*friendship

July 30, 2014August 2, 2014 / jane in training / 4 Comments

I’m single and I don’t have kids.

So if you want to marry me or be my kid (not both), I will mail you an application. You can tell a lot about a person from their handwriting and the way they construct their sentences. I need to find the right person to inherit my personal treasures:

…my Preciouses…

In all seriousness, I’ve been thinking about drawing up a living trust/will. I simply cannot imagine leaving and not having the final say. And more seriously – I really do love my Preciouses.

Being in this mind space makes me wonder if I’ve expressed enough love to the people I love. Some already know because I’ve told them or have sent them a random text or email while high on caffeine, running or while possessed by some wide-ranging, renegade emotion. I also say it through food. Sometimes I pull their hair. There are so many different and creative ways of expressing it.

I’m not always a good friend. Relationships morph as you morph and break ups are difficult. Do you use a clichéd saying?: We’ve outgrown each other…We want different things, you and I…It’s not you/me, it’s me/you. You cannot say, “Let’s just be friends” because it’s totally counterproductive.

And then there are those who are stunningly beautiful in the ways that they are, and some way, some how, they look at the tumbledness inside of you and think you are stunningly beautiful, too. One of these beautiful creatures opened her home to me and let me stay with her for three months while I sorted out my life. I’m not sure I could have let myself do this or let someone else do this for me, except her. I love her with all of my heart and beyond. I’ve never said it to her in exactly those words; if I had, I’m sure she would have had me arrested for being overly dramatic, as is my wont. Thusly, my plan is to tell her posthaste! For my heart wills it. Exit stage left.

I guess that’s the point of a living will: to take care of business while you’re still able, and remind you to use your voice, arms, and yes, your oven, too, while you are still able. I wish more than anything that I could will everyone their hearts’ desires plus the belief that they can do whatever that thing is that makes them happy.

What the hell. Maybe I will add that to my wishes and demands. I wonder if you have to use law lingo for a document to be considered legal tender. (I feel like that sentence made me sound kinda smart.) Well, for now, I’m declaring it here. I’m feeling sentimental these days; so much so that my heart gets to aching because it feels like I’m not doing everything I can for the people around me.

I think I’ll go now and bake cakes for everyone…

*for nancy

breaking

July 26, 2014July 26, 2014 / jane in training / 2 Comments

I just found out that one of my good friends, someone I consider to be like a sister to me, is under hospice care. She was placed there the same day I posted ghosts.

I’m going to leave later in the week and hope she will be up to having visitors.

my heart is breaking…

ghosts

July 24, 2014July 24, 2014 / jane in training / Leave a comment

Everyone is haunted by something.

Be it love, disappointment, loss, or the ghost of who we are at our core – we are haunted.

Our ghosts can propel us in a myriad of directions. We can run as far as we can, even to the ends of the earth, but the faster we run, the more they chase us down. Some want to possess us; others want to teach us. Sometimes we can’t tell the difference and without question, we run like hell.

I had an older sister who died when I was four years old. I know my mother is haunted by the memory of her and by the other experiences she’s had in her life – some I know about and some she won’t tell me. I cannot remember one single thing about my sister, try as I might. Years and years ago I had a dream about her: She was lying down on the ground and I reached to open a small door in her back. I placed some garlic bulbs in there, closed the door and voila! She sat up and starting walking around. She was alive.

I recently found an old article by Martha Beck about how having a mishap is a chance to expand your outlook. She wrote:

“…shit happens. Randomly. But here’s an amazing human capacity: We can use virtually any experience as a catalyst for hopelessness or growth. We can see the world as if everything is meaningless or as if everything is meaningful. Each of these positions is equally untestable. So we get to choose.
“We all have the same freedom to find and focus on the meaningful parts of our own misfortunes. Every one of us encounters random events, but we also possess a universal ability to create meaning out of suffering. We can turn a curse into a blessing, tragedy into heroism, loss into gain. Lucky us.”

I know it can be difficult to try to turn something emotionally tragic into something meaningful. It somehow feels…wrong. But I get the essence of what she is saying. Everyone copes in different ways. Whether you cope in darkness, in the light, or go in between the two, grief needs time to move from smothering you to sitting beside you. Eventually, it may reside peacefully, but it never moves out. You simply allow it to be what it is. You allow it to sit in the same room with you. That’s when your relationship to it changes.

This Buddhist practice is ideal, but I know it is damn difficult to do while in it. I don’t like grief and the causes of it. I can see it in people and sometimes it is excruciating to witness and you don’t know when and if they’ll reach for that life preserver.

I have ghosts.

Some are quite lovely, some are bothersome. Some float around, reminding me that I already have a life jacket on: really, love…stop all this flailing around.

My conscious memory does not remember my sister, but because she was a part of my experience, she is a part of me.

And there, she lives.

teamwork

July 11, 2014July 11, 2014 / jane in training / Leave a comment

I think Mr. T is trying to smile, but his gold chains just won’t allow it.

“I love it when a plan comes together.”
~ John “Hannibal” Smith, The A-Team

Me, too, Hannibal, me too.

When I wrote about the different voices I write with, I saw that those voices belong to team of players: joy, patience, irony, love, the real me, the storyteller, the critic & the judge, fear, uncertainty, the perfectionist. And sometimes I forget to be a team leader. Without a team leader, disorganization and anarchy are a stone’s throw away. So what to do? Assemble them together and allow them to bring their individual strengths to the table. Above all, you’ve got to lead the rag tag bunch.

Have you ever watched “Top Chef”? Specifically the episodes in which the contestants have to work in teams? If you have, you know exactly what I’m talking about. A team of alpha dogs will gnash, crash, and jockey amongst each other to rise above the rest, upsetting the potential for a beautiful group effort. A team of peaceful non-combatants with no discernible leader will feel the love, but lose the power of a concise, focused meal. And sometimes there is a loose cannon that upsets any potential balance. They don’t want to play nice. Whenever I see this person on a team, I think, oh no…they’re going to ruin it for everyone…

On my team, this role is played by The Judge. And The Judge never travels without Stewart Martha, the intellectualizing Overthinker, and…where are they?…Fear is around here somewhere. Probably hiding out, as usual, waiting for the imperfect time to jump out and scare the crap out of me. Holy hell, they can be a menacing gang. They are incredibly irritating, mostly when they are allowed to run around, turn tables over, and cause mayhem. Because they know they can.

I’m taking a fresh look at my peeps, my role as a leader, and how to utilize everyone’s strengths and allow them to lead with those strengths. I don’t want to kick any of them out. I need all of them.

I love it when a team comes together.

*this post was heavily influenced by an article written by Martha Beck, The Avengers, and my involvement with the best team I’ve ever been on, where all members set their egos aside to create a strength of One.

the past is present

July 8, 2014July 25, 2014 / jane in training / 2 Comments

“…the nature of perfection is always mutating. What constitutes
enlightenment today will always be different tomorrow.
Even if you’re fortunate and wise enough to score a sliver
of “enlightenment,” it’s not a static treasure that becomes
your indestructible, everlasting possession. Rather, it remains
a mercurial knack that must be continually re-earned.”

~ Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology

The other day I wrote about all of the different voices that arise when blogging. I forgot to add a voice. My mutant voice. The ever-changing one.

As I had mentioned before, the blogs I like to read are homey and friendly, where the writers are brave enough to share their honest emotions. They write about what they love through cooking, their creativity, their family life. And it comes from their heart. You can feel it. That’s when it hit me: I have the hardest time doing this.

About ten years ago I started to post random thoughts on the blogging site Xanga. In those days, I wore my humor like an overcoat. On top of three other layers of coats. When I took one off, I immediately felt a chilling breeze and I would quickly slip on the heavy layer again.

My main voice was sarcastic, snarky, and glib – towards others and myself. Sort of a more aggressive, on-steroids version of my current writing. I’d get comments here and there after I wrote these types of posts. Occasionally, my heart would write what it wanted to write*, but people didn’t respond to those posts. My learned Pavlovian response?: stop doing what you’re doing. people don’t like it. do something to gain favor. must perform.

My humor, such as it is, is my best weapon against invaders. But I’ve also employed it to connect to some of the most curmudgeonly people and the shyest of shys. It diffuses situations. It helps me shrug off the things I really don’t need to worry about. And, I have to say, I do like making people laugh. Still, I don’t want to hide in it.

Gah. It’s a bit painful to read some of my old stuff. Granted, I think some of it is hilarious (I do say so myself), but I led with my humor so much, you couldn’t see me. But that was the point. I didn’t want to be seen, at least, not my real self.

Witnessing a past You certainly can inform the present You.

What I want to do, what I really want to do, is start from the heart and go from there. (With a few non-sequiters thrown in for good measure. I can hardly stop this as I can my sense of what is funny.) I tried way back when with one of my old Xanga posts that I’ve added below. Ironically, I was reflecting on a past Me, much like I am now. Reading it made me feel a bit sad for both of the girls who didn’t feel safe continuing down that road. It’s not too late though, you know? Never too late to wander down a new path or even revisit an old, overgrown one. The kind of path that takes you back yet propels you forward at the same time. Because, deep down, you know you have to cut through that overgrown tangle of weeds to see yourself more clearly.

So, I take my own shyest of shys and share my younger self, sharing my even younger self. Taking a coat off…

[the post below is unedited. it’s awfully difficult to post it without wanting to tweak it over and over again like i usually do. there. another coat off.]

As I was cleaning/clearing my desk at home, I found a journal I had written in four years ago and starting reading a few of the entries. I was struck by one of the comments I made: “So I’m sitting in the back of the car, looking at the Big Dipper…and just feeling like giving myself over to it…I saw myself swimming in the ladle…These are things one can only do in silence, in the quiet space of one’s own thoughts.” This may not seem like much, but I think I used to give in to my imagination more, I remembered my dreams more, I took a moment in the moment. Don’t you think we spend enough time during our day making sense of things, getting things done, and using the left side of our brain?

We weren’t living in L.A. at the time I wrote that entry – we were living in a place where we could drive a few miles and be in the country, where I could stare out the window and see truly blue skies and green rolling hills, where you could gaze up and see a million stars at night. There were creeks and cows and trees and vineyards. When there is beauty and peace around me, it reminds me that there is more to life than just navigating it – I actually FEEL life. I had a glimpse of it this morning while on my walk. It was a beautiful morning in L.A. – rare blue skies and puffy white clouds – but I was bombarded by those things I mentioned in my previous post. If Mother Nature was attempting to give me a peace offering this morning, L.A. just took it away by its very nature. (9/26/05)

Our voices are ever-changing. That’s the beauty of writing. It moves with us wherever we go.

*this reminds me of Woody Allen saying “the heart wants what the heart wants” to explain his affair with his now-wife. I am happy, very happy to find out that it was Emily Dickinson who first said in writing, “The heart wants what it wants…“