Jeffrey

Everything is beautiful in the summer
Except a Jeffrey Pine.
Unfettered and shaggy,
He reaches towards the sky.
Trying to be light and frivolous
But failing.
Only the squirrels and bluejays
Manage to play and mock
The Pine standing stoic.

When the snow comes
The pine is triumphant.
Plastered with snow,
The boughs pull down,
Branches winched in
Like an umbrella.

The Jeffrey is beautiful in the winter,
At his most glorious assaulted
By snow and wind.
Here he is not stoic
But vigilant and brave.
Beneath the snow, the Jeffrey waits
For summer to reach
His shaggy branches upwards.
The same tree, but so different.
Turned inside out. Always
waiting for the next season to take
An opposite form.

Wholly Me

Language enthralls me. Certain phrases that I tell people in my day to day life swirl across the soft palate of my mind. "I am separated." That sounds so harsh. Separated. Split. Divided. Fragmented. Torn asunder. The images are brutal. Because, of course, I am not separated; I am whole. Leaving my husband was the first time I was wholly me. For twenty some odd years I lived like a host. Marriage for me was more of an inane parasitic relationship. I was the nurse shark to my husband's pilot fish. Always there, he survived off the flotsam that surrounded me. I swam and swam taking his presence for granted. When I left (because the pilot fish had turned into a problem), I worried about how the pilot fish would survive. Are there pilot fish without sharks? But I was on my own for the first time. Separated? Not exactly. Whole but apart. Who knew that the shark gets as attached as the pilot fish?

Now I tell people: "We are reconciling." Sounds like we are balancing our checkbook, settling our accounts, aligning our stars. It's surprisingly easy. Natural. Not passionate nor a struggle nor work even. Simple, comfortable, smooth. I thought it would be hard, but the hard part is how easy it is to slip back into our roles. What should our new roles be, though? Our old roles were not good.

However, a pilot fish remains a pilot fish and a shark remains a shark.

Choices

I will survive this.
I am strong.
Bullies are not just little kids,
I will not be ashamed and hide.
Come at me again and I will come at you.
Shame on me for flinching once.
I will be honest and clever.
I know who I am again.
Ready!

One of the Lucky Ones

I used to lie in bed when I was a little girl and think about my place in the world. I remember being grateful and slightly awed that I had the enormous good fortune of being who, where, and what I was and, in particular, when. What that was was an American in a secure home during the most exciting time in history.

Now, looking back I see how wise I was. As a 50-year old, I have seen so much revolution and change. Born in 1959 on the tailcoat of the baby boomers, I passed my childhood in the sixties. Everything was groovy and classic in the classic-rock sense. All the teachers played music, the kids read books and rode bikes, most moms stayed home, and the neighborhood was a giant block party with barbecues, hide-and-go seek, freeze tag, and swimming parties. We'd listen to the Jackson Five, the Osmonds, sing along to Mr. Big Stuff, Cherokee People, and Band of Gold. And we had heroes. Real ones. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the world and taught us what equality was. Ghandi changed the world with peace. Neal Armstrong took a giant step for us. Gloria Steinem, Camilia Paglia, and Miss Piggy built on the foundation laid by Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, and Abigail Adams. On Saturdays, we watched, the Flintstones, the Monkees, and Johnny Quest;  afternoons after school were old-time musicals and cowboy-and-Indian movies; at night, we watched Batman, the Avengers, That Girl, the Carole Burnett show, Ed Sullivan, the Smothers Brothers, and Laugh-in. And always there was the Vietnam War. We hated that war. Our young adults protested it, Walter Cronkite counted the bodies every evening, and we felt shame. This is the time when we were raised to call the police cops or pigs, flowers were power, war was bad, bras were to be burnt, and you were to never trust anyone over 30. I looked up to hippies and radicals but I remained afraid of them. Charles Manson was pure evil. Pot and LSD could kill you. The hills were alive with music, Harold and Maude were in love and Billy Jack kicked everybody's butt who wasn't an Indian. This was a great time to be a kid.

A teenager in the seventies, Nixon and Watergate taught me to not trust the Man. The Beatles broke up. Girls were good at English, boys at Math. The war was over. Brooke Shields was close with her Calvin Klein's. We were in the middle of the sexual revolution and everyone was horny. Magazine covers discussed orgasms and g-spots, women smoked Virginia Slims, and love was free. Cocaine wasn't addictive, pot had names like vacation spots, love was free, and the music was even better. Led Zeppelin, the Doobie Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, and the Eagles. I was embarrassed to be a virgin so I hid it from by friends who were keeping the same secrets themselves. We dreamt of surfing, boys, Karmen Ghias, going to Hollywood clubs but all we got was Rocky, King Kong, and Grease. At least we had Annie Hall, Cabaret, and . At night we drank wine coolers and beer, danced at parties, listened to the comedy albums of Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, and Robin Williams, watched Saturday Night Live in packs, and cruised Whittier Boulevard. Strange, but blow-jobs were considered sex and was the most intimate and forbidden act. It was okay to have sex because the worse thing was getting pregnant and Roe vs. Wade had taken care of that.

Rolling into the eighties I was in college and the party was going strong. We danced and drank and felt like adults. Doctors were handing out the pill and diet pills. Nights we'd drink and dance to Lionel Ritchie, the Gap Band, and....who cares there was no AIDS! What a miracle. I was attractive, young, a product of the sexual revolution, and I couldn't die from sex. The only people ostracized were the ones who weren't having sex...or at least claiming to.

But the AIDS virus changed it all and we were in shock. Then came technology and we were at least entertained. The internet, emailing and work became our new obsession. All done while wine-tasting, reading Harry Potter, blackening some poor fish, and smoking a cigar. Which of course brings me to Lewinsky. Clinton shocked even my generation when he said he didn't think blow jobs were sex acts. So, with one blow (pun intended), they changed oral sex to hooking up. And you can't get pregnant or AIDS from head.

Now it's all about blogging, texting, and Botox. We used to discuss music and sex and our heroes, now we talk about who is having what done and where you can get it cheapest.

I wonder what we will obsess about in the next couple decades? I just hope it is not Soylent Green. Which is not a vacation spot or a type of pot.

Seeing the Shadow by Dairyu Michael Wenger Sensei

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.—Marcel Proust You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.—Bob DylanThe film Groundhog Day demonstrates the wonder of living each moment as a totally new event. It follows a day in the life of weatherman Phil Connors, a sarcastic curmudgeon. He wakes upon the same day, Groundhog Day, again, and again, and again. His namesake, Phil the groundhog (himself a weatherman), sees his shadow, is frightened and goes back into his burrow, thus predicating six more weeks of Winter. Phil Connors is frustrated by living the same day over and over again. He wants to get somewhere else, find new circumstances, he tries to escape each day with the scenarios of his life. He pursues sex, but after a while it is a dead end. Crime is exciting but becomes tiresome. Drinking, therapy, suicide, finding a love relationship, all are explored. The habits and shadows of his life are found wanting.

Each action has consequences. This is the law of karma: he has a choice, but each choice leads to a new reality. Perhaps the turning point of the movie is when he tries to save a homeless man day after day after day, and, no matter what he does, the man dies. He really wants something and is powerless to insure its happening. We have freedom, but within limits. This is "samsara" in Buddhism, the cycle of becoming driven by our karmic intentional activity. We have desires and wants but we may never reach them. Eventually, through many days [lifetimes] he chooses a life of service, works through his demons, and breaks the cycle of Groundhog Day.Each moment becomes a new opportunity, so the same situation is brand new and his unique response leads to a unique result. If we recognize what is driving us, and clarify our true intention, the unexamined shadows are no longer about some solely external reality or objective weather, but about us. Each moment is a new beginning. Our projections and stance in the world can cast a long shadow on our lives, and the Spring of each moment is postponed for a long Winter. If you examine and test your perceptions, each moment brings forth a new world. If we lead an unexamined life, we feel each day is different, but it is really a rerun of our habits. If we examine a disciplined life closely, each instant can blossom into a unique flower. This film parallels Buddhist practice. In a training temple, the wake-up bell rings the same time every day. You go to the same place, wear the same clothes, and follow the same routine, and yet each moment is unique. Not distracted by your desire for changed conditions, you can live each moment not knowing what it will bring, seeing the familiar landscape with new eyes. Phil Connors in the end "wins the girl." He gives up trying to possess her, so that true intimacy, true participation, can occur. Affecting and being affected by each other and each thing is the true interpenetration of self and other. The cycle of samara is broken, his shadows are seen through, and each moment blossoms. As in the tenth ox-herding picture, Phil Connors comes out of his burrow to the market place with gift bestowing hands. He sees the shadow of his reflections and bows to it, as it must to him.

Poem #4

There's a brief magical time
when I lie in bed
cuddling my warm lap top.

The sleeping pill starts its lull-a-bye
pulling me to the soft spot
Where consciousness, sub-consciousness,
and unconsciousness meet.

I write, and post, and chat.
My thumbs dash off misspelled texts,
I blog and my thoughts mingle
With Queen Mab as my editor.

In the morning, I awake.
Cookie boxes, water bottles and socks
Amid books, papers and dreams.

I open my laptop and begin
To retrace my dreams and ego droppings
Left under a URL pillow.

So Screwed

Co-dependence makes sense.

It came as a shock to me when my therapist told me I was co-dependent. Even after she told me and I skimmed a few books, I didn't get it. I remember asking people, "How is being a good, loyal wife any different than being co-dependent?"

I stick. I put on a smile, take a Xanax, and stick. I try like a saint to fix it and endure...both of my chief ingredients in my formula to a happy marriage. After 10 years of a pleasant marriage, my husband became a gambler and a verbally abusive alcoholic. He had always lied so that wasn't new. For the next 5 years, he ruined us financially, insulted and degraded me, and terrified our children. Finally, I  left with my girls after another especially rugged five years of rabbit punches to my sanity. And then, after months of arrests, frauds, and vulgar voice mails, he joins AA and gets better.

Now he wants to make it up to me and make amends. He is better than he has ever been. Kind, thoughtful, loving, reflective, and sober.

However, this one fact is impaled in the back of my mind and I cannot extricate it: He was bad when I was there, and he got better when I was gone.

Oh, yeah, co-dependence is a mother-fucker.