttered remarks, occasionally vulgar, of this type: children shouldn't be given to any father, least of all god the father, children should be given to themselves; the moment has arrived to study as women and not as men; behind every discipline is the penis and when the penis feels impotent it resorts to the iron bar, the police, the prisons, the army, the concentration camps; and if you don't submit, if, rather, you continue to turn everything upside down, then comes slaughter. shouts of discontent, of agreement: at the end she was surrounded by a dense crowd of women. she called me over with welcoming gestures, proudly showed off dede and elsa to her florentine friends, said nice things about me. some remembered my book, but i avoided it, as if i hadn't written it. the evening was nice, and brought an invitation, from a small, varied group of girls and adult women, to go to the house of one of them, once a week to talk -- they said -- about us.

mariarosa's provocative remarks and the invitation of her friends led me to fish out from under a pile of books those pamphlets adele had given me long before. i carried them around in my purse, i read them outside, under the gray sky of late winter. first, intrigued by the title, i read an essay entitled we spit on hegel. i read it while elsa slept in her carriage and dede, in coat, scarf, and woolen hat, talked to her doll in a low voice. every sentence struck me, every word, and above all the bold freedom of thought. i forcefully underlined many of the sentences, i made exclamation points, vertical strokes. spit on hegel. spit on the culture of men, spit on marx, on engels, on lenin. and on historical materialism. and on freud. and on psychoanalysis and penis envy. and on marriage, on family. and on nazism, on stalinism, on terrorism. and on war. and on the class struggle. and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. and on socialism. and on communism. and on the trap of equality. and on all the manifestations of patriarchal culture. and on all its institutional forms. resist the waste of female intelligence. deculturate. disacculturate, starting with maternity, don't give children to anyone. get rid of the master-slave dialectic. rip inferiority from our brains. restore women to themselves. don't create antitheses. move on another plane in the name of one's own difference. the university doesn't free women but completes their repression. against wisdom. while men devote themselves to undertakings in space, life for women on this planet has yet to begin. woman is the other face of the earth. woman is the unpredictable subject. free oneself from subjection here, now, in this present. the author of those pages was called carla lonzi. how is it possible, i wondered, that a woman knows how to think like that. i worked so hard on books, but i endured them, i never actually used them, i never turned them against themselves. this is thinking. this is thinking against. i -- after so much exertion -- don't know how to think. nor does mariarosa: she's read pages and pages, and she rearranges them with flair, putting on a show. that's it. lila, on the other hand, knows. it's her nature. if she had studied, she would know how to think like this.

that idea became insistent. everything i read in that period ultimately drew lila in, one way or another. i had come upon a female model of thinking that, given the obvious differences, provoked in me the same admiration, the same sense of inferiority that i felt toward her. not only that: i read thinking of her, of fragments of her life, of the sentences she would agree with, of those she would have rejected. afterward, impelled by that reading, i often joined the group of mariarosa's friends, but it wasn't easy: dede asked me continuously when we were leaving, elsa would suddenly let out cries of joy. but it wasn't just my daughters who were the problem. it was that there i found only women who, resembling me, couldn't help me. i was bored when the discussion became a sort of inelegant summary of what i already knew. and it seemed to me i knew well enough what it meant to be born female, i wasn't interested in the work of consciousness-raising. and i had no intention of speaking in public about my relationship with pietro, or with men in general, to provide testimony about what men are, of every class and of every age. and no one knew better than i did what it meant to make your own head masculine so that it would be accepted by the culture of men; i had done it, i was doing it. furthermore i remained completely outside the tensions, the explosions of jealousy, the authoritarian tones, weak, submissive voices, intellectual hierarchies, struggles for primacy in the group that ended in desperate tears. but there was one new fact, which naturally led me to lila. i was fascinated by the way people talked, confronted each other -- explicit to the point of being disagreeable. i didn't like the amenability that yielded to gossip: i had known enough of that since childhood. what seduced me instead was an urge for authenticity that i had never felt and that perhaps was not in my nature. i never said a single word, in that circle, that was equal to that urgency. but i felt that i should do something like that with lila, examine our connection with the same inflexibility, that we should tell each other fully what we had been silent about, starting perhaps from the unaccustomed lament for my mistaken book.

that need was so strong that i imagined going to naples with the children for a while, or asking her to come to me with gennaro, or to write to each other. i talked about it with her once on the phone but it was a fiasco. i told her about the books by women i was reading, about the group i went to . she listened but then she laughed at titles like the clitoral woman and the vaginal woman, and did her best to be vulgar: what the fuck are you talking about, lenu, pleasure, pussy, we've got plenty of problems here already, you're crazy. she wanted to prove that she didn't have the tools to put into words the things that interested me. and in the end she was scornful, she said: work, do the nice things you have to do, don't waste time. she got angry. evidently it's not the right moment, i thought, i'll try again later on. but i never found the time or the courage to try again. i concluded that first of all i had to understand better what i was. investigate my nature as a woman. i had been excessive, i had striven to give myself male capacities. i thought i had to know everything, be concerned with everything. what did i care about politics, about struggles. i wanted to make a good impression on men, be at their level. at the level of what, of their reason, most unreasonable. such persistence in memorizing fashionable jargon, wasted effort. i had been conditioned by my education, which had shaped my mind, my voice. to what secret pacts with myself had i consented, just to excel. and now, after the hard work of learning, what must i unlearn. also, i had been forced by the powerful presence of lila to imagine myself as i was not. i was added to her, and i felt mutilated as soon as i removed myself. not an idea, without lila. not a thought i trusted without the support of her thoughts. not an image. i had to accept myself outside of her. the gist was that. accept that i was an average person. what should i do. try again to write. maybe i didn't have the passion, i merely limited myself to carrying out a task. so don't write anymore. find some job. or act the lady, as my mother said. shut myself up in the family. or turn everything upside down. house. children. husband.

    *                 *                 *

on one of those occasions i told her about my relationship with franco in the days of the normale, and what he had meant to me. i'm grateful to him, i said, i learned so much from him, and i'm sorry that he now treats me and the children coldly. i thought about it for a moment, and continued: maybe there's something mistaken in this desire men have to instruct us; i was young at the time, and i didn't realize that in his wish to transform me was the proof that he didn't like me as i was, he wanted me to be different, or, rather, he didn't want just a woman, he wanted the woman he imagined he himself would be if he were a woman. for franco, i said, i was an opportunity for him to expand into the feminine, to take possession of it: i constituted the proof of his omnipotence, the demonstration that he knew how to be not only a man in the right way but also a woman. and today when he no longer senses me as part of himself, he feels betrayed.

*                       *                      *

. . . i was signora airota, elena airota, a woman depressed by submissiveness who nevertheless, urged by her sister-in-law but also in order to fight discouragement, had begun to study almost in secret the invention of woman by men, mixing the ancient and modern worlds. i didn't have an objective; only to be able to say to mariarosa, to my mother-in-law, to this or that acquaintance: i'm working.

and so i pushed on, in my speculations, from the first and second biblical creations to defoe-flanders, flaubert-bovary, tolstoy-karenina, la derniere mode, rose selavy, and beyond, and still further, in a frenzy of revelation. slowly i began to feel some satisfaction. i discovered everywhere female automatons created by men. there was nothing of ourselves, and the little there was that rose up in protest immediately became material for their manufacturing.

insignificance

from remnants of the first earth by ray a. young bear

"in an earthly realm where the forces of nature are infinitely more powerful than human beings, personal and collective insignificance is a given. in our relatively compact tribal society, there was equal standing among everyone other than the chieftain hierarchy. in the ancien regime our people hunted, fished, gathered food, planted seeds, and harvested crops together, making everyone interdependent.

this philosophical stance of insignificance was reflected in the journals. preceding each passage my grandfathers wrote were such disclaimers: 'now, at this very moment, i will be forthright and say that i do not know much, that i am not exceedingly knowledgeable, but this is what i have been told: whatever you see, you will document that fact, for it will serve as a point from which present and future black eagle childs will have an unobstructed view of our life. this i have done in the same way my other grandfathers did. . . .'"

"it is true what leslie silko says: that if you know how to write, you inevitably deal with those who once lived -- by yourself.

a human presence is forever. even luciano's. even if he didn't quite die. whether in the act of storytelling or fond remembrances. the mere virtue of being alive, permeable and free, rang throughout the physical totality of the person who was luciano bearchild. he sought and was able to experience new ways to see things, to live them and not be complacent."

"listening to grandmother's pleas for william to awaken, i felt the welling of sadness within me. in a tribal society that was historically burdened with obstacles, suppression of emotion became an art form. to cry over the departed was to inflict misery upon their 'shadows.' in death there was a deep-rooted fear that personal grief could bridge the world of the real and the nonreal. whatever our affliction - physical pain, bereavement, sheer loneliness, or embarrassment - being ostentatious was not part of our demeanor."

"edgar bearchild used to preface and summarize stories by saying: 'ma ni tta-i ni-e na ska ki-a ji mo ni. in this direction does the story fall.' bearchild used this phrase to an obsessive degree for any information presented. in this direction being the disclaimer for words spoken in perhaps an unfavorable context, does the story fall being inevitability."

"keep this in mind: to have every facet of life work to one's advantage was seen not as the glorious result of unbounded determination but as the workings of evil. this was - and even today is - the tribal community's mind-set. illiteracy was shared. poverty was blood-ingrained, and like the harmony that held the clans together, having little was inherited. anything that tore through the delicate netting was regrettable, like suicidal indians or those who chose urban relocation, coming home for their own funerals. what a pity! was whispered through cupped hands to respectful, listening ears. a life misled was lamented over sweet rolls and coffee, but luciano's success with money and white women was deemed unnatural.

suffering and bad luck were shared. equally - like commodity surplus foods. luciano's fortune benefited his immediate family and himself. . . amazingly, after luciano's mysterious disappearance, many spoke of him in respectful terms. those who had been jealous enough to become enemies recanted statements he had been an extraterrestrial all along and took part in the search for him."

solitary mind

quotes from be an island by ayya khema

"when we can abandon distracting thoughts while meditating on the breath, we can use the same skill to protect our mind at all times. the more we learn to shut our mind-door to the negativities that disturb our inner peace, the easier our life becomes. peace of mind is not indifference. recognizing and letting go is not suppression. a peaceful mind is a compassionate mind.
[suffering] is self-made and self-perpetuated. if we are sincere in wanting to get rid of it, we have to watch the mind carefully. we have to gain insight into what is really happening within. what triggers us? how do we react? there are innumerable triggers, but only two reactions. one is equanimity, the other craving."

"if there is such a thing as the deathless, and if we recognize that birth is [suffering], then what is left to us other than the path toward the deathless? it is not enough to try meditation tentatively, hoping for some bliss and to learn some of the buddha's teaching to improve our interaction with others. it is enough only when the heart says, 'there are no other choices but to attain the deathless.'
one certain way of reaching that conviction is having sufficient [suffering]. of course, nobody would wish that for anyone else, but the experience of much suffering is often enough to turn the tide. there are many stories from the buddha's lifetime when women in particular were experiencing so much [suffering], losing their families and loved ones, that they had no other choices left. in our society there may be too many alternatives left. . . if we look at any of the alternatives we can conjure up, we recognize each one of them as a sense contact - which is always short-lived. unless that becomes entirely clear, our spiritual growth will always be shaky."

"we need courage to choose the way of the dhamma. if we take the path leading out of [suffering], we have to leave a lot of attachments and support systems behind. that takes courage. we discard much of that which we once believed to bring fulfillment and happiness. we need courage to break with that and begin to stand alone. . . we begin to loosen our attachments, our clinging and belonging. we recognize beyond any doubt that there is nothing more important to be done than treading the path to enlightenment. then all our energies and priorities are geared to this objective."

"a malleable mind is pliable, moves freely, and embraces everything. whenever we notice some inner change in ourselves, we need to recollect it repeatedly so as to make it second nature. one such change is becoming less concerned with comforts, belongings, ideas, hopes, and wishes. we become more and more concerned with what we can give, how we can grow, and whether we are making wholesome karma. investigating further, we can try letting go of being a separate person for a moment and instead feeling part of all that exists. as long as we are caught within the barrier of our own minds and bodies, we cannot find true happiness. . .
giving oneself completely is difficult for most of us, because we think we are losing ourselves. actually we gain everything -- all spiritual teachings are agreed on that. whatever we use as our personal identity constitutes our prison. letting go is freedom. when we do experience a moment of letting go, we mistakenly think that it was due to a certain situation or person. but in reality we experience freedom whenever we let go of what we're clinging to. giving in and giving up are tiny lights at the end of the tunnel that let us know freedom is possible."

"solitude can be fully experienced only when there is inner peace. otherwise loneliness pushes us to remedy feelings of emptiness and loss. 'where is everybody? what can i do without some companionship? i must discuss my problems.' mindfulness is able to take care of all that, because it arises in the present moment and has nothing to do with the future or past. it keeps us totally occupied and saves us from making mistakes. the greater our mindfulness, the fewer the mistakes. errors on the mundane level have repercussions for the spiritual path. when our lack of mindfulness leads us to inflict [suffering] on ourselves, we will try again and again to find someone who is to blame or someone who can distract us.
ideal solitude arises when a person can be alone or with others and retain the same inner calm, not getting caught in someone else's difficulties. we may respond in an appropriate manner, but we are not affected. we all have our own inner life, but we get to know it well only when the mind stops chattering and we can attend to our inner feelings. once we have seen what is happening inside of us, we will want to change some of it. . . our inner stress and lack of peace push us to find someone who will remove our [suffering], but only we can do it.
the solitary mind can have profound and original thoughts, whereas a dependent mind thinks in cliches because it wants approval. a worldly mind that understands only superficialities cannot grasp the profundity of the buddha's teaching."

"depth of understanding makes release from suffering possible. when we go deeper and deeper and find no core, we learn to let go of even deep-seated attachments. whether what we find within us is pure and commendable or impure and unpleasant makes no difference. all mental states that we own and cherish keep us in duality, in midair, in insecurity, and cannot bring an end to suffering. . .
even if we agree with the buddha's words and find them plausible, without the certainty of personal experience they will be of limited assistance. to have direct knowledge, we must sink like a stone, untied to anything, down to the bottom of all our obstructions. to see the truth, we need a powerful mind, a weighty mind. as long as the mind is interested in petty concerns, it will not have sufficient weight to attain deep understanding."

who is responsible for what

quotes from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

"anger is inevitable when we submit to unfair circumstances and when we protect another person at our own expense."

"feeling fuzzy-headed, inarticulate, and not so smart are common reactions experienced by women as we struggle to take a stand on our own behalf. it is not just anger and fighting that we learn to fear; we avoid asking precise questions and making clear statements when we unconsciously suspect that doing so would expose our differences, make the other person feel uncomfortable, and leave us standing alone."

"karen's emotional reaction to her boss's criticism obscured her thinking about what she wanted to ask and what she wanted to say. . . her tears and her willingness to let her boss play the role of advisor and confidant were, in part, her unconscious way of reinstating the status quo and apologizing for the 'separateness' inherent in her initial position of disagreement. . . karen had deep-seated fears of her own omnipotent destructiveness and the vulnerability of men. our very definitions of 'masculinity' and 'femininity' are based on the notion that women must function as nonthreatening helpmates and ego builders to men lest men feel castrated and weakened. . . karen was afraid of transforming her anger into concise statements of her thoughts and feelings lest she evoke that disturbing sense of separateness and aloneness that we experience when we make our differences known and encourage others to do the same. . . karen had a long-standing pattern of attempting to restore the togetherness of her relationships by crying, criticizing herself, becoming confused, or prematurely making peace. at the heart of the problem was the fact that karen needed to work harder at the task of clarifying her separateness and independence within her first family."

"more often, and more crucially, separation anxiety is based on an underlying discomfort with separateness and individuality that has its roots in our early family experience, where the unspoken expectation may have been that we keep a lid on our expressions of self. daughters are especially sensitive to such demands and may become far more skilled at protecting the relational 'we' than asserting the autonomous 'i.'"

 "learning to use our anger effectively requires some letting go -- letting go of blaming that other person whom we see as causing our problems and failing to provide for our happiness; letting go of the notion that it is our job to change other people or tell them how they should think, feel, behave. yet, this does not mean that we passively accept or go along with any behavior. in fact, a 'live-and-let-live' attitude can signal a de-selfed position, if we fail to clarify what is and is not acceptable or desirable to us in a relationship. the main issue is how we clarify our position."

"we are responsible for our own behavior. but we are not responsible for other people's reactions; nor are they responsible for ours. women often learn to reverse this order of things: we put our energy into taking responsibility for other people's feelings, thoughts, and behavior and hand over to others responsibility for our own."

"why is the question 'who is responsible for what?' such a puzzle for women? women in particular have been discouraged from taking responsibility for solving our own problems, determining our own choices, and taking control of the quality and direction of our own lives. as we learn to relinquish responsibility for the self, we are prone to blame others for failing to fill up our emptiness or provide for our happiness -- which is not their job. at the same time, however, we may feel responsible for just about everything that goes on around us. we are quick to be blamed for other people's problems and pain and quick to accept the verdict of guilty. we also, in the process, develop the belief that we can avert problems if only we try hard enough."

"the emotional rescuers of the world can have a terribly difficult time allowing others just to sit with their feelings and learn to handle them. . . when we do not put our primary emotional energy into solving our own problems, we take on other people's problems as our own. . . the problem arises when we are excessively reactive to other people's problems, when we assume responsibility for things that we are not responsible for, and when we attempt to control things that are not in our control. when we overfunction for another individual, we end up very angry, and in the process, we facilitate the growth of no one."

this hand that writes

excerpt from faces in the crowd by valeria luiselli

in winter there were windstorms. but i used to wear miniskirts because i was young. i wrote letters to my acquaintances telling them about my rambles, describing my legs swathed in gray tights, my body wrapped in a red coat with deep pockets. i wrote letters about the cold wind that caressed those legs, compared the freezing air to the bristle of a badly shaved chin, as if the air and a pair of gray legs walking along streets were literary material. when a person has lived alone for a long time, the only way to confirm that they still exist is to express activities and things in an easily shared syntax: this face, these bones that walk, this mouth, this hand that writes.

now i write at night, when the two children are asleep and it's acceptable to smoke, drink, and let drafts in. before, i used to write all the time, at any hour, because my body belonged to me. my legs were long, strong, and slim. it was right to offer them: to whomever, to writing.

weakness

excerpts from the story of a new name by elena ferrante

but he promptly shifted onto the only terrain that seemed to justify our meeting. he said that he was glad to see me, all he could talk about with his friend was soccer and exam subjects. he praised me. professor galiani perceived it, he said, you're the only girl in the school who has any curiosity about things that aren't useful for exams and grades. he started to speak about serious subjects, we resorted immediately to a fine, impassioned italian in which we knew we excelled. he started off with the problem of violence. he mentioned a peace demonstration in cortona and related it skillfully to the beating that had taken place in a piazza in turin. he said he wanted to understand more about the link between immigration and industry. i agreed, but what did i know about those things? nothing. nino realized it, and he told me in great detail about an uprising of young southerners and the harshness with which the police had repressed them. "they call them napoli, they call them moroccans, they call them fascists, provocateurs, anarcho-syndicalists. but really they are boys whom no institution cares about, so neglected that when they get angry they destroy everything." searching for something to say that would please him, i ventured, "if you don't have a solid knowledge of the problems and if you don't find lasting solutions, then naturally violence breaks out. but the people who rebel aren't to blame. it's the ones who don't know how to govern." he gave me an admiring look, and said, "that's exactly what i think."

i was really pleased. i felt encouraged and cautiously went on to some reflections on how to reconcile individuality and universality, drawing on rousseau and other memories of the readings imposed by professor galiani. then i asked, "have you read federico chabod?"

i mentioned that name because he was the author of the book on the idea of nationhood that i had read a few pages of. i didn't know anything else, but at school i had learned to give the impression that i knew a lot. have you read federico chabod? it was the only moment when nino seemed to be annoyed. i realized that he didn't know who chabod was and from that i got an electrifying sensation of fullness. i began to summarize the little i had learned, but i quickly realized that to know, to compulsively display what he knew, was his point of strength and at the same time his weakness. he felt strong if he took the lead and weak if he lacked words. he darkened, in fact he stopped me almost immediately. he sidetracked the conversation, he started talking about the regions, about how urgent it was to get them approved, about autonomy and decentralization, about economic planning on a regional basis, all things i had never heard a word about. no chabod, then: i left him the field. and i liked to hear him talk, read the passion in his face. his eyes brightened when he was excited.

            *                         *                               *

who knows if michele solara had kept to himself what he had seen. who knows if everything was going smoothly. who knows if nunzia was already asleep in the house on the road in cuotto or was trying to calm her son-in-law who had arrived unexpectedly on the last boat, hadn't found his wife and was furious. who knows if lila had telephoned her husband and, reassured that he was in naples, far away, in the apartment in the new neighborhood, was now in bed with nino, without fear, a secret couple, a couple intent on enjoying the night. everything in the world was in precarious balance, pure risk, and those who didn't agree to take the risk wasted away in a corner, without getting to know life. i understood suddenly why i hadn't had nino, why lila had had him. i wasn't capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. i didn't know how to be drawn beyond the limits. i didn't possess that emotional power that had driven lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. i stayed behind, waiting. she, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn't afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings. she deserved nino, in other words, because she thought that to love him meant to try to have him, not to hope that he would want her.

          *                        *                    *

unlike pietro, his father, mother, and sister conversed on a wide variety of subjects. at lunch, in the restaurant of the hotel where they were staying, professor airota and his daughter had, for example, affectionate skirmishes on political subjects that i had heard about from pasquale, from nino, and from franco but of whose substance i knew almost nothing. arguments like: you've been trapped by inter-class collaboration; you call it a trap, i call it mediation; mediation in which the christian democrats always and only win; the politics of the center left is difficult; if it's difficult, go back to being socialists; you're not reforming a thing; in our place what would you do; revolution, revolution, and revolution; revolution is taking italy out of the middle ages, without us socialists in the government, the students who talk about sex at school would be in jail and so would those who distribute pacifist leaflets; i want to see how you'd manage with the atlantic pact; we were always against the war and against all imperialism; you govern with the christian democrats, but will you stay anti-american?

like that, a swift back and forth: a polemical exercise that they both obviously enjoyed, maybe a friendly habit of long standing. i recognized in them, father and daughter, what i had never had and, i now knew, would always lack. what was it? i wasn't able to say precisely: the training, perhaps, to feel that the questions of the world were deeply connected to me; the capacity to feel them as crucial and not purely as information to display at an exam, in view of a good grade; a mental conformation that didn't reduce everything to my own individual battle, to the effort to be successful. mariarosa was kind, and so was her father; their tones were controlled, without a trace of the verbal excesses of armando, professor galiani's son, or of nino; and yet they injected warmth into political formulas that on other occasions had seemed to me cold, remote, to be used only in an attempt not to make a bad impression. following each other in rapid succession, they moved on, without interruption, to the bombing of north vietnam, to the student revolts on various campuses, to the many breeding grounds of anti-imperialist struggle in latin america and africa. and the daughter now seemed to be more up to date than the father. how many things mariarosa knew, she talked as if she had first-hand information, so that airota at a certain point looked at his wife ironically, and adele said to her, "you're the only one who hasn't chosen a dessert yet."

"i'll have chocolate cake," she said, breaking off with a graceful frown.

i looked at her in admiration. she drove a car, lived in milan, taught at the university, stood up to her father without resentment. i, instead: i was frightened by the idea of opening my mouth, and, at the same time, humiliated by staying silent. i couldn't contain myself, i said hyperbolically, "the americans, after hiroshima and nagasaki, should be brought to trial for crimes against humanity."

silence. the whole family looked at me. mariarosa exclaimed bravo!, she took my hand, shook it. i felt encouraged and immediately bubbled over with words, scraps of old phrases memorized at various times. i talked about planning and rationalization, the socialist-christian democratic precipice, about neocapitalism, about organizational structures, about africa, asia, primary school, piaget, collusion of the police and the courts, fascist rot in every manifestation of the state. i was muddled, breathless. my heart was pounding, i forgot who i was with and where i was. yet i felt around me an atmosphere of increasing approval, and i was happy to have expressed myself, i seemed to have made a good impression. i was also glad that no one in that nice little family had asked me, as happened frequently, where i came from, what my father did, and my mother. i was i, i , i.

          *                       *                        *

i was working night and day on my thesis, i harassed pietro, reading aloud to him what i had written. he was kind, he shook his head, he fished in his memory of virgil and other authors for passages that might be useful to me. i noted down every word he uttered, i worked hard, but in a bad mood. i went back and forth between two feelings. i sought help and it humiliated me to ask for it, i was grateful and at the same time hostile, in particular i hated that he did his best not to let his generosity weigh on me. what caused me the greatest anxiety was to find myself -- together with him, before him, after him -- submitting my research to the assistant professor who was following the progress of both of us, a man of around forty, earnest, attentive, sometimes even sociable. i saw that pietro was treated as if he already had a professorship, i as a normal brilliant student. often i decided not to talk to the teacher, out of rage, out of pride, out of fear of having to be aware of my constitutional inferiority. i have to do better than pietro, i thought, he knows so many more things than i do, but he's gray, he has no imagination. his way of proceeding, the way that he gently tried to suggest to me, was too cautious. so i undid my work, i started again, i pursued an idea that seemed to me original. when i returned to the professor i was listened to, yes, i was praised, but without seriousness, as if my struggle were only a game well played. i soon grasped that pietro airota had a future and i didn't.

in aporia

by akilah oliver, from a toast in the house of friends

"i realized everything i was doing must have been death. it was christmas or labor day -- a holiday -- and every time you turned on the radio they said something like 'four million' or 'going to die.'"
-andy warhol

i'm trying on egos, [a justification for the planet's continuance]. oh
hello transgressor, you've come to collect utilitarian debts, humbling
narrative space. give me a condition and wheatgrass,

i his body is disintegrating, i his body is ossification. death my habit
radius, yeah yeah.
i his body can't refuse the summons. i can't get out
this fucking room. tell me something different about torture
dear trickster.

tell me about the lightness my mother told me to pick the one i love the best
how it signals everything i ever wish to believe true just holy on my ship.
i jump all over this house. this is it [what i thought is thought only,
nothing more deceptive than]:
i his body keeps thinking someone will come along, touch me.
as like human. or lima bean.

i'm cradling you to my breast, you are looking out. a little wooden lion
you & peter carve on bluff street is quieting across your cheekbone. not
at all like the kind of terror found in sleep, on trembling grounds.

it is yesterday now. i have not had a chance to dance in this century.
tonight i shall kill someone,
a condition to remember sunday mornings.

to think of lives as repetitions [rather than singular serial incarnations].
to understand your death is as exacerbating as trying to figure out why
as schoolchildren in mid-nineteen-sixties southern california we
performed reflexive motions:
cutting out lace snowflakes, reading dick and jane search for their
missing mittens,
imagining snow.

and this too, fiction. the book i would want to right.
the restored fallen, heroic.

did you expect a different grace from the world? or upon exit?

i'm working on "tough." they think i am already. all ready.

who is the dead person? is "i'm sorry" real to a dead person?
browning grass. my hands on this table. a contentious century.
a place to pay rent. redemptive moments.

am i now the dead person?
dead person, dead person, will you partake in my persimmon feast?

the body inside the body astounds, confesses sins of the funhouse.

i too have admired the people of this planet.
their frilly, ordered intellects.
the use they've made of cardamom,
radiation as well. how they've pasteurized milk, loaned surnames to stars,
captured tribes, diseases, streets, and ideas too.

if you're hooked

quotes from how to meditate by pema chodron

“the more we see this kind of pattern and don’t go on the downward cycle, the more our confidence grows in our capacity to awaken. as we expand our confidence in the workability of our situation, we begin to see that we are not victims of our habitual patterns. it can definitely feel like we are victims of our habitual patterns; they have a very sneaky way of getting the better of us. but the path of meditation addresses these patterns very directly, and it begins to unwind this whole sense of being imprisoned by our own mind.

the mind is the source of all suffering, and it is also the source of all happiness. think about that. in fact, you can contemplate this for the rest of your life. when something comes up in your life that causes you dissatisfaction, or triggers habitual patterns and reactivity, or makes you angry, lonely, and jealous, ask yourself: are these emotions happening because of outer circumstances? are they completely dependent on outer circumstances?

the path of meditation says that we have to work with our mind, and that if we do work with our mind, the outer circumstances become workable. things that used to irritate and bother us or that trigger our reactivity and habitual patterns begin to dissolve. so whenever you find yourself caught in an emotional attack, you have to ask yourself: ‘how much of this is really happening on the outside, and how much of this is my mind?’. . .

the guideline is this: if you’re hooked, then you need to work on your side of the situation, no matter how outrageous and unjust the outer circumstance might seem. if you’re hooked, this is a clue that you have some work to do -- and you, only you, can call yourself back. this is the basic attitude of meditation.”

“criticalness is an obstacle to meditation, and harshness is an obstacle to awakening. this tendency to be hard on ourselves does not come from the buddha nature, the basic goodness within all of us; it comes from the ego and our conditioning. we all have the seeds of this basic goodness within us -- we only have to nourish them. nourishing the basic goodness within includes not judging ourselves for all the wild thinking that takes place in our mind. we can’t control how many thoughts we’re going to have. and we can’t control what the next thought is going to be. as you practice, try to be faithful to the instruction with a gentle attitude. we train in attention, but it’s friendly attention. we train in labeling, but it’s friendly labeling.”

“as you spend more days and weeks with your commitment to practice, it might seem that your mind wanders even more. many people, even seasoned meditators, say, ‘i’m thinking more than i ever did before!’ they feel like their distractedness and thinking are getting worse, rather than better. the fact is that before you started meditating and trying to develop mindfulness, you weren’t aware of how many thoughts you have. now you are, and that’s why there appears to be more of them.”

“trungpa rinpoche used to say that this kind of experience is very good because it humbles us. he said, ‘our minds are great teachers because we have just enough growing awareness and alertness, or increasing kindness, to encourage ourselves.’ and as he pointed out, we can even get very arrogant about that. in other words, our humanity, this discursiveness and this inability to completely overcome the wild and drowsy mind, keeps us in balance.

the third word i’d like you to hold when it comes to your thoughts is ‘humor.’ gentleness, patience, and a sense of humor. have a sense of humor about the fact that your mind is like a wild monkey. in his book wake up to your life, ken mcleod has a great quote from the theravada meditation master henepola gunaratana. he says, ‘somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless. no problem. you are not crazier than you were yesterday. it has always been this way and you never noticed.’ our thoughts are like the weather -- they’re just passing through. in our practice, there’s no need to cling to them, no need to see them as totally solid. they are thoughts, after all; they’re not the present moment. let them pass through the big sky of your mind.”  

mere unbeing

excerpts from housekeeping by marilynne robinson

"well, that's fine," sylvie said. "i'm glad to have a chance to talk to you. you're so quiet, it's hard to know what you think." sylvie had stood up, and we began to walk toward home.

"i suppose i don't know what i think." this confession embarrassed me. it was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that i often seemed invisible -- incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. it seemed to me that i made no impact on the world, and that in exchange i was privileged to watch it unawares. but my allusion to this feeling of ghostliness sounded peculiar, and sweat started all over my body, convicting me on the spot of gross corporeality.

"well, maybe that will change," sylvie said. we walked a while without speaking. "maybe it won't." i dropped a step behind and watched her face. she always spoke to me in the voice of an adult dispensing wisdom. i wanted to ask her if she knew what she thought, and if so, what the experience of that sort of knowledge was like, and if not, whether she, too, felt ghostly, as i imagined she must. i waited for sylvie to say, "you're like me." i thought she might say, "you're like your mother." i feared and suspected that sylvie and i were of a kind, and waited for her to claim me, but she would not.

*          *           *

the quilt was warm and soft around me arms and shoulders and my ears. i fell asleep where i sat, with the cup of brimstone tea in my lap, held carefully in both hands so as not to spill. sleep made one sensation of the heat in my palms and the sugar on my tongue. i slept precariously upright, aware of my bare feet, hearing the wood in the stove crackle. more words passed between sylvie and lucille, but i could not make them out. it seemed to me that whatever lucille said, sylvie sang back to her, but that was dreaming.

so this is all death is, i thought. sylvie and lucille do not notice, or perhaps they do not object. sylvie, in fact, brought the coffeepot and warmed the cup in my hands, and arranged the quilt, which had slid from my shoulder a little. i was surprised and touched by her solicitude. she knows, i thought, and i felt like laughing. sylvie is sitting beside the stove, flipping through old magazines, waiting for my mother. i began listening for the sound of the door opening, but after a very long time my head fell sharply to one side and i could not lift it up again. then i realized that my mouth was open. all this time the room was filling with strangers, and there was no way for me to tell sylvie that the tea had tipped out of my hands and wet my lap. i knew that my decay, now obvious and accelerating, should somehow be concealed for decency's sake, but sylvie would not look up from her magazine. i began to hope for oblivion, and then i rolled out of my chair.

sylvie looked up from her magazine. "did you have a good sleep?" she asked.

"all right," i said. i picked up the cup and brushed at the dampness of my pant legs.

"sleep is best when you're really tired," she said. "you don't just sleep. you die."

*         *            *

of my conception i know only what you know of yours. it occurred in darkness and i was unconsenting. i (and that slenderest word is too gross for the rare thing i was then) walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming flowers, and suddenly -- my ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months i rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. but this i have in common with all my kind. by some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. so they seal the door against our returning.

then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. again, this is the common experience. they walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. the only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.

types

from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

PURSUERS

• react to anxiety by seeking greater togetherness in a relationship
• place a high value on talking things out and expressing feelings, and believe others should do the same
• feels rejected and take it personally when someone close to them wants more time and space alone or away from the relationship
• tend to pursue harder and then coldly withdraw when an important person seeks distance
• may negatively label themselves as 'too dependent' or 'too demanding' in a relationship
• tend to criticize their partner as someone who can't handle feelings or tolerate closeness

 DISTANCERS

• seeks emotional distance or physical space when stress is high
• consider themselves to be self-reliant and private persons -- more 'do-it-yourselfers' than help-seekers
• have difficulty showing their needy, vulnerable, and dependent sides
• receive such labels as 'emotionally unavailable,' 'withholding,' 'unable to deal with feelings' from significant others
• manage anxiety in personal relationships by intensifying work-related projects
• may cut off a relationship entirely when things get intense, rather than hanging in and working it out
• opens up most freely when they are not pushed or pursued

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UNDERFUNCTIONERS

• tend to have several areas where they just can't get organized
• become less competent under stress, thus inviting others to take over
• tend to develop physical or emotional symptoms when stress is high in either the family or the work situation
• may become the focus of family gossip, worry, or concern
• earn such labels as the 'patient,' the 'fragile one,' the 'sick one,' the 'problem,' the 'irresponsible one'
• have difficulty showing their strong, competent side to intimate others

OVERFUNCTIONERS

• know what's best not only for themselves but for others as well
• move in quickly to advise, rescue, and take over when stress hits
• have difficulty staying out and allowing others to struggle with their own problems
• avoid worrying about their own personal goals and problems by focusing on others
• have difficulty sharing their own vulnerable, underfunctioning side, especially with those people who are viewed as having problems
• may be labeled the person who is 'always reliable' or 'always together'

colonist

excerpts from "the resident" by carmen maria machado - from the short story collection her body and other parties


i crossed paths with the others at breakfast, sometimes. one morning, diego told me about the previous day's social engagements-- which i had ignored in favor of lucille's social engagements near my novel's climax -- and in doing so he said a curious word: colonist.

"colonist?" i said.

"we're at an artist colony," he said. "so we're colonists, right? like columbus." he drained his orange juice and stood up from the table.

i suppose he meant it to be funny, but i was horrified. resident had seemed such a rich and appropriate term, an umbrella i would have been content to carry all of my days. but now the word colonist settled down next to me, with teeth. what were we colonizing? each other's space? the wilderness? our own minds? this last thought was a troubling one, even though it was not very different from my conception of being allowed to be a resident in your own mind. resident suggests a door hatch in the front of your brain, propped open to allow for introspection, and when you enter, you are faced with objects that you'd previously forgotten about. "i remember this!" you might say, holding up a small wooden frog, or a floppy rag doll with no face, or a picture book whose sensory impressions flood back to you as you turn the pages -- a toadstool with a wedge missing from its cap; a flurry of luminous autumn leaves; a summer breeze dancing with milkweed. in contrast, colonist sounds monstrous, as if you have kicked down the door hatch of your mind and inside you find a strange family eating supper.

now when i worked, i felt strange around the entrance to my own interiority. was i actually just an invader, bearing smallpox-ridden blankets and lies? what secrets and mysteries lay undiscovered in there?

*           *           *

in my cabin, i tried hard to focus. i stood out on my balcony and strained to see the lake, but i could not. exhausted by the weather, i lay down on the floor. from there, the room changed, utterly. i felt stuck to the ceiling by a force equivalent to, though the opposite of, gravity, and from here i could see the hidden spaces beneath the furniture: a mouse's nest, a stranger's index card, a lone, bone-white button tilted on an axis.

i was reminded, for the umpteenth time, of viktor shklovsky's idea of defamiliarization; of zooming in so close to something, and observing it so slowly, that it begins to warp, and change, and acquire new meaning. when i'd first begun to experience this phenomenon, i'd been too young to understand what it was; certainly too young to consult a reference book. the first time, i lay down on the floor examining the metal-and-rubber foot of our family refrigerator, wreathed in dust and human hair, and from this reference point all other objects began to change. the foot, instead of being insignificant, one of four, et cetera, suddenly became everything: a stoic little home at the base of a large mountain, from which one could see a tiny curl of smoke and glinting, illuminated windows, a home from which a hero would emerge, eventually. every nick on the foot was a balcony or a door. the detritus beneath the fridge became a wrecked, ravaged landscape, the expanse of kitchen tile a rambling kingdom waiting for salvation. this was how my mother found me: staring at the foot of the refrigerator so intensely my eyes were slightly crossed, my body curled up, my lips moving almost imperceptibly.

*         *           *

in the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. what if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? what if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it's all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? what if you get inside and there's no furniture? what if you get inside and it's just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? what if you get inside and there's nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

what is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?

what is worse: writing a trope or being one? what about being more than one?

i walked to my cabin for the last time. i finally added my name to the tablet above my desk. C----- M----, i scrawled. resident colonist & colonizing resident & madwoman in her own attic.

i threw my novel notes and laptop into the lake. after the plush splash subsided, i heard the sound of girls, laughing. or maybe it was just the birds.

countermoves

quotes from the dance of anger by harriet lerner

"our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth."

"if feeling angry signals a problem, venting anger does not solve it. venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur."

"feelings of depression, low self-esteem, self-betrayal, and even self-hatred are inevitable when we fight but continue to submit to unfair circumstances, when we complain but live in a way that betrays our hopes, values and potentials, or when we find ourselves fulfilling society's stereotype of the bitchy, nagging, bitter, or destructive woman."

"our society cultivates guilt feelings in women such that many of us still feel guilty if we are anything less than an emotional service station to others."

"the negative words and images that depict women who do speak out are more than just cruel sexist stereotypes; they also hint at a painful reality. words like 'nagging,' 'complaining,' and 'bitching' are words of helplessness and powerlessness, which do not imply even the possibility of change. they are words that reflect the 'stuck' position that characterizes our lives when a great deal of emotion is flying around and nothing is really changing."

"it is those closest to us who often have the greatest investment in our staying the same, despite whatever criticisms and complaints they may openly voice."

"de-selfing means that too much of one's self (including one's thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is 'negotiable' under pressures from the relationship. . . the partner who is doing the most sacrificing of self stores up the most repressed anger and is especially vulnerable to becoming depressed."

"it is the underfunctioning of one individual that allows for the overfunctioning of the other. . . underfunctioners and overfunctioners provoke and reinforce each other's behavior, so that the seesaw becomes increasingly hard to balance over time. the more [one person] avoids sharing their own weaknesses, neediness, and vulnerability, [the other] may experience and express more than their share. the more [one person] avoids showing their competence and strength, the more [the other] will have an inflated sense of their own. and if the underfunctioning partner starts looking better, the overfunctioning partner will start looking worse."

"whenever one person makes a move to rebalance the seesaw, there is a countermove by the other party."

"we are good at anticipating other people's reactions, and we are experts at protecting others from uncomfortable feelings. this is a highly developed social skill that is all too frequently absent in men. if only we could take this very same skill and redirect it inward in order to become experts on our own selves."

"when the 'togetherness force' is overriding, a lot of energy goes into trying to 'be for' the other person, and trying to make the other person think or behave differently. instead of taking responsibility for our own selves, we tend to feel responsible for the emotional well-being of the other person and hold the other person responsible for ours."

"we all need to have both an 'i' and a 'we' that nourish and give meaning to each other. there is no formula for the 'right' amount of separateness and togetherness for all couples or even for the same couple over time. each member of a couple is constantly monitoring the balance of these two forces, automatically and unconsciously making moves to restore more separateness (when anxiety about fusion sets in) or more togetherness (when anxiety about unrelatedness sets in). the balance of these two forces is constantly in motion in every couple. one common 'solution' or 'division of labor' that couples unconsciously arrange is that [one] will express the wish for 'togetherness'; [the other], the wish for 'separateness.'"

"the dilemma is that we may unconsciously be convinced that our important relationships can survive only if we continue to remain one down. to do better -- to become clearer, to act stronger, to be more separate, to take action on our own behalf -- may be unconsciously equated with a destructive act that will diminish and threaten our partner, who might then retaliate or leave."

"fighting and blaming is sometimes a way both to protest and to protect the status quo when we are not quite ready to make a move in one direction or another."

"most of us want the impossible. we want to control not only our own decisions and choices but also the other person's reactions to them."

"repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the time comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck."

"emotional pursuers are persons who reduce their anxiety by sharing feelings and seeking close emotional contact. emotional distancers are persons who reduce their anxiety by intellectualizing and withdrawing. . . what is the common outcome of this classic scenario? after this escalating dance of pursuit and withdrawal proceeds for some time, [the pursuer] goes into what therapists call 'reactive distance.' feeling rejected and fed up, they at last proceed to go about their own business. [the distancer] now has even more space than they are comfortable with, and in time moves closer to the other in the hope of making contact. but it is too late. "where were you when i needed you!" the [pursuer] says angrily. at this point, distancer and pursuer might even reverse their roles for a while.

emotional pursuers protect emotional distancers. by doing the work of expressing the neediness, clingingness, and wish for closeness for both partners, pursuers make it possible for distancers to avoid confronting their own dependency wishes and insecurities. as long as one person is pursuing, the other has the luxury of experiencing a cool independence and a need for space."

miniature secrets

quotes from atonement by ian mcewan

"a taste for the miniature was one aspect of an orderly spirit. another was a passion for secrets: in a prized varnished cabinet, a secret drawer was opened by pushing against the grain of a cleverly turned dovetail joint, and here she kept a diary locked by a clasp, and a notebook written in a code of her own invention. in a toy safe opened by six secret numbers she stored letters and postcards. an old tin petty cash box was hidden under a removable floorboard beneath her bed. in the box were treasures that dated back four years, to her ninth birthday when she began collecting: a mutant double acorn, fool's gold, a rainmaking spell bought at a funfair, a squirrel's skull as light as a leaf.

but hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from briony the simple truth: she had no secrets. her wish for a harmonious, organized world denied her the reckless possibilities of wrongdoing. mayhem and destruction were too chaotic for her tastes, and she did not have it in her to be cruel."

"for this was the point, surely: he would be a better doctor for having read literature. what deep readings his modified sensibility might make of human suffering, of the self-destructive folly or sheer bad luck that drive men toward ill health! birth, death, and frailty in between. rise and fall -- this was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too."

"soon there were only the sounds of steady breathing and snores. beneath him the floor still seemed to list, then switch to the rhythm of a steady march, and once again turner found himself too afflicted by impressions, too fevered, too exhausted to sleep. through the material of his coat he felt for the bundle of her letters. i'll wait for you. come back. the words were not meaningless, but they didn't touch him now. it was clear enough -- one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. waiting. simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. waiting was a heavy word. he felt it pressing down, heavy as a greatcoat. everyone in the cellar was waiting, everyone on the beach. she was waiting, yes, but then what? he tried to make her voice say the words, but it was his own he heard, just below the tread of his heart. he could not even form her face. he forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was supposed to make him happy. the intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died. briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the guilty became the innocent. but what was guilt these days? it was cheap. everyone was guilty, and no one was. no one would be redeemed by a change of evidence, for there weren't enough people, enough paper and pens, enough patience and peace, to take down the statements of all the witnesses and gather in the facts. the witnesses were guilty too. all day we've witnessed each other's crimes. you killed no one today? but how many did you leave to die?"

the three lords

excerpt from cutting through spiritual materialism by chogyam trungpa

the lord of form refers to the neurotic pursuit of physical comfort, security and pleasure. our highly organized and technological society reflects our preoccupation with manipulating physical surroundings so as to shield ourselves from the irritations of the raw, rugged, unpredictable aspects of life. push-button elevators, pre-packaged meat, air conditioning, flush toilets, private funerals, retirement programs, mass production, weather satellites, bulldozers, fluorescent lighting, nine-to-five jobs, television -- all are attempts to create a manageable, safe, predictable, pleasurable world.

the lord of form does not signify the physically rich and secure life-situations we create per se. rather it refers to the neurotic preoccupation that drives us to create them, to try to control nature. it is the ego's ambition to secure and entertain itself, trying to avoid all irritation. so we cling to our pleasures and possessions, we fear change or force change, we try to create a nest or playground.

the lord of speech refers to the use of intellect in relating to our world. we adopt sets of categories which serve as handles, as ways of managing phenomena. the most fully developed products of this tendency are ideologies, the systems of ideas that rationalize, justify, and sanctify our lives. nationalism, communism, existentialism, christianity, buddhism -- all provide us with identities, rules of action, and interpretations of how and why things happen as they do.

again, the use of intellect is not in itself the lord of speech. the lord of speech refers to the inclination on the part of ego to interpret anything that is threatening or irritating in such a way as to neutralize the threat or turn it into something "positive" from ego's point of view. the lord of speech refers to the use of concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is. the concepts are taken too seriously; they are used as tools to solidify our world and ourselves. if a world of nameable things exists, then "i" as one of the nameable things exists as well. we wish not to leave any room for threatening doubt, uncertainty or confusion.

the lord of mind refers to the effort of consciousness to maintain awareness of itself. the lord of mind rules when we use spiritual and psychological disciplines as the means of maintaining our self-consciousness, of holding onto our sense of self. drugs, yoga, prayer, meditation, trances, various psychotherapies -- all can be used in this way.

ego is able to convert everything to its own use, even spirituality. for example, if you have learned of a particularly beneficial mediation technique of spiritual practice, then ego's attitude is, first to regard it as an object of fascination and, second to examine it. finally, since ego is seeming solid and cannot really absorb anything, it can only mimic. thus ego tries to examine and imitate the practice of meditation and the meditative way of life. when we have learned all the tricks and answers of the spiritual game, we automatically try to imitate spirituality, since real involvement would require the complete elimination of ego, and actually the last thing we want to do is to give up the ego completely. however, we cannot experience that which we are trying to imitate; we can only find some area within the bounds of ego that seems to be the same thing. ego translates everything in terms of its own state of health, its own inherent qualities. it feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at having been able to create such a pattern. at last it has created a tangible accomplishment, a confirmation of its own individuality.

if we become successful at maintaining our self-consciousness through spiritual techniques, then genuine spiritual development is highly unlikely. our mental habits become so strong as to be hard to penetrate. we may even go so far as to achieve the totally demonic state of complete "egohood."

even though the lord of mind is the most powerful in subverting spirituality, still the other two lords can also rule the spiritual practice. retreat to nature, isolation, simple, quiet, high people -- all can be ways of shielding oneself from irritation, all can be expressions of the lord of form. or perhaps religion may provide us with a rationalization for creating a secure nest, a simple but comfortable home, for acquiring an amiable mate, and a stable, easy job.

the lord of speech is involved in spiritual practice as well. in following a spiritual path we may substitute a new religious ideology for our former beliefs, but continue to use it in the old neurotic way. regardless of how sublime our ideas may be, if we take them too seriously and use them to maintain our ego, we are still being ruled by the lord of speech.

most of us, if we examine our actions, would probably agree that we are ruled by one or more of the three lords. "but," we might ask, "so what? this is simply a description of the human condition. yes, we know that our technology cannot shield us from war, crime, illness, economic insecurity, laborious work, old age and death; nor can our ideologies shield us from doubt, uncertainty, confusion and disorientation; nor can our therapies protect us from the dissolution of the high states of consciousness that we may temporarily achieve and the disillusionment and anguish that follow. but else are we to do? the three lords seem too powerful to overthrow, and we don't know what to replace them with."

the buddha, troubled by these questions, examined the process by which the three lords rule. he questioned why our minds follow them and whether there is another way. he discovered that the three lords seduce us by creating a fundamental myth: that we are solid beings. but ultimately the myth is false, a huge hoax, a gigantic fraud, and it is the root of our suffering. in order to make this discovery he had to break through very elaborate defenses erected by the three lords to prevent their subjects from discovering the fundamental deception which is the source of their power. we cannot in any way free ourselves from the domination of the three lords unless we too cut through, layer by layer, the elaborate defenses of these lords.

the lords' defenses are created out of the material of our minds. this material of mind is used by the lords in such a way as to maintain the basic myth of solidity. in order to see for ourselves how this process works we must examine our own experience. "but how," we might ask, "are we to conduct the examination? what method or tool are we to use?" the method that the buddha discovered is meditation. he discovered that struggling to find answers did not work. it was only when there were gaps in his struggle that insights came to him. he began to realize that there was a sane, awake quality within him which manifested only in the absence of struggle. so the practice of meditation involves "letting be."

. . .

such practice is necessary generally because our thinking pattern, our conceptualized way of conducting our life in the world, is either too manipulative, imposing itself upon the world, or else runs completely wild and uncontrolled. therefore, our meditation practice must begin with ego's outermost layer, the discursive thoughts which continually run through our minds, our mental gossip. the lords use discursive thought as their first line of defense, as the pawns in their effort to deceive us. the more we generate thoughts, the busier we are mentally and the more convinced we are of our existence. so the lords are constantly trying to activate these thoughts, trying to create a constant overlapping of thoughts so that nothing can be seen beyond them. in true meditation there is no ambition to stir up thoughts, nor is there an ambition to suppress them. they are just allowed to occur spontaneously and become an expression of basic sanity. they become the expression of the precision and the clarity of the awakened state of mind.

if the strategy of continually creating overlapping thoughts is penetrated, then the lords stir up emotions to distract us. the exciting, colorful, dramatic quality of the emotions captures our attention as if we were watching an absorbing film show. in the practice of meditation we neither encourage emotions nor repress them. by seeing them clearly, by allowing them to be as they are, we no longer permit them to serve as a means of entertaining and distracting us. thus they become the inexhaustible energy which fulfills egoless action.

in the absence of thoughts and emotions the lords bring up a still more powerful weapon, concepts. labeling phenomena creates a feeling of a solid definite world of "things." such a solid world reassures us that we are a solid, continuous thing as well. the world exists, therefore i, the perceiver of the world, exist. meditation involves seeing the transparency of concepts, so that labeling no longer serves as a way of solidifying our world and our image of self.