Category Archives for Writing

Reflection Upon Santosa

Yesterday in class we discussed how society and culture has taught us
to see contentment as negative. We have been pushed to consume consume
consume, and the best way to do that is to convince everyone that they
are not content. That they need something newer, better, more
exciting. That these objects and ideas are the key to finding
happiness. And we are taught that contentment is “settling”, which is
taught to be bad. “Why settle for less” is one ad slogan.

I do not believe the best translation of Santosa for our society is
“contentment”. Right now, my best word is “acceptance”. We must learn
to accept reality for what it is. We cannot wish it to be different.
We cannot let our minds wander and race with ideas of how it would be
better if it were different. What is, simply is. And we must learn to
accept things as they are, and love them as they are, and not want to
change them for no other reason than we love them as they are in the
moment. We do not love them for what they once were and hold on to
that. We do not love them for who we want them to be in the future. We
love them for simply being.

And that includes how we perceive ourselves.

Our society does not just demand that we are dissatisfied with what we
own, what we have in our lives, it also demands that we are deeply
dissatisfied with ourselves. We are too fat. Too thin. Losing too much
hair. Not getting enough sleep. Skin is too rough, too oily, our hair
too gray, teeth too brown… our libido too weak, our ability to focus
not strong enough, our ability to enjoy not free enough…

All of this is a distraction from accepting what is, and loving every
moment with burning ardor.

Stamped Deep

This is a writing exercise to write about an object we found that led to us learning something about someone we hadn’t known before.

–Stamped Deep–

Lt. Col. John Thomas. The black letters stamped deep into the silver bracelet stood out as a name not known to me.

I learned that my mother was once in love.

I learned he died in the Vietnam war and left her heartbroken.

I learned that she tried to comfort herself by drinking and dancing.

I learned that is how she met my father.

I learned that is how she became pregnant.

I learned that is why they got married.

I learned that she would dream about Lt. Col. John Thomas every night, but that there was always some obstacle keeping her from reaching him, and that she would wake up in tears.

I learned that my mother never really loved my father.

I learned that 40 years later he would still be in her dreams.

I learned why my mother was always so sad.

Lt. Col. John Thomas. The black letters stamped deep into the silver bracelet stood out as a name not known to me.

 

unmasked

“Let’s retrace our steps”, I reassure my tearful three year old son who has just lost his superhero mask somewhere between a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and wandering the local nursery in search of more vegetables for our garden. He knows how good I am at finding things, and is eager for me to find his mask. “You’re a good finder, dad.” he says with his superhero muscle padded chest puffed out with confidence. In reality, I am worried I will let him down.

Retracing my steps is something I find myself doing a lot these days. A few days later I am on a similar journey with my recently separated wife. “Let’s go for a walk,” I suggest as we met at the botanic garden near my office, the garden where we had our first flirtation as I read her tarot, while she shyly blushed at the Lovers card peaking at her from the bottom of the deck. Where we would have our first kiss leaning against her favorite fig tree, and shared walks where we talked about our future.

But this walk isn’t about finding our lost love. It feels more like a crime scene investigation, trying to understand how we let things get so out of control. I see symbols of ruin everywhere. A dead hawk, my wife has a fascination with dead birds as evidenced by her award winning Book of Dead Birds, lays near the place we performed that first magical tarot card reading. The beloved fig tree has been cut down, leaving a knife like edge of a stump that cuts deep into our flesh as we sit in shock and take in the surroundings. The landscape is almost unrecognizable. It feels disorienting. The changes to the garden are as real and manifest as the changes in our hearts, and it is clear there is no going back to the place we once were.

Returning to my empty home I am reminded of my ten year old self, how, when my parents separated, I would walk home from school and let myself into a dark and empty house. I have never forgotten the exact moment that little boy broke down in tears crying out “why did you leave me dad?” I can feel that pain in my heart again, now, as I return to emptiness. But the house isn’t just empty. It is as different as the unrecognizable landscape of the garden. I find signs around the house that things are not the same. The light fixture that we bought to symbolize my mother after she passed away, the light that is the heart of the kitchen, is mysteriously askew, like a weather vane pointing in a new direction. My tarot cards are missing, my childhood photos carelessly left in the garage to warp and wrinkle, the never completed projects around the house feel like tombstones marking the death of each aspiration. Everything that I once was, that I once dreamed about, has been cast aside and replaced with stress and unhappiness.

When the big day that has been looming over our heads for weeks arrives, the day she officially moves into her new home, I get a text that reads “just got hit by a wave of ‘what the hell am I doing’ “. I’m not sure anyone ever knows what they are doing, I think we are always just hoping for the best. I reassure her that the environment and energy we had created for ourselves was not working out, and that we both need space to decompress and find ourselves again. It would be harder to recover if we were still living together, and any improvements would be so small as to be unnoticeable from day to day. But, if we are apart, we can heal and see the changes in each other more clearly. And maybe we will find that we do still want to be together.

Sometimes you can’t retrace your steps and find what you’ve lost. Sometimes you have to accept your new reality and move forward. We can’t keep hiding our true identities behind not-so-super masks.

As for my son’s superhero mask, I did find it. I didn’t let him down.

Hoarders

I don’t know how hoarders do it. How they can keep everything they ever had locked away in their house – stacked to the ceiling, scattered on the floor, broken or rotting. As I stand in my basement I feel like a hoarder – boxes stacked to the ceiling, some stuffed with memories and others holding discarded hopes and dreams. There is a lot of discarded hope here.

When Gayle’s mother, Arlene, passed away we boxed up anything that might have sentimental value and stacked them in the basement. Rows and rows of artifacts of her life as an artist, as a music lover, as a champion for those she saw as unjustly treated. When my mother, Jette, died there was less to pack, less ambitions that needed archiving. My mother’s most prized possessions are someone else’s memories, memories that belonged to long dead great aunts and great uncles.

I hate looking in her boxes. They smell of decomposing paper and mildew. It feels like I’m looking at a box that belonged to a child who died long ago. It feels like these items are imbued with her spectral energy, faintly glowing in the dim closet light. Full, if you can call a half empty box full, of her few joyful memories from her childhood: a few pictures of people I will never be able to identify, clothing for paper dolls, and… a threadbare kitty cat..

That is the hardest piece to look at. The decomposing body of her precious cat. A toy cat, yes, but it was once alive with my mother’s imagination. It followed her on adventures, sat beside her when she was happy. And she clung to it with great fondness because it reminded her of how happy she used to be. I hate looking at that cat because it reminds me of how sad she had become. How her potential for this life was wasted in a drug induced stupor, how she was too afraid to step out into the world and do something amazing.

The last time I touched these sacred items it felt like I was touching my mother’s hand. The last time I touched my mother’s had was the day we decided to take her off of life support and I sat by her bed, holding her hand, as I watched her chest rise and fall for the last time.

Love Yourself, Love Your Self

Some quotes to remind us to love ourselves first. Only then can you bring happiness into the world and truly love others.
 
“Always accept and feel comfortable with your flaws, that way no one can ever use them against you.” –  Unknown
 
“Love yourself or no one else will.” – Unknown
 
“It`s not your job to like me – it`s mine.” – Byron Katie
 
“Love brings you face to face with yourself. It`s impossible to love others if you don’t love yourself.” – John Pierrkos
 
“Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built up against it.” – Rumi
 
“I have had more trouble with myself that with any other man.” – Dwight L. Moody
 

NaPoWriMo: April 12 – Unspoken

This is a little less poetic, and a little more essay, but I have not had time to write as I would have liked, and this is what wanted to be written tonight.

unspoken

As I listened to Nikia Chaney
describing her desire to give fear
a face and make it known through writing,

I was transported to a primitive place
surrounded by darkness and unknown dangers
lurking in the shadows, clicking and clawing
at the recesses of my mind, and I realized
that early man lived in fear of the unknown.

How comforting it must have been to
name those sounds and be calmed by knowledge.

How words evolved into story telling,
which begat ethos and mythos.

How powerful it is to name our fears,
suddenly bringing them out into the open,
confronting them and finding there is nothing.

To deny the right to utter a name
like JHVH, or He Who Shall Not Be Named,
takes us back to our primal fear,

to deny our voices the right to speak
our truths is to live in fear.

 

NaPoWriMo: April 5 – Kiln

kiln

my mother must have doted
over my little baby feet
just as i have with my child.
counting tiny toes, caressing
arches that had not yet walked,
pressing them gently
into soft clay.

she even saved my first ceramic vase.
i was so excited to make it for her,
rolling the hard pottery clay
into snake-like ropes, coiling
them into a tower, painting it
with blue and pink and white.
i was eager to see it fired
in the kiln, to see her shine
when she filled it with flowers.

i was sad to see how my tower
melted in the heat, and leaned
to one side, the coils shifting
and cracking open until
it could not hold water.
the colors muted and dull.

but my mother did not mind.
i was always embarrased to see
that vase proudly displayed
on the bookshelf, next to
the pictures of our ancestors.
it was still there
as i packed up
her house

her body melted
and cracked open
in the heat of a kiln,
sending her atoms
back to the earth
to make new clay.

maybe next time she can
stand straight and shine
with bright colors

NaPoWriMo: April 4 – lost in plain sight

lost in plain sight

people keep getting lost in plain sight.
like the man, right here on Mt Rubidoux,
trapped for six days, 100 feet from the trail.
how could hundreds of people pass by every day
and not notice a man was calling for help.
how could no-one have noticed he was missing
and gone out looking for him?

i keep getting lost in plain sight,
trapped in the darkness of my mind,
unheard by people passing by me,
no-one noticing that i am missing.

i am here…
over here…