While I was gone it became harder and harder to find this voice, the one that lives here. Eventually I couldn’t hear it at all. When I thought about this blog, this thing that I very much felt the loss of, I had nothing. I was blank. Couldn’t think of anything to offer, even though life was continuing to unfold.

I’m starting back small, trying to remember what this voice sounds like, feels like.

Pogo reminded me recently that people who scale Mt. Everest often report feeling nothing but exhausted when they get to the top. Not elated, not victorious, not woo-hoo! Just tired. And anxious about making it down. That’s what it felt like to turn in a 358-page manuscript draft that in one iteration or another had been in my life for more than a decade: a little relieved, mostly tired, and anxious nevertheless. I dream at night that old, powerful men are flipping through its pages with critical eyes and pursed, judging mouths. I worry about it. I know it won’t be done done for, reasonably, another year if it makes it through reviews and revisions. I worry about “the worst” happening and being cut free from this whole, weird academic life that I’ve never been sure fits me anyway.

And in the wake of that I have maybe a sense of what post-partum depression feels like.

All the same: It is spring. We had lots of rain in the last month. All the soft buds and leaves have been blossoming, uncoiling. I have been blessed with elements of new life–sunshine, warmth, good company, laughter. Some days I want to hide in a cave and just abide in the dark quiet for awhile. Other days I have the sense of waking up and reentering life. I am trying to trust that all the work has been, will be for something. Starting back small.

It’s been either bright, blistering, or unseasonably balmy around here for the last six months. I could count on one hand the days of rain or even spit we’ve had since May. But I think Coloradans have gotten so used to the effects of climate change, including nearly relentless drought, that they’ve forgotten that spring and autumn aren’t supposed to feel like August. Up to two days ago it was consistently over 70 during the day. This is not Southern California, people.

Did I mention I’ve been sad? Like, wringing every drop of moisture out of my body every day or two sad. Like, what is that white stuff on my eyelashes? Oh, it’s salt deposits from all that crying sad. I’m ok; I’m getting through it with a lot of writing, a lot of aloneness, prayer, and a few key wellsprings of support. There’s no getting around sorrow you just need to feel in order to move forward; I accept that. But to wake up every god-forsaken morning with relentless sun streaming through my bedroom window and not the faintest sign of a cloud, in late October, gets to be a little much. Can I not just huddle under the sheets for awhile on a Saturday morning without feeling like I should find myself a Labrador retriever and go hiking, or ride my bike up to Mt. Evans?

Thank God, then, for yesterday, when at just about noon a glowering cold front tore through town and shoved a cheerleader-perky morning aside, muttering, “get out of the way, candy asses; welcome to NOVEMBER.” I watched the faces fall across the cafe where I was working, and I brightened up. People slunk into their sweatshirts and cast wary glances at the fat flakes falling on the asphalt. Customers bought soup instead of salad. Good. I got more work done in four hours than I had in the previous four days.

And this morning: a wonder. I woke early. It was sunny, yes, but my central heating hadn’t yet turned on and I could feel the crispness of the first frost. I pulled on a cashmere sweater, a scarf, a cozy hat, and my new faux shearling, softer than soft coat, and headed to the corner for my every-other-day, half-caff vanilla latte (speaking of candy asses). The yards were sheathed in the telltale sugar coating of frost, the buildings of downtown sparkling like glacial waters.

Then I heard a curious sound that stopped me in the middle of the street. A sound like thin ice cracking on the surface of a creek. Or like sweet potato chips fluttering down to earth. I looked up. From what I think was a big elm tree, leaves frozen overnight but now thawing in the sun were pouring off the branches and clicking in their half-frozen state onto the sidewalk. A beautiful, melancholy sound and sight. I breathed and listened, honoring the falling, the abrupt, half-graceful, half-awkward letting go after a long suspension. Maybe I could pull that off, maybe not. My soul sung its respect. And I embraced, finally, November.

I’ve been catching myself doing something I’ve decided to call “sawing.” It goes a little something like this. If the thoughts we think help construct our material reality (because those thoughts reflect beliefs, beliefs create actions, actions create character, character creates who we are in the world and the decisions we make, etc.), then we would do well to attend to the thoughts we are thinking, and to change the ones that perpetuate realities we don’t want to manifest in our lives. And if the thoughts we repeatedly think affect our actual brain chemistry, as the brain scientists tell us, then thoughts have a chemical dimension, a biological expression, as it were. We know, for example, that rumination is not just a product of but actually a creator of depression. Likewise, fear thoughts perpetuate anxiety because they trigger hormones that prepare us to fight or flee. And so on with angry, happy, sexual, etc.

I have ample evidence of all this being true in my own life. (Caveat: I don’t believe thoughts alone create all of everyone’s life circumstances; no one thinks their way into a birth defect or life on a destitute reservation, for example. But there is such a thing as a poverty mentality.) And so I’ve put a lot of practices into my life that help me notice and where possible reshape my thoughts in more positive directions.

But when I’m worn down, or my self-esteem is floundering, or I’m sleep deprived (i.e., most of this summer)…that’s when the sawing begins. My thought-filter weakens and a thought creeps in like an insect. And it starts sawing.

Let’s take I’m always alone.

Ok, I’m not always alone. In fact, I often am surrounded with good company. I’ve been spending most days with my friend Lisa, working on our books together–which is a huge blessing. I have family in Denver that I love, and family in California that I can call anytime. I have amazing friends who love and take care of me, and who make all the difference in my life. I have a partner that I adore who, despite the rough ride she’s been on in the last year and a half, is a loving presence in my life. I also have students, mentees, neighbors, and acquaintances I could get to know better as friends if I chose to. Also: I, unlike a lot of people I know, actually enjoy spending time alone and feel agitated when I haven’t had enough of it. Alone is not my enemy.

And yet I come home from some day of doing stuff with other people and I am always alone gets in my head. It starts sawing a groove. I make something to eat. Always. I call someone who doesn’t answer. Alone. I sit at my desk and respond to some emails. Paco pads in to the office and flops down, purring. Right in the middle of an ordinary task: Oh god! Why am I always alone? Maybe I turn on some music, or go in the backyard and do some gardening. I’m not trying to avoid the thoughts, just doing things I enjoy. But maybe I’m tired from a long day, and some other worries are floating around in my head. Somehow that perpetuates the sawing. The ugly thought–which I realize is not only a thought but factually untrue–settles into its back and forth groove. It looks for evidence to prove that I have been or always am alone. It builds an argument. It makes a case. And, worst of all, it begins attracting emotional energy around it–a pool of sadness under my sternum, a kryptonite ball in the belly.

I try to build a shield in my mind, to catch the thought and “weed” it up before it can express again. Each time it tries to run its groove, I pluck it first. Sometimes that works, but if I’m tired, if I haven’t slept enough, it just saws and I don’t know how to stop it.

The only solutions I’ve found so far:  1) yoga, 2) sleep medicine, 3) reading (if I can concentrate), and 4) noticing, and naming, the sawing. And telling the thought that it doesn’t have permission. And trying to love the poor self that’s struggling with the thought.

What do you do?

I did try a Quaalude once in college, which was kind of passe by 1986. I guess it lived up to its rep as a “downer,” but mainly because it was like drinking a case of beer and then banging against dorm hallways, slurring like an idiot. One could do that any day in college. And I gave other things the occasional whirl, mostly so I could understand what people were talking about. Drugs had their pros and cons; I found sex a lot more interesting.

I’ve been reminded this summer that  life has turned out to present more than enough experience on the matter of uppers and downers, and I don’t even have to take the little red or blue pills. But now I understand the need for them.

A quick recap of some of the highs and lows as of the halfway mark in my summer:

Upper:  I finished my Spring Quarter classes with high marks from a really strong group of students.

Downer:  I started teaching a Summer Interterm class before I’d even turned in grades for the Spring class. That kind of overlap doesn’t make me happy when people comment on me having “summer off.” On the other hand, the Interterm class was filled with adult, working women, and it was rewarding and transformative. (So, Upper.) It did, though, include one very rabid, religious, and aggressive student who wanted an A for C-level work. (Downer.) At any rate, I feel like I’m meant to teach that class in some larger forum. If I could only figure out what that forum is, and how to make it pay financial dividends.

Downer:  I got paid $1K less than I’d calculated to teach that class. And then the next one I had on tap did not get enough students to roll. Nor did two other little side-classes I’d been planning. Which ups the ante on my already-dicey summer finances. And silver hair turns out to be a real liability on the hooking front.

Upper:  I’ve made some solid progress on my book, especially when I camp out in the public library or a cafe. It’s always slower going than I’d like, but conceptually I’ve made some breakthroughs and I think a lot of the writing so far is pretty damn good. It feels like I’m finally writing the book I want, and need, to write. Or I feel that most of the time, when I’m not torturing myself over some aspect or another of it.

Downer:  I’ve probably only gotten 10 full nights of natural (non-assisted) sleep since the beginning of June. Steady insomnia due to any number of factors in combination: worrying about money, career, or relationship; heat; R.A. pain/discomfort; and the chemical side-effects of not sleeping previous nights.

Upper:  It turns out that Kaiser now covers Ambien (a downer, surely) at the regular $10 co-pay rate, which was not the case a few years ago when I asked. Ambien is a huge comfort because 95% of the time it works for me. I mean, I fall asleep within 20 minutes of taking it. This means that I can *know* I’ll sleep at least 5 hours that night, usually more, which translates into not going 2, 3, 4 consecutive nights without sleep, as has happened in the past. But it also means I’ll likely feel kind of cloudy in the morning (but still better than Tylenol PM or even Valerian root). So I try to use it as a last-ditch solution, and I only take half. But there have been too many last-ditch nights as of late. That worries me. The last thing I need is to become an Ambien junkie and find myself like some Kennedy wandering the streets of D.C. at 3 a.m., dialing exes. In a crocheted halter.

Downer:  Given the fact that the bulk of next month’s pay source remains a mystery, I started looking at bartending jobs again, mostly on CraigsList. That has led to two promising no-gos and two humiliating experiences standing in line with 30+ others under the age of 30 to fill out 45-minute questionnaires–only to be obviously shunned by interviewing male managers (age: 27ish) who’d clearly dismissed me on sight. Consider the ego-blow of filling out the “education completed” section of an application to sling shots for people the age and mentality of my undergraduates. This raises the question: what the HELL am I thinking? Under the right circumstances, bartending is a sweet little side-gig. In this economy, the process involved in securing such a gig is…well, let’s just say, it makes me want to sit on the toilet eating Twinkies, like Elvis.

Upper: I rocked out an entertaining and informative public talk on Carl Jung at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Mixed Taste series last Friday. No small achievement, and kind of a coveted little opportunity I am fortunate to have had. Lovely life-highlight and a rare chance to do what I’m good at in front of friends and family.

Downer:  In the wake of that, all my major joints feel achy to the point of distraction and the fatigue hit Sunday like an anvil swinging on cables. I am pretty sure this is called an R.A. flare. And every time I look at CraigsList it seems to surge. That leads to the popping of pills–just Naproxin, but still. If I go looking for another source of income, my R.A. hurts. If I don’t, I worry so much I can’t sleep. I mean, this is ugly honest, but it’s where I’m at.

Upper:  I feel like I’ve totally rediscovered watermelon, and that turns out to be significant. I bought one for $3.99 a couple weeks ago, and on the first bite found myself devouring it like a starving dog.  It was like my whole body was THIRSTING for watermelon. And that craving has been steady ever since, so I keep eating it. I think I could survive the summer on watermelon alone (which is good, as I might have to). So I looked up the nutritional contents of watermelon and here’s the deal: Aside from copious quantities of Vitamins C, A, and B1 and 6, it’s full of this stuff called lycopene, an antixodant that kills free radicals, among other things. Free radicals cause the inflammation associated with, guess what, Rheumatoid Arthritis. How about that? My body sidestepped the rheumatologist and seized on what it needs.

Upper:  I also discovered (or remembered) that art is therapy. In the process, I happened on  the “monster” that is my forlorn, freaked-out inner child.

On the other hand (downer), I often feel guilty while drawing or writing that I’m not using the time to search for work or write my book. And then I feel humiliated that in my 9th year of teaching college I’m still having to whore myself out for side jobs to make ends meet. I try hard not to feel guilty about blowing a few hours on art, as I know the creative stuff helps everything else–not to mention it’s where part of my heart lives–but the pressure of getting that book out and under contract is getting pretty concrete.

All in all, I’m kind of a mess this summer. And though I know there are pills designed to even out the psychological responses, like anxiety and depression, that come with this kind of roller coaster, I guess, for now, I’d rather try to ride it out with minimal meds. But I may have to hit up the thrift store for some seventies fashion, as I’m definitely feeling like a poster child for uppers and downers.

Anyway, here’s one thing that’s been on my mind, as the results of our collective (yes) greed continue to hemorrhage into the Gulf of Mexico:

If we allow ourselves to feel this, we open ourselves to grief. We must have the courage to grieve.

If we don’t grieve, we remain numb.

To the degree that we are numb, gnawing anxiety, anger, and depression corrode us individually and collectively.

If we choose to remain numb, we cannot act.

If we cannot act, we cannot change.

If we cannot change, we die. And, more tragically (for doubtless our annihilation would be a gift to nature) we destroy a planet full of living things with us.

I know I need to grieve. I can barely watch the images of the oil spilling into the water, creeping over the beaches and marshes, drowning birds, killing the life that remains in an already desperately polluted Gulf. I find myself turning down the volume on NPR stories that upset me too deeply. But instead of bursting into tears, instead of taking minutes, hours–maybe days out of my toxically busy life would be at least the beginning of a fully awake response to what’s happening–I sublimate it in order to function. And then the sadness, fear, and anger move into my bloodstream and I wake in the morning to a strange, dull ache under my breastbone. Am I thereby entering into the shared reality of non-stop, low-grade Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder functioning that “civilized” culture has become?

It disgusts me to hear almost exclusively of the human cost of this; what of all the animals and organisms innocent in the face of this apocalypse? Why must we inflict ourselves on the world in such a violent way, when we are capable of so much creativity and healing?

I could go on, but what’s the point? I know we’re all overwhelmed. I know we know we need to change, and so many of us are trying, with our pathetic little “baby steps.” We all feel the fury at British Petroleum and Big Oil–as we listen to NPR, in our fossil fuel-consuming, carbon contributing cars en route to our massively energy consuming homes.

I know we can’t afford to get stuck in overwhelm or sorrow. But what is lost and what will be forfeited from not truly grieving all this?

The book I’m (re)writing, Ambivalent Miracles, is some kind of Kilimanjaro. And as is the way with naming things, the title seems to have embedded itself in me on personal levels: I often bring ambivalence to the writing, or at least the needing to write it, and it may feel like a miracle when I finally send it off, which I just try to regularly envision myself doing. After all this time, and the climbs and setbacks that have happened along the way, I just need to summit, at long last, and finally descend. I never in a lifetime expected to live this long at Kilimanjaro.

I’m trying to bring joy to the ascent, and sometimes I do, when I find the groove. I am putting distance behind me, and it is beginning to settle into its essence, its voice.

But showing up to it often hurts. There is a spot beneath my breast bone that roils. There is nausea, both when I sit down before it, and when I’ve gone too long without facing it; either way, the bile rises. I sit down at the keyboard and feel the press of tears full to bursting–not when I’m writing, but when I’m contemplating writing, when I know it’s time to resume the chipping away. The anticipating it, the fearing it; that’s what hurts. The chattering, screeching, fidgeting, mocking monkey mind is a demon. I have to design tricks to sidestep it–freewriting, plowing forward without knowing, sprinting sometimes. I need to remember to find ways to write in faith; devotional writing; writing as a form of knowing, even when I feel like I do not know. (Is this wherefore the yoga?)

Writing is walking into the not-knowing. And I’m free in it when the risk feels low, like here. But the academic audience is severe, is often a ruthless chorus of self-loathing critics, and I remember how their words abraded me last time. I still have the scars, though they’ve faded. And I can hear them even now–but it doesn’t matter, because I have to tune them out to listen in, to hear the voice of the narrative that is already there, ready to be articulated. In the end, it has to not matter the outcome. It has to matter that I write the book that is ready to be written, that needs to see light. Not necessarily the book that “they” might want. I have to trust that the chips can fall exactly where they’re meant to and that doors are always opening. The matrix of possibility constantly shifts and flows, undulating with infinite opportunities.

I know these things rationally, or spiritually. It’s the visceral panic, though, that counts when I sit down to the task. Every day, freaking out, slaying the field of hissing dragons, picking my way over them, and trying to move at least few feet forward. Gaining ground regardless of scuttling claws behind me.

Send me an image; I’ll take all the inspiration I can get these days.

And sometimes, like this morning, I think, “this would be a good day for diamond earrings.”

Maybe I’m supposed to write on this topic, because the same Jungian messages keep coming at me from all these disparate sources–Kundera’s Immortality, and, last night, Parker Palmer’s gorgeous Let Your Life Speak. I wanted to share this passage from Palmer (via Annie Dillard) as food for thought:

Those of us who readily embrace leadership, especially public leadership, tend toward extroversion, which often means ignoring what is happening inside ourselves. If we have any sort of inner life, we “compartmentalize” it, walling it off from our public work. This, of course, allows the shadow to grow unchecked until it emerges, larger than life, in the public realm, a problem we are well acquainted with in our own domestic politics. Leaders need not only the technical skills to manage the external world but also the spiritual skills to journey toward the source of both shadow and light.

Spirituality, like leadership, is a hard thing to define. But Annie Dillard has given us a vivid image of what authentic spirituality is about: ‘In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.’

Here Dillard names two crucial features of any spiritual journey. One is that it will take us inward and downward, toward the hardest realities of our own lives, rather than outward and upward toward abstraction, idealization, and exhortation. The spiritual journey runs counter to the power of positive thinking.

Why must we go in and down? Because as we do so, we will meet the darkness that we carry within ourselves–the ultimate source of the shadows that we project onto other people. If we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone ‘out there’ into the enemy, becoming leaders who oppress rather than liberate others.

But, says Dillard, if we ride those monsters all the way down, we break through to something precious–to ‘the unfied field, our complex and inexplicable caring for each other,’ to the community we share beneath the broken surface of our lives. Good leadership comes from people who have penetrated their own inner darkness and arrived at the place where we are at one with one another, people who can lead the rest of us to a place of ‘hidden wholeness’ because they have been there and know the way.

I love Dillard’s idea that it is actually the “substrate” that provides the foundation for the good. What monsters do you get, and do you fear, to ride? Who “out there” is the problem for you?

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about this word before, but since he mentioned it, I’ve felt a shift taking place. Devotion; it’s such a better word than “discipline,” or “routine,” or even “practice.” Though it incorporates all of those, it also somehow contains love and faith. PIETY; an act of prayer or private worship; a religious exercise or practice other than the regular corporate worship of a congregation; the fact or state of being ardently dedicated and loyal; FIDELITY.

This is what I’m trying to practice as I look in the wall of mirrors at the yoga studio and try to sweep aside all the critical voices in my head nagging at my physical imperfections. I am showing up in a faithful way, an honoring way–whether I “feel like” it or not, whether I’m grumpy or tired or in total, painful resistance all the way through. Whether I feel lean or bloated (and in Bikram, where you’re basically wearing underwear, it’s usually the latter). Even when I feel awkward and stupid and maybe especially then, when I most need to show up for myself.

Whereas I associate “discipline” with things like military, Puritan, monkish, self-controlled, fasting, obedient, and cold, with “devotion” I can remember that this is about wholeness, dedication, fidelity. I can bring the love to it.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my single New Year’s resolution for 2010 is to “have more fun in the midst” of the things I’m doing. In other words, to remember to play, to enjoy, to not take it all too seriously, because it is so easy to get caught up in the pattern of living life as a series of tasks, duties, obligations, “to dos”. This is part of the being over doing practice. Although a lot of people think of me as a playful, silly type, I’ve always carried a super-serious undercurrent that sometimes, well, pulls me under.

In pursuit of my resolution, I made “havingfun” part of the main passwords I use on a daily basis. So every time I type the password, I’m invited to stop and check: Am I having fun in this? Or am I in hyper-focused, “Sue” (the serious, taskmaster personality) mode? This growing awareness has changed, loosened, my approach in the classroom and I have to say, I’ve been having a lot more fun with my students and really feeling absorbed in our conversations. It also helps me play more with my academic writing, and that creates creative openings. It makes the “duties” of my day feel less tyrannical.

This, of course, has raised my awareness of the “tyrannies” I allow or create or at least experience in my life. What do I mean by tyranny? Websters describes it as “oppressive power” of some kind, and we can think of the political iterations of authoritarianism, autocracy, etc. But what I have in mind are activities/relationships/patterns that come to feel obligatory, entrapping, tediously repetitive, and in some way not really optional, not really chosen. Of course, these include things that most of us “have” to do all the time: commuting, laundry, housecleaning, meetings, cleaning up after or taking care of others, paying bills–you know, “the drill.”

It’s when I’m feeling obligated toward such things, when my life feels propelled only or mainly by these things, that I get depressed. Occasionally I just flatline, and it feels like all the life drains out of me. But here’s the big irony: In order to reach goals I set for myself, I set up all kinds of mechanisms that are, in effect, little tyrannies.

If you want to write a book (or even an article), you generally have to break it down to small tasks and routines. If you want to lose weight, you change your behaviors, meal by meal, workout by workout, showing up for each minor and psychological step on a path to transformation. If you want to meditate, you practice, every day, or however many times a day. You show up, whether you “feel like” it or not.

What we are, in effect, doing is setting up a structure that facilitates an end goal. We’re building a little container, if you will, which can also function as a little cage. And, sure, there is always a choice in terms of following through, but a practice is, after all, a way of learning discipline; of “doing the work” or “showing up” regardless of mood or inclination in that particular moment. In a way, you stop allowing yourself an easy “opt out.”

I need these things. If I don’t, for example, try to carve two hours before noon Monday through Friday to spend time with my book, it’s just way too easy to blow it off, because other things always feel more pressing or interesting. And because it’s hard to show up; it raises every nasty fear and doubt in the book. So I have to commit to it beforehand, to give myself that structure. And since I’ve been committed to this “practice” of showing up to my work, I’ve gotten a lot done, even though some days it’s agony.

But what about the days that this practice just adds to my sense of a tyranny-driven life?

At my hot yoga studio they’ve been doing a “30-day challenge” this month. The challenge is to show up every day to yoga, to see how it changes your life. I decided to accept the challenge–not with the goal of coming every day, because that’s simply not possible in my schedule right now, but with the aim of seeing how often I can find ways to show up, and what that feels like. So far I’ve been showing up 4-5 days a week, which is pretty intense, though largely gratifying. The thing is, though: I don’t want yoga, this practice that is really helping me on many levels, to become another tyranny, and especially not an externally imposed one. So if I really don’t feel like going, or if getting there is going to add another 1/2 hour of intense stress in my life to make it happen, I’m not going to do it. If yoga generally attracts a lot of goal-driven achiever and monkish types, Bikram is the evangelical version of this. The teachers are basically fanatical about the discipline, and they spout a fair amount of Bikram-jargon in the process. It is changing my life, but I also have to tune some of that preachiness out when I do it. I recoil from all practices that feel like dogma.

I think this instinct to resist more tyranny is a healthy one. On the other hand, I’m aware that it may be a cop out, or at least the wrong framework for thinking about practices like yoga or writing. If I want to learn real discipline, real practice, I think I have to learn what it’s like to push through my biggest resistances, my most intense moments of absolutely not wanting to do it. I can’t give myself an “out” simply because I can reasonably justify doing so in a given moment. But the thing is, in order to make it not feel tyrannical in these resistance moments, I have to keep an eye on why I’ve made the commitment; I have to return to what it’s about.

Yoga right now is about learning a real practice, and showing up to take care of my spirit and body in a totally committed way. Writing right now is about finishing a project I’ve had in my life for many years and thereby being able to move forward, toward my next horizon. Maybe if I can keep these things in mind I can transform the short-term interpretation of them as tyrannies. And maybe I can interpret the other “tyrannies” in my life as little acts of gratitude.