Tag: mindfulness

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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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Autophony: The sound of living inside a mother’s dementia

  

I scrapped together a few writings I blogged over the year and produced this piece that was published yesterday.

Tripping on sounds, I hear birds outside my window, muffled, over the swish-throb of a heartbeat in my ears, a pulsing slightly alarming and soothing all the same. I also hear a dish clanking outside the closed door of my room, emanating from the kitchen where I imagine my mother is sitting, skeletal and serene in her wheelchair, gazing off through the filmy stare that inhabits her face now. The cataracts of her mind’s eye reaches some unknown space outside or inside her head that swirls and lulls the cerebral juices to twitching stillness, her jerking to and from that space in split-second recognition of a face, idea, song slice or voice. I imagine her waiting like the baby bird with beak wide open in anticipation of its mother’s nurturing tongue, depositing the meaty worm of egg or pear. She is spoon-fed…continue here.

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You Can’t Always Get

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It’s a familiar trap, a pattern many recognize–getting caught between wanting to do the “right” thing for someone else or for the self.

The conflict pits ahimsa, or non-harm in thought or deed, against satya, truthfulness in the Yamas.

Trying today to unwind my thinking, past my feelings, habits and impulses, to identify my needs. I am caught up in the should’s. And I dislike it.

Yes, I grew up with a mother who attended co-dependents anonymous and that may explain why, in the past, I instantly responded to calls for volunteers for the school, sports organizations, non-profits, family and friends whenever I could. I built habits for some need I had to fulfill to help. But what about now?

The balance of helping others and helping myself is the challenge. Getting it right is not always easy, but I am more interested today in examining these knee-jerk reactions and judgments that come with “I should help this guy out” compulsion.

I give a lot of time and attention to a long-time friend who cannot reciprocate, and I am becoming resentful and disinclined to see this friend any more. This would seem like a no-brainer, dump the freeloader, but it is not that simple. I don’t want to (thinking) be beholden to a give to get something or quid pro quo value system. The impulse to give irrespective of gain is in line with my values.

Resentment (feelings) arises for sure in this equation, but the more important question, if I give myself time to respond the next time my friend, who I will call Ash for convenience, calls and asks to go out to lunch to talk (read: monopolize the conversation), is why I feel compelled to be the sympathetic ear, ignoring my own therapeutic need to be heard and share thoughts and feelings.

Mind you, this friend does not always take but often enough where the obligatory “should’s” hit me whenever I see that text or telephone number on my screen. The first reaction is a tiny wince and inaudible sigh. I have known Ash a long time and spent countless hours being a friend. Is it habit?

I wrestle with passive-aggressive responses too–unavailability, calling back much later, too late, and just plain ignoring. That is not a good friend, I chide myself. Feeling guilty is not helpful, either. The spiral of internal chain reactions is exhausting…I shouldn’t ignore…just say what I feel…don’t want to hurt someone for what I perpetuated…time I cannot afford and don’t want to give…others who need it more…giving unconditionally…compassion…

…and on and on.

How to get past the stuff, the gunk (too much thinking or not enough), to the discerned need, my real need in this relationship, occupies my day today. Being truthful.

I know the answer–for me, anyhow. Time. Give myself time to decipher my need–for that moment, any given moment–before saying yes to engaging with Ash. Examining the relationship a bite at a time may lead to the larger answer that I sought today, too overwhelming, as to what I need in this relationship, not want, project, hope or atone for in it.

The Stones got it right: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need.

Given enough precious time.

credit:  goodreads.com/MickJagger

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Pratyahara and Pencils: teaching writing is about seeding awareness in students

  
This was exactly what Professor Yip meant by being detached — not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling was not sticky or blocked. Therefore in order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.

Bruce Lee 

Pratyahara and pencils populate my thoughts today. Back to school, I can smell the freshly sharpened pencils—not that anyone sharpens pencils in my college classes so much. The sensory memory recalls the time of year: fall, school, endings, beginnings and lifelong learning. Cycles that inspire.

Inspiration arises in peculiar places. During a particularly dry creativity spell, I sat through the annual English department meeting last week at school, my employer, and felt a sudden spark. It was midway through a workshop on workshopping (silly sounding but fruitful) when I began to write about…

Continued here…

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Fær

 

 
The hordes arrive, in families of twos and threes, all nationalities,

as I sip tepid tap water coffee, thirsty for succor in this jailhouse sweet shop.

Regulars, strangers, all alike, from the gym, retail store and pet trainer next door, 

all drop by at an appointed day of the week coinciding with their weekly habits and chores. 

And they ask the same questions, and look around with the same concentrated effort of choice.

The anesthetics of the daily hum through a storefront window surpass surreality–mere abstraction.

 
“They have too many choices,” one Yelp reviewer complained. 

A desperate failure for sure, this absence of the given, circumscribed, delimited and allotted. 

Failure abounds, thrives in the cracks and on roof tops, announced, derided, ridiculed and feared.

Professional success is a teflon mask of muscular smile, amused at fun house mirrors while

a stranger looks inside herself and winces at the truth: faking bemused stares.

Not a single one, no one is good enough, not since Caesarian born fær thundered alive.

 
A curious beacon, this failure, negative space, vertical inversion, binary split, 

a vacancy, trip, stumble, snafu and inferno too–blazing bailiwick’s forest funeral.

Fiery mourning howl weeps losses unfathomable but not forlorn forever.

No one stumbles on a pavement crack unscathed, eternal-glimpsed of false stability:

reinstating an upright illusion, death defying gravity-riven, absolved, re-calibrated,

restored but bludgeoned awake by the faltering blow, newly armed in science or religion.    

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Cultural Appropriation or Emulation: Does it Matter?

  
Published in the Mindful Word, please enjoy an article I contributed to the ongoing conversation about Rachel Dolezal, cultural appropriation and social media. 

For those of us who grew up in a Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, or Nepali household, our struggles to fit in are vastly different in magnitude, but the solidarity exists. So that’s why we are upset when someone wakes up one day and decides to exploit our turbulent identities as a disposable fashion—and by doing so be rewarded as a paragon of globalization and cultural acceptance. How dare they regard Indian fashion as effortlessly cool and chic while we make it look “fobby,” or a stubborn adherence to our culture that purports us to be “fresh off the boat.”


How dare they have a crush when we spent our entire lives trying to love.

Read more here.

Peace, 

Gaze

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Mindfulness: Culturally Diverse not Divisive

  
My Eagle (Eastern Washington University Eagle) and I speak most days about her training, school, roommates and life in the Northwest. Her pre-season schedule keeps her wickedly busy, but yesterday we ended the day unwinding to the news of her day and mine. 

After reminding me of her class schedule, one class being African American studies, we began a discussion about cultural appropriation, having referenced the class that Rachel Dolezal (former professor at EWU and President of the NCAA who made the news recently by her parents outing her as white) would have taught. 

Not surprisingly, she and I differed. She thought social media had gotten it right this time. People should not be consuming cultural artifacts as if unattached to the people who suffered or strove through the badges, persecution or honors of and by those cultural expressional effects. 

One example she insisted on was the appropriation of “clueless white girls” adorning themselves with henna though they do not care a whit for Indian culture or people. In fact, she claims, these same young white girls actively discriminate and ridicule cultures different from their own (if whiteness is a culture as well as a position of privilege and power?), including Indians.

Admittedly, my most played role as devil’s advocate annoys my children. But this time I was not baiting. I countered with labeling and generalizing as liable to injure as much as the lack of consciousness of some consumerists. Not all cultural appropriations spell disrespect. 

We live in a multicultural world, America being one of the most diversely populated. Adapting the behaviors, clothing, styles and language of other cultures organically arises from living among others. What matters–the same always–are words and actions consciously spoken and taken. 

To love another culture so much as to adapt it is not uncommon. People move to other countries more suitable to their natures. Look at Cat Stevens, who left American fame and fortune to live in a culture more nourishing to his spirit. One can question his or anyone’s motives for “abandoning” his or her birthright, but why, what’s the point?

The people my daughter–and her social network–criticize, live inauthentically and thereby injure others, I suspect. To affect the style of another group is an act of honoring, blind imitation, or malicious mockery, depending on the intentions of the adapter. 

But all behavior may be measured as moral, immoral or amoral, depending upon the degree to which the actor moves beyond him or herself toward another–and with a conscious intention of producing good or ill will.

Mindfulness is an overused term, quickly turning trite. But in truth, to bring mind to bear on everything we do matters most. Morality is another term that gets maligned in its use, overuse and abuse. But the morality that the philosophers hypothesize about in classrooms, bars and libraries through time immemorial informs the morality I believe defines mindfulness:  an ethics of right behavior toward others, which is situationally switched on by a mind and heart likewise opened and active.

I am not foolhearty enough to believe in a “correct” behavior for every situation, but the footpath toward morality starts with a consciousness of the causes and effects of what we do, otherwise known as awareness. Thinking awake and remembering that we belong to a community are two steps in the right direction on that path.

At the conclusion of our call, I asked her what I should write about next, after plastic bags and waterless urinals. She offered sex work and cam girls. Um….wait, what?
 

credit: socialwork.simmons.edu

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The Gift of Writing in the Mindful Word

  
My first piece published as a contributing writer for this wonderful journal, The Mindful Word, came out today. Please enjoy this esssay about writing and teaching students old and young about the craft I attribute as salve for what ails us in the human condition of illusory separateness.
Peace, 

the Gaze

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