Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Always First Steps
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I realized I needed to make a big change in my life. Looking back, I can see that the big change included the ending of my marriage. At the time, I experienced it more as making the choice to breathe. Inhaling when I wasn't used to it was very overwhelming. All the cool air rushing in through my nostrils and filling my lungs stole my attention away from the dust bunnies and dinner menus. It moved my reality from the space that filled my suburban home into the space that filled my body. I was startled and uneasy, but more than anything else, I was terrified. Before breathing, I could look into my future and see my husband aging in the chair next to me. I could see our children and our retirement fund growing. The purchase of a vacation home at the beach, the college tuition, the weddings and grandchildren, all marked the road before me like the measured miles of a desert highway. There were no road blocks or jack knifed tractor trailers. There were no unmarked side roads or greasy spoons. When I was married, my life was held safe from the uncertainty of change by our Plan. As I began in my new found hobby of breathing, I noticed some strange things about our Plan. I played golf in our future which was surprising because I didn't think I liked golf. Common interests are a good thing to have in the future, when retirement removes work from the list of things that protects us from intimacy. I would daydream about the unmarked side roads, wondering what uncharted adventures could be discovered there. I remembered being afraid of these daydreams, I mean in the time before I began breathing, but when sleep pulled me below the surface of my skin, I could feel the excitement of my eight-year-old self when the passion of uncaged daydreams made my eyes sparkle. Breathing became more of a habit, and the dust bunnies decided to move out. "Come with us," they told me. "We're off to become tumbleweeds." The jars of peanut butter and jelly warned me of untold dangers beyond our neighborhood. "You'll starve to death. Your children will go hungry." I turned my face to look into the eyes of my future and was stunned. The Plan was gone. All I could see was pure darkness. J handed me a can of Alpo. "You'll never go hungry," he said. He invited me to paint a picture. "Tell me what it looks like in your dreams." I couldn't see clearly, but the texture impressed itself upon my heart. "It feels light, and open. My children are there and the man I love, and his children too. We're laughing and happy and we love this life we've created together." The painting was of a distant place, hundreds of miles from my married kitchen. I have crawled, cried, stumbled and snowboarded all the way along, trying always to remember to breathe. Why is it taking so long to get there? My feet are beginning to hurt. M turned me around and showed me what happens when I took one more step past where I thought I was safe. Hugging the edge of the rocky coast is the ocean, a glittering canvas of water and light that fills and creates space simply by being. So here is my oblique strategy: breathe between the waves and let the tide take me to the perfect place.
Jennifer @ 2:37 PM link
Monday, August 25, 2003
The Weekend, Part I
The weekend began with Black Eyed Peas, Christina and Justin. I know what you’re thinking, “Were you paid to go?” Well, almost. I went with Jessye, Lillian, and Karen, stopping for Thai food on the way. I really had a wonderful time (the company, the horn section, the people watching) and I learned something very important. Unless I start wearing fingerless gloves, I’m never going to be anybody.
Jennifer @ 2:51 PM link
Thursday, August 21, 2003
(Coffee + Kids) in Car = Art/Life...(you do the math)
Jessye was telling me how she has to write an essay for school. It is about a book that she read earlier in the summer. “How This Book Changed My Life” is the title of the essay. I asked, “How did this book change your life?” “There was something in the story that I never thought about before. In one scene, the boy is watching a bird fly and he sees the movement as a dance. Then he tries to dance what he has seen. I never thought that a bird’s movements could be thought of as dance.” “When I was in high school,” I told her, “I remember sitting in the back seat of my friend’s car. We were on our way to Bradley Airport on a summer’s night and I had the distinct feeling that I was in a movie. I felt as if someone were making the movie and I was a character in it. It was difficult for me to really understand what the movie was about because I was just in this one scene at the time and I had no idea what the other characters were going to do or what was happening elsewhere.” “Throughout the rest of my life, I’ve had that same experience and I play with it. Like I choose to experience the situation I am in as if the events were happening around me, the actor, but my real life is somewhere else. As I’ve grown older, I begun to understand this differently. What if I am starring in a movie about me, and the script is all about what I need to have happen to be the hero? All of the other people are my supporting cast, rather than the other way around.” “When I was told that I was being laid off from work, I was completely present for what was happening in each moment. I heard and understood what was being said. At the same time, I knew there were other parts of this story that I couldn’t see. They had happened in other rooms when I had not been present. I would never really know the truth of the events that had led the other characters to this moment. I didn't need to worry about the story lines of the other characters. Not being present for those other scenes meant that the truth, for whatever it's worth, was just hearsay now, another story in another room, a kind of moving target depending on the storyteller. For my part, there had been other events that had led me to that moment. I had been present for those events and this was just another plot development in the middle of my story.” “I was creating a context for myself in which to place this experience. For this reason, I was in the room, participating in the interactions, and I was witnessing it. As I sat on the couch in the CEO’s office, I could feel the tension rise as I did not react. In his story, I was supposed to cry or get angry. But I did neither of those things. In my story, I am accepting and aware of the grace of the moment. Although it would have been easy to play the part written for me in someone else’s story, it is much more rewarding to be my own author.” Jessye and I continued to talk about creating… “When you experience the events in your life,” I said, “you have the choice to use them as the raw material for your own art. One of the things that I love most about M is something we share. M lives in a city. When I am lying on his bed with the windows open, there is a convergence of sounds that becomes music to me. Just as when I open my eyes and see the spines of this bridge and the sky, it is a drawing for me. I choose to experience my life this way, where the lines between art and life are blurred and everything is fodder for my own creation” This is the trick of having a fulfilling life. You have to choose to be the creator in it. It is a habit you develop and you practice at it. It is man’s choice to distinguish the parts of an experience into a sight or a taste or a sound. It is easier for us to make cognitive sense of our immersion in a moment by breaking it down into bite-sized elements. The largest truth about an experience is as a whole and the ability to take it in without first deconstructing it offers us a more powerful resource of raw material on which to draw. To Olivia, an aspiring chef, I offered this example, “If you were to take a trip to New Jersey, that entire experience would have a flavor, a texture, a scent. If you were a chef, you would feel into it and say, ‘what could I prepare that would be like taking in my experience of going to New Jersey?’ The flavors, the textures, the placement, the temperatures, the colors, and the way they interact…all of it would matter. It would not be a trip to New Jersey, but it would be a creation that sprang from your experience of the trip. This is what would separate a cook from a great chef.” This is where the excitement of living comes from. Taking the elements of your experience here and now and playing with them, creating with them. I obviously could go on about this for quite a bit, and I will, in another time and place. For now, I’m supposed to be working at the job I have, and am supposedly losing, but can’t seem to get rid of.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
A Reflection of My Experience
It's taken more time than I care to admit to get Fearless spiffed up. The new banner, doorknobs, came from a photo I took with M & M at the Fair Days on the Green in My Little Town. I liked this pic for a few reasons. I really feel like doors are opening for me these days: doors to better opportunity, doors to the sweetest parts of my heart, not to mention, doors to my vw. Here's another piece of a pic from the same day at Village Fair Days.
Jennifer @ 11:17 PM link
Construction Site
Spent too much time trying to rectify the missing archives problem and have resorted to using another blog template in the interim. Please forgive Fearless Wonder's unfortunate outfit this morning. She'll be better dressed soon, I promise.
Jennifer @ 11:16 AM link
Rabbit Show Workers Only
On Saturday, we (Deb, Julia, Katrina, Jessye, Olivia, and I) were at the Bridgewater Fair before any non-farm worker should be out of bed. At the time, this made incredible sense to me. It could just be that I ran out of caffeine that morning, but it seems to me that there is a funky correlation between this photo and the situation at work.
Jennifer @ 8:45 AM link
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
My archives seem have disappeared off my blog. I can see that they're still there, sitting on the floor of my FTP closet, but they don't pop up on my blog page. What's a girl to do???
Other than this, I'm enjoying a very sunny attitude about the recent changes in my employment situation. I can't help myself but see the humor in all of it. For those of you who know me, you know I work in a place where reality is a moving target. For those of you who don't, suffice it to say I have often referred to work as 1) the black hole of communication 2) fubspring and 3) my pretty little Hell. The short version is I was caught in the cross hairs of a layoff. Then I was reinstated. Then I was told that they think I'm going to be leaving at some time in the future but they really can't be sure when, blah, blah, blah. They have no idea that I've spent a good portion of my life being self-employed and uncertainty is an easy habit. I've often said, "everyone is a temp they just don't know it." and fubspring is working OT to reinforce the point. Meanwhile I continue to work on my own business, enjoy all of the abundance that populates my life, and love the way the warm glow of my tan (that's code for a merging of freckles) sets of my flashing smile.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Running Away From Home
Despite the way it looks, I am still alive. I did leave the building for a little while, managed a vacation on a beachy island complete with hammocks, lounge chairs, sea food and a knitting store. And living on the edge as I sometimes do, I not only left Blue* home, I didn't even lay so much as a finger on the ibook that vainly attempted to lure me into its clutches. The funny thing about unplugging that I really didn't expect is that I liked it. Time slowed down (instead of disappearing altogether). I could hear myself breathing. I napped. I am back now. Have pics and pixels to share. Coming soon...
*Blue is my Toshiba Satellite.
Jennifer @ 9:42 AM link
Friday, August 01, 2003
Making an Impact
Yesterday, after renegotiating a particularly high maintenance relationship over the telephone, I slipped into a bout of extreme multi tasking. Driving my car, thinking too much, planning ahead, and day dreaming all at the same time, my car bought my attention swiftly to the present. I was sitting at the stop sign, I swear. Foot on the break, really, I totally mean it. Then next thing I know, BOOM! I thought the big DodgeFordChevy pick up backed into me. Really. We were at the stop sign. It took me a minute to connect the sound with a reality. I saw the guy in front of me get out of his truck. I looked at my front bumper and all I could see is a perfectly square indentation dead center on the plastic trim of my car’s bumper. I didn’t understand. Then I looked at the back of the truck. There was a huge trailer hitch under his bumper with the square beam-like end exposed. If his truck were one inch higher, the hood of my car would have suffered a horrible scrape. If it had been one inch lower, my car’s grille would have been shattered. Them man in the truck, Scott, began by looking under his truck to see if the hitch was bent. I’m thinking, “you’ve got to be kidding?” My plastic car bending his monster truck??? Scott returned to his human form and softened a bit. He mentioned that he had a friend who is a welder that could look at the hitch and straighten it if it needed it. But here is the strangest part, I drove away into the rest of my evening completely grateful. Here’s why:
I’m grateful that no one got hurt. I’m grateful that none of my airbags deployed. I’m grateful that the only damage was to a plastic part of my car. I’m grateful that the damage was a perfectly square imprint, dead center on the front bumper trim (which, incidentally, will be completely hidden if I ever manage to put my front license plate on the car). I’m grateful that Scott let go of his fear a little bit and didn’t get out of control.
I’m not sure what all of this gratitude for a car accident gone well says about me. Probably the same thing that my recent habit of knitting dish cloths does.
