Category Archives: Psychology

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The Man of My Dreams

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A song from the past floats into my head as I’m falling asleep.  I’m a teenager, listening to one of the first albums I bought with my own money.  Barbra Streisand: A Star is Born.  It’s the end of the story.  Esther Hoffman Howard is a widow, taking the stage for the first time since the accident.  “With one more look at you…” she begins.  “I want one more look at you.”  I want one more chance to put it all together and make it make sense.

My husband Jim is in my dreams again.  But I don’t know I’m dreaming.  I can touch him.  I feel his hair, strangely coarse, actually, compared to the thick, loosely curled, soft stuff I remember.  But he’s there, in the flesh, inexplicably, and so am I.  I want answers.  How is it you’re here again, and so often?  Was I wrong when I thought you’d died?  Has there been a mistake?  Are you back for good?  Where, exactly, have you been?  Speak to me.

He begins to talk, and I hang on every word.  He is telling me the secrets of the Universe, of life and death, and I had better remember this accurately later, when I wake up.  When I wake up…does that mean that this is just a dream?  Logic gets all loose and wiggly again, and consciousness creeps back into my head.   Suddenly, I’m awake and sweating hot.  I’m in a room by an open window on a street in suburban Milwaukee.  And this doesn’t seem to make much sense, either. 

Anger. Denial. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.  What are the emotions driving these dreams?  What is my subconscious trying so hard to reconcile? I keep struggling for meaning.  I am angry, I suppose.  I deny that Jim died at the age of 47.  That was too soon.  It doesn’t fit into my perception of How Things Ought To Be.  I do not accept it.  Even now, more than four years later.  Although, even in my dreams, I know that he is dead, and that is Real. 

Enlightenment is, roughly, when you accept all that is…without the ‘you’.  Ego is inconsequential.  Acceptance, peace, wholeness.  All Is.  I guess I’m not at that point yet.  I work on it through the night.  I imagine Jim trying to help me out, but his input just confuses me.  And I’m still too involved, trying too hard to wrap my little brain around the incomprehensible.  How can I simply let it go?  Accept ambiguity.  Accept mystery.  Accept it all.  Accept.      Accept.

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Imagine

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While investigating a new follower, GYA today, I watched this YouTube clip from his May 17 post.  Again, I had to ask myself about the source of my tears.  (see my post Why These Tears? from 2 days ago)  Watch it and see if you don’t have the same questions.

Okay, I’ll wait while you go get a tissue.  Or watch it again.  (I did both.)

I love his choice of song.  It really puts the focus on the force of consciousness.  What does your brain spend time on?  Did you catch the comment by the one judge who said that it made her think that the things she worries about are “pathetic”?  Pathetic.  Sad.  Sorrowful.  Tearful.  That we get stuck in negative and depressive patterns of thought surrounding circumstance is very sad to me.  That there are other options, that we do have the capability to change our focus and probably our futures is the great joy.  The tears are a double whammy.  I am sad that seeing physical deformity and hearing the story of a child’s abandonment brings me to focus on depression by default.  I am overjoyed to see that assumption shattered by the reality of a young man who enjoys love, the gift of a beautiful voice, and the opportunity to create a life that is satisfying to himself and an inspiration to others. 

I hope that anyone reading this can take the time to IMAGINE today.  Imagine the things you worry about dissolving in a broader perspective.  Imagine your limitations transformed by the transcendence of judgment.  “Handicaps” aren’t handicaps.  Reality is neutral.  You can make a positive or a negative judgment about them, and that will effect your experience of them.   I really believe this is what we do with our enormous brains, but most of our culture thinks that’s metaphysical hocus-pocus and that quality of life is found in the nature of circumstances.   “IF” conditions are right, you can be happy.  Why not just be happy and never mind “conditions”?  This is not my own idea, of course.  It stems from centuries of Buddhist thought about suffering.  I have only recently begun to see it illustrated in my Western life.   So here’s the million dollar question: what is happiness and how can you discover it?  My mother used to quote, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”  If so, joy is everywhere.  Happiness is everywhere.  It’s already here, then.  It doesn’t need to be discovered; it may simply need to be uncovered.  “Cleaning the windshield” is what Steve sometimes calls it.  Get rid of the crud that keeps you from seeing the happiness that is all around.  Imagine!

Living for today…

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Why These Tears?

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So I didn’t get a post in yesterday.  It was a hot, humid day at work; thunderstorms arrived just as we were leaving.  I got home at 6pm, put my feet up for a bit, made dinner, and then prepared packages for mailing for the book business.  By the time we were done, it was 9:30, and my eyes were stinging.  I closed them and fell asleep.  I’ve been musing on an issue for two days, though, and since I don’t work today (except for a voice lesson), I’m ready to give it some time and work it out in writing. 

It happened on Saturday.  I burst into tears at work. 

It was late afternoon, toward the end of my shift.  Families had been coming through in dribbles to look at the church.  Since it was hot, I put a chair out on the landing in front of the door so that I could catch the breeze.  Sitting there in my bustle, I suppose I made a good picture of a prim and proper church lady.  A father and his two-year old daughter wandered down the road, leaving Mom and older siblings at the General Store.  I invited them in and showed the little curly redhead the pump organ.  She liked the sound of her voice in the echoing chamber of the empty church, so I played “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” (a good Mozart tune) and let her sing along.  She took a look at my pin cushion balls, too, and held one until her father gently took it and handed it back.  She never left the safety of her father’s arms during the whole visit.  I walked them out of the church and settled in my chair to watch them walk back down the road, hand in hand.  She stumbled at one point, but Dad righted her gently.  That’s when I lost it.  That sudden, rising swell of heat in my nose and the burning tears tumbling down were totally unpredicted.  Why these tears?  Why now?

Driving home with Steve, I began to talk it out and answer his compassionate questions.  Where were my thoughts?  What were my emotions?  I remembered that I had been bored, hot, and feeling a bit lost and alone:  all dressed up in an empty museum, wondering how I got there.  Kind of disconnected and surreal.  That father and daughter reminded me of my late husband and our curly-haired youngest.  Seeing them walk away together triggered a sense of devastating loss.  I will never see Jim again; Emily, now 21, will never be that young again.  That manifestation of life is gone forever.  

But I knew that.  Why the tears?  Why judge that as something sad?  Obviously, I am still very attached to that particular arrangement, and perhaps not so attached to my current one.  “Attachment causes suffering.”  Somehow, I came to believe that my life as a wife and mother was very meaningful, very important, and it became a “secure” identity for me.  Not hard to imagine how that happened.  The thing is, it isn’t the Truth, wasn’t the Truth, either.  It was a temporary condition.  I enjoyed that condition, but Change is the nature of life.  Conditions always change.  One condition isn’t more meaningful or important than another.  To be able to think about every moment of life as a valuable moment is a mindset that can set me free to live happily.  I think of Hafiz, the Sufi poet, and his exuberant joy in living, not dependent on circumstances.  I get sentimental about family life, but I don’t want to be the mother of a two year old, now.  Somehow, though, that sentiment suggests that there is greater value in that particular model of life than in others, and that I am “missing out”.  It’s just not true.  It’s a kind of cultural propaganda.  Hallmark and Focus on the Family and organizations like that profit from supporting that way of thinking.  I love my children, but our life isn’t Hallmark any more.  It was, once.  It was nice, but it wasn’t the only and most important manifestation of living.  Conditions arise, conditions change.  Judging that one is “better” than the other can get me stuck and cause suffering.  That’s not to say that I can’t think critically about my life and make changes.  But I also want to be able to be happy in any situation. 

I like my tears, too.  They help me learn about myself. 

photo credit: Susan

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Home and Hearth

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I’m anticipating the arrival of my middle daughter for a sleep over visit.  I have done the dishes, swept and mopped the kitchen floor, changed the sheets and made the bed.  My 21st century house is maybe about 75 years old.  The houses I help keep up at my Old World Wisconsin job are about 135 years old.  What remains constant about hospitality?  The desire to provide a degree of comfort out of respect for another person.  The pride of being able to offer, no matter how humble, an invitation to share what you have with another person, be it space, warmth, food, shelter, peace or love.  “For it is in giving that you shall receive.”

 

I am enjoying a sense of maturity in my ideas about homemaking, a sense of seasoning.  As a young wife and mother, I was extremely anxious about entertaining.  I felt that everyone who walked through my front door was judging me.  I was sure that I wasn’t doing things the “right” way and that everyone could tell that I was faking being a “good” mother.  I hardly ever had the sense that people who visited me were actually interested in enjoying time with me.  I suppose you could just label that “low self-esteem”.  So what does self-esteem have to do with hospitality?  Perhaps it’s simply that until you esteem yourself, it’s hard to know how to esteem someone else, or until you know how to be comfortable in your own skin, it’s hard to know how to help another person be comfortable in his or hers.  That’s what I want to be able to offer my guests: a place where they can be at peace with themselves, with me, and with their surroundings.  A place to experience welcome and contentment —  home and hearth.     

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Traveling Mercies

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Today’s poetry writing prompt is to write a travel poem about getting from Point A to Point B.  I took this with me as I walked with Steve to meet his mom for breakfast at a cafe on North Avenue.  Here’s what I came up with:

Suburban sidewalk, cement sanitation

Fighting blight from untidy dandelions

Writhing, withered stems polluted, poisoned

Preventing spreading superfluous seeds

 

Muddy raindrop crater-pocked parkway

Mini helicopter maples, twin neon confetti

Mossy black trunks, petal-splashed branches

Tinny worm smell, saturated iris-limp toilet paper

 

Hiking boots treading asphalt pathways

Longing for the purity beneath.

 

Yesterday’s rain has left a distinct damp chill over everything.  I miss the golden sun.  My mood is slow and overcast as well, but I think I’ve had an epiphany in the recent “relationship talks” we’ve been having.  A serious and positive epiphany, too complicated to explain.  I never knew that shock and denial could last four years and then drop in an instant.  I feel like a snail without her shell.  Perfect for crawling about a rain-soaked environment. 

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Summoning the Sand Man

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I am thinking about my oldest daughter today.  She has been sick with a terrible cough, possibly pneumonia, and left a message on my phone yesterday afternoon saying, “I just needed some Mom.”  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact her since to get more information although I’ve left messages.  These are those “Mom moments” that teach me how to manage anxiety.  Her voice actually sounded better than the day before, I know she’s on antibiotics, so my brain can convince me that there’s little evidence that something catastrophic is happening.  My imagination, however, cooks up a million scenarios that are “possible”.   My spirit tells me that I live in this moment, not any imagined or borrowed moments from some other plane, and so I act in the present as best I can.  Practicing living in peace with myself and the world, what I think I know and what I don’t know is an ongoing project.  At this point in my life, I do not need added drama. Reality is exciting enough. 

My daughter has always been open to engaging with lots of stimulus.  Even as a toddler, she had a hard time shutting her brain off at the end of a day, relaxing and falling asleep.  As a grad student, there are just so many exciting things to pursue, that I think she resists shutting down to re-charge.  She’s a fascinatingly energetic person to talk to, but she has a hard time slowing down.  No wonder she’s succumbed to illness, right?  I checked out the poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo this morning, and they suggested writing a lullaby.  Perfect!  I know just who to write one for!  I am hoping her phone is turned off because she’s resting, sleeping, meditating and healing.  When she was a little girl, I used to do a kind of guided meditation that I made up in order to get her to relax.  I had her visualize floating like a leaf on the surface of a slow-moving brook.  So, here’s a lullaby for Susan and pictures of the Sand Cave at Wyalusing State Park.  I apologize if this makes anyone sleepy in the middle of their work day! 

Lullaby for Susan

 

Float gently, float slowly, my baby, my dear

Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear

Gaze skyward to heaven while stars gather there

Like a leaf on the water, no burdens to bear

 

With mermaid hair flowing, glide slowly along

While Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song

Go slowly, breathe deeply, my child; nothing’s wrong

Your Mama’s beside you, she sings this sweet song

 

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Close Up

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There are a million wonders along the path, many of them missed if you’re traveling too fast.  You have to slow down to catch life in close up.  Our culture resists this vigorously, of course.  So I choose to live differently than most.  I suppose this difference has been highlighted this week while I’ve been filling out government tax forms, listening to party politics and preparing to step back into the 19th century for my new job at Old World Wisconsin.  I am not trying to move “up and to the right” like the business graph.  I want to follow a different trajectory.  

This morning I’ve been reading some blogs written by women who are caring for their aging mothers through stages of dementia.  My father died two years ago from Alzheimer’s, but I was not a care-giver in his life because I live halfway across the country.  I was a care-giver to my husband who died 4 years ago from coronary artery disease, kidney failure and diabetes.  The perspective of life across different physical, mental and psychological ages intrigues me, and provides the inspiration for today’s poetry and photos.  The photos are again from our trip to Wyalusing State Park.  The first one was something Steve noticed as we walked.  “Look,” he said, “little teenaged Priscillas!”  He was looking into a stream where some water striders were sheltering between the rocks.  My mother used to refer to me as a water strider when I was in high school.  The poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo was to write a sonnet, 14 lines because today’s the 14th.  I did not attempt to compose anything with a more formal frame than that.  No iambic pentameter or rhyming scheme, just 14 lines.  So, here we go with the pictures and poetry!

Skimming the surface, supported by tension

Riding the tide of everyone’s angst

A mere shadow in the depths, a dimple of contrast

Slender legs splayed out, weightless, of no consequence

A teenaged water strider, this youngest daughter.

What rock will plunge her universe,

Reverse the level of her lens and fasten her,

Securely, where the current flows and tugs?

In the wet of things, completely drenched

Attending top and bottom feeders, gasping, flailing,

Always moving, face in the water with wide opened eyes

Until another metamorphosis, an aged knife,

Severs the lines and sets her adrift

Above the ripples once again, that much closer to the sky.

Dutchman's breeches

Shooting star

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Tuned In

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NaPoWriMo Day #3

Today’s prompt invited me to look up the #1 pop song on my birthday and write a poem inspired by that song.  I could also look up another significant date and use the song associated with that date instead.  I tried my birthday, and then the day that my husband and I always celebrated as the day of our first kiss.  I have to say that the first option won out.  Poems I have written inspired by my love for my husband will have to wait.  Especially since I am posting this in advance (courtesy the techno savvy of my friend Helen) because I am taking my kids to the Museum of Science and Industry for their birthdays today…their 23rd and 25th birthdays (kids never outgrow museums!).   I want to give my husband and the poetry he inspires a bit more time.

The number one hit song on the day that I was born was…..”The Locomotion” by Little Eva. 

I had an immediate association.  Not with the song, specifically.  With a train.  Steve has taken to describing my typical M.O. as “the freight train”.  It has to do with a very focused, linear way of acting.  I get into a task-oriented mode when I’m trying to get something accomplished.  I do not like to get side-tracked when I am operating like that.  I like to streamline and simplify and do one thing after another until the whole bloody thing is finished.  God help you if you get in my way.  That’s what cow catchers are for.  It can be an effective way of doing things.  Steve, however, likes to be “light on his feet”, like a river, like a school of fish, shaped by movement and fluidity.  There are advantages to that, too.  Anyway, it’s one of our points of reference when discussing our differences and trying to achieve compromise.

That’s the back story.  Here’s the poem:

 

Was I born to do this straight-track motion

Or was I just trained?

Was chugging along my very first notion?

Was it always ingrained?

It’s not much of a dance.

It’s not fluid with grace.

There’s not much of a chance

Of a partner to face

When we’re all in a line

Going forward full speed.

Someone’s always behind;

Someone’s always the lead.

So “ev’rybody’s doing it”,

And that may be true.

But, c’mon baby, are you sure it’s for you?

I think this is my moment to jump off the track.

And, no, I’m not asking for my money back.

Was that Scilla that just blew by?!

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A Jury of My Piers

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Those solitary places where great expanses spread to absorb thoughts, dreams and other venturings of consciousness always appeal to me.  They feel accepting and safe.

An appropriate physical place to house a mood is often hard to find.  I think that’s one thing that keeps me exploring.  I keep my favorites locked in my memory and go back to them by closing my eyes.  This is how I try to listen to myself, I suppose.  Before I face any jury, I want to know my own story.

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Intimacy

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How well do you know me?  How well do I know myself?  How well can any two people know each other, accept each other, celebrate each other, or be open and honest with each other?  Do you really want to be that intimate with someone?  It sounds like a lot of work.  And there are some things that might not be pleasant to know.  Even about myself.  Maybe especially about myself.  I want to present the pleasing face.  I’ve worked on being able to do that.  Is that not me?  Are you sure you prefer the genuine me over that pleasing mask?  Why?  

My partner Steve and I go around and round about this.  He maintains that he is honestly working toward a genuine intimacy that is non-judgmental and completely open.  Whether that’s attainable is another question, rather like a Zen koan.  I find that my brain is hard-wired to make a million comparisons, a million analytical assessments, a million judgments all in a short time…about everything.  I turn that brain on myself all the time, without being terribly conscious about it.   I want to practice being aware of those thoughts and communicate them honestly to Steve.  He promises to practice accepting, appreciating, and honoring them, holding a safe space open for me to continue my practice.  What might that look like?

We go on a walk together.  His long legs want to stretch; I can’t keep up.  I assess myself and feel slow and out of shape.  I begin to feel like I am a hindrance.  I blame myself.  I blame Steve.  I decide to communicate.  “I want to walk more slowly and take pictures.”  “I want to keep up a good pace and get more exercise.”   “Let’s just do what we want and meet up later.”  Sounds reasonable.

There he goes.  The Walking Man walks.  James Taylor sings in my head.  I wander toward the river, away from the parkway, the bicyclists, the dog-walkers, the joggers, the strollers and baby strollers.   On a sunny Sunday, the village moves outside.  I find a spot by the river’s edge, alone with my camera.  I watch the water glide over rocks, reflecting light.  What do I reflect?  Is that me?  Is it genuine?  Is it a costume, an act?  Maybe I am everything — change and movement.  Maybe communicating is so important because this change and movement is constant.  You will never know me if you’re thinking about what I said a minute ago.  You can never step in the same river twice.

If I take the energy I might have spent on “formatting” myself for presentation and apply it to communicating myself “as is”, will I get closer to knowing my true self?

I am still learning how to be what I am.  Just that has taken half a century almost.  This conscious brain is cumbersome, manipulated early by social constructs and patterns, weighty now with baggage.  The simple forming and blossoming of a bud reminds me that life can be much freer than I make it. 

I dreamed last night that I could fly.  It was like swimming in air, gliding where I wanted to go, my feet never touching the ground.  I have had this dream my whole life.  I’ve always known how to do that, effortlessly.  But only in my sleep.