Watching...and waiting

As the days pass and the sun still shines I often feel as if I live my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Having had such a good winter and by that I mean a winter where I didn't fall into the Harris hole of depression, I am sitting here in this glorious Spring feeling a bit low and completely de-motivated.  Why? Does it matter? Can I actively change it by being in-active?


Last week's work fiasco was the beginning.  Though, if being honest with myself I set up that situation perfectly.  The killing of Bin Laden was not planned in any greater detail.  From the moment I took on the work contract I began to create failure.  I was convinced I wouldn't be any good and I was certain that I was not prepared enough, that my programme for the two day course was not detailed enough. I was sure that I would fall flat on my face and when I was confronted with a sour, unhappy group of workers, I decided to take it all very personally and fall flat, just as I anticipated.  Since then I have had more positive feedback, from senior people and directors of the company.  I have seen that the two days achieved more than anyone expected and that I was well liked and invited back with open arms.


This knock has rocked me dreadfully.  I feel so low and so unlovable today and I also see that I am just creating more 'stuff' for me to deal with and there is no need for it  and still I do this again and again.  To me this is the definition of stupid.  As Einstein said when he defined insanity - 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'. So either I am insane or very stupid.


To add to this self-flagellation I went to my doctor this morning for some minor thing and he weighed me! Weighed me! Very bad thing to do when I am not feeling absolutely at the top of my game.  I always want to be thinner.  Thinner than I am at any given moment and today I was not.  I have not gained any weight in months, but according to his (obviously wrong) scales, I have not lost more that 1/2 a kilo.  BOO! this means that in order to attain my ideal weight and age, because of course, I not only want to be thinner I also want to be younger, I have to cut out all the little treats that feel so necessary when I am feeling low. The realisation that even if I am thin I will still be almost 62 years old with a face full of wrinkles and a body dimpled with cellulite is another huge de-motivator.  Oy vey - am I making problems today.


All in all, I could list idiotic reasons as to why I feel low, but it all comes down to the same thing.  All of it is self-created and seeing this today so clearly is almost enough to motivate me to do something new.  I could clear my clothes from the floor of the bedroom, I could cook a gourmet dinner, I could even iron some clothes, but at the moment the blankets of my bed beckon me and are asking me to pull them up over my head and hide for a while.


I think I will try to do a little bit of all these things.  After all, that's what a day off is for.  Tomorrow I can go to work and shine.  Today I will just glow a bit and give in to myself.

How to get it wrong...

So, here I am beating myself up for doing a terrible job at my training event last week.  Really beating myself up, gnashing of teeth, wailing, mea culpa-ing like crazy and then I started typing up the training notes.  As I typed I saw that actually the group came away with lots of ideas, actions, plans and future changes they are going to make.  So far, so good.  Then I had a conversation with the consultancy that hired me.  I was on the verge of handing back this contract, resigning with my tail between my legs and slunking off to a corner to lick my self-esteem shattering wounds until I heard that the client loved me. Huh??? Really loved me, thought I was great and wants me to not only carry on working with the organisation, but also wants me to facilitate a meeting with their executive directors and their board.  What????


How did I get this so wrong?  For sure I could have run a tighter course.  I could have nailed the brief down tighter before I started, but there was no way I could have anticipated the internal wrangling and politics I was faced with.  I could not have known that this particular group of people was fed up with any training at all and didn't want to be in the room.  I could not have known the individual hidden agendas with which I was confronted and all of this added up to me believing that I was unprofessional and more distressingly, useless.


I am not unprofessional and I am not useless, but how easily I let myself be convinced of this.  How easily I let myself fall headlong into this pit of despair makes me sad for me and for my development.  I thought I was further along than this.  I really believed I had transcended my childhood need for approval and could re-affirm myself without the need of the input from others.  Maybe this is another form of arrogance - the belief that the opinions of others should not matter.  For me they do, but how could I have read this so wrongly?  Why was I so ready to believe the worst about myself?  This is what I am busy with right now.


I used to be a smoker.  I was a heavy smoker and sometimes got through three packs of cigarettes a day. I stopped in the 1980's for over eleven years.  Wow - quite an accomplishment! I convinced myself that I was cured.  No longer a nicotine addict.  I could be in a room full of smokers and not feel an inkling of temptation. Nothing, not a smidget!  I was above my past addiction.  And then, one day, I had a cigarette.  What harm could it do? I was no longer even tempted by the lure of cigarettes, one couldn't hurt.  BANG! Before I knew it I was back on two packs a day edging towards three.  How easily I slipped back into old habits.


This is just what I did over the past few days around work. I judged myself so harshly because of my addiction to old habits.  Not feeling good enough is an old habit.  I thought I had eliminated it, but obviously just like the one cigarette of my old downfall, one episode of doubt had me laid low.  Feeling bad about myself is an addiction to the past and just like any addiction I need to look at it again and be more aware of its power to entrap me.  I need to treat this addiction to feeling lousy with respect and when it arises, I need to examine it, acknowledge it and counter it with positivity. What I don't need to do, is to feed it.  The more I feed the addiction to feeling bad, the bigger it grows. I need to nourish the little girl inside who is so unsure, but not be beating her up, but by hugging her and showering her with love.


Thank goodness I have friends.  They have been supportive and loving and busy telling me that I'm fine.  I am beginning to put myself back together again.  I am still feeling bruised by what was a difficult few days and I am still wary of going back to the same organisation.  This time I will go back prepared for what I might find and with the knowledge that I am good at what I do and I am never less than professional and competent.  Sometimes I am even great!


Oh, and by the way, I completely stopped smoking six years ago and can't even remember that old addiction so there is genuine hope for the future.

I'm Back!

THIS PIECE WAS WRITTEN THEE WEEKS AGO:
It's over two months since I've thought to come and write down my thoughts.  I'm not at all sure why this is and not sure why I am today inspired to write once again. So much has happened and so many different emotions have flown through me that it's almost hard to know where to begin and possibly, and just as importantly, where to end.

In the past few months I have been to the States to visit my father, seen some old friends, been on holiday in Scotland and increased the amount of work I've been doing.  Life has felt very busy and I've been watching my moods with curiosity as I take on more and panic less. I've given myself the gift of booking the Ecstatic Chant group at the Omega Institute in early September and booked a week's residential pottery course with Ralph for this summer.  Even making plans for a few months in advance seems like a good omen and a pledge of trust in the future.  I've watched the garden turn green again and the Spring blossom come and go as the warm weather takes hold.  In other words life has carried on taking me with it and all in all it's been very good.


As I write these words I am still surprised that it is me who is writing, that it is me who is feeling these positive feelings.  Surely there is some mistake, I will wake up from this dream and find myself mired in my usual anxiety.  Now I can't say that ALL in the garden is lovely.  I still have my crises of confidence, my panic over a new work contract and my horror when I look in the mirror and see, not a young beautiful girl, but a rather wrinkled, overweight old lady and et, and yet, and yet, the order of life is exactly as it is meant and things seem to be workig out just fine.


PLEASE LET ME ADD NEW INFORMATION HERE:  
It is now a few weeks after I originally wrote this upbeat report of where I'm at and since then a few things have changed.  I still feel strong and resilient, but I have taken a major knock to my confidence.  The work contract I took on began this past week and went really badly.  A combination of an organisation in chaos and my lack of experience in the area of work I undertook meant that for the first time I can remember, my work didn't go well.  I was and still am, to some extent, very shaken up by this and very distressed by how much this has disturbed my equilibrium.  I feel like I've been in a car accident - battered, bruised and hurt.  There are many reasons why the work didn't go well and to be honest, less than half the fault lies with me, but that still leaves a chunk of poor quality work that falls at my feet and it sure feels bad.


When I was originally offered this work I said no.  I knew this was not my area of expertise and in my gut I felt that I was not the right person to do this work.  I allowed myself to be convinced otherwise and seduced by the size of the contract.  I guess I am upset with myself for putting myself into a position where I took on something I should not have taken on.  I should have trusted my original reaction and stuck to my no.  Instead of that I am sitting in my house feeling absolutely dismal and trying desperately to make it ok.  It will be ok, but right now, it doesn't feel that way.


ALLOW ME TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT!
Not only am I taking part in the Ecstatic Chant at the Omega Institute this year, but I am also booked to participate in an intense and important retreat.  It is a retreat of bearing witness in... Auschwitz.  Let me explain this and in explaining I know I can get clearer for myself on what I think this means to me. 


I have known about this retreat for almost three years.  Each year the pull to take part has grown stronger and this year I could no longer ignore the call to be there. It is a 5 day retreat organised by a group called Zen Peacemakers and led by a Buddhist Roshi (master) named Bernie Glassman.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxgPhWFquo  


Every year for over 15 years he has led multi-faith groups in bearing witness in the grounds of Auschwitz.  Each day is structured and involves meditation, sharing, prayer and time to process what happens.  Rather than sounding morbid, it feels to me to be a journey of healing and as Glassman puts it, 're-membering', putting back together the unhealed past.  For me this feels like the culmination of so many years of having come to terms with my parents' past and having deeply understood that the purpose of remembering is to heal and honour those who died in the Holocaust by making the world a good place to live in.  In some small way I fully believe that taking part in this retreat is my next step.  It is my 'enlightenment intensive'.  How to explain something that is based so strongly on a magnetic pull of the heart, something that is beyond words and beyond rationale.  


I could never imagine going on a day trip to Auschwitz with some tour group.  I have often thought about visiting Poland.  As my father is reaching the end of his life and his spark of life is getting dimmer, it seems that this is the absolute right time for me to undertake such a big step.  I trust totally that this is a positive thing to do and also, I feel very courageous right now.  I am ready for this.


I will write more about my thoughts on this since it helps me to clear anything in the way and also I am aware that my 'retreat time' has already started.  From the moment I booked the group, the flight and the hotel, I have begun a process. Right now it feels a long time until the retreat begins at the end of October, but I know that at my age, time seems to fly by.


I am happy to be writing again.  It makes me smile to sit here and tap away at my new nifty little computer and pour out my ranting.  It makes me happy even though the main reason I started to write again was that I did a poor piece of work.  I will try to be kind to myself and not beat myself too badly over it and watch it pass.


I welcome myself back to the world of words...

Not waving...but drowning

Below is what I wrote two days ago.  I feel completely differently today, but still wanted to leave this as an introduction to the upheaval and personal tsunami that has washed through me over the last couple of days.  I have been completely unprepared for these feelings and will elucidate after these calm and rather plaintively boring paragraphs...

I want to write, today, yesterday and almost every day.  Last year it seemed so easy to pour out all my thoughts and feelings and just let things flow and to hell with where it all ended up.  This year I have felt much more constrained and have spent quite some time planning blog entries and then abandoning them because they had no spontaneity or meaningful content. The self-consciousness feels like I have bitten the forbidden fruit and have now been banished from the proverbial garden. I have to change this immediately.


This weekend I was reading something about writing by Philip Pullman.  He advised budding writers to just write.  Set aside a certain time each day and write even if you believe you have nothing to say and do this every day until you've created a new habit.  Well, that's just what I did last year.  I created a habit.  I addicted myself to writing and I am finding it very tough to not write, but I do feel I have run out of things to say. This seems an impossibility.  I never, ever run out of inane chatter, meaningless conversation or words that come falling out of my mouth, so why now, is it so different?


Last year the commitment I made to myself was to use my writing as a way of resolving my seasonal depression.  It was a straightforward way of self-examination.  I saw patterns and spirals of anxiety I was travelling down and the act of writing down these thoughts allowed me to distance myself from the magnetic pull of the winter misery.  Along the way I started to tell 'my story', a bit of my life history and the things that I find important.  Sometimes I surprised myself with the results in print.  it helped me to re-define who I am and re-think what my priorities are.

... And so here I am a few days later, watching the television news, reading the BBC web site and listening in open-mouthed horror to the events in Japan.  So much death, such destruction seems impossible for my mind to comprehend and I feel such an overwhelming sense of sadness and despair.  At the same time as this is going on in the outside world I also feel my own waves of sadness.  For reasons I can guess at, I have suddenly been engulfed with tears and more tears every time I think about my dad.  He is still alive and being well-cared for in the home he is in in Connecticut. At this moment my father is in a steady decline which is not unexpected.  My dad really doesn't have much awareness anymore.  He hardly speaks. He doesn't know who he is or anyone else, he is wheelchair-bound and fed by helpers. His language appears to be leaving him and he occasionally speaks in a gibberish combination of Yiddish/English/nonsense.

I cannot bear to imagine him locked into life in this way.  If he could let us know his wishes I know he would not want to carry on in this manner.  I wish I could press a button or pull a switch to make his present life stop and yet, there is no choice, or at least the choice is not mine to make, it is his.What is causing me so much anguish is the contrast between who he is now and my 'real' dad - the alive, spirited Pop that I hold in my heart and whom I already miss so much.

In addition to these unexpected feelings, the events in Japan over the past days have brought me such profound sadness and a palpable pain in my heart.  It is easy to fall into the sinking spiral of helplessness and at the same time I feel my spirit soaring with so much love and sending out so much healing to all those in need, also remembering to send the same level of healing and compassion and caring to myself.  I think this is really important right now.  All of us who are praying and meditating and caring  for those in need also need to direct those prayers and meditations and care towards ourselves. We need to stay strong in our love for each other, in order to strengthen those around us. I am drowning in sadness and floating in love...

In the words of Gandhi:

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall ? think of it, always."
	Gandhi

Optimistic or mad?

This morning when I woke up I felt so remarkably relaxed that I felt like I was inhabiting the body of a stranger.  I was up before 6 am and standing at the ironing board a few minutes later.  As I had promised I ironed a shirt for my beloved husband and then carried on ironing and even repairing some of my own clothing.  After that I stopped, prepared my yummy healthy breakfast of blueberries, cottage cheese and almonds and sat down to watch early morning television.  The sense of relaxation stayed with me and I slowly pulled my morning self together and showered and dressed ready to face the outside world. "No rush", I thought as I laid down again for another half hour of internet browsing and musing about the day.  Eventually I went out, did some food shopping, pottered around in some second-hand  shops, chatted to my old lady friend for a while and finally finished up in a local cafe with a coffee and danish pastry while I perused the daily papers.  I cannot remember feeling so unpressured, so chilled and deserving of such a morning.

"Who are you?" What have to done with the real Cynthia?"  This is not the person I recognise at all.  I heard myself chatting to a local shopkeeper who was complaining about the continuing cold weather and I actually said I like these days of late winter and early Spring.  After all, Spring is just over the horizon and there is a wonderful feeling of expectancy in the air. "Who is this person saying these things?  What have they done with the glass-half-empty Cynthia?" I even suggested to one of my regular shopkeeper contacts that I was a bit worried that I was bi-polar and maybe this was the beginning of the manic phase?

Now that I sit back and reflect on where this unfamiliar optimism comes from I think I begin to understand a bit more.  Today I woke up with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. I am aware of all the things in my life that are really pretty wonderful and just for this moment I forgot to take them for granted. In this mood of warmth, nostalgia and gratefulness I thought I would like to begin to make one of those lists that the many self-help books on my shelves suggest are a good idea, so here goes:

• I am grateful for my children. For having a beautiful, strong, courageous daughter who goes through life facing every challenge with strength and beauty and for being loving and caring and open always. For having a son who is warm, loving, responsible and funny and a man of integrity. I am grateful for the love that they inspire in me and give and receive from me and to me.  This is a rare blessing.
• I am grateful for my husband, Ralph.  Loving him has taught me more about myself than I would have been brave enough to learn on my own.  Not only is he the best schoolteacher that any child could wish for, he has also been my teacher and helped me to become the person I was always meant to be. My heart almost bursts when I allow this love.
• I am grateful for my beautiful, chaotic, cluttered, dusty home.  My home is a safe haven for me . When the world feels dark and insecure my home always feels like a lovely security blanket.  It's big and sprawling and filled with my history and I love it.
• I am grateful for the knowledge that I can create this safe haven in another place.  if I need to move, sell these four walls, I am delighted that I know I can do it again.  I am certain that I can create another nest because I will always have that ability.
• I am grateful for the ability to express myself creatively.  Whether it is through words, since I love to talk, or in writing, painting, sculpting, knitting, sewing, cooking or singing, I can express myself well and sometimes really beautifully.
• I am grateful for the work I do and the people I connect with through this work.  I am grateful that I have some small part in changing the world in a positive way and for being able to guide people towards a greater appreciation of each other.
• I am grateful for all the people I love, for friends and family and all my teachers.  I have a blessed life.  I am lucky to be able to live in such an easy way.  I have more than enough and am slowly, at the ripe old age of 61, learning to relax and enjoy.
• I am so grateful that it is not too late to learn that life is so good.
• I am grateful for today.

My plastic fantastic past

A few days ago I started thinking about the many, many years I've lived in London.  It's over forty years since I arrived in this strangely familiar and totally foreign land.  I still feel a bit of a stranger but I also consider myself at home here.  I was also reminiscing about my childhood in the Bronx and how different my childhood was compared to those of my generation who grew up in London.

Growing up in the Bronx was such a wonderful, mad experience. Of course, this is only with hindsight, at the time, it was all felt perfectly normal. My parents were newcomers from Eastern Europe and embraced American culture with open arms, or at least they thought they had.  What they really embraced was the curious, unique brand of American culture that was filtered through a mesh of Bronx Jewish style.  How marvelous this was when I look back.  It was more than running the streets all weekend, or buying egg creams at the corner candy store.  It was also buying chocolate covered halvah and apricot shoe leather on Jerome Avenue and eating pizza slices from Frank's Pizza and bagels from our local bagel bakery.  It was queuing up at the bakery, K&Z, for rye bread and raisin pumpernickel bread where the cry of "Who's next" was always answered with, "It's my next".  Buying hot dogs from Epstein's, pastrami from Schweller's, and shmaltz herring from Olinsky's was part and parcel of daily life. Accompanying my mother on her daily shopping expeditions, trailing behind the ubiquitous wire-mesh shopping cart, was the adventure of my early life. Often my mum would leave my baby brother sitting cross-legged in the street while she shopped.  He was happy to sit for ages listening to a local busker playing his violin.  In those days it was perfectly safe to leave children outside alone.

More than any of these food or shopping-related memories is the memory (and it makes me laugh so much now) of sitting on plastic-covered furniture on hot summer days and peeling myself off the couch as my shorts-covered legs got hot and sweaty and sticky.  This was such a Bronx phenomena - the covering of the brocade couch and armchairs in custom-made, clear plastic covers to protect the furniture.  Quite a few of my friends' apartments had the same sort of gold or olive-toned brocade covered couches and zipped on top were these thick, clear plastic abominations that made sitting in the living room in the summer a really unpleasant affair.  I guess it was good that we were never really allowed to sit in this room.  The living room (and this in a tiny apartment) was reserved for company.  Only honoured guests got to stick their asses to our plastic-covered couch.  We, the immediate family,  were mostly relegated to sitting round the formica kitchen table and this is where most adult conversation took place. As the years went by the plastic got less malleable and stiffer and would eventually develop cracks that were taped up so we could continue to endure the plastic horror of our three piece living room suite of furniture.

One of the the most bizarre Bronx memories I have is of the apartment that Ralph and I finally rented that was to be the first place we set up home as newlyweds. We went to view the apartment before signing a rental agreement and the people that lived there had the requisite Bronx Baroque-style brocade covered couch fully encased in made-to-measure clear vinyl covers. That was not a surprise. After all, every good Bronx housewife in those days was concerned with protecting her furniture, the surprise was the kidney shaped marble topped coffee table taking pride of place in the centre of the room - covered in fitted clear vinyl!

I remember Ralph's expression on seeing the plastic slip-covered vinyl.  He was stunned and amazed.  Being English and new to the Bronx, the entire experience of plastic slipcovers was new to him and the idea of covering an almost indestructable piece of marble in plastic was almost too much. I remember that we waited till we left the apartment before we burst into laughter.

All these memories flooded back to me this week.  I'm not sure why.  A sudden attack of nostalgia?  Perhaps a moment in time that reminded me of being a kid in the Bronx, without a care in the world? I checked the internet and apparently you can still buy custom-made plastic slipcovers.  You can still buy marble-topped tables, though the kidney-shaped one with french provincial cabriolet legs that my parents had, might be tough to replace. You can buy bagels, pizza, chocolate-covered halvah and even apricot shoe leather, but I can't replace these wonderful memories.  The memories of a carefree childhood in the streets of Mosholu Parkway, jumping down flights of stone steps in my roller skates, sitting at the counter of the local candy store and having an egg cream, and well, just being a kid.

Remembering has become a source of genuine,simple pleasure.  I'm only pleased that I don't have to sit on that damned plastic-covered furniture anymore!

The Map of my Heart

A few days ago I started writing an new entry to my blog. This is what I wrote:

There is an inordinate amount of bickering in this house.  We bicker about everything and anything.  It has become a habit and it's not very nice.  I need to change my part in it, because for sure I own 50%of the bicker shares.

The question is how to change the habits of a lifetime, or what seems like a lifetime.  I love my husband.  Of that there is no question.  I sincerely believe he loves me and yet, we seem to clash far too often.  Not big clashes, no major earthquakes though sometimes those do happen, but small barbs and little poisonous darts that make me unhappy and judging by his reactions, make him unhappy too.

I sometimes feel like we are stars in a bad American sit-com and our little snipes should have a canned laughter soundtrack in the background.  I also see that there is a little discomfort accompanying the laughter. 'Do these people really love each other?  Is this really a solid relationship?'  Yes, is the short answer to both questions though maybe we've forgotten how to be kind to those really closest to us.

I have written before about my need to be right and I guess this is sadly what I see again.  I still have a tremendous need to be right, a need to deflect anything I judge to be criticism and send it back with spikes on. This is mostly what the bickering comes down to. Only I can change my part in this and see what happens.

... So, that is what I wrote on Saturday and now today, Tuesday, I don't feel the same at all.  something in me has relaxed and that relaxation has enabled me to take a step back and look at myself in this long relationship. What I see is interesting and enlightening. Enlightening in that the more I examine my attitudes and behaviour the lighter I feel.  The more I adjust the way I react to things and attempt to respond more from my heart, the lighter everything feels.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, as challenging as allowing myself to love someone for so any years.  Every time I think that the partnership/marriage/love affair I have with this man cannot get any deeper or any more intense, I find myself surprised. The feelings that I have change from moment to moment - up, down, warm, cold, joyful, angry, sad, delighted -  though the foundation of love never waivers. I am still shocked at the clarity of the mirror that I see myself reflected in here.  Just when I think I can become more self-centred and isolated, I have a perfect reflection to teach me another way.  Just when I want to give up, pull the drawbridge in and never let anyone else in, I have a doorway to step through. How wonderful and how special this marriage is. How miraculous that I can still find new things to discover in both of us and how much easier it makes it to have someone to hold me while I explore.

Chava Rosenfarb, a Yiddish writer who recently died at the age of 86, used the expression 'the map of my heart' to refer to something so deep and so much a part of her that it was as if her heart had been mapped out to encompass this one thing.  I feel like this is what my life long love affair with my husband is about.  It is the map of everything.  It is what has taught me the most about myself and helped guide me along paths that sometimes felt frightening or insecure. It is the map of my heart that has taught me what deep love is, and given me the direction to head for when I felt lost. It even encompasses all those moments of irritation and all those times we snap at each other. The map also guides me back to the direction of love.  I never really feel lost.

In the past days, since I wrote my original plaintive cry about all our marital tiffs, I have felt a softening in myself.  Maybe this is due to a bout of illness, maybe it's also due to spending some time with a friend discovering some new things about letting go of my dad and his continuing inevitable decline.  Maybe it's because Ralph brought me home a bottle of real Coca-Cola, not my usual Diet Coke, and told me to treat myself because I deserved it.  Whatever the reason I don't see the bickering as much of a problem, just a habit that I can give up.  After all, I gave up smoking and I'm sure that was even more addictive.