"...as makeshift as we are, we are..."

I've had this thought in my head for a while now, and I keep hoping the words to explain it are going to arrange themselves perfectly without any effort on my part, but that just hasn't happened yet. I keep forgetting that writing (like yoga) is not magic, it's work, and takes practice. So here's my practice:

One of my recurrent issues is feeling like I don't deserve anything that I have, or want. I don't deserve this relationship, that job, this house, these friends, blah blah blah. Generally this feeling only strikes when I'm down on my luck or stressed for some other reason. Like a zit before a blind date, it always comes at the worst possible moment. So I've been sitting with this realization about myself for a while; perhaps a few years since I really started to see it. Recently I've had a revelation: of course I don't deserve the things I have or want. No one deserves the hand they've been dealt, either good or bad. That's not the point. The point is that whether I deserve it or not, it's my hand and I need to play it.

A side factor that plays into this sense of not deserving, which I've lately recognized, is that I'm much more comfortable wanting something than having or working towards having it. I know this comes from growing up in an environment in which it was much, much safer to live in my head than to make my desires and needs known, but even knowing this, it remains a mindset which is dreadfully difficult to abandon.

tagged

And now, for your reading pleasure, a brief game of tag! Thanks to NoR (some of whose responses I wanted to steal/borrow).

1.Post these rules before presenting your list.
2. List 6 actions or achievements you think every person should accomplish before turning 18.
3. There are no conditions on what can be included on the list.
4. At the end of your blog, choose 6 people to get tagged and list their names.
5. People who are tagged write their own blog entry with their 6 suggestions.
6. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged.

My list:
a. Spend some time away from home. I didn't do this, but I wish I had.
b. Find the off switch for the TV (computer, iPod, xbox, &c)
c. Try something new, fail miserably, discover that failing does not kill you.
d. Start writing a journal.
e. Learn to cook and clean up after yourself.
f. Register to vote (okay, this you'd have to wait for your 18th birthday for).

I'm only tagging green weaver, who I think will have some interesting and well thought out responses.

Science koan

Okay, enough maudlin claptrap already. Sheesh.

My best friend in high school and I used to challenge each other with (often semi-idiotic) thought questions - if dinosaurs were resurrected would they be kosher, and that sort of thing. There's one I've been mulling over for a few years now, and I think the time has come for it to see the light of day:

Take earth (please!), as it is now. Remove all people from it. Remove all representations of people from it - no statues, no video, no images. I don't care why everyone is gone, we just are. Maybe there was a disaster, or maybe we heard there were good investment opportunities in the Andromeda Galaxy. Anyway, we're all gone, leaving infrastructure, cars, office buildings, etc. intact. Now imagine that someone from an alien civilization lands on earth. Would he/she/it be able to determine what we looked like just from the things we made and used? Would they be able to tell we had a torso, a head up top, and four appendages? Five fingers on each of two hands? My guess is that in very gross terms (approximate height, size, shape), it would be possible to reconstruct us physically. How many (if any) of the physical details of our existence would be irreproducible, though?

I really don't know how I struck upon this question. I think it came to me as I was driving a few years ago.

Also: happy belated 50th birthday to the Lego brick. I think I still have my Junior Builder's Club card from ~1979 somewhere. I should laminate it and put it in my wallet.

More maudlin veneration of the land

Another quote, this time from Mary Morris' Wall to Wall (excerpted in Home Ground):

All my life I had imagined this terrain, a country as much within me as without, a landscape that seemed almost of my own making. I could not look at this land and not think about its history. And I could not think of its history without thinking of my own. We crossed frozen ground, ice-trimmed lakes. Peering through the open shade, I saw a world outside that seemed no different from the one I carried within. Cold, hungry, empty, and vast.

I think she was writing about a railroad trip through Russia, but I can't read that without thinking of Ontario.

"I have a good, and I have an evil"

I spent 95% of last night's yoga class thinking about how sick I am of yoga and how I never want to see another sticky mat as long as I live. Then the thought struck me that it's time for me to pick sides; to keep feeding into my anger and frustration, or stop. Like in those old Looney Tunes cartoons, I have a devil sitting on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil keeps telling me to sit on the couch all day, eat doughnuts, watch TV. The angel tells me to get off my ass, stop bitching, and go to class.

I don't know why my angel swears so much. I feel sorry for her. I think she's ready to throw in the towel some days.

Jesus Camp

A few nights ago, I watched the most terrifying horror movie ever made. It's a documentary called Jesus Camp. I felt so bad for the kids in that movie. Their parents, their pastors, their entire culture tells them that the physical world is rife with sin, that physical pleasure is evil. The scene in which the ten year old girl says that dancing for the holy spirit is okay, but dancing for "the flesh" is wrong, is horrifying. How are these kids going to deal with puberty in a few years? Their bodies are going to be giving them signals that their indoctrinated minds refuse to accept, and no one around them is going to have any sympathy. Something's going to have to give. You can't internalize that much hatred and fear without doing some serious damage.

I am a big fan of Philip Pullman's books. Jesus Camp helped me to understand why Evangelical Christians are so afraid of him; his philosophy is completely antithetical to theirs. This is how I summarized Pullman's message in a recent email: "What the books argue in favour of is existence itself - the here and now. The beauty and the wonder of that which is right in front of us, and within us. The books are distinctly against relying on a superhuman power (whether a god or an unaccountable organization) to dictate morality." No wonder there was a call to boycott the Golden Compass movie (which stunk out loud, incidentally, but the books are great). Hell, most of the kids in Jesus Camp weren't even allowed to watch or read Harry Potter, and that's practically a paean to Christian values.

I try not to get too obsessed with other people's beliefs. I don't burden people with my belief system unless they ask, and I expect the same courtesy from them. Worship whatever you want to, just leave me the hell out of it. But when you're fucking up your kids with your idiotic and dangerous beliefs? That's not acceptable.

Totally unrelated: my yoga teacher training program runs through June, and I've been thinking that as a reward to myself for finishing the program (assuming I finish the program), it'd be nice to go to Prince Edward Island for a week or two, rent a bicycle, and ride from one end of the island to the other. I've never been there before, and I'd like to cross it off the list of provinces I have yet to visit. I don't know if I'm in good enough shape to do that much riding, and I've been having knee issues lately, so those are issues I'll have to address before I decide whether to go. I have this vision in my head of PEI the way it must have been a hundred years ago, when L. M. Montgomery was writing. I know it's certainly not the same now, but maybe I could still get a sense of the history of the place.

Finally, a wonderful, wonderful passage from Barry Lopez's new book: "Whatever their styles and emphases, many American poets and novelists have recognized that something emotive abides in the land, and that it can be recognized and evoked even if it cannot be thoroughly plumbed. It is inaccessible to the analytic researcher, invisible to the ironist. To hear the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice, one has to wait for it to speak through the harmony of its features - the soughing of the wind across it, its upward reach against a clear night sky, its fragrance after a rain. One must wait for the moment when the thing - the hill, the tarn, the lunette, the kiss tank, the caliche flat, the bajada - ceases to be a thing and becomes something that knows we are there." Those last few words especially are haunting to me. I've never read anything else quite so well written about what it feels like and what it means to find oneself merging with a landscape; for the land to become not just something out there, but something to which one is intimately, vitally connected. No longer other. Kindred. Family. I have that sense here, in the Hudson Valley; I have had it in south eastern Ontario as well, where I spent healthy chunks of my youth. I did NOT have it when I lived in Maryland for a few years, and that is a large part of why I never liked it there.

(Note: I pieced together much of this entry from recent emails, which may explain its slightly disjointed character. Guess if I posted more frequently I wouldn't feel as obligated to cram so much in to a single post.)

Holiday ramblings

My family has been cultivating a new holiday tradition for the past few years. I will not say that we started small; we didn't. Yet we still seem to best ourselves every year. I am referring to our Christmas Eve feast. This year's menu: steamed mussels over a bed of tomatoes, sausage, and white beans; garlic shrimp; mushroom tartlets; butternut squash soup; French pot roast; roast chicken marinated with figs soaked in sweet Vermouth; capenata; the usual piles of mashed potatoes and dressing; and of course the inevitable pies (apple, pumpkin, pecan). I'm probably forgetting something(s). We made everything fresh from scratch. My brother-in-law and I started cooking on Saturday, spent most of Sunday in the kitchen as well, and did pretty much nothing on Monday but bump into each other as we careened around the kitchen in increasing states of frenzy and inebriation. Despite the chaos, all the dishes we prepared came out very, very well (a Christmas miracle, as far as I am concerned) and were well received by the group of 16 for whom we were cooking. I am of course getting hungry again just thinking about it.

I wanted to make a gingerbread outhouse for dessert, but didn't. I'd like to say that discretion got the better of me, but the truth is that I just didn't have time.

So NoRegrets meme tagged me a few weeks ago, and embarrassingly I still haven't the slightest idea what to write on most of the subjects... sorry! I was never very good at colouring inside the lines, I'm afraid.

Prank update

She did think it was funny, but she didn't call me weird. At least she didn't call me weird any more frequently than usual.

I think there's something wrong with me...

I'm storing some stuff for a friend who is in between apartments. Her nice, neat pile in the corner of my living room was just too tempting a target for a minor prank:



I did something like this once before, when I was in high school. My little brother made a stink about having to move his favourite chair in the living room for the Christmas tree, so when the rest of the family was away for the evening, I decorated his chair with a few strands of holiday lights. I think his response was that I should have decorated the chair with him in it, watching TV.

Ultimately, I guess a chair or a pile of stuff is not much more arbitrary than an evergreen, is it? Or maybe it is. If I remember correctly, the Christmas tree's original meaning was as a representation of Yggdrasil, the tree of life from Teutonic mythology. I don't know of any mythologies that revolve around a chair of life. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that consumerism revolves around piles of stuff as a central organizing force, but it wasn't my intention to make any sort of sociopolitical commentary with my light strand prank. I just thought it would be funny.

Anyway, I can't wait for my friend to get back and see what I've done to her pile of belongings. I think she will laugh and tell me that I am weird.

Scribblings

A few snippets of writing from the past few days; first, from Sunday's entry in my yoga class log:

We did the asana sequence that scares me most today - sirsasana dropping backwards into urdva danurasana variation. I knew it was coming and I steeled myself up for it by thinking of things I have done wrong and treating my fear as a punishment for me to work through, or a crucible in which I could measure my worth. This, from someone who does not believe in god, an afterlife, or moral absolutism. There is enough of a devil in each of us that we need not pretend there is any other external demon.

I can't wait to see what my instructors make of that, if they do read it.

And from a poem I started writing last night:

Every god damned time I sit down to write this poem
some shiny new distraction catches my eye
immediate, demanding, inconsequential -
trumps my best laid plans
calls to question my motivation and abilities -
laughing with derision, "you'll never find the words anyway."

I loved her, I loved her not -
Schröedinger would feel right at home.
But me, all I do is sit here and mew
bitch about the time I've wasted
lapping at this bowl of milk
wonder why it's so dark in here

Some of it needs revision, and there are a few more stanzas to come, I think. I like the first two lines. The second stanza is sort of clever, which makes me nervous, but I think I will keep it in one form or another.

The horror!

The Hudson Valley Horrors Roller Derby team, that is. I have a few friends on the team, and they twisted my arm to work security for their match last night (roller derby girls can be very persuasive). This was my first exposure to the roller derby world, and it was amazing! Or, since they lost the bout to the visiting New Skids On The Block team from Montreal, perhaps I should say emerveillé! On Friday I told my supervisor that I'd be working security for a roller derby match over the weekend, and she told me that I always do the most interesting things of anyone she knows. I talked about this with some friends (fellow single friends) on Sunday afternoon, and we agreed that a boon of being unattached is that one is sometimes impelled to seek out passtimes that the rest of the world finds very peculiar (admittedly, cause and effect are a bit grey here).

And more horrors - Hallowe'en. My favourite holiday; a good old fashioned celebration of darkness, both literal and figurative, which has been all but completely denigrated into yet another orgy of capitalistic gluttony. Thank you, Walmart. Thank you, Madison Avenue. Thanks a fucking lot. Wasn't Christmas enough for you? And Thanksgiving? Couldn't you leave one holy day on the calendar (albeit a holy day for a religion that is no longer in vogue) without turning it into a feeding frenzy devoid of meaning or reflection? We don't deal with darkness well in this culture. We run from it whenever we can; use our gadgets and crappy philosophies and distractions to pretend death and sadness and anger don't exist. But they do.

Anacortes Crossing

This week has been very challenging for me. The details, I think, are beyond the purview of this blog; perhaps it suffices to say that I have been observing the anniversary of a very confusing time. I have a natural tendancy to dwell on the dour; anyone who knows me knows this. Even reflecting on things that turned out well, I focus on what went wrong and why it was my own fault. It's a knee jerk reaction. What I'm reflecting on now was such a hodge-podge of the good, the bad, the wonderful, the painful, the beautiful, the impossible, I scarcely know how to sort it out in my own mind. I look for errors I made, and I find them; but my remorse is tempered by the beauty I experienced. I try to focus (for a change) on amazement and wonder, and these feelings are marbled with regret. This isn't simple. It's not linear. It's not something that I felt even remotely prepared for, yet I found myself in this situation nonetheless, and I had to muddle through as well as I could, trying to minimize damage...

...which brings me to the title of this blog entry. Anacortes Crossing is the name of a peak in the North Cascades of Washington state. I traversed it in July of 2002, with a group of "well-chosen companions," to borrow a few words from Barry Lopez. It was the most difficult hike I've ever done. As happens in any intense situation, all of my shit came up. I had to face my fears, over and over again; and I kept going. I had to deal with my distrust of my own abilities; and I kept going. I had to surrender my ego and rely on others; and I kept going. I cried on that hike, at a time in my life when I never, ever cried. And I kept going. The photo that accompanies my profile on this site is from the morning before that hike. When my yoga teachers advise me, at the beginning of class, to focus on something essential or beautiful to me, as often as not my thoughts are drawn to Anacortes Crossing. This is part of my psyche now; incontravertible proof that even when faced with a difficult situation that I don't think I'm able to handle, committment, good friends, and surrender of ego can ease me through to the other side. So "Anacortes Crossing" has been my mantra recently, a talisman for me to hold when my mind starts travelling down its rougher byways.

Cryptofascist mania, silicon deliria

So I started my yoga teacher training program this past weekend. I've been practicing yoga regularly (religiously? ruthlessly?) for about five years, and have been thinking on-and-off about teaching for almost the entire time. About two years back, I dipped my big toe into a different training program, but found the waters therein chilly and unaccomodating. And so here I go again. So far so good. I didn't freak out in weekend one, and there's only nine more to go (once a month till June). Plus homework. Lots and lots of homework. Time to bust out the #2 pencils.

Despite (or perhaps because of) having spent so much time in this yoga/meditation/personal-growth/crystal-light-and-breakfast-cereal-healing-centre community, I am very very skeptical of the motivations of other folks I meet along the way. I think a lot of the people drawn to this sort of practice are trying to salve old wounds (me included). But some are looking for a way to avoid dealing with old wounds, and it's this emotionally dangerous group of folks against which my guard is raised. But how do you know who's who when walking into a new studio with a dozen new faces? Well... you don't. And much to my discredit, I tend to default to believing that everyone is there for the wrong reasons, until they prove themselves otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent. I wasn't concious of it, but that's how I walked into our first teacher training session on Saturday. Closed. Suspicious. Guarded. It wasn't a pleasant way to spend four hours. But I thought about it that night, and I realized what I had done, and I saw that it probably wasn't necessary. I didn't have to take all these people into my heart all at once, but I didn't have to lock them out either. So I walked in on Sunday feeling a bit different; more open and less accusatory. It was a better way to practice.