Author: Inthegazeoftheother

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Are All Writer’s Introverts?

  
I googled that question today after teaching two classes, writing a few blog posts, counseling a student, and editing an article. Facing the prospects of a shift at a retail job to finish off the day’s work schedule, I am on the verge of collapsing into the couch and burying my head deep under the pillows.

People exhaust me. I am clearly an introvert, and I have never taken a test to prove it. I know it. However, whenever I confess to this most trendy of trends…”You know you’re an introvert if…” being an introvert, people are amazed. “But you’re a teacher and seem so social.” Both are true. I am a pleasant person, courteous at least, in the company of others and am certainly a teacher. I love teaching. But neither of those facts make me less of an introvert.

I hate to be the living cliché, but I believe most writers are introverts, living inside of texts, which are quieter and less demanding. People require attention, not only of the mind but of all the senses. They must be heard, seen, sensed, smelled and sometimes…touched. It’s all too much by the end of the day.

While I am among the masses, however, I do not feel sapped of energy. It’s when I hit the quiet of the late afternoon, sitting in the sun’s windowed reflection under the ticking of the clock punctuating my solitude among the table and chairs, tablecloth and armoire of my kitchen/dining area that the absolute exhaustion–a bone weariness of the mind and spirit–overwhelms me.

 

An aphid burrowing into the cells 

homing the pulp of me, crawling 

the synapses ablaze with centipedal

feet by the hundreds across attention

span and heat of the moment glee of

questions answered and asked, again

ticking off to-do’s of the do-nothings

but ply, ply, ply; it’s my trade, my cue,

my plight, but in the end, husked,

devoured, twisted, torn and teeth-

marked, me, hollow, me, cocooned

in respite of the dark, silent sap of

the dead thickening thinned linings

undressed, undermined and stripped

swollen, aching in whispering dawn.

 
credit: laurensapala.com

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Ghosting

 

 
I learned this term today in an elephant journal article.  It means “ending a romantic relationship, by cutting off all contact and ignoring the former partner’s attempts to reach out.”

Like the writer who defined the term, I am in the dark about new trends, words and expressions quite often despite having two teenage daughters. I often think how far behind the times I will fall when my contact with them is not daily–in my house. They keep me fresh and as close to hip and trendy as I will ever be (which is not very close), often with exasperated faces, slumped shoulders to punctuate the sheer agony of educating an older person.

However, rudeness is not confined to youth. I agree that ghosting is rude, excluding abusive relationships, of course. Treating people as if they are disposable plastic bags, discarded (probably on the ground) after use without a thought to future ramifications (pollution-physical and emotional) to other beings both human and animal is more than unkind, more than cruel. It is brutal. 

The kindest gift is knowledge with all of its up and downsides. I may be rejected, feel bad about being rejected or even about myself, if someone dumps me face to face or in an email or text, but ice that rejection with someone’s cowardice or cruelty to keep me ignorant in the face of such dumping, well that is too much. 

First, I not only wind up feeling rejected but ashamed on top of that. Once I discover the ghosting, I am bound to feel doubly embarrassed that I did not know the person I cared about was such a coward, such an unethical person. That is the part that would throw me into despair. How could I not know I was dealing with an asshole? 

That realization–that I am stupid, unobservant and/or naive–kills me more than someone rejecting me for being me. I do not need validation from someone else, though it certainly feels wonderful to be appreciated. But I DO need to know who I am dealing with–for my own safety. For how do I make wiser decisions in the future if I have a defective bullshit detector?

The battle is always between the bravery and freedom to trust against cautiousness, the wisdom to discern others’ intentions and needs, and whether those fit my own. The difficulty, of course, is in achieving clarity, sorting through what’s mine and what’s someone else’s. They get conflated and confused sometimes. Is it me who wants exclusivity or am I capitulating to some unspoken or spoken desire of the person I HOPE to build a relationship with in time? It gets complicated picking through the nuances.

Knowledge is the best armor. Knowing the self and observing others is a lifelong study. I hardly ever get it right. The attempt is all I or anyone ever has, but the trick is to develop an intuition or listen to the one inborn, weak as it is, mixed in with recollection of tendencies and traits that are recognizably lethal.

I believe ghosters are detectable to those paying attention. 

Barring the sociopaths, those who would do others harm smell differently, and I mean that more in a metaphoric than a literal sense. Tight listening to instincts, like wearing infrared goggles, reveal the dark hidden. If only we use the gear at our disposal: eyes, ears, heart and mind, take note of the signs, the hints, looks and words–not in suspicion but in curiosity, like an archeological exploration, seeing what the landscape bears underneath, hopeful of gems of discovery but mindful that the earth may be barren or even collapsable and dangerous.

Perhaps ghosting is more a phenomenom of youth with its inexperience, fewer notes on lived case studies. Or it should be. But even young people have inherent tools to sniff out fear, falsehood and feelings. If only they respect themselves and their abilities, without trepidation over likely mistakes. 

Buddha proclaimed it way before I did. Suffering, though inevitable, is minimized in the mindful.
 

credit: futuresequence.com

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One for the Bees

Victory, most probably pyrrhic, for the bees last week in a San Francisco Court that ruled against the EPA’s approval of neonicotinoid pesticides, specifically sulfoxaflor, a Dow chemical product that confuses bees flight patterns, according to the New Scientist. Apparently succumbing to “public pressure” (Dow’s money and agricultural lobby?), the EPA approved the use of the chemical without enough viable support, tactfully stated as “flawed data.” This despite the known harm to not only bees but all pollinators, other insects and even birds.

The upshot: Fuck the bees. There’s money to be made.

But can we live without the bees?

They are critical pollinators: they pollinate 70 of the around 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world. Honey bees are responsible for $30 billion a year in crops.

The battle for the bee is not won, however. Though one of these nenicotinoids have been banned in the U.S., they have not been banned in Europe or elsewhere. Bees do not stay in one place. And other harmful pesticides are still in use–just not sulfoxaflor.

And while pesticides are only one of the causes for the dwindling bee population, they are a big contributor, one that can be controlled by human intervention. So hooray for the court’s decision last week, but so much more needs to be done.

Who will speak for the bees?

dn28167-1_800

Workhorses of a seething-bustling, 
strange, 
misunderstood 
and alien world that we barely see
its glory and gore
acidic stew of swallow
and cilia claws 
burrowed below
but for the infrequent frightful protrusion,
intrusion,
extrusion, 
threatening a sting, 
a bite 
or a siphon
sipping the living juices of us,
savagery in the encounter.
 
And yet they sustain those who would crush them,
self-defense or not, 
fill the undergirding of our world with germinating life, 
exchange and commerce in wildflowers of the fields, 
manicured gardens of urban rooftops 
and edges of the sand dunes. 
They nourish us with sweet meats 
of the trees 
and gifts of the earth’s panoply of gallant beauties
pageantry of roses, peonies and daffodils,
and green godly goodness of cabbage cool,
beans of the vine
and broccoli floret 
walnuts
almonds
Brazils
the browns of nutty seas.
You, pinpoint friend, swap the day away, 
flitting from one sweet hollow to the next 
wearing, 
ingesting, 
carrying 
and dusting yourself with your wares, 
plying your trade 
and all we breathe better for it
and eat 
and expire
respire by your daily toil, 
though your armies are micro
populated,
though thinning, 
smallest of the small, 
and most benign. 
Some will warn
look away
not to watch,
not to near 
or interfere
or swat 
our swelling flesh worse for the encounter.
Carpenters of the Carribbean, 
homed amid the yuccas 
and woods 
while others gnaw at our backyard decks right here. 
Crow swims in sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, 
carpeting himself the golden sun, 
while sumptuous sand specialists 
hang in the hills of North Carolina 
or the Eastern Shore dunes, 
skimming the edges for life. 
Affable-bliss, 
drunkard, 
drinks from his nose of a tongue, 
buzzing about the Badlands, 
sucking up sweets from the wells of bells, 
trumpet trollops of honey delight, 
a piña colada of rum and pineapple pollen bits.  
But big old bombus and Metallica and modest-us, 
modest in size, 
half a rice grain wide, 
who carries her goods inside, 
a vomitous gift 
her babies survive
or they die
too sick
sparse
poisoned
murdered
by un-notice
unseen
unheard
unfelt
turnaway.
Health of heart, 
health of earth, 
home to hordes
4000 kinds strong
all native North American
only 40 left home
to honeycomb here
home to homo-cides
ignorants
polluters
stung-greedy
core-less
suicides
who
deny
if they are we are.
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Thank You

A year ago today, I committed to daily blog posting to see if I could do it, after starting this blog six months earlier and then neglecting it. My aim then was to begin a discipline of daily writing, some place where I could be held accountable to produce writing, not mere scribblings.

The practice was more for me than an audience, but the practice evolved, I have evolved–teeny bit, anyhow–and I believe it is time (way past time) to thank those who follow, read, contribute and/or comment. It feels like a collaborative work, which is far more satisfying and meaningful.

If I had more time, I would do this better, offer more, not just content but more. I would learn to blog better to embrace you, my readers, in a more compelling and inviting way, make you feel at home, not like voyeurs. But there is still time to improve, thankfully.

So, with gratitude…

 

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Fugue

  

  
Sundays. 

In day-drifts I spend them in lengthy morning sheets, 

woven threads striping maypole my legs with yours.

Skills. 

You have them: attentive, unwavering, intent. 

Your strong gentleness fills our bed with symphonic hum, a vibrational fugue. 

I cry. 

Some tenderness tears at lost time, flaked off bits of skinned cycles round, 

a heart with no hands.

Touch: soft swept fingers warm atop cupped palms, like namaste hands, loose prayers. 

Your hands. 

The edges brush by bristled cheek, full flesh and heated like sun-baked summer squash.

Promises: unsaid, steady and willed. 

You cannot. 

Ties from September past, 

a dozen dozen or more in months melded to seamless years of you and you and you. 

And her. 

Until: always when, yet, but still, then again, for now, someday, and forgive me.

 
credit: thisisnickwhite.com

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Yet Another Ode to Dionysus: Sampling Under the Auspices of Research on a Saturday Afternoon

image

I drove miles to meet, caught on the draft of highway 1,
Steeped knee deep in alder wooded cabinets stained in olive oil for
Caressed care of liquid pearl, grapey god’s velvet sip.
A dream of Athens, fleet footed baccanalia, you, my hedonistic loined lover of leaf and vine.
The sun.
Engineered glycolic canyons deep, your sugar mined for me
Wilts me weeping, drunk on pleasures
Deep, soil rich and dancing, your hooves in mine, herding your tethered Lust for wine–and me.

image

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A Curious but Obvious Notion

I nearly always practice yoga in the solitude of my room, yoga mat spread flat and cushy on the clearing between my bed and doors, bathroom and bedroom. The spot is spacious enough, though I often disappear from wherever I am anyhow, closing my eyes in movement, shuttering my awareness to the outer material world as much as possible. I do not feel this kind of freedom in a class.

One consistent ritual in my practice is to light incense, some evergreen, pine or reedy scent reminiscent of the earth’s goodies. I am not sure when or how I switched from scented candles to incense, but I burn incense now as I have for years. To complement the scents, I click on my Native American flute ensemble station on Pandora to hear the hollow wooden whistles of the fluted chorus sung through the wind or birds, screeches of eagles, or even drums of thunder and clackle of wampum. Sometimes I listen to the sound of simulated light or water in vibrational tones or wind chimes. Anything to cast away the walls as I salute the sun through and past the house rooftop.

But it recently hit me. The memories of moving through asana practice outdoors, like that yoga on the beach or in the park series, bring me peace, thinking how I glimpsed the indivisibility of the inner and outer worlds integrated then. The juxtaposition of moving inward while outside brought everything yoga I had read, practiced and believed into focus. Moments of fluidity of mind and matter.

It all makes sense. Inside, the impulse to move inward is driven by outdoor signs; outside, the drive to move inward out into the expanse pivots from the outside moving inward and back out again, both inward and outward absorbing all as one. Not so much an epiphany as a slot-filling, the answer finally catching up to the question.

Namaste, as you were.

One Naked Poet, the Gaze.

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Singing Joni

Joni Mitchell sings, ” I am a lonely painter. I live in a box of paints.” And when she does, I am stilled. But it is not the last sentence so much as the first, and not the last word so much as the word before–lonely–that moved me dozens of hearings. She moans the word, extended ‘O” evocative of Munch’s howl, though far more subtle, deeper and soulful. The anguish is not Munch’s, overlaid with fear, so much as the rooted, internal groan, petulant sugar, that she bemoans.

I sing that line out of nowhere driving in my car or listening to a conversation drifting in and out, particularly imbalanced ones where I witness more than counsel or contribute.

At first the metaphor of living in a box of paints brushed up against the literary lover in me. I imagined her a genie in a bottle, except a box of paints, transporting me back home–in my imagination–just visiting others’ worlds when I choose or must. But I know it’s the howl of the loooooooo that draws me to the line, to sing it. And not the lonely of loneliness. We are all lonely, though more like unsatisfied, unfocused and disassociated too often. A spiritual loneliness more than a lost or severed connection with others often characterized by missing someone or something. I do not consider that lack as lonely. It’s bigger yet smaller than one human or animal or other being, one activity.

No, the oooo in the looooo is both a ‘no’ and an ‘oh,’ like a sort of toggling between braking and accelerating a car or a dance, patterns of release and restraint.

Joni wants to paint but she sells songs instead. She is an artist, vast and particular. Many artists tear at the thrust of creation thwarted to pay the bills. We yearn to paint.

It is not so much a complaint–I can find a modicum of pleasure and certainly gratitude in anything I do, given that I allow myself to do so–as much as it is a longing, a desire ever felt, within centimeters of impossibly outstretched fingertips, a taste, a scent, a faint melody or flash of recognition come and gone. The hollow left behind–of not reaching–the come and gone, is the oooo. Both full and empty space, both present and absent. An ache. But one informed by the mind’s consent. I hurt because I worked out, something good for me. It will get better.

A promise. We live on promises. Some say that is wasting time, wasting away. Waiting is my least favorite thing to do. Impatience is my pratfall. But there is the impatience at not getting what I want–an open lane for some fucking space, room to race onward!–and there is impatience with something larger, more profound. Not attaining because…Perhaps that is the larger impatience. The because. What follows elicits the moan, sigh and gut grief.

Today “I am a lonely painter” with many mutterings to utter before the day is through, puppeteering a teacher, word-pump, and merchant. And as I dive into a replenishing yet jolting plunge into gratitude, I will channel Joni, fighting for all that is ordinary and plentiful right now–air, thought and motion.

 

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Disturbed

dis·tur·bance

dəˈstərbəns/

noun

the interruption of a settled and peaceful condition.

I can count on this like exhale to inhale. The interruptions bombard, whether from the knock on my door while I am in the quiet focus of writing, grading, thinking and/or reading or from some other outside intruding force I happen upon, like the petty and sensationized news, the pitfalls and false allure of Facebook or my own clumsy stupidity. 

No matter that I spent a langorous 45 minutes stretching, breathing and calming, that first misstep and stubbed toe while folding up my yoga mat sends me to that screechy, enraged place of pain and impatience. Ugh.

synonyms: disruption, distraction, interference; bother, trouble, inconvenience, upset, annoyance, irritation, intrusion, harassment, hassle

The minor hassles like pages that do not load on Google Chrome or clicking the wrong button to make wanted things disappear or unwanted things appear when I am trying to work under deadline do not make me scream, but almost..sometimes.

a breakdown of peaceful and law-abiding behavior; a riot.

The unruly mob resides inside my head, riot in full swing, some days. Like getting sucked into a social media grab, meant to suck me in, plodding to, which I am wise to, but succumb anyhow, only to get riled up, appoplexed and ennervated. An entire session of yoga inverted.

plural noun: disturbances

Yes, on any given morning they might start with a door slam that awakens me from much-coveted sleep, only to follow up with dog barking and outshouting dog discipliners. No antidote to those sounds, not a Native Flute Ensemble plus fan white noise blocker–attempt. 

Wait…hold on…someone is yelling into my open front door, “Hello! hello! hello!, in quick succession and loudly, so much so that I jump despite the closed door, fan-blowing and Andean flute singing of my room. 

The washer-dryer delivery scheduled to arrive 6 hours ago has made it. Just when I finally sat down to write, believing they were not coming. At least the installers obliged me with an example for this blog post.

My washer does not spin dry, and my dryer is wheezing from wet loads that take four cycles to do the job. 

synonyms: riot, fracas, upheaval, brawl, street fight, melee, free-for-all, ruckus, rumpus, rumble, ruction

A rumpus, fracas, melee and free-for-all sound far more fun than any disturbance I have known; a street fight, brawl, or rumble too violent; and a ruction too virulent. Upheaval feels like getting off my ass after slumped in a chair working too long. 

A riot describes the heaving thoughts and sensory invasion that strafes my days with piercing knocks on my door, hoarse shouts in and around the house, trash barrels banging against the metal sides of the garbage truck’s claw, roaring drills of sound from lawn mowers and trimmer, shrill barks of the panicked dog and various summoning yowls and whistles and whines and entreaties with my name on them.

the disruption of healthy functioning.

Yes. They make my mind and guts spin.

synonyms: trouble, perturbation, distress, worry, upset, agitation, discomposure, discomfiture; neurosis, illness, sickness, disorder, complaint

These run deep: no answers, helplessness, fear of the unknown, inability to keep present and focused, difficulty breathing, paralyzed panic, stomach aches, brain freezes, and labotomized boredom.

METEOROLOGY

a local variation from normal or average wind conditions, usually a small tornado or cyclone.

Real and metaphoric: being overwhelmed.

LAW

interference with rights or property; molestation.

And I am back to the day’s opener responding to Facebook posts about religious clerks in Kentucky and crazy hijacking rogue poets who steal Facebook pages and ‘likes.’ Silly suckage that bothers me that I bother in the first place.
 
I let it own me like any mean-willed mistress.

But lookie here what I have now.

  

  

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“How Open Marriages Really Work”

im-with-them “I feel that the biggest benefit to having a relationship that allows for others is that you never have to worry about being everything for someone,” said Skye. “We get to love each other and be with each other, and we get to love other people who are special and important to us in other ways.”

Salon’s article “How Open Marriages Really Work” is refreshingly candid about choice and the nature of relationships–that monogamy is not for everyone. Though polyamory is tossed about quite a bit, I think that label imposes a false sheen over the article that aims to shatter the accepted notion that people who do not do monogamy fall into another label, namely polyamory.

Always one to shun labels, I felt a little compartmentalized by that term, even while the article indulged many scenarios where open marriages were either fallen into after initial monogamy or chosen at the outset. In all cases, the catchwords are honesty, openness and love. However, brave is the overall impression I get.

Yes, it takes honesty and ability to articulate jealousies, desires and needs. Some couples felt jealous of the outsiders but later located the source as something missing in the primary relationship that caused the jealousy. If they spent quality time together, either or both were okay to go off on a date with others. But speaking up and facing fears–of loss, jealousy–takes guts.

I was pleased about the mention of some open marriages that are not acknowledged but known by both parties as well as all shades in between complete openness and shadowy closeted. Having enjoyed monogamy for many years before my relationship opened up, I appreciated the nod to necessity as well as choice. Some couples cannot complete one another intimately and so rely on others to do so. And if both agree to any given arrangement, it works, for however long it works. I suspect child rearing years are different from before and after those times. Once again, fluidity.

Monogamy is tough. It is what most of us believe we want, but in truth, most of us do not, not always. I love the options open to the mature who can agree on their relationships from phase to phase, time to time. We are not static beings and neither are our relationships. But more importantly, it is rare to find someone who can be all things at all times for another. Not even the Stepford Wives worked out so well.

Now, if people could just stop being threatened by others doing it differently than they do…what a wonderful world.
 

credit: polysingleish.files/wordpress.co

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