wave of modulation

recursive

desire

If you want something, don't ask for nothing

stretching

The ironic thing about my last post is that I don't. I mean, I love Rumi's writing, but I don't yearn. The title was supposed to be a play on words. (y) earn. I was thinking that I have to earn the ability to yearn. I think having the ability to yearn is important. I know some people yearn too much. I don't want to yearn too much. I just want to yearn. To me, having the ability to yearn is not just the ability to imagine or desire. It's about being present, listening to myself, and imagining what I might need or want. - - - - Very recently I was poking around the internet, for the first time in months. I came across a blog I haven't visited in at least a year. Someone I never really knew very well. On the author's 'about' page they listed unresolved childhood issues as a 'turn off'. I chuckled a little at myself, and our collective human condition. I also know the only reason I've had the ability to consider my issues is because I have been safe and fortunate enough. It can seem self indulgent at times when you're looking backward, whether you do it by choice or just seem to find yourself there. At the same time, I feel that issues are issues are issues. Whether a one considers their source or not. Sure some issues don't come from formative years, but I think adult issues come as a response to how we've dealt with childhood issues. They're like questions asking for... something. Interpretation, growth. And yes, heh, issues can be a 'turn off'. Even to the folks who admit to having 'em. I stopped going to therapy a couple of years ago for a variety of reasons. One reason was because I felt I was ready. But there was another reason. I felt that I wasn't truly able to trust my therapist. I felt that if I did trust her, I would be able to hear her messages more clearly. I would be able to be intimate with her. I would be able to look her in the eye while I told her how I was feeling. Or feel something more when I told her how I was feeling. Something would be different... Maybe I would be different. Several months ago I was tested for Attention Deficit Disorder. And yeah, they confirmed I have some strong ADD characteristics. But they discovered something about me that I had sort of known previously and had forgotten, something I didn't have a name for. They said I have Asperger Syndrome. After they told me, I remembered. When I was a kid in foster care, when my life was fragmented and unsafe, I had taken some "tests". Afterward, I remember hearing one of the adults saying that I had several "autistic features". I had no idea what they were talking about. I mostly remembered the part where they said I had a freakish ability to read, spell and pronounce words. Anxiety, focus, repetition, relaxation, anxiety, focus, repetition, relaxation. I've learned that this is my cycle. This is why I have trouble feeling my feelings in front of other people. This is why I was different even before my mom became mentally ill. This is why I felt like I had to learn how to emote by watching other people, and felt like I was faking it all this time. This is why I enjoy work and focus so much. This is why I avoid certain kinds of interaction.  This is why I am oblivious to some things and attentive to others, this is why I am so often overwhelmed. This explains why I see myself as a separate being whenever I imagine myself. I can't express how many mysteries this has solved for me. One of the surprises: I believe my ability to empathize was greatly enhanced by my mother's mental illness. If she had been well, I may not have been motivated to learn about the subtleties of the feelings of others or motivated to learn how to respond to them. - - - - A couple of days ago, I suddenly became ill in the middle of the night. I woke up sweating and sick to my stomach. After a couple of hours spent in the bathroom, I took a bath and lay on the couch trying to go back to sleep. I flipped through a few channels on the tv trying to find something uninteresting to lull me to sleep. I stopped on the movie, Honey. The one with Jessica Alba as the do-gooder / hip hop dancer. At one point, someone in the movie said, "I found something that I truly love, something that truly makes me happy." And then Honey realizes that she should find out what will make her happy. That struck me as important. To really know how to yearn, I have to seek happiness. I have to practice yearning. I must be able to speak what I need, and at the very least I must be able to hear it. I would also like learn to act on it. I don't believe happiness is a permanent state. I believe I must be open to happiness, and I am. I also know now I have to imagine it, to envision it. I can't just be happy with whatever happens, which is my tendency; it's what I have taught myself to do. I want my yearning to have weight and strength, and I want that weight to be balance of imagination and purpose. I will have to stretch. I will learn to reach for it.

white

where is my love

 

patterns of presence

This picture was taken the first day we had cold enough weather to form ice. The windows that face our sunrises are terribly leaky and drafty. But the beauty and surprise each morning, the light shining through the water droplets and the icy patterns, makes the cold and damp worth it. The windows have always been this way, all eight years I've lived here. This is by far the longest time in my life I have lived in one place. This is the room I used to sleep in when I first moved to Boston. When I had only sparse furnishings in my apartment. Before I knew M. That was when I was so afraid all the time that I used to pretend that there was no future. Only I didn't know I was afraid. I thought I was brave. The room is all windows, with a spectacular view of the city. The sun rises and fills this room with incredible light. I've been told that the leaks in the window are bad for the house. Our landlord doesn't seem concerned. I know nothing about house care. I only know apartment care. Temporary care. Maybe we should look into longer term options. I need to expand my knowledge, my confidence in structures. That's not completely true. Maybe I just need to develop confidence in the care and feeding of structures. Maybe the beauty of the ice isn't worth the cost of watching the slow decay of this beautiful room. - - - - This morning when my plane took off it was eighteen degrees in Boston. When I arrived in Florida, the sun was just beginning to set. The air was so warm and fragrant that it took me by surprise. I knew I would need a change of clothes, but the other changes I felt were unexpected. This is the first time I started missing M before I even got to my destination. He started getting a cold yesterday and today he wasn't feeling well at all. I got off the plane, and while I was looking for the baggage claim, this feeling that I wanted to hug him overwhelmed me. - - - - Last week was a hardcore work and deadlines week featuring two all-nighters, proof that I "still have it" and proof that I am still at least slightly unbalanced. The whole week was amped up just a touch more because of a neck strain I received from slipping on a sheet of ice on Monday. I can't hate the cold and ice, though, when it creates patterns this beautiful. I can't hate work, either, when things are going as well as they are. And I realize that during the worst times outside of work, my love of work has made me feel competent and capable, and safe, and engaged. During the best times, like right now, I actually feel creative, trusted, like I belong to something. That doesn't stop me from wanting to change careers to something even more creative someday. A job where I can get my camera out whenever the mood strikes, a job where I can wear jeans, or maybe silky loungy pants with sandals and a soft lacy t shirt. Or a bathing suit under my clothes. That's what I have on right now. I've been sent away for a week to a tropical paradise for technical training. I'm actually enough of a dork that I am really looking forward to getting this training, because it means I will see clearly when I begin to imagine building cool new worlds for information and new ways of searching for, and finding, that information. I've been getting ready for this. I've been reading articles and blogs and big fat resource books. I'm excited about doing the work we'll need to do in the coming months, and this new learning will help us do the work well. I'm looking forward to the challenges. What happened to me? Technical books used to put me out cold. These technical books don't make me sleepy at all, so they don't make good bedtime reading. I wonder if I will wake up from these years of work and look back on the puzzles that occupy and sometimes thrill me now, and wonder why... I brought Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami. It is one of my favorite books in the world, one that changes the way I think, the way I see, every time I read it. It does make good bedtime reading. His imagination helps me feel more at home in the world, opens the bounds I put on my own imagination. It fills me up and cleans my slate, and it makes me want to dream. - - - - Later as I walked from the lobby to my bungalow, I was surrounded by the sound of the fountains and the palms murmuring. The scent of fading warmth rising from the stone path. I had this feeling that maybe I was getting away with something. And maybe I am.

baby steps

For many years, the most commonly recurring dream I had was about me discovering a newborn animal or nest of newborn animals, usually by kicking or stepping on them. The setting was usually my bedroom or another room in whatever apartment I was living in at the time. I’d trip on the babies, and then I’d be both shocked that there was a nest of babies I somehow didn't realize was there and also horrified that I’d squashed them. In my early twenties I also started having a recurring dream that when I looked in the mirror, I saw a glimpse of something in my eye, and upon looking closer in strong light I saw the face of an embryo, sleeping restlessly where my brain ought to be. In my early thirties there was a new dream. I would discover a baby in my midst, usually by accidentally injuring or neglecting the baby. And suddenly I'd realize that I was babysitting but had somehow forgotten. Sometimes the baby was maimed. Sometimes the baby was dead. Sometimes during my shock and horror at finding one frozen baby in my car, the babies would multiply into a ten frozen babies. In my mid to late thirties, a new dream took its place. I began to dream about a fetus inside of its mother, restless and anxious, afraid to be born, not wanting to be born. I haven’t had one of those dreams in a long time. I never thought the dreams were literal. I am an excellent aunt and babysitter. A couple of years ago, I ended almost five years of both individual and group therapy. My therapist had a theory about dreams that made a lot of sense to me, and it has since deeply affected how I think about the human point of view. Her theory was simply that in many dreams you play every part yourself. Every person represents some part of you. She made an educated guess that I wasn’t caring for myself the way I should, that I was neglecting my vulnerability, that I was hurting myself by continuing on the path even after discovering this. I’ve made changes in the way I treat myself and in how I respond to others. Though I’m quite sure I have many more changes to make, lately I feel peaceful in a way I don’t think I ever have. Last week I thought about the possibility of having a child of my own. Though that idea is something I have always felt strongly ambivalent about, I felt differently about it. I’m not sure if I will have a child, but I do feel sure this means I am ready to explore some things I have never explored. There is a yearning in me to understand. In May, I’m going to be forty years old, and while I don’t put much emphasis on age in my life, it does feel like a crossroads of sorts. I feel like all my potential paths are good ones. I feel like I have been walking many paths in my life and instead I want to walk one path, and I need to be fully present on that path. The love between a mother and child has always seemed like something wonderful and amazing and yet out of reach, and for good reason. That love is something I have always felt other people can have or understand, but not me. That love has been terrifying to me personally, in my relationship with my own mother, which has been rife with issues of ownership, invisibility, fear of loss, intrusion, abuse, sadness. And yet other things. In the past couple of years I’ve begun to have a relationship of sorts with my mother. Maybe for the first time since I was a wee babe. This kind of love is so tangled up in my heart and head. I have some sorting to do. This is one of those times when I need to find those ignored, intertwined parts, gently untangle them, dust them off, and understand. In a way it seems like I’ve already been there and done that, but I also know I’m different now. I have different questions. I will learn new things. I think I’m ready, but I need to take baby steps.

that far away look

Part of me is far away. In the nucleus of a molecule. Incubating, growing, germinating. I feel the next stage of my life coming on. I'm not buying into Christmas this year. I'll buy some gifts, yes, but mostly I am just planning to quietly contemplate the season. And send a handwritten something to those I love. This year, this feels right.

I grew up believing love was a life or death proposition