On Predation & Hiding.

A friend calls, her voice like one riverstone
rolling against the next, and she says
I sound breathless, and she asks
what are you doing 
so urgently
at 9:30am?

Because it's the truth, I holler STOP THAT
and then regularly say, The cat is an asshole
who's tormenting a tiny
nuthatch whose tail feathers

are all pulled out and I've got
to get him away from him.

She sends me off to do that: To rescue.
And all through the next COVID conference
call I've got an injured
nestling in the downy maroon
pocket
of my sweatshirt.

I am not sorry for what I've said-
the cat is an asshole,
but I'm sorry for predators,
who know not why they do.
The nuthatch jabs

his dainty rapier
bill into my thumb.

I find an empty Priority Mail box,
line it with tissue,
prepare to imprison this barely-fledged
creature,

and instead he flaps damaged wings
just once, falls, cries out
pitti-caw-caw, 
then disappears behind the fridge.

The damned fridge is old, unwieldy.
I know-I move it out, then back, then out again
trying to find the nuthatch

and cannot. An old dryer vent
hole appears.

All day I am tormented
thinking Surely, he's died. One cannot hide
in so much refuse and dust.

Surely he has suffocated, and will soon turn
to bone.

For how could something so tired,
so tiny, survive both predation and hiding?

I sweep mouse dung up,
move the fridge back again.

Behind it, the dryer vent
leads to outside.

SO MANY THINKS. A starter blog about dating...

...see what I did there? Thinks vs. Things? Eh?

Just kidding.

I have a particular beloved friend who is dealing with reentry into the dating world while undergoing a divorce. This experience is one with which I am well-acquainted, and I share her trepidation and dissatisfaction. Many difficult questions, and specifically those that challenge our sense of place, self and self-esteem, tend to rise to the surface in dating.

This, as the previous post, is a disjointed thought about what's ingrained in us as we develop our romantic and sexual selves. Likely other posts will follow...

We grow up with, are exposed to through all types of media, and are taught so many tropes about our personal relationships that are, because they are dichotomous, gendered, misogynist and/or couched in religiosity, that ultimately are unattainable and unrealistic. 

1. We, and women in particular, are taught that our partners must be our "best friends". Again, women in particular are taught throughout childhood and adolescence that a "best friend" is a singular entity. As girls, we yearn for that, to paraphrase Anne of Green Gables, bosom friend, who knows our secrets, our hopes, dreams and whole selves far better and more intimately than any one other person may. As we mature, and as we shape our romantic, sexual and sensual Selves, never are we able to do so FOR our Selves-indeed, we are taught to do so in order to be more appealing to this "best friend" who will eventually become our (another trope) "soul mate". Herein are resulting issues:

a. When we meet potential love interests, we automatically and unthinkingly subject them, and ourselves, to a battery of unseen "requirements", a rubric for knowing each other that must be completed before the relationship is to evolve and progress: favorite color? favorite and least favorite foods? side of the bed? shoe size? hometown? 

i. I have discovered that both the trope of a singular "bosom soulmate" is not only socially false, but unreasonable for me, as it pertains to the person I share a romantic, sexual relationship with. I hope never to stop uncovering and teasing out, and discovering that person. I hope never to have the same question, nor the same answer, for them twice, and vice versa. 

ii. Recognizing and honoring that, outside the romantic sphere, there are multiple people for whom I feel a deep, intimate love without romance or sexual attraction, has changed what I expect and what I view as necessary to receive from my partner. There are many whose input I respect and rely on. It is completely possible to use the human resources outside our romantic relationships to discuss said romantic attachments. It is not reasonable nor acceptable that we place the full weight of our expectations and fears upon a single partner whose role it becomes to at all times know us inside and out, nor should we expect that that partner's intimacy and most intimate self belongs solely to us. 

To follow: In what ways are we taught to deny our sensual selves when relating to others? How does this influence the ways in which we hold expectations for our romantic relationships, and place undue pressure on ourselves therein?

The Self as a Fractal

While mathematics and especially theoretical mathematics are not my strong suit, I have always had a fascination with the ways in which chaos theory and fractal math apply to socio-cultural and social-emotional situations. I have no idea what spurred the following poorly-expressed theory, but after a week of intense conflict with my Self, it came out in this form and fashion. A succinct way of distilling down all that I've been agonizing over, to be sure.

I have battled hard against anxiety and depression since I was a teen, and PTSD or CPTSD since my mid-20s (following a series of what is most easily described as Highly Unfortunate Events). Perhaps the below theorizing is the result of, a few days ago, finally having felt that I had battled my own demons and won...

"Humans in general are alternately the chaotic arms and spirals, and the central, tightly-coiled, absolute value in a fractal. Systemically, if applied to the individual psyche and psychology, we can posit that:

a. where a conflict between the Self and CPTSD, anxiety, depression, etc. exists, the central, Mandelbrot-based "c" value (the relationship between the Real and the Imaginary parts of an equation) are reflected by the current mental-emotional stressors; thus the Self becomes the derivative sequences (arms, spirals, infinite iterations); the central absolute can be considered both the cause and the solution to such chaotic, harmful Self-conflict: filial-tribal networks, community, learned healthy coping, resilience; AND:

b. the inverse can also be true, wherein the Self becomes the central, absolute value, having the most constant stability, as healthy coping, communities, and resilience are built; we might posit that information can flow both outward and back inward along a Julia set (this being the result of each further derivation from the original). Given this inverse relationship and the theoretical exchange between Chaos (the world around us; personal relationships; existent unhealthy coping) and subsequent Order (we observe; we experience; we are given input; we grow), can we teach ourselves how to become anchors in the eye of, rather than being the, Storm?"

What are our obligations to one another in relation to this ever-inverting and reverting system of emotional intelligence and growth? It would seem clearer progressively that we must encourage and empower one another to be unafraid of the two key and opposing states of Being: one that appears on the surface unmanageable, but is anchored firmly within the Self, and another which is chaotic  to the individual (whose mental-emotional state appears as many derivative arms), but is anchored in multiple ways.

Footnote-I will likely come back and add more to this later...

Resurrecting a neglected project...

I have not posted here nor on Sunday Morning Poems (a collaboration between myself, Lauren Leslie, and Nicole Hardina) in what seems like eons. 

But, here's a small thing, written in between checking things from both work and personal lists that never seem to become shorter.

It needs a title, which is not my forte and  never has been, but, it is still a sort-of poem...


6/20/2019

And when there is still, as the river-valley winds die,
haze scattering light across what's left
of snow, which clings like Dall sheep do
between peaks,
we call what breaks the treeline greens
and tundra rusts
fire. Somewhere south of us, it burns.
There, when by careless match or half-cigarette
or (disbelieve it?) lightning
strike, stillness is the beak of a boreal
woodpecker. Listen:
never more than three beats
at once, lest what we eat
discovers us, glossy black eye bent
close to dry bark, to crusted sap hardened amber,
which needs no match, no flicked ember
to set alight, within which we dream
(if ever the heat lets us sleep)
there are mosquitoes, gossamer
old wings containing old codices
of new life. And newness we crave wholly,
while the mountains trap thunderstorms,
and we wait
burning too, for a rain that smells
of snow.

Fish Pearls

Let's stick to just the facts.
When the birch logs refused to light,
paper-white bark lifting in flecks toward the sky,

that's when you disappeared.
Not vanished, mind you, but in mind, and I could see
through the trees (dripping rainwater from

branch to silhouette branch)
one long arm outstretched, not toward me.
And I could see that you could still

see me. Let's stick as justly
as the emerald-green moss clings to stumps.
To the facts: where the river undercuts

its own banks, there are footpaths,
and upon those are people,
and someday the people will cling to drifting logs.

I would say, if interrogated, that this disappearance
was not sudden; limb by limb,
you faded-spine a bulwark, shoulders a scale.

Just, let's stick to the facts:
some of those people own cabins of split log.
When the river cuts into

its own banks (braids itself in like snakes
through the hair)
the elderly couple clinging to their home

will drift with split logs
into the new main channel, where the gray
water is the color of a salmon's split belly, of the skin

peeling back from the salmon's bare skull,
eye sockets housing what we called,
as children, fish pearls, 

tiny white calcified flecks
scattered in sand, that we knew for a fact
were precious
beyond measure.                                                         

The Iceberg, or the Ship?

"We'd rather the iceberg than the ship, though it meant the end of travel,"
-Derick W. Burleson

I've been thinking a lot, especially recently, about fear,
and what the modern concept of "ownership" means to us, when we're afraid.
I've been thinking about the dialogue between people, and how it becomes less a dialogue, and more a debate or a battle, over and over again, between people whose individual fears of loss rear ugly heads, dredge up painful memories, and, like quick-growing vines, tend to choke out all empathy, disallowing true "hearing".

About how we dishonor ourselves by using words like "objectivity" and phrases like "meeting halfway". How we become indoctrinated by others into believing that emotions, especially those pertaining directly to relationships and human connection, can be bought, paid for, given, or taken away; that transition, change, and fluidity are foreign, unfair, and unsafe.

Two days ago, I DNFed what was supposed to be my very first 50-mile ultra.
I managed to make it 22 miles to the "halfway" checkpoint. By that point, I had rolled my left ankle. I have had ongoing hip and knee issues in the same leg, and the combination slowed my first-half pace to a crawl. By the time I reached mile 22, it seemed inevitable that even were I to continue to finish, I likely would not make it there by the finisher's cutoff of 15 hours.

The choice to DNF devastated me. I had to hike myself and my gear out another 4-5 miles, to where a friend's vehicle was waiting. More than the physical pain (a thing most ultra runners grow accustomed to), the mental/emotional blow of having experienced what at first I felt as a total, utter personal failure has been dragging me down ever since.

During that same time, I began once again hearing the language of fear from someone who had mistrusted me, and shut down in our relationship. The slamming of an emotional door by someone we love-isn't it often the most hurtful thing we experience?

When our authenticity and our genuineness are questioned, or even insulted, and we are told that we are "too much", it's often by those whose emotional ideation is based in the fear of having things taken from them. And that fear becomes a function of the ego; of a mindset that disallows fluidity for the sake of the ego's concept of all other human beings as sheer consumers-of sustenance, product, and of people. 

Their fear is that if they share, are authentic, are true, and meet our truths head-on, that somehow we will assimilate them. Their fear is that this, then, will take away any upper hand they may feel they have in interpersonal relationships.

My running community, above all things, has dealt a compassionately firm hand when I've felt that my experiences on the trail are not mine. In DNFing, it's easy to feel as if one's performance is a function that's completely within our control: if I had just increased tempo sooner, brought more food, hydrated better. It's easy to forget that even in what we consider failure, we do not own most of the circumstance. It's not a fountain pen. It's not a cheese grater. In the immortal words of Chuck Palanhiuk, "you are not your fucking khakis".

Things ARE in fact just things.
Our experiences, ideas, conceptual frameworks and emotions are not.
We don't own happiness, trust, or authenticity anymore than we own the air we breathe.

My failure to finish this 50-miler was preceded by all these messages from someone I care about saying, you are asking me to give and I do not want to. I am afraid that you will use my emotions, thoughts, and ideological concepts as hard currency. I am afraid of your authenticity, and I am jealous, because you are NOT afraid. 

Emotionally, that's a heavy place to be, and I could feel it in my very feet on the scree.
Here I was, actually running between the rocks of the trail and a hard place-a hard place created by my having conceptualized, based on this person's poor communication, feelings, interpersonal empathy, trust and love as THINGS. As if those concepts were akin to money in the bank, to be earned, hoarded, spent. I was not engaging in self-stewardship, or in stewardship of my fellow runners and the environment around us.

And it dragged me down. I could not finish that race. Mentally, emotionally, I became heavy, having spent (using this ideology, that was not my own) all my currency in attempting to convince someone who had shut down that I was being genuine, authentic.

In the last couple of days, the trail/ultra-running community has reminded me:

I do not own the trail.
When I run an ultra, certainly a level of bargaining occurs. The distance and strain push me through each stage of the grieving process. I remember people I've lost, whom I love dearly. I say their names. I think endlessly about my son, who is usually with friends. I reaffirm over and over again, through the miles, what I've been through, and who I've become.
But the trail, with all its beauty and treachery and challenge, is not mine.
The trail does not belong to me.

There are so many other beautiful aspects of my life for which this principle holds true:

When I write, it is meant to be read, else it remains flat and unfulfilling.
Poetry, essay, even this blog, are given life by readers.
I do not own these words.

As a photographer, I often take photos of people.
Of places holding secrets and wonders of their own.
I own neither the subject of my work, nor the photos themselves.
These photos are meant to be seen, and when I lower that camera from my eye,
those people, places and remarkable things are still there.
The photos? Those belong to my clients. They belong to the world, to see.

My child. My heart, my child.
I should hope beyond hope that no matter how much we all love, protect, nurture 
and revere our children, we know we do not own them.
We help them grow their wings. We instill values. We worry, fret and pace.
We hover-oh, how we hover. We cleanse their wounds.
But we do not own them. And no matter that they make us proud
or hurt us beyond reason, we do not own their destinies, paths or actions, either.

As a survivor of domestic abuse and rape; as a mother; as a single parent: this is a HUGE act, not of letting go, but of acknowledging a deep connection to re-imagining my world as one that I move through, and not against. Instead of being incessantly afraid of the horrible things that might happen, of the fact that people may hurt me, I choose, every day, to frame ownership in a different way: after DNFing for the first time, rather than clinging to what I did wrong to prevent myself from finishing that race, I can focus instead on the things I don't have charge of-the trail, the weather, the wildberries along the course. The kindness of the race volunteers. The support of my friends. My body aches. My pride is wounded. My concept of the trade-off for that, of having my experience "taken" from me? That is all completely up to me.

It is a supreme act of faith, one that says, I have been hurt and betrayed, yes. I have had physical, corporeal things taken from me. I have been put in fear, but I refuse to LIVE in fear. The most important things in my world are things I do not own. They are not things, at all. What's precious to me is meant to be shared, spoken, passed back and forth around the hearth-fire.

People have asked me, given the situation I've come from, how it is that I do "it"-which is to say, "How do you live your life? Isn't it hard?"

It is. It is undeniably hard.

But although this life is not "easy", it is SIMPLE. And much of that simplicity lies in the ability to conceive and then achieve an awareness of how it is perfect, natural and wise to give our feelings and emotions, even to other people, other people who may hurt us. Because we do not own them. They are not things.

They are fluid, dynamic, shareable.
The hard parts, too-the DNFs, the miscommunications. The breaches of trust.
We no more own the feelings and ideologies of others than they do ours.
We can choose, daily, to be self-stewards rather than consumers, in the same way that we can choose stewardship of others over consuming them emotionally.

If there's anything I've learned, especially through use of running and the running community as therapeutic, it's that we should never, never falter in our authenticity just because someone else tells us, Whoa, slow your roll-that's too much for me. When you come at me all authentic and genuine-like, it scares me. It makes me afraid.

What a life, to constantly wall yourself off from others' shining, strong light because you're afraid. To ask others to hide that light under a bushel basket (to use a Biblical turn), out of having been hurt so badly that you no longer know how to be authentic yourself.

And, too, what a life we would all lead (and so often do) if we met that fear by always spending a currency we don't understand, to try to earn things we shouldn't have to earn. Things that should not be treated as such.

I'm going to go back out. I'll be on the trail, training, hoping and dreaming again, sooner than I might think. DNF happens. Unfair people happen.

Remember, when you're hurting, all these amazing dialogues you don't own-the sound of breath and feet on the dirt; a beautiful sunset; the best story you've ever read or heard; someone else's pain.

Your own pain.
Your own light.
Your story.
Continue to put it out there, please. 

Continue to ask little, and give more. Ask your ego to step aside-tell it to bugger off. There's so much to learn and see and do when we cease to hoard our truth and trust.

Keep running. Writing. Singing, speaking, painting, capturing the world around you.
But don't forget to let it go a little, too.

Anniversary

for D.W.B and J.R.R

How the body must know before the spirit.
How, on waking, maybe weeks before,
one ankle crumples as foot touches floorboards
gritty with river silt; how before first light

the head refuses to swivel, knowing
when it does, the empty side of this large room
remains an emptiness. Sometimes, the number of days
is a diaphanous cloud of gnats,

undulating against hot air, refusing
to let a body alone. I cannot recall details.
How the fingertips, long gone from that white room,
feel still petechiae on the underside

of one arm; feel stillness. How the ribcage
caved slightly. How breath slows. How this body
is now a receptacle for spirit,
begins to grieve before the paper reprints each

tribute, always begun with name . How the heart,
this heart that still beats-not each one that does so no longer-
becomes an eagle with wings spread
at the top of the blackened, dying spruce.

How the eagle begins to ululate. How it carries,
gritty with longing, across the taiga,
how the keening and the wind together are still
not enough to call down his mate.