"Many of us hate limitations. We rail against them and push into them, HARD. And sometimes to great effect...."

Video portrait of the blogger finally starting to hit a skill that took 2.5+ years of off-and-on work....both soft work and "smashing into the rocks" work.

 "There is a skill you will never do. It may require more strength than you will build, more flexibility than your body can manage, a specific kind of coordination, timing, or momentum that is outside of what you'll develop. We like to think of ourselves as limitless. But this is a mistake. We will always be able to continue to grow, but we grow like oaks, up and out and down and sideways, in accordance with our environment, our genetics, and our experience with previous growth. We don't grow infinitely in all directions at once.

"Many of us hate limitations. We rail against them and push into them, HARD. And sometimes to great effect.

"And sometimes, we put so much of our energy into railing against a limitation, pursuing a skill or a trick or a goal -- that we fail to grow into the soft places where we can have more success.

"I'll be the last to tell you to take the path of least resistance. But I'll be the first to tell you that what sets you apart as a performer, and as a human, is the beautiful variety of what comes naturally to you. Lean into what works, what feels good, what you do that no one else does. Strive for excellence AND don't smash yourself against the rocks of a skill that isn't coming.

"It's a hard balance to strike, it's even hard to explain. But if you needed permission to work on something different, or to soften your intensity where it's only frustrating you, or to spend time playing with that sill arm movement you like to do. This is it!"

- Janelle Peters / @cirque_psych 

I keep returning to these thoughts. I'm not a performer, just someone who likes to move and, both separately and relatedly, keeps needing to learn not to rail against limitations.

I hadn't experienced that in such a physical way until I started recreational circus. Aerials are physically strenuous enough that I found I could quickly ruin my whole evening if I didn't know when to quit trying, when to leave a skill alone that just wasn't happening for me. I'd get more and more tired and more and more frustrated (which is hardly a combination that leads to breakthroughs, huh)...

Anyway, I was grateful for this perspective and copied these words down into my aerials notebook. Circus specifics aside, maybe they'll resonate with you too.

What I miss and what I don't (nine weeks into lockdown)

One of the hills I miss.
A reflection on some of the small ways my own small life has changed due to Shelter In Place, as food for thought on what I'd like to hang on to when this ends, what I might feel ready to let go of now that I've realized what life without is like, and what I'd like to enjoy with renewed gusto and gratitude when this ends.

I miss:

• Being able to go the movies or to a live performance
• Being able to have a normal birthday celebration
• The positive office atmosphere my coworkers and I made for each other - the jokes, the advice, the customer stories, etc.
• Looking at and tasting the produce at work
• Some favorite items from my normal grocery store of choice, which has way, way, way too long a line for me to face now
• Being able to shop from bulk bins
• Generally being able to choose lower-waste/lower-plastic items as often as I used to
• Sunglasses. Sounds silly, but mine broke and even as a hardcore "shop local!" type I didn't realize how much I would miss brick-and-mortar retailers until I needed something that sort of needs to be bought in-person (i.e. so you can try it on)
• Being able to donate and resell things I don't need anymore
• Being able to visit my local family members
• Hiking in the hills and being able to visit other beautiful outdoor places that are not close enough to home to justify right now
• Being able to get film developed

I am happy that:

• I have no commute
• There is much less noise in my life
• I get to walk around my quiet, pleasant neighborhood streets on my breaks
• I have time to run more often
• I have time to cook much more often
• I am talking on the phone more with my family
• I am living with my girlfriend (because we are sheltered in place at her apartment)
• I am not living with my official roommates 
• Going outside to walk and get fresh air and sun and see trees has become a very on-purpose and precious-feeling practice
• I am living with few possessions and way fewer items of clothing (while away from my home)
• Working remote means I can do a lot of homey things in the quiet moments during my workday (e.g. empty the dishrack, or start lunch cooking for myself). No longer is all the housework crammed into the last four "free" hours of my day.
• I am buying from our wonderful local vegan mini-market more often
• Not being able to easily return online purchases is steering me away from online ordering of items I'm not sure about
• I am spending less money generally buying things for myself
• I am actually reading through some of the books I own and haven't read, rather than adding to their numbers 
• Watching movies at home has become a bit more of an enjoyable pursuit and less of a lazy-feeling pursuit, and I'm spending more time searching for really good movies 
• I am going grocery shopping less often (and thus spending less time on it)
• I have gotten back in touch a bit with one old friend

No doubt I'll think of more things - and when I do, I probably will add them here, so that this stands as a record for me.

If you have any list items of this sort and also find this type of reflection meaningful, you are invited to share yours - I'm curious to hear.

Body thoughts, continued

For a while, when I thought about physical activity, I thought: the point is dance. The thing to do is go to dance classes, or do something else that will make my dancing easier or better (e.g. jogging so that I had better cardiovascular stamina for jumping combinations). And I thought, I could or should make sacrifices for this. And there was so much to lose from any time off.

Then I thought, maybe the point is physical fitness in whatever form feels good at the moment. Maybe what feels good points to what I need, and maybe what feels good will be easiest to stick with and therefore also the best for my health.

I took up jogging, again. I saw changes in myself - I grew stronger, and softer. Not smaller. I grew calmer. I walked up the long flights of stairs from the underground train stations without getting out of breath.

I struggled to fit in as many runs each week as I thought I should. I thought that I should still be able to fit in dance classes too. Part of me felt I was holding out on myself, not trying as hard as I could. I don't know why, though - when in my life have I ever succeeded in having that many regular commitments of time and energy on top of existing ones? Never.

Then after a while more, I thought, maybe the point is not physical fitness or movement. I thought that whatever the point was, it was achieved by various combinations of napping, jogging, dancing, sitting in my grandmother's chair doing nothing, walking, looking at the sky, lying in the dark in a bed of saltwater, each according to the day, and that whatever was gained was worth sacrificing for nothing. There is a high-level vocab word I can't remember that means "incapable of being lost." Whatever was gained was something occurring between me and myself that could not be lost.

Body thoughts: I promise I'm going somewhere with this

I was in love with ballet as a teenager, painfully so. As the vast majority of teenaged ballet students do, I eventually quit. Then I did something as a twenty-six-year-old that kind of surprised me - I went back to it, back to the same ballet school even. And I had such a wonderful time compared to when I was fourteen/fifteen/sixteen years old. It was what I needed, too, during a tumultous and painful period of my life - something absorbing that felt as familiar as church. After class, I strode around in the night hours collecting groceries, putting off going home, all glowy with sweat, my legs sore and strong.

 And I actually think I was a better dancer than during my teenage years dancing... I had much more awareness of my physical self, more intelligence about what my muscles were doing. I had more ability to have an interesting physical presence in the center of a dance floor.

But after a year and a half I changed jobs, my work hours changed significantly, the neighborhood I worked in changed, and it became a lot more difficult to get to class, so I stopped. And my life became, for separate reasons, a lot calmer and safer, and held itself together without ballet class.

I have further places to meander with this; to be continued.

For myself, stitches

I have had a rough week. So all day long in my head I'm admiring - my surroundings, the circumstances of today. Forming thoughts carefully.

The formula is: "How..." or "What a...":

How nice the air feels here. What a beautiful city to work in. How lucky to work near a place that makes tasty burritos. What an energizing walk to be able to take on my lunch. What a wonderful view from the top of this hill. What good memories I have from that summer. How beautiful the landscape was. What a precious opportunity that was. How very many interesting and excellent things there are to think about.

And so on, and so on. This is what I'm doing today, as if I were knitting to keep my thoughts busy instead of my hands. When I get to the end of my rope, there's another rope, something new to try, something old to try. And when I get to the end of my knitting, there's a scarf to keep warm with. And so on, and so on.

Islands, again

"Many years ago I had a hermitage in a wood about two hours' drive from Paris. One morning I left the hermitage to walk in the woods. I spent the whole day there and practiced sitting and writing poetry. It was very beautiful in the morning, but in the late afternoon I noticed that clouds were gathering and the wind was beginning to blow, so I walked home. When I arrived at my hermitage it was a mess because in the morning I had opened all the windows and the door so that the sunshine could come in and dry everything inside. The wind had blown all the papers off my desk and they were scattered everywhere. The hermitage was cold and miserable. The first thing I did was close the windows and the door. The second thing I did was to make a fire. When the fire began to glow I heard the joyful noise of the wind and I felt much better. The third thing I did was to pick up all the scattered sheets of paper, put them on the table, and put a stone on them. I spent twenty minutes doing that. Then, finally, I sat down close to the wood stove. I felt wonderful, and the hermitage had become warm and pleasant.

"When you find that your conditions are miserable because the windows of your eyes are open, the windows of your ears are open, the wind from outside is blowing in, and you have become a victim -- a mess in your feelings, your body, and your perceptions -- you should not try hard. You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call 'taking refuge in the island of self.' If you don't go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Peace Begins Here

Things are not bad at all except for when I think they are

* The more I freak out about how bad being unemployed is, the less capable I am of securing employment.

* This could be a nice enough time if I let it be.

* Stressors I do not have to deal with include: paying rent, paying for groceries. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

* I have money in my bank account from the last six weeks of temping. Not enough to move out, but enough to go places and do things and relax a little about what living expenses I do have.

* And I have plenty of time and energy now to do things that will keep me feeling okay (IF I LET THEM) such as sleep enough, meditate, watch Xena, ride my bike, be with my love, bake...

* All I have to do is keep putting in some work every day (vis–à–vis job applications) and keep learning.

Boiling it all down

I felt tense and overflowing this morning, like I needed to scream, so I went for a run for the first time in nearly two months. It felt glorious. Why did I ever stop? My body loves it. It's not even running, just jogging, which sounds like the most boring dutiful form of exercise ever, but it's not, not for me; after all this time and confusion still my body loves it.

And I at home again, meditating in my sweat because it can't wait for after my shower. Because why do I form the thought in my head, I feel like screaming or I feel like crying? Listen, listen. Breathe / what is the shape of this energy? Where do I feel it, what does it feel like? To search for it in my body and having found it, listening to it with fiercest attention, with no intention of quelling it or pushing it away, no intention other than to listen well enough to know it for what it is, to let go and rest deep (quietly, honestly) in whatever I find it to be.

News? Love, temporary employment, credit cards, fear, Lana Del Rey, first ever smartphone.

Be well, my dears.

Rehabilitating a day like today

1. cry and feel afraid until you're done

2. get at least thirty seconds of fresh air before you give up

3. don't mind your phone or inbox for a while

4. choose a song that makes you feel like getting dressed
       *i chose "hollaback girl"

5. fix your coffee with a ridiculous quantity of hot cocoa mix in it

6. mistakes are small and life is big
       *do something that makes it feel true again

A reminder, for when we are in pain

You know, I hope, that you do not have to justify your pain. Not to anyone else, not even to yourself.

It is not too much or too little. You are not taking "too long" to get over whatever it is.

You do not have to earn the right to feel this by "making sense."

Notes on traveling alone (Australia)

Restaurant leftovers are your new best friend. Leftovers and bloggers. Go into the church. For the price of a Starbucks drink that comes with 30 minutes of wireless access, you can buy 75 minutes at the Malaysian cafe three blocks away. When you walk alone at night, walk like you're on your way to kicking someone's ass. Trust the young woman with the big dress and big headphones and sharp eyes.

Buy cut flowers or fresh bread. The key is under a green can in the empty planter on the west side of the house. It's okay to feel like you're not okay. Write a letter. You will be.

Practice your accent to the cashier when you eat alone. You have a good sense of direction in any hemisphere. There are lots of jobs that pay cash. Put on lipstick when you are terrified. Tell everyone back home you are having a wonderful time; it's true. Keep your feet off the tram seats. A tablespoon of honey will not be missed. You are not worse off than you were at seventeen. The bartender who tries to insult you doesn't have anything you need. Carry tea bags and a thermos — ask for hot water and you shall receive.

Consciousness

The waters of my brain are too murky lately to write easily to anyone but myself.

I'm still very young, but the world seems to have darkened significantly over the past several years as my understanding of it has grown.

I still believe that to see truly is the heart of all mercies. That seeing is where hope and possibility begin. First comes the clarity of sight — then hope. But there's pain between, in the space of gaining clarity.

And my body is so heavy from the pain of this work lately. I do not want to see any more  —  this society is terrible, I get it, and now there is so little left for me to stand on. I trust that with greater understanding, though, hope will return. Like second simplicity. Second hope.

So I am saying every day to myself, Do not run. Wider. Open your eyes.

Academia and the intellectual life

This time last year, I thought I wanted to go to grad school. I was studying philosophy and culture theory and feminist theory for the first time in any depth, and I was in love. As I am still. My desire to read fiction has been shockingly low for the past year or so, just because I've been stumbling into so much compelling and urgent-feeling nonfiction.

Really what I think I want, though, is to have a life full of learning and theory-making and hard thinking and books and intellectual conversations and letters, an intellectuality never partitioned from daily life, from creativity or love or politics. And  I can see so much more clearly after a few months out of undergrad that these things do not belong solely to academia. Or even primarily to academia. To have learned how to read dense writing, and to have rigorous-thinking friends, that goes a pretty long and beautiful way.

I made a list of personal "should" voices

You should know exactly what to do in a given social situation.

You should constantly be taking better, more original, more interesting photos.

You should be desired, and hopefully even chased after.

You should be really good at everything you do, and you should do everything that is "good." (Perfectly rounded, master-of-all-trades.)

You should be too strong and smart to be affected by manipulation or unfair treatment.

You should maintain an "aesthetically pleasing" figure and a "fit"-seeming weight, but without dieting or relapsing.

You should never offend or shock your parents, or do anything to earn their disappointment — but you should also never compromise yourself. 

You should always be able to will or reason yourself out of being afraid.

Your hair should always look just right.

You should be liked by every "worthwhile" person.

You should be a dazzling host.

You should have just the right, albeit minimalist, wardrobe.

You should not take "too long" to process or get over tough stuff.

You should not be "too" affected by anything.

You should always be consistent and/or self-aware.

You should be able to live anywhere and thrive in every way.


...


They're kind of outrageous, once I actually notice them. Try it.

Possibility and the stories we're not "supposed" to have

I weigh something like thirty pounds more than I did two years ago, the most I have ever weighed, and that's supposed to really distress me, but I have to say, it doesn't.

The bullshit consumer-capitalist/patriarchal messages about why I should be distressed, they make me anxious on occasion. But when I maintain awareness of those messages as external (imposed), I realize that I do not have strong feelings about the size of my body.

I also do not have any sob story about "letting myself go," or not feeling like myself anymore, or not respecting myself, or how I've been just existing, not really living, or any of that nonsense that we're supposed to talk about when we talk about gaining weight.

On the contrary, I feel wiser and more creative than I ever have before — intellectually, artistically — and there is so much vigor in my days. I have never felt so awake in my life.

There is such a poor selection of narratives to choose from when we look at the cultural canon, and not just when we're talking about weight gain. The narratives that we have needed have been withheld from us on the grounds that they would not be useful for selling things to us.

It's quite important that, as we are seeking the shapes of our lives, we do not settle for these pre-fab stories. They are easier, but they do not satisfy. The only stories that can do justice to our lives are the ones we ourselves are doing the hard work of discerning. The honorable truths. Truths whose existence affirm the wideness of what is possible.

And my truth today is that I gained weight, and it was not a fall from grace. I gained weight, and it means little more to me than that I weigh more and take up more space than I did before.

The gap between what our experiences and histories "should have been" and what they actually are — just like the gap between what we ourselves "should" be and what we actually are — is a manufactured illusion. Only what has happened has happened; only what is, is.

The art is in seeing what is, as reality in its own right, instead of merely in relation and subordination to what "ought" to have been. And the art is in the way that discerning and speaking our realities, "allowed" or not, opens reality up wider for others too.

Worries

The first question I sent to two friends last night; the second to Twitter. I will submit them now to you.

What do you do when you are troubled by worries?

What do you do when you cannot sleep?

Giveaway: The Thing About Thin

Hello friends and familiars,

I left one book off my "Read in January" list, not even on purpose, but it happens to be the book that I have an extra copy of to give away.

The sixth book on the list is The Thing About Thin, a nonfiction work by Sui Solitaire of Cynosure.

It slipped my mind as I compiled that list because I read it in unusual circumstances — I was one of her beta-readers prior to its release last month as an e-book, because it was partially inspired by a post of mine.

The post in question was one from last May, called "Self-esteem & happiness are not the ends."

The Thing About Thin uses its ideas a jump-off point, and it is fittingly subtitled Body Image, Eating Disorders, Resistance + What Really Matters. 

Other than my blurb on the book's page, this review covers nicely what I would say about the book if I were good at writing reviews. Basically: It's insightful and wise and strengthening, and I think its ideas are important medicine.

If you'd like to win this copy of The Thing About Thin, leave a comment with your email address. For an additional entry, you can spread the word at your own internet-space and leave me a second comment with a link to the pertinent post.

I'll close the comments at 11pm Pacific Standard Time on Monday the 27th, and randomly choose one entry.

Bonne chance!

Sadness vs. depression

Sadness surprises me. It is unfamiliar. I have been anxious, angry, and mildly to severely depressed over the past four or five years, but rarely just sad.

I became insensible to sadness during the Year of Depression and the Year of Joy, or I forgot about it — and when I felt it again, I didn't recognize it. It bewildered me. I tried to chase it away at first, worried that it could bring a relapse into depression.

But depression and sadness are different. Not even related, really. Sadness has a more translucent feeling to it. It does not wall you into yourself. It passes. It needn't hurt less than depression, but it hurts differently, less unnaturally: it is not the pain of being constantly attacked by your own thoughts.

Not a numb, solid weight, but a slick of grief. Maybe tears. It can be borne without alcohol or starvation or antidepressants. The warmth and scent of tea, even swallowed alone in the dark, bring comfort.

From "A Long Conversation"

All kinds of language fly into poetry, like it or not, or even if you’re
only
as we were     trying
          to keep an eye
         on the weapons on the street
     and under the street

Just here, our friend L.: bony, nerve-driven, closeted, working as a nurse when he can’t get teaching jobs. Jew from a dynasty of converts, philosopher trained as an engineer, he can’t fit in where his brilliant and privileged childhood pointed him. He too is losing patience: What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc . . . & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any journalist in the use of the dangerous phrases such people use for their own ends?

You see, I know that it’s difficult to think well about “certainty,” “probability,” perception, etc. But it is, if possible, still more difficult to think, or try to think, really honestly about your life and other people’s lives. And thinking about these things is NOT THRILLING, but often downright nasty. And when it’s nasty then it’s MOST important.

His high-pitched voice with its darker, hoarse undertone.

At least he didn’t walk out, he stayed, long fingers drumming.

– Adrienne Rich
in Midnight Salvage

Food and time

I wrote on Wednesday:

I've thrown so much time away simply because I thought it wasn't mine — time when I was "supposed" to be doing other things. Why is it a rule that when you're procrastinating, you have to be numbing your brain, bouncing around from website to website or similar? It's not. It's stupid. It results in nothing worth remembering, and it's not even enjoyable.

and I wanted to elaborate on that and connect it with eating as Sui did in her comment.

In Intuitive Eating the authors mention several adolescent clients who had gotten into the habit of overeating after school because as long as they were eating, their parents didn't make them do homework. In other words, their right to nourishment was acknowledged, but not their right to leisure time, and the result was that they tried to suppress one need by oversatisfying another.

I've realized that I can fall into a similar trap. When I'm willing to acknowledge my need for, say, an internet break "just to check my email" (ahem) but not my need to do something ACTUALLY enjoyable, like have tea with a friend, or ride my bike, or do some pleasure reading — then I overdo the internet surfing in an attempt to satisfy my chocolate craving with rice cakes. Falling into the black hole that is the internet can take longer than a real break would have, and it's way less satisfying.

I think this also has to do with the fact that I can avoid some of the responsibility for "procrastinating" by blaming the internet's addictive and time-warping qualities. (One earth hour = sixteen internet minutes, to quote my high school government teacher.)

And yet all that's needed to make taking that responsibility less dreadnacious is to accept that taking breaks is allowed — yes, even long unscheduled ones — and that I don't have to guilt-trip myself by labeling them "procrastination." That it really is okay to set aside a paper in order to go for a bike ride. (Appeal to pragmatic side: After all, if that's what I'm craving, then that's probably what will best refresh me and and re-energize me for more paper-writing later.)

Back to the food. I'd like to propose an analogy:

Unrealistic dedication to productivity is to wasting time as dieting is to overeating.

And what is the way out? Intuitive living, something like intuitive eating but bigger? Are there thoughts as trustworthy as the body's hungers?

I think so. I'm experimenting.