Category Archives: Self-reflection

My “Real” Writing (26)

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There is a sweetness in touching my “real” writing. I wonder if it is that that truly draws me to it—that deep, quiet sweetness rather than the eager, scary thrill of reading it out loud or sending it out into the world. Maybe it is different for all writers, but there is a place we all go to, at least now and then, where we do our best work. Natalie Goldberg calls it “dropping down to first thoughts,” Clive Matson, “letting the crazy child write.” I’ve always thought of it as “entering in.” When writers describe it, there is an element of the physical, of being present, anchored in our bodies, grounded. It depends, too, on what I am writing. I may be deep in it, but if it’s something hard, the sweetness isn’t apparent. Still, I think the coming out of it may be the same, even when the writing is difficult, like pushing through anger, through pain, through loss, when it feels like pulling teeth, or breaking them with my bare hands. Even then, in the surfacing there is a sweetness, a tender regard for myself, and a sense of having done good work. Even with tears still wet on my face, when I emerge from my true writing I am never mean to myself. I am only kind.

Breathing Me (25)

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My body is tired but tense—poised to spring into action, tight from endless, focused work, staying tuned at pitch even though I have walked away now for an hour. I made watermelon juice, ate walnuts, read one of the last chapters of Thunder and Lightning. Earlier today I stopped long enough to peek at the newspaper, do my qi gong. After my next stretch of work I’ll do my yoga, roast eggplant and fennel for dinner. I am in the middle of the busiest week of my year. Monday I did 180 login help requests. My life outside, away from this frenzied beast, is broken into small chunks. What should I do with my hour? I make good effort to stay present, but the work itself blurs the brain, makes me fuzzy. Still, the miracle is I remember to breathe. I always knew it would make a difference, though I never pulled it off before. But this week I sit up straight in my bar stool in the courtyard. My feet are propped on a footstool, my laptop across my thighs. And while I enter data, do searches, reset passwords, troubleshoot, I keep taking these long, slow, deep, full breaths, as if I was always someone who did that, without even trying, as though my breath is breathing me.

Entering In (6)

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I let myself read a bit of the Natalie Goldberg book every day. At some point I come close to tears. Today is no different. Richard told me years ago my writing tends to make him cry. I wonder if it still does? I think in the Goldberg it is something about the open heartedness but also the bigness of spirit, that maybe we are grouchy and critical but still human and lovable. And this bigness of spirit is in her writing itself, not just in what she says. She makes me want to reach for those open spaces in my own writing. I used to find them more often, I think, but I’m not sure. I remember talking about “entering in” at one of Clive Matson’s workshops. It seemed to happen every time I wrote. It’s hard to know now if this was even true. Was it a kind of beginner’s luck? Or was it only a different understanding of it all when I first started? I was reading Natalie Goldberg then, too, every morning on my stone porch in Hopland before I filled my page a day. I wrote the beginnings of my novel that way, felt like a “real” writer for the first time in my life. But I remember the look on Clive’s face when I was talking about it. “What do you mean by entering in?” he said. He was hesitant, puzzled. I hadn’t meant to be glib. I thought I was talking about something that happened to everyone when we wrote, that dropping down and the opening up, being part of something larger, letting the writing come out. I used to be able to do it at will. Now I’m not sure I do it at all. But maybe my memory of those Hopland mornings is exaggerated, dreamlike. Or maybe over time the experience becomes more familiar, the transition less noticeable. I don’t know. But I do know reading Natalie Goldberg makes me want to break out into something larger. And I dream about one day going to one of her writing retreats. But what if in person she rubs me the wrong way? It’s silly, I know, but I don’t want to “ruin” her books for me, like being afraid to sleep with your best friend, not wanting to take that risk. Still, I think, if I get the chance I’m going. Maybe she’ll do a retreat at a hot springs, maybe Tassajara. Sit. Walk. Write. Soak. (Sigh.) I’m in.

Go with the Gut (56)

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One of those recent horoscopes in my daily paper was about trusting my gut. Donna, the clairaudient, told me the same thing. “Trust yourself,” she said. “Don’t second guess yourself.” I thought I did trust myself. But when I read it in the newspaper, it seemed so direct, so simple. The first reaction, the one I feel in my body, that’s what’s true. Go with that. I knew that. But it reinforced what Donna told me, made me think about it again. And when I was floating on my back in the hot mineral water, the wind fierce outside the sheltered pool, it came to me that I wasn’t trusting myself. I had no idea. I’m not sure how this pattern evolved. But I will often have a gut reaction, and the next thing out of my mouth is something like, “Of course, I could be wrong.” I think it may be because often the toughest tests for trusting my instincts involve other people, and I want to be fair. I don’t want to be attached to being right. So I say what I believe, and then I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I think what gets put in play is I am doubting myself. And I don’t want to do that anymore.

Run Toward It (55)

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For weeks now many of my horoscopes in the L.A. Times have seemed especially apt, like the one or two lines were written just for me. One of my favorite ones said, “If it makes you want to run away and hide, you should run toward it and wave your arms as the bigger-than-life force you really are.” I love this. I put it into practice right away. Now whenever I see one of the two work colleagues online who make my belly sink, I flap my arms at my laptop screen. It leaves me grinning. And speaking of things that make you want to run away and hide, it came to me the other day that some of the (endless?) fear images my mind seems determined to present to me might not be just autopilot fears but bits of precognition. Sometimes when they arise might I be getting a glimpse of possible futures? And can my prayers or my banishing of them help to manifest a different future?

Adrienne (39)

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In more recent months, I stumbled upon a healer who practices the laying on of stones combined with her own version of energy. She names it quantum healing. It was the same experience I had with Lisa, the angel intuitive. I remember standing in the back room of the store, the art gallery where the healers often work, getting a feel for the three women working there that late September day. They were each working on someone, and again it was Adrienne’s energy that drew me. I chose her. And I was never sorry. It is a vulnerable act, an act of faith, to put yourself on the table in another’s hands. But I trusted her. She helped to bring me back from the last terrible summer months. She told me I had a chance to heal now at a deeper level, and being me, I felt like she was saying I should be doing something I wasn’t. She was patient with me, with my weird defensiveness. “Well, if you’re driving, and you get to an intersection in the road, it’s only then that you can turn left or right,” she said. “You can’t do it before you get there.” I believe it was my work with her that helped me find that full moon healing in December, the shedding of that old, heavy cloak. I went back to see her later that month, eager to hear what kind of progress she might see in me after having had that experience. But she was gone. And I know I have to trust the universe in this. I have to believe those three visits are what I was meant to have with her, and now they’re over. But I can’t help but wonder why. Could I not have kept Adrienne and Lisa a bit longer in my life, companions on this journey? Is it selfish of me to wish I could be buoyed longer than these brief bits of time? I can’t help but ask, is it something in me that makes this happen, that makes them go away? And the thought that comes is this. Maybe it is only to prevent me from becoming too dependent on them. Maybe it is the universe telling me to trust myself.

Fifteen Weeks (30)

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I know I don’t do well without taking days off, days where I don’t even turn on the computer. I have colleagues who think nothing of working seven days a week, who seem to do it by choice. But I have to walk away from it, shed the cords tying me to my students, to faculty, be apart from it all in order to stay sane, stay whole. Still, I am no stranger to long stretches without time off, and when I added the new piece of my job I agreed to working seven days through these three periods, about 15 or maybe 17 weeks all told per academic year. My mind always wants to do the math on that, as if to reassure myself several weeks remain untouched. (52 minus 15 = 37. Whew.) Right now, Day 44, this seventh week of no days off feels like it’s been a year already. My perspective is skewed, lost, and a bit of me, too, I am pretty sure. Still, I think I’ve navigated these weeks better than I’ve ever been able to before. The cats have only suffered a little loss of attention, I think, and I’ve been less patient with Mami. (Which is bad, of course, because I’m not very patient to begin with.) But I haven’t yelled at the cats for no reason. There has been no screaming into the phone. And I haven’t ended up in a puddle on the floor, hysterics my only way to release the mounting stress. So, I hold the thought of Friday in my heart, Day 49, my first day off after 48 days. I count myself lucky to have come so far unscathed. And that welling of gratitude seeps through my cracks and eases something inside me, and I know days 45 through 48 will be easier than I first imagined.