good practice

The IRS surprised me with a notification that I owe $700 more than I already paid on my taxes. That’s a significant dent. I want to spread the payment out. I’ve been waiting 45 minutes on hold to talk about this. I am not irate, or impatient, or anxious. I am having tea and gazing at my friend Prospero, the giant pine. Like his namesake he has human qualities, including human faults, he has magical powers: he has the ability to control the weather, and also the actions and movements of people and the spirits who live on his island. My deck overlooks the parking lot of my little apartment complex, my island. That will be a good stage for my drama. I want to tell a story. First I need a cast of characters. I want to enjoy the quirks, and feel the heart of each one, It will be good practice for life.

Each morning I wake up, assess my body, take a couple Tylenol, sit on hot pad, drink a cup of tea, check the headlines, write in this journal. If my body doesn’t feel too bad, and there are no new humanitarian catastrophes or work crises, I call it a good day. My heart, while it isn’t particularly peaceful, is not riven by fear or anxiety. It is numb. That is is a good thing for clear communication and getting things done at work. But I miss the passion I felt In my thirties. My heart cried out, yearned for love. “I am on a lonely road and I am wandering…” Joni sang it for me. I listen to her now on YouTube; the heartache swells once more and I welcome the aliveness of it. Ever the seeker, I am still searching for love, within my own heart now. I know it is there, waiting to be set free.

My world is small. I spend all my time in my little apartment, where I am content to be. My phone brings me photos of my grandchildren. I order what I need from Safeway and Amazon. Repeatedly throughout the day I check the headlines so I stay in touch with the devastating state of the country and the planet. I am lucky to have a job I can do remotely. Today I’ll watch a streaming church service and catch up on some work. My emotions are rather flat. I am content enough to be where I am. I numb myself with incessant internet scrolling. I want my feelings back. Today I’ll make a plan to limit time spent online.

Well, due to a work glitch not as good as it was a couple minutes ago. But knee-wise a very good day. I don’t need a knee replacement. Yesterday I dealt with the tedium of obtaining medical care from my provider, traversed the network looking for help, feeling abandoned. My primary care physician just went on leave; I had no idea who to contact in her place. The orthopedic department does not order x-rays, they receive x-rays! My hip surgeon does not deal with knees, etc. It was so dispiriting. I am old enough to remember when my doctor knew who I was…and cared. But yesterday the system worked, calls were returned, I actually received same-day service. X-rays taken and results received in one day. Not that, as I was told “anyone would contact you to tell you about it.” But I found the results online and the results were good. The relief! The peace! The sense of life opening up! This hip replacement is going to be nothing. I can’t wait. Wish I’d looked into the knee months ago. This is a reminder that it’s always better to ask than to speculate, a lesson that especially applies to health matters for this believer in miracles and alternative medicine. It’s not always a bad thing to go to the doctor…or in this case, the medical center. I took a day off from physical therapy and lay in bed watching Netflix with a clear conscience and even somehow a sense of righteousness. It was great.

Two months ago I joined a group of women over sixty who are working their way through the book “It’s Never too Late to Begin Again,” by Julia Cameron. I was wildly excited about the project, having read “The Artist’s Way,” written by Julia in 1992 as a “Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity”. The new book covers much the same material with the difference that it is largely addressed to retired people who are feeling a lack of purpose. I grow wistful when reading references to the challenge of dealing with large swathes of unplanned time. I’m employed and yearn for even brief swathes of unplanned time. Back when I read “The Artist’s Way” in the  nineties I was as wildly excited as this time. Back then I was as undisciplined about doing the work as I am today too.  “The Artist’s Way” reproached me from my bookshelf for almost thirty years, one of many paths not taken. The process involves free-form writing upon awakening each day, one-hour dates with oneself to explore a place or experience totally on one’s own; and various tasks, one of which is to write a memoir broken into blocks of approximately 6 years for someone my age. (The blocks consist of one’s age divided by 12). The group meets once a month; we  are covering one lesson each month, though the book is formatted to cover one lesson each week. Even with the expanded time frame I found myself “too busy” and did not write my morning pages this past month, our second. The first month I did not do the other exercises, but I wrote my morning pages and I was feeling good! I had established a regimen! I was following up the writing by making and drinking celery juice to cleanse my liver! Then when I broke a tooth my fragile habits fell away. I was uncomfortable and medicated. So now the second month has almost passed; today was the first day I wrote my morning pages since our group last met. My Inner Critic is telling me that I failed, but my Higher Self is telling me it’s never too late to begin again!

And I just wasted quite a bit of time trying to mail myself a photo from my phone so I could illustrate this post. So I’m plunging on photo-less because tomorrow is a work day and this will be a more than full week and I broke one of my front teeth right off last week so Thursday will be a long day at the dentist getting an implant. Once I get my photo upload process underway I’ll share a picture of me minus tooth. Maybe I’ll use it for my profile image here just for fun and to make a philosophical point of some kind. But for now I just want to say that today I had an epiphany, hallelujah. And I think it came as a result of my less than perfect efforts to practice The Artist’s Way. One thing that is part of the practice is called an Artist’s Date. One is encouraged to keep a date with oneself and go alone somewhere unlikely and just be present for the experience. I’ve been putting off my Artist’s Date. Today, because I’ve been having a rough time at work I decided to do a little retail therapy at TJ Maxx. That would be my Artist’s Date I laughingly told myself. And it turned out it was an Artist’s Date after all. I came away from my shopping with a couple of objects that are adorned with words. And after an hour or two I realized the dichotomy I’ve created between words and pictures all my life doesn’t exist. What I love is words that are pictures…and I remember creating a kind of logo with the letters of my name when I was six…drawing it over and over on the undersides of furniture as I lay on the floor, a kind of Sistine chapel exercise dedicated to myself. I am so excited to realize this! And now I’m going to close and go to bed where I will lie procrastinating about brushing my teeth and Googling the designer of my new coffee cup that says “Be Honest.” Her name is Rae Dunn. I have always loved letterforms and now I know why. I asked for guidance today and I received it. I need to create a piece that says “Thank You.” Well, actually I just remembered that I already designed and printed one that said “Thanks” for an employer who rejected it saying it was too difficult to decipher and he just wanted to say thanks! And I still have it. And it’s beautiful.

Everything has changed. Larry is gone. I don’t live on the hillside anymore. I don’t have a cat any more. For a time I was bereft, stripped of my identity and ejected from my home. I fantasized about writing accounts of my pain and loss, warning unregistered domestic partners out there about the fragility of a life that is predicated on a relationship not properly documented, registered, in a word, not legal. I was in despair. My health suffered. I learned about grief. Mostly that it feels like going crazy, but it’s not. It’s normal, and suffering is normal, and I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to be only learning about it at this late date. And to my surprise, that’s pretty much all I have to day about the past year and a half. I put away Larry’s photo last week. It dominated the living room of my new apartment as he dominated my life for so many years. Now my life is my own to mold. I joined a group of women who are working through Julia Cameron’s “It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again.” I am excited.

Of my three handsome older brothers Jack was the one with the black Irish good looks. When I was in first grade he was in high school, glamorous and distant. Indeed he was a glamorous figure, having consciously reinvented himself when our family of General Motors nomads was sent from small-town Wisconsin to Northern California just as he entered high school. He arrived in Hayward a skinny bespectacled eighth-grader. A couple months later he entered Hayward High School a dark slender heartbreaker and achieved matinee idol status there. Politically astute early on, he compensated for his utter lack of athletic prowess by running for head cheerleader, backed by his best friend, the football team’s quarterback. When he was cheerleader he made it more than a sideline role; he was a star in his white gabardine slacks and sweater, performing well-rehearsed synchronized routines with the gorgeous twin sisters recruited as his assistants. Jack was a performer. As Hamlet in a black velvet doublet, he dazzled audiences in school plays produced by a drama teacher whose productions went beyond the ordinary. Jack loves an audience and had one throughout his career as an English professor, teaching film and literature. His audience today is in the Intensive Care Unit; he is telling jokes a couple hours after emerging from open heart surgery, still  still holding the stage. 

Ha! I just kept my commitment to myself that I would write everyday and concluded the piece with the very clever reflection that I feel free to say just about anything here because no one reads this blog; and the dichotomy of such public privacy. Hit publish and the whole thing disappeared! I could not believe it! I felt terrible, as if an account of how much time I spent web surfing and what I ate today (not potato chips or chocolate) needed to be immortalized. Even I have lost interest in the topic at this point so I think I’ll call it a day and try again tomorrow.