Disaster Plans, Part 2

I was running down the Riverview Trail and literally ran into a woman I know from church.

[I love that my Unitarian Universalist congregation is called "church." It's such a crowd-pleaser.  The subtext works in two directions: To my atheist pals, I'm saying, "don't worry, it's Unitarian, you know, not really 'church,' - and to my religious pals, I'm saying, "see? I'm going to Church, not hell," and everyone's happy. And if you believe that, well...]

So, she’s out searching for ragweed seeds for some research study, and she randomly tells me, “Yeah, I carry my cell phone because several years ago a woman was raped on this trail in broad daylight, the guy was acting strangely, but you know,” and I looked down at my cell-phone-less hands and thought about the guy I’d seen a few minutes prior dragging some branches around for no apparent reason and started thinking, Oh, he’s making a place to rape people, and started calculating if I could run faster than a rapist.

I don’t even know if rapists run. I don’t even know how they rape runners. Do they trip them up? Do they use invisible wire? Poison darts? Do they ask for the time? Are they also joggers? Are they walking dogs? Do they rape women with dogs? Do they rape women who listen to iPods? Do rapists wear good running shoes?

I just don’t know. If I look like I’ve been running pretty hard, does that make the would-be rapist consider me an easier catch, because I’ll probably be too tired to escape?

On the other hand, when I’ve been running pretty hard I get really really reddish-purple in the face and sweaty, and though I know rape isn’t about attraction, I can’t see a snotty, sweaty, purple-faced person being much bait.

Then again, I’m not a rapist. And these are things I don’t know.

I’m also not sure how much a cell phone helps in situations like this. If a rapist corners me, will I have time to say, “Hold on while I dial 911,” or will I just speed dial a friend and hope they answer and hear what’s going on?

Or is the cell phone more to leave on the trail so the people investigating the crime have a piece of evidence? I remember watching “Murder, She Wrote,” and how the victims in those cases were smart enough to die with their hands in the shape of the letter of their murderer’s first name – or to grab a clue – or a piece of hair. I was pretty impressed. Still, on the whole I preferred watching “Scarecrow and Mrs. King.”

Anyway, it’s hard to know how much to worry about rapists when you go running. It’s hard to know how to balance wanting a break from the electronic web for some downtime in nature and the possible need to get help should a rapist or a snake appear.

Today when I was running it also crossed my mind that I could choke to death on all those little gnat-bugs. But I can’t exactly run without breathing.

I know, I know – there’s a harmony somewhere around being mindful and careful vs. paranoid – but I do find it difficult to achieve. Rapists aren’t like snakes; you can’t just ignore them, knowing they’re scared of you, too. Though wouldn’t it be nice if they were. It would be nice to think there was a way to identify them ahead of time, by their stripes, the shape of a moustache. I know so many women who have been assaulted by both strangers and family members – and no two are alike.

I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want the women I love to be vulnerable.

But being a woman often means you have a lot of factors to negotiate. And there’s a part of me that feels a lot of anger about that- that a world is shaped by trauma, warped by pain, and victimization gets passed from one person to the next. Trust is hard to achieve.

It’s kind of what I wanted to rant about to some young boys I passed on the trail a few weeks ago – they seemed to be on a field trip. I ran by and heard one boy complain to the other, “Why didn’t she say hello? Why won’t anyone say hello? What is wrong with these people?”

I almost pivoted on my heel to say, “Listen, kid; this is not the nice society you think it is. I’d love to believe we were all a polite community, too. But just try being a woman by herself – when you look a man in the eyes, or smile, wave, he thinks you are opening yourself up to him – giving permission to judge, to ogle – you have to keep boundaries up. And I don’t want to have to feel pressured to smile at people. Now think about that and go write a paper.”

I wonder – if you are a woman, when you are by yourself, do you feel more vulnerable? Do you have strategies to keep yourself cloaked, as it were? And do you have disaster plans?

The Secret Imagination: Part II

In the recent edition of Yoga Journal, Sally Kempton writes:

Imagination – our ability to create images not available to the sensory system – is arguably our greatest faculty for evolving human consciousness. In order to transform ourselves and our world, we need to be able to leap out of the familiar and into the unknown. … the imagination can help us begin to replace our internal patterns, especially the ones that keep us limited and stuck. If we can reimagine our sense of who we are, we can change our experience of life. If you can imagine yourself, say, free of suffering, you’ve taken the first step toward that freedom.

Later in the article she connects our internal imagination with external acts, pointing out that:

If you’re spending time during your day imagining yourself as filled with compassion, it doesn’t take you long to notice that you speak to people differently and even treat yourself with much more subtlety and kindness.

So yesterday, for “shits and giggles” as a favorite person used to say – (I won’t go into the images that comes into my head when I hear that phrase – don’t want to sully your imagine and bring about the wrong kind of transformation!) – I “tried” “The Secret.” Caveat – I have avoided the book and movie or any other description of this completely – I only followed the vague idea I heard from my therapist – who was also skeptical, but did wonder what would happen if I tried it.

Item #567 you can do when you don’t have a job: Experiment with New Agey psycho- hijinks (next week, Tarot cards and a colonic cleansing).

I performed a kind of meditative visualization exercise and wrote down five things I wanted to happen that day. They were:

1. To be told “I love you” by a certain someone

2. For someone to offer a job or job interview

3. For sandalwood perfume oil to reappear in my life

4. To have a stranger flirt with me (reassure my ego!)

5. For someone from my past to warmly contact me and inquire as to how I am doing

The Results

Now, here’s the funny thing. Basically, all of these items “came true” or came to fruition – but before you get excited about the possibility of a magic recipe, let’s recall the insights from Kempton, summarized above – the act of the imagination in the mind can have force and expression in the body, transferring from the world of ideas to the world of actuality a wish, a possibility, a desire.

Example: The basketball player envisions the perfect slam dunk before the game, and her chances of actually performing that slam dunk “in real life” go up immensely.

So here’s basically how it went down.

1. I arranged coffee with the certain someone and though I had no expectations, the love was indeed reciprocated.

2. From the networking I’ve been doing through Facebook, a person I hardly know connected me to others I don’t know, and it looks like at least one of them will need me for work.

3. I went online and ordered the sandalwood.

4. I went out to a social gathering; someone flirted with me.

5. I spent a large part of the day beefing up my Linked In profile by writing recommendations for past colleagues, and indeed, someone from my past did warmly email me, as a result.

So, we’re not talking about mystical alchemy here. We’re talking about how writing down the things I wanted from the day in a positive manner – as in, I wasn’t thinking “here’s my goals to accomplish,” which would have pressured me with onerous tasks, but rather “here’s what I want, deep down inside, but who knows” – provoked me to take steps that made the things I desired occur. I wasn’t really focused on the outcomes I had listed. I just acted out of desire – to connect, to be near a loved one, to smell better.

This isn’t magic or rocket science. It’s kind of the principle of the book Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow – ridiculous, but really when you engage in what you love and desire, when you – yes, here I go again! Joseph Campbell alert! – follow that stinkin’ bliss, but not for the accomplishment or the reward but for the love of the thing in itself – then you truly enter into the kind of fruitful relationship with yourself and your work/art/relationships that allows you to be fully present and ultimately fully satisfied.

One of those paradoxical laws that is so simple and hard, it must be true.

So, no: I’m not a “The Secret” convert. But this experiment did underscore for me

• the importance of giving so that you can receive – without expectations;
• doing what you love out of love;
• and sometimes, when you want something – well, you can go online and order it.

Honesty vs. Kindness

A woman told her husband of 13 years, I don’t love you anymore.

She was going through intense therapy. A few months later, she realized, No, she did love him. But it was too late. He’d been hurt. There marriage ended soon afterward.

The woman – my mother – was being honest with her husband – my father. And isn’t honesty the best policy?

This causes me to have one of those internal debates that then drives me to write before I start talking to myself in public. I can argue some opposing points:

1) In a relationship, you don’t always need to be 100% divulging all the time of everything in your heart. Keep your mouth shut. The truth might take some time to surface. If my mother had waited a few months, she could have avoided hurting my father and losing him forever.

2) It’s a good thing my mother told dad how she felt, even though it was hard, and possibly a passing feeling. The fact that he couldn’t hear it and handle it is proof that they needed to split up.

3) My mother told the truth, and maybe regretted it, but it was the truth, and she should have stood by it, instead of backtracking when the consequences hurt.

4) Mom should have valued his feelings and the relationship over her need to spill her guts out. The edit button is helpful to preserve relationships.

What do you think?

There are definitely times when speaking everything on your mind is just not the kindest way to be honest. Telling your boss her breath stinks, for instance. Telling your neighbor you hate the way she does her hair. Confessing to your spouse that you wish he would lose some weight. These may all be truthful, honest statements – but do they reflect the truth of your care and concern for that person?

The other thought here goes back to good old Jesus – love thy neighbor as thyself. Be honest and truthful to yourself. So this means, in my mother’s case, that she needed to honor her truth. Maybe that didn’t mean telling Dad she didn’t love him anymore – but maybe she could tell him she was in a really hard place. Maybe she needed some things from him to honor the process she was going through – or maybe telling him her feelings was indeed honoring her truth, conducting herself with integrity, and despite his reaction, she should be proud of herself.

I’m sure there isn’t – is there ever! – a black and white answer to this conundrum. For myself, I grew up very much pleasing other people whatever it took in terms of playing down or shaving off any rough edges poking through that might cause displeasure or provoke alarm. Speaking my truth with kindness for myself and others is a challenge I am just now learning to tackle.  Letting others be responsible for their reactions is a crucial part of it.

The truth can definitely be a sword.

Is it possible to wield it gently?

Where Do All the Hippies Go?

To the tune of “Where did all the cowboys go…”

It’s a strange Cville phenomenon: Hippies appear in some expected, some unexpected places – like little rabbits peeking out of the undergrowth. You can find them fingering the organic cabbage at IY or playing the ukele on the downtown mall. Sometimes you’ll spot one randomly biking on an odd stretch of 250. There were several of them at the Scottsville 4th of July gathering, doing the ‘country’ thing. And yes, many are at the Tea Bazarr or your nearest yoga studio.

What’s the problem, you ask.

This place is expensive, I answer. Really expensive. And for all the fuss about the artsyness of this place, it’s not the kind of grungy, downhome environment that normally breeds hippies. Cville’s downtown mall features a store for dog and horse lovers, for goodness’ sake. It supports chic and overpriced paper shops. There aren’t any head shops or incense coops, you know what I’m saying?

So, where do they go? Where do they live? How do they afford it?

Current theories:

a) They all secretly turn into Cville businesspeople when I’m not looking – the Chill-powered execs in Chinos and blue shirts with ties – the dreds are really wigs -

b) There’s an underground commune where they cohabitate

c) They’re squatting in Keswick

d) They all secretly turn into rednecks when I’m not looking

I’m guessing this is all offensive enough to inspire some comments. But truly, I really do want to know. The hippies I knew when I was at college in Richmond actually did manage to scrape by on pennies and had several Africa houses to support their incense habits. That made sense to me. I knew where they went. There was cheap, greasy housing and cheap, greasy food and an abundance of hippies made sense.

But here? I just don’t get it. Can someone clue me in?

A Call For Poets of the New Reality

When I went to the Ani DiFranco concert a couple weeks ago, I didn’t expect

a) to fall in love with her as a performer, or

b) to find myself moved deeply, reminded of a passion born within me years ago in graduate school that I had somewhat forgotten about.

Yet both (a) and (b) happened when Ani and her band played the song “The Atom.” The lights seemed to get misty and the song had a husky quality to it as she sang:

the glory of the atom

begs a reverent word

the primary design

of the whole universe

yes, let us sing its praises

let us bow our heads in prayer

at the magnificent consciousness

incarnate there

Not only was a someone offering musical worship of a “scientific” particle of matter, but later in the song our troubled relationship to nature through the cause of science connects to our environmental crisis:

human beings are a cross

between monkeys and ants

you can see us from your spaceship

melting the polar ice caps

with our arroagance

summon a congress of angels

dressed in riot gear

we’ve got ourselves a serious situation

down here

It was gorgeous, moving.

Years ago, in graduate school, I took a class with Robert Nadeau, a historian of science who, along with a noted physicist, has written a number of books on “the new science,” quantum mechanics and new biology, that argue that what we learn from these new studies undermines the dualistic Cartesian and Newtonian thought that still dictates our philosophical concepts – in the humanities and elsewhere. They show that principles of nonlocality and complementarity that appear in the latest science give us new models for understanding humanity’s place in the world – we are a part of the whole, quite literally. And they stress that without this new understanding, we will continue to erode this world, and ourselves.

But Nadeua, in class and in his work, feels strongly that our culture is not going to change through intellectual argument alone. He calls for “poets of the new reality” to infuse scientific revelations with spirituality, knowing, it seems, that reason alone won’t have the heft to shift such imbedded ideals and behaviors. He and Kafatos say, speaking about the ecological crisis, that

the global revolution in ethical thought and behavior that is prerequisite to human survival may not occur unless intellectual understanding of the character of physical reality is wedded to profound religious or spiritual awareness… central to this vision would be a cosmos rippling with tension evolving out of itself endless examples of the awe and wonder of this seamlessly interconnected life… the astonishing fact of our being.

I found this quote in one of my papers, in which I tried to show how some contemporary poets seem to be attempting to use scientific fact to create a new theoretical landscape in which to consider ourselves no longer dominant masters of a subjugated earth, no longer alienated outcasts caught in Nietsche’s prisonhouse of the mind, no longer either separate and in opposition to the physical world nor completely, Romantically merged with it, but existing within it, and it within us, in a complementary, “both/and” framework.

Reading what I wrote about this reminded me how inspired I was at the time to write poetry that could do this important work… and how later, I felt like I found in Unitarian-Universalism a possible foundation for the spiritual piece of  “the new reality”…

But in the midst of things, I had kind of forgotten about those idea. Listening to Ani the other night, I was heartened to feel that she, too, is a poet of the new reality. A song about the atom could have been a goofy They Might Be Giants anthem; instead, there was a loving, mystical quality to the music that made her words powerful.

And while I like The Streets’ song about our environmental crisis, “Dodo,” I believe that human beings aren’t going to be motivated to do what they need to do to save the planet by being confronted with a pessimistic dismissal of our value. It has the same empty effect as telling a kid that smoking a cigarette will kill her. Of course,she doesn’t want to die; but death is so far off, and so inevitable, and the wagging finger so chiding, all she does is light up another one.

When that same kid gets pregnant, though, and becomes aware of what smoking will do to the baby she feels kicking inside of her, she might be more motivated to stop smoking because of the hope of new life present and heavy within her. Hope and love will encourage her to change where a picture of doom only added to her nonchalance about her health.

I had a book of stories as a child that included one with what must be a common theme. It’s about some grimy old guy in a shack who gets saddled with an orphan baby while working in a mining camp. The baby’s sweet beauty makes the guy realize she needs a clean blanket; then he sees she needs a clean bed; then he sees she needs something pretty to look at, so he puts out flowers; soon his shack and his clothes and everything is spotless, clean, beautiful – his transformation spurred by beauty, adoration, love, and the sense of responsibility that such love imbues.

How does all this relate to The Park, you ask? The litter challenge. People aren’t going to stop tossing their Dorito bags on the oak tree roots because of a posted admonishment, even the threat of a fee. So what about the beauty of the place? Can we write poetry about it, recite with missionary zeal? Should Ani DiFranco do a song about it, preaching its glory and divinity?

Those of us who want to “save the environment” yearn for “everyone” to feel that we belong to the earth, to experience the special relationship, so that we treat it as we would a mother – this is familiar language.

In the microcosm of a small little park, how does that larger vision translate to the concrete space? How can we save the earth if we can’t even have enough care to stop littering on one square of grass and trees?

One thing I have noticed about this park, which saddens me greatly. There aren’t very many visitors to it. I happen to know there are plenty of families with kids along the surrounding streets – I’ve met some of them; I see their abandoned toys in their front yards when I take walks. But the park is more often than not empty. Why?

Is it that people just play in their own little squares of owned turf? Are they afraid of mingling with others?

If people felt ownership of this common space, perhaps it wouldn’t be neglected, trashed. Someone would care about it. It would shine proudly, like all the gleaming cars in our driveways…but maybe we are too isolated in our single family homes these days to know how to have a common space. Maybe we can’t understand and live out a harmonious relationship to the earth because we can’t even find a way to heal the split between ourselves and our communities, our neighbors down the street.

I don’t have much of an answer for how to get people in the park, how to get people loving it, like it is a baby in a shack.

All I know is, I believe that we have to start where we are, with what’s before us.

Each piece, each park, is part of and reflects the whole.

call me baby girl

As I stop to talk with my neighbor, a long-time resident of our neighborhood, he is parked next to the park with a truck and with a couple of other guys, all decked out in hunting camoflage; he and his pals intermittently yell out hellos and hays at the trucks that drive by. Almost every one of them. The feeling I get is: Joe knows everybody. Everybody knows Joe.

When I first moved to Fluvanna County several years ago, it was the same thing: People had been around a long time. Waving on the roads – one or two fingers would do if you were driving – was customary, the presumption or norm being that somehow, everyone there knows everyone else – or their kin.

What’s interesting to me, though, are experiences I’ve had where the friendly gestures extend to strangers on what seems like outstretched good faith. I’ve noticed that in three distinct places:

1) in the cockney areas of East London, where I lived as a child – women at the fruit stands calling everyone “Love” and “Ducks” and “Duckey,” brightly inclusive, even of us odd Americans

2) in some rural areas of “the South,” where the cliche of “Southern hospitality” has its roots, perhaps – “Honey” applied to me, an obviously nonnative with a Californian accent -

and now, 3) I’ve noticed people on the bus interacting with familiarity, even when I know they are meeting for the first time. The thing is, though, my “stranger” status seems more problematic than in the other two examples. I feel very, very conspicuously white.

Yesterday, on the bus, the chipper lady next to us similarly seemed to know everybody on the bus, and called one of them, a woman as old as herself, “baby girl.” “hey, baby girl!”

This made me want to call other people baby girl and to be called baby girl, even though I’m clearly not a baby or a girl, because it seemed so loving, so sweet. I have it as one of my goals to always see other people as former infants, to remember how we all start off and retain in the core of us very innocent, tender beings who want to be held and crave love.

I don’t come from a class/race background that sprinkles conversations with the sweet nothings of Honey, Ducks, or Baby Girl. In fact, I was coming of age in a time when terms like that were suspect – elements of a patriarchal system we were being taught to resist. Don’t call me Baby.

But man, I like the loosness, the casual aspects of these cultures. I’m sick of the uptight middle class brigrade of Appropriateness and Reserved Respect. I would like to request that everyone start honking and waving and calling each other tender names. Next time you see me on the street, wave, will you?