Do Reindeer Have Fear of Flying...?

And now to contradict my last blog about the virtues and rewards of proactive change. There's a special hell inhabited by those of us who sometimes live for years with deeply conflicted needs and wants. I'm talking about liminal places in life where desires and the portals through which they're accessed are in the process of aligning but aren't there yet. I'm talking of course about middle aged women like myself. We who still haven't gotten with the program and totally self-actualized. We have no excuse eh? Nobody likes a fence sitter. The self-help-you-can-do-anything mecca of 50 ways to detox your liver, leave your used to be lover, vent your spleen, cleanse your colon and push push push those boundaries is targeted at we (am I being paranoid here ?) whose lives are eminently fixable. We just need to spend more money and most of our time on reinventing ourselves. Right?

Can I just say that I'm tired of being told how worth it I am and to put my own oxygen mask on first? I know it's good advice to keep breathing, but if one is trying to answer a more basic question like " am I on the wrong flight"? then who cares whether oxygen is flowing freely?

In other words, to meet and prioritize your needs your have to know what they are. It's one thing to know you need a different size bra or more cardio in order to feel better- but what about those times when you suspect you need a radically different life? In such cases conventional wisdom can be useless--unless you really, really don't have a clue what to do next and then it can work temporarily as a strategy for self-preservation while dog paddling. Like my friend Vinny says, the last step in re-creating comes down to timing. Trust in the unknown and overcoming the fear of flying are not the same as being ready to act. When it's time.

Which brings me back to conflicting wants and needs. A lot of women pressure themselves in ways that have nothing to do with their ability to make choices but rather with things they aren't in a position to change right away. We tell ourselves we're stagnating rather than see the process for what it is, and then we get stuck in what Patricia Sun refers to as old style thinking. It's a style that says we're either naughty or nice, doing it right or wrong- in a good marriage or a bad one. Unless you're solving a math problem there are many potential correct answers that will work, and an infinite number of paths to a happier place. Process thinking allows us to be kind and patient with ourselves and others while we're moving towards goodness and wholeness. I've had the greatest epiphanies and shifts come from forgiving and releasing guilt or shame--which are like the bags we carry the baggage in.

So here's my advice- forget sweeping New Year's resolutions. Don't even try to seize the whole day if you've been a chronic worrier/analyzer/fixer up to now. If you catch yourself for a moment loving yourself, something, or someone exactly as they are for one moment, you've just entered the kingdom. The rest is practice, surrender, and here's that word again: TRUST.

See you in 2010,

Love,

Gwendolyn.

Ch ch ch chchanges....

I think Bowie was right, I think we do change in order to turn and face the strain of living. I'm basically lazy. Hey, one needn't grow up in a hurry. I do a dead fridge items clean out at least once a week and I religiously recycle to the point of being obsessed with getting rid of whatever I don't use.

Yet how many times have I waited til reality bit my shapely arse before spitting out the sands of denial and procrastination? But what about you and I making change from a place of exuberance and joy- because we actively seek to grow or because it's time to do the hard thing before it gets harder?

This is what I personally am working to get better at-- proactive rather than reactive living. It makes sense to start with the small stuff, so this year when I knew that I'd need support to handle spending an entire bleak, wet winter in Auckland without going abroad ( yeah, I know it's a privileged cross to bear) I did something about it. Exercise kept most of the winter blues away and a few of the indoors extra pounds that my inner foodie and I are want to accumulate...especially whilst indulging in pre-recorded episodes of The Colbert Report. I also committed myself to the demanding if not hugely rewarding undertaking of organizing a large city event in support of the World March for Peace. Becoming an activist for ending the condoned use of nuclear and other weapons spoke to my heart- and meant that instead of sitting home waiting for my son's school day to end, I went out and asked local NGO's and others to join me in bringing violence to an end.

So here was my small epiphany for 2009: I didn't have to renounce being a change junkie to satisfy my fix for something new. I could simply redirect the focus from distracting myself to getting engaged. I know it sounds like tripping over the obvious to say that a year spent working for peace really took care of that old empty feeling in a way that no amount of working at self-improvement could have. Who knew that what I was ultimately lonely for was a sense of meaning?

Now if only I'd stop waiting til my car runs out of oil before I make myself drive to a mechanic.

Landscapes

And now a word in praise of vagabonds. Where would humanity be without explorers, nomads, wanderlusters and the like? Let the rest of the world stay in one place and paint self-portraits in the pale shades of routine conformity. God bless the working class with their regular bowel movements. As for me, sticking with things means I’m on an oiled massage table. Yes, I can hold down a “job” if pressed to do so and am about to celebrate my 12^th wedding anniversary. These are not accomplishments. For those of us for whom variety is a staple rather than a spice, life isn’t digestible without forays into the unknown. We’re proud of the risks we take and the courage to try new things. It’s not better—just different.

Still, I haven’t always been comfortable being a scanner to quote the term coined by author Barbara Sher. I worried for years that I was somehow defective, unstable, immature, and subsequently paid more than one therapist good money to find out why long term goals have always eluded me. Was it too many Sinatra songs at a tender age, followed by a few years of recreational drugs at a slightly older age?. Bad/planets/broken/home. Who can say? I was in point of fact perfectly adapted for a Southern California childhood in the sixties and seventies. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t lived there for over two decades-- I’m still more at home on a freeway heading out of town than anywhere else. To truly live by the Tumbleweed’s code is to make no apologies and take no prisoners.

Which brings me to New Zealand. Accidentally on purpose. It’s so beautiful, so wild, and so, so freakin small. For an American like myself who grew up with the ethos of bigger, faster, farther--there’s significantly less pressure here to amount to something—in fact one wants to avoid standing out. Certainly no one is going to call you a loser for not wanting to claw your way to the top of the food chain, which in this country means you shop at Foodtown rather than Pack and Save. Auckland is arguably nirvana for those who are content to get by on simple pleasures and occasional sunny days, surrounded by seductively accessible coastline and mostly decent wines.

Still, it’s also a place that doesn’t offer much of anything out of the usual, has a quasi arts scene at best, and no old world culture to speak of. That’s what jet airplanes are for—if you don’t mind flying for a long, long time to get to somewhere with a pulse. Yep, I’m restless here after six years just like I’ve been most other places. Meditation helps---especially if I’m trancing out on the getaways section of the paper….

See you in economy.

Love,

Gwendolyn.

Frame

This instant- one in which I am. Ploughed under colours

mixed in blue of cornflowers chipping wind.

Light cuts open the afternoon.

Air has all of water none of its density, the way the thick amongst us

lumbering fields at all hours. There's the soil again. Vulgar tufts.

Thick brown granules washed off corpses consumed at their roots.

All the while, his skin not the colour of dirt but of sandstone

beautiful ochre genitals of salmon. So his only love rose.

I ran out to it and to sea. Right to the edge of distinction

furrows stiff as peaks. She a petticoat- he a lady's tailor

She a cauldron upturned he among the damned.

Walking.

Romanticize the life birds lead. Plunge dreams off

summer balconies. What may bloody asphalt

never the more forgives its quarry.

Gwendolyn.

Heartstrings

Lately I've been really really emotional. So what. Its a gift if you look at it with open eyes and see past the relative humiliation of suddenly spitting out your stir fry with a big blubber over lunch. I don't have to dig for my feelings as if they were unwanted weeds in some neglected garden. I don't get out of touch very often either-- I cry easily, and laugh at times when its not exactly appropriate. No emotional constipation here. I like my humanity, I think that it's one of those midlife discoveries that comes as a relief after years of needing to keep it together.

Do you ever look at people in positions of power and or those with high public profiles and realize how lucky you are to able to cut lose whenever you want to? I do. There are few things I prize like being able to fuck up without anyone knowing about it. Imagine if your entire livelihood or self-image revolved around public opinion polls, rating games, how much weight you did or didn't gain in any given month. Ironic that individuals whose stature we can't help but admire have less freedom than most of us to behave as ordinary humans, ( to the extent they play the impression management game) and yet they're more successful- happier. Right?

What an insane notion to aspire to a life where because you've made it there's this implied pressure to have maximum control over what you project to others and to show your feelings less.

But then, one does admire the occasional Herculean feat of cool under pressure. What do you think? 

Relationships: 

 

If you live long enough in a couple it happens. The great divide. Where initially there were two people whose very love desired total uninhibited disclosure of all thoughts and feelings, communicating and sharing almost as one, this eventually becomes—as we all know with time, a thing of the past.

One day there are now at least four of you living under the same roof. There are the two of you who now converse by being careful to gauge, measure, sift, edit, and when necessary stifle what you say. You learn where the speed bumps are and how to deftly steer through curves out of mine fields. Basically, you don’t go behind the iron curtain unarmed. Relating becomes about best outcome scenarios as ones where both get to save face or at least walk away in time to stem the bleeding.

Then there are the other two of you known only to yourselves, who seldom say much of anything you deeply feel out loud. The loneliest moments in a love affair revolve around internal monolgues-- succinctly spilling your guts using perfect syntax and irrefutable logic— silently saying all the things you wish could be really heard if you did say them. So goes the retreat into a kind of inner dialogue that hides the truth of itself out of fear, apathy, rage, unconsciousness and sometimes grief.

Truth is, maybe naked honesty is meant to wane for the same reason the urge to copulate like rabbits goes away. We all wish it were different- swear that this time it will be--a true no holes barred connection- and then the holes get, well, barred. And not always for lack of trying! Don’t you know at least one uber switched on relationship where they vowed to keep it real and open forever?

 They did perpetual counselling or some variation on the Tantra-Meditation-Our-Love-Comes-First schtick and one out of a million times it worked- til the day they both openly admitted they’d be better off apart because they’d run out of things to say.

Most of us I believe come to see total disclosure in our relationships as overrated. It makes more sense not to hurt or be hurt in the name of openess when you understand that leopards don’t change their spots just because you point out that the spots are there. The people we love are who they are in spite of us and because of how we choose to see them. Perhaps when we court the slow death of intimacy for the preservation of equilibrium we do so partly because it’s the tried and true model we grew up observing. It becomes enough if the conversation was mostly pleasant on any given day and if there were any moments of genuine tenderness or humour- all the more for the glory.

I know, you want more than mediocrity and so do I. The disappointing but wholly important lesson is that friendship and basic respect prevail where the language of romance falters… Every day kindnesses which when mastered allow one to move on to that utopia reserved for the undemanding or the patently innocent at heart.

I personally know that the fastest way to waste years of your life with someone is to hold out for some guarantee of happiness. Though I am working on it. Hard. I do suspect that love is the answer, not the kind where the violins swell along with parts of one’s anatomy…but that the way to build meaningful bridges between men and women is to become bilingual. We get to learn the other’s language of love- it may not even be a spoken language or easily recognisable after years of not listening because we assumed we knew. It isn’t necessary to speak it fluently to each other at every moment. My self-appointed task is to find a way to become a walking dictionary by using actions to define what love means to me. Do that I tell myself, and then watch and feel and taste what happens.

 

 

 

Dear Reader,                        

Welcome to my inner worlds. It's high time to let the selves out of the bag...why not? You see, I have a brain-mind stuck on permanent meta-process, I like to think of it as a gift rather than an affliction. I'm also a woman who has been listening intimately to inner voices for years-- mine and those of other women.

I've done this listening in the capacity of a therapist, educator, workshop facilitator, mother, and of course as a friend. 

Shortly after my Mom, the most amazing woman I've ever known died, she came through the unlikely channel (or Chanel as Deidre would say) of a palm reader who works in a book store in Sydney. My daughter whom I was visiting at the time and I had spontaneously booked the appointment. The young woman who sat next to me in a room the size of a broom closet had a gaze like Ophelia and so far as I know knew only my name. Yet there she was, assuming my mother's countenance complete with jutting jaw and fixed green-eyed stare as she said "Why do you keep wondering what to do with your life--don't you know women need a place to tell their stories"?

Whether it was Mom coming through or just some longing she read inside me--she's right.

Women do need a place to tell our stories and this ( If I can figure out the HTML) is now mine.

You're most welcome to share sacredly irreverent space here....a dearth of which is, in my own opinion a true environmental crisis if ever there was one.

Gwendolyn.