Enlightenment (Still Don’t Know What it is)

I’m in the here and now, and I’m meditating
And still I’m suffering but that’s my problem
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
—Van Morrison

I woke today with Van Morrison’s voice in my head. He was singing the chorus to Enlightenment, and boy do I need some this week.

My next book chapter has been done before, but I feel I have a new slant that’s pretty compelling. The book is on creativity, and this chapter’s theme is creating a space for yourself (both physical and psychological). I had small seeds of ideas in my head and couldn’t wait to get alone and write. Tom had Gavin for the night, and possibility lay stretched out before me. I didn’t know I was about to get a loud lesson in my own healthy need for space, the psychological kind.

I turned down an invitation for a quick bite at McDonald’s with Tom and Gavin. But I faltered when someone else asked me to dinner. This someone is very close, and still someone I want to protect, so I’ll leave it as a Male Someone who is very dear to me. I told this Male Someone that I would meet him at Penny Lane, a local restaurant.

My gut said that I needed space, but I often view my need for space as selfish. And if it’s space so I can create, I seem to double the guilt. I have great quotes on my computer that remind me otherwise. My favorite is attributed to Nelson Mandela:

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

Anyway, with this particular person I have a particularly high guilt quotient. We go way back, and he is mentally ill. I try not to define him that way, but the illness keeps rearing its ugly head. I want so much to be helpful to him.

This dinner out left me in tears. My special Male Someone said some cruel things, and I want to think it was the illness talking. But over the years he has found many ways to be cruel. On this particular night, even when he could see I was vulnerable, he was relentless in his attacks. I was honest with him about how he’d hurt me, but still he pressed on. Finally I walked away. I am still sick about the whole experience.

I am a proficient advice-giver. I have a background in psychiatry, and a general affinity for being a good listener. Except to myself. I always tell my girlfriends Listen to your gut. But my gut was screaming to me that I needed time alone, and that this person (at least at this moment) was toxic, and still I sat there.

Van Morrison has more to say on enlightenment:

Good or bad baby
You can change it anyway you want
You can rearrange it

In this particular circumstance, this statement seems nearly impossible to me. I know that I can’t change this Male Someone or his circumstances. But thinking more about it, I can change how I interact with him. I can limit our contact. I can walk away sooner if it gets ugly. I can channel all my angst into a brilliant piece of creative work. In fact, maybe I should have written that night, after the tears, instead of giving up and going home.

I often wake up with a song in my head, and I think my “song for the day” tells me what I need, the way other people have prophetic dreams. All the intellectual puzzling and postulating I can muster is not enough to solve some problems, or even to understand them. The spiritual realm beckons once again, and I’ll again set a tentative foot on the path to some practice, some regimen, some religion that speaks to the deeper parts of me, to the need for peace that “passes all understanding”.

It has been a stressful week all around, and I have suffered from poor sleep. I look at least 5 years older in the mirror. Gavin, my little live-in-the-moment guru, brought me back around in such a sweet way when he woke up today. In the way that 4-year-olds do, he stammered and stuttered his way to a very important question: If it….if it….if it rains today……if it rains today and then it stops……can we jump in puddles? Somehow that question and my yes reply made everything feel much better.

Pedicures, Prose, and the Date that Got Away

I had the afternoon off yesterday. After weighing all of the possible pleasures, I found myself up on a pedestal with pants rolled up, feet soaking. I had made it to a long-awaited pedicure.

A young woman who spoke little English worked hard on my feet, which I’m sure were in rougher shape than the other ladies around me. I watched the practiced customers and watched for cues: When did they give the tip? Where did they put the flip flops when they left?

I was supposed to be reveling in this rare, pampered moment, and all I thought about was, when will she be done so I can go write? I had a printed draft and some other materials in my car, and could have kicked myself (if my foot wasn’t being massaged) for not bringing them in with me. But, had I been so clever, I’m not sure I could have written well in that cushy leather chair. I didn’t like this scenario, this stranger laboring over my unpruned feet. I didn’t like that none of the customers talked to the workers, even if there was little English to exchange. It felt like the Twilight Zone. It wasn’t me.

Still, my toes are pretty this morning, nails sweetly rounded, in a glossy cherry red. And I might go back sometime, at least at the start of next summer. But as I sat in that chair (can you believe it has a massage mechanism built in?) I realized that I finally know myself. I know what turns me on, and it’s not salon services, not even a massage chair. I seem to keep falling for the idea that I should be better polished: I spent a lot of money getting my hair colored before I admitted that I preferred my $6.99 box of Clairol. And I spent a couple of hours getting a pedicure when I would have rather sat, unpolished, in the Starbucks down the block, writing up a storm.

I did have some time, when I finally got home, to write on the back deck. I propped my pretty feet up and marked up my latest draft. But I had lost a lot of momentum, and mostly I was just cranky.

My crankiness was compounded when I heard that we had to cancel our anniversary date (a major reason for the pedicure!). The babysitter couldn’t make it. This particular date meant a lot to me, because I was going to actually prepare for it. The usual scenario is that we pick Gavin up together and drop him at my mom’s. I am often still in the clothes I wore that day, or if I change it is in haste. We tend to have to come home right about when we’re unwinding. We smile at each other wryly and say that was nice. But we wish we had more time and energy, more romance.

But this time, in honor of our 16 years and a distant memory of dates where I actually felt sexy, I was going to take a shower, iron my outfit, and dress up with shoes that showcased my sparkly toes. We were going to stay out later than usual. We were going to have Tibetan food.

I thought about our relationship, and how we keep plugging away at making it work. And how, in this phase of our lives, the disappointments (when it comes to romance) seem too plentiful. Work and childcare demands make time alone together, time when we are not exhausted, a rare commodity. I can see how couples drift apart, and the only preventative measure I can see is to keep at it, to pay attention, to (borrowing a phrase from the Long Island Railroad) mind the gap.
As always, art echoes life. I am leaving the honeymoon period behind on this book. I’ve drafted 4 chapters and have some solid ideas for my proposal, and I am just plain tired. I love the writing process, but it is hard work. It is a constant struggle to find the time, and to find new approaches that keep my juices flowing. I’ve had ideas that sputtered and died before, and I want this one to be different. And I feel in my gut that this book will actually happen. But, like my marriage, it’s not going to happen on its own. As someone once sang, I have to keep on keeping on.

It’s a busy Saturday: haircuts, swim lessons, and a kid’s birthday in store. Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and I have Tom’s cards and present at the ready. I’m looking forward to our family time together. Tom’s only requirement is that we go “someplace cool”, as the temperature’s supposed to soar. Maybe we can squeeze in a quick discussion, plans to recapture the date that got away.

Tall Blog, No Foam

(No Saturday blog this week. Just a short entry before we head to Vermont.)

Part of me is cynical about Starbucks, that mega mocha mecca that has so many of us hooked. I suspect that even the retro background music is coldly calculated to induce more coffee purchases. But I must admit I liked Tony Bennett crooning and Nina Simone wailing while I drank my decaf cappuccinos and drafted another book chapter on Wednesday.

This was not so unusual: I often maximize these child-free moments (Tom took Gavin to the mall) to catch up on writing, and my breakaway sessions have me glowing. But the days that followed my Starbucks interlude felt even more promising.

I mentioned last week that I sometimes struggle with integrating my writing into day-to-day existence. Just writing that activated a switch somewhere, and since then I have acted more like the writer I want to be. Writing feels more like a practical matter, and less like a far away dream. I have printed things to read en route, popped open my laptop just to add a thought or two to the latest chapter, and started carrying a disk wherever I go. I have broken through an invisible barrier, the one that saved "real" writing for the undisturbed moments that surface fairly infrequently.

I know I am attached to this book, because I carry a disk separately from my computer. In the unlikely event that someone steals my ancient, 20-pound laptop, I will still have the latest version in my purse. I had to create my own paper holder for the floppy disk (not even sure they make floppy cases anymore! Time to upgrade.).

Tom and I are married 16 years today. Another milestone to savor, but we are postponing our celebration. It's a tall order to get packed, and to get our little family + my mom, brother, and their dachshund out the door before 9 AM. There is little room for romance in a crowded pickup truck!

Until next Saturday...

The Sound: My Silent Witness

Today I am toasting the Long Island Sound. I have lived on both sides, and it seems to have witnessed so many of my happy moments. On the New York side, we spent our early married years living close to the Sound, in Glen Cove and then Huntington. We always seemed to end up near the water. It was a natural follow up to our childhoods near the Great South Bay (Tom) and the Atlantic Ocean (me) on the opposite Long Island Coast. We both love the smell of low tide, and roll down our car windows at dusk, driving through the marshy areas of Connecticut’s shoreline, recalling memories made on both sides of the Sound.

My most recent Sound encounter was on Tuesday. I am still patting myself on the back for taking the day off and using it well. I dropped Gavin at Day Care and called Mercy Center at Madison from my cell phone. Yes, I could come for the day and use the facility. The fee, including lunch, was $15, surely the least I have ever paid for instant peace of mind.

What joy to wander an expansive, nearly silent mansion and find the perfect room to write! I set up my laptop in the enclosed sun porch overlooking the Sound. I had indulged in a large iced latte (Starbucks en route) and rarely drink caffeine these days, so I found myself taking rather frequent bathroom breaks. But except for this annoyance, I found I was capable of following the often-quoted advice to writers: apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. I propped my laptop on a small table and worked on three book chapters. I moved on to an essay I’ll submit this week. I relearned two lessons about writing: it is one of my biggest joys, and it is also just plain hard work. A reread told me that my chapters have a long way to go.

After lunch, I walked out to the patio. I felt torn between the pragmatic need to plug in (those darn laptop batteries die so quickly!) and the desire to be outside in the balmy, salty air. Then the heavens opened and I found that the patio was wired. I plugged into the outdoor outlet and was happy as a clam. I got so absorbed in writing that I didn’t notice the earth continued to rotate. It rotated me right out of the shade and my left arm turned red, then nearly maroon as I typed happily, obliviously. When I was typed out, I dozed in the shade, listening to a lone swimmer cut through small waves. Every time I massaged lotion into my sunburn this week, I thought back to my heavenly interlude.

I still struggle with integrating writing into my day-to-day existence, and wait for these magic windows to really be productive. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve made writing too sacred and separate. I want my writing to become more portable, to sometimes have my laptop on the couch while Gavin plays, to scribble edits on hard copy while he takes a bath. I know that writing and parenting can (sometimes) coexist happily when I let them.

I am hoping the rain stays away long enough for the Lyme Farmer’s Market, my personal sign that summer is truly on its way. I hope Gavin treasures the memory of visiting the stalls with me and my Mom, sampling cheeses and breads, stealing sips of my iced coffee, having an ice cream. The market is held on a dewy, expansive lawn, and the coffee roasters are just up the hill. Cows and horses graze just over the stone wall. It couldn’t be more picturesque, and the crowd is always relaxed. Back at my mom’s house, we often walk down to, of course, the Long Island Sound.