Can a Leopard Change Its Spots?

How do you know if you've actually done any work? You go to classes. You do the practices. You change your eating habits. You keep peeling back the layers that have, you thought, kept you safe. You keep showing up even when you don't want to, but you still don't know if your central beliefs about yourself and the way you navigate the world can fundamentally change.

How can you tell?

When every trigger you have gets pushed in a short period of time and you find that your responses are not the responses of the past. And, you find that you can't even really access those past responses. There's this whisper of a whisper, "Shouldn't I be feeling contraction? Shouldn't I be undone?" But the whisper has no place to stand, so it soon enough blows away. You are somehow no longer making assumptions about the present moment based on past experience. WTF? How did that happen?

We all have tendencies and patterns. My dad wrote to me, in my 11th birthday letter, that I resisted change more than anyone he'd ever known. That says something about an 11 year old! But it was a very perceptive observation, and perhaps a belief about myself that I have solidified, in part because it has truth to it, in part because it was something dad saw in me and so by holding on to it I was holding on to him, and in part because I didn't think there were options.

I have worked for most of my adult life on issues of attachment and aversion.  Generally speaking, attachments arise from our previous experiences of pleasure and happiness. Aversions emerge from previous experiences of pain and suffering. Over time, our sense of self-identity is largely formed by a long list of such likes and dislikes. We have a tendency to define ourselves as a collection of our previous emotional experiences. For me, these issues have surfaced most around times of change -- when a relationship ends, when someone dies, when others around me are changing and I don't want them to, when I am afraid of moving away from what no longer serves me.

For years I've had this line posted above my desk in my office:

Unconditional acceptance of whatever is arising in the present moment is absolute freedom.

I posted it so I would see it every day because I know my tendency is to resist whatever is arising. My tendency is to attach to a particular moment that rocked and hold on to it until it's dead. My tendency is to be sticky. To root myself so deeply I can't move. To solidify inside and outside.

When I figured these things out about myself, I thought that was a pretty big piece of work. I thought at least I will have greater awareness when I'm living my life. Now that I know I do this, at least I can not project my own stuff onto other people. But I didn't really think I could actually cellularly shift those things. I thought my job was to work with them because they would always be there (see the false assumption I had that there is permanence?)

In the past few weeks, I've been hit with everything that would have previously unmoored me. It started when Patrick Swayze died and I spent a few days crying for him and for dad. I could cry though, and go on with my day. It wasn't debilitating. It was cleansing. Then the following week was the one-year anniversary of my friend Jeffrey's death. In the past, I would have created a drama around that -- something along the lines of I'll never see him again. I'll never have another friend like him. I'll never see San Francisco the same way again. And on and on. I did experience sadness, but it welled up, moved, and was gone. I went to his Facebook page (one never really dies on-line) and left a note on his wall, along with many of his other friends.

I finished the final draft of The Writing Warrior and sent it to Shambhala a few days ago. This is the first book I've written that Jeffrey didn't read ahead of time. The first book that will not have his keen eye on the text. When a manuscript is finished, there is a period of silence. A space where there is nothing to do but wait for what is next. In the past, I would have attached to wanting the New Book NOW. I would have attached to how much I missed Jeffrey's input. How much I miss Jeffrey. But I didn't. I sent the book off and I am now waiting, both for the response from the editor and for the next book to start to speak.

But the biggest awareness of the internal changes occurred on Sunday at a workshop I attended. My fabulous friend Ciara attended as well. Ciara was on her way out of the state to a new life in Arkansas after the workshop. Cain was teaching the class, and he was on his way out of the country for a retreat. Ciara and I met in yoga and both studied a lot with Cain. We shared lots of growing together. We rubbed warm jade balls on our abdomens and coughed up ickiness. We poured salt water through our nostrils and did hours upon hours upon hours of shaking practice together.

I was already weepy by the time the class started. Cain had done a third cupping session with me on Thursday (see pictures below) and that one moved a ton of remaining sludge from a frozen shoulder I've been working on for several years. (If you're interested, the internet has info on Chinese cupping. I was going to attach a link to a video, but I thought it would be too much for my mom! And I have to admit, if I'd have seen the videos before I did it, I'm not sure I would have done it.)

After the cupping, I found myself spontaneously crying, leaking, essentially, from every possible place once the sludgy sticky water in me finally moved. I wept in a way that was more like washing off a muddy sidewalk than a weeping of attachment. I just let everything move. I also found freedom in my shoulders and back that I did not believe was possible. I felt like I had a whole new body, and that made more tears come. I just felt so grateful to be able to raise my arms above my head without contraction. Raising the arms seemed somehow connected to opening my lungs and my heart. Each time I did it, I felt freer, like I imagine a newborn must feel as she explores her new body. I didn't know how much blood was stuck in my shoulder until it moved.

In the past, if I knew I was going to an event that was going to involve saying good-bye to two people I cared about, I would have created a drama: This Is The Last Time The Three Of Us May Ever Practice Together. I would have decided that was a terrible thing, rather than a precious thing, and I would have held the as-yet-to-occur moment of good-bye as the Thing To Be Endured. I would have added my personal favorite storyline of abandonment. Of loss (based on a previous history of loss). I would have added the storyline of attachment and aversion -- I am Attached To My Practice Continuing As it Has Been and I am Adverse to Anything (ANYTHING) Being Different From How It Currently Is. I would have spent the entire class focused on the ending storyline, rather than being in the class with the present moment experience. But I couldn't do that. The class was not about the ending of the class. It was only about the class.

Ciara and I went to lunch at the Raven at the break. Previously, the storyline in my head for that lunch would be: This May Be My Last Lunch With Her. I would try to attach to her not leaving. I would try to avoid the end of the lunch. I would not, in any way, be able to be present and enjoy the lunch. But I didn't do that either. We simply had lunch.

Class ended and Ciara and I went to say good-bye to Cain. I was weepy because I've been weepy now for weeks. Previously, I would have snuck out of the class to avoid actually saying good-bye. I wouldn't have been clean and clear about it. But this time, I told both of them how they helped me. I told both of them I was grateful. And we all said good-bye.

And I didn't die. :-) And I did not get tossed away. I couldn't even attach to trying to get tossed away. There was only the moment. I couldn't create the contraction that I would have experienced before. I just felt what I felt when I felt it.

I tried to bring back the feelings I was expecting to feel -- the contraction I was sure would come. The inevitable (I assumed) triggering of grief onto and into grief. But I couldn't. I felt sad and I felt grateful and I felt happy, all at once and one after the other. 

I'd been given a chance to see if the internal patterns I have previously shaped my identity around could change. And they did. I don't know when they fell away, but they are gone. And there's a freedom in that I didn't know was possible. The bruises on my back and shoulders are fading, but the space inside them is still there.

Whaddya think, Dad? I walked right into change. I walked right into the ending of a phase of learning. I walked right into sadness and it didn't stick to me. On the other side of it is the next right thing.

Now, note to self: don't attach to this ....  OK, OK. It's already different. Oh! Different again! And I'm still standing! Who'd have thunk it.

results of cupping 3 days afterwards (see, Mom, I'm smiling! It's OK)

 

back results of cupping 3 days afterwards 

 

my friend Ciara

One of the trainings with Cain a few years ago. 

(I'm in the green skirt and Cain's in the white shirt in front of me.)

You can see I'm not convinced I can move my shoulder like that!

Good Fences

Our house, July 2008

**The essence of this essay is true. The spatial details within the house have been rearranged.

Our house had not caught fire as I’d feared as a girl after watching the Walton’s house burn on TV, and then watching my father place his lit cigarette on the edge of the windowsill so he could kiss me good night. The house had not fallen to disrepair, as others on the street had, like the burnt yellow split level where my best friend had lived, or the one across the street, still the same chartreuse it was in 1980 where the cute bad boy with the long hair had worked on his black Mustang late into the night. The front door to our house had been repainted the same chalky red it had been when we lived here. My father had wanted to paint the house himself in 1977 because all strong Southern men could paint – should paint – their own houses. But he couldn’t. Or at least didn’t. The eaves were too high, his polio withered leg too weak, the fingerprints from his most recent heart attack tracked in blue across his chest.

“We’ll hire someone,” my mother said, and we did, and the eaves were painted the chalky red color we had hoped would symbolize vitality, a quality we no longer felt we had.

My father watched the young painters, flecks of dried red paint in their light hair, from the den as the Sunday afternoon golf matches droned underneath his thoughts. My mother worked on the lesson for her Sunday school class on the Remington typewriter that had both a red and black ribbon option, but no correction tape. Ben Hogan held the leader board for the day, but my father was not watching, not listening. He was watching the men – the boys really – with their strong legs and their strong hearts paint the ceiling of his family’s home. He was, perhaps, tracing the blue path across his chest with the fingers of his right hand while his atrophied left foot hung in his specially designed shoe. He was watching his children, who, for the moment at least, were not fighting. They were in the backyard also watching the young men who were painting the house. He might have wondered if his daughters wished for a father who could paint houses, or throw a baseball, or run behind a bicycle. His daughters wondered what the were having for dinner, hoping for spaghetti, expecting cube steak and string beans cold from the can.
  

When I walked up the driveway again at forty years old, two young men were still repainting the eaves. This time different men and a different color, though the spackles of thirty-year-old chalky red paint still dotted the brick side stairs.
  

“Do you want to come in?” they asked, and I had almost forgotten the need for permission to enter. It was, after all, my house.

Inside, the golf match wasn’t on. Ben Hogan wasn’t winning. My father was not sitting, not thinking, but the walls were exploding through the neutral beige and Navajo white they’d been painted to ensure a quick sale. The walls pointed to the windowsill of my girlhood bedroom where I feared the impending house fire would begin, where I feared the monster that took my father away one night and brought back an aged man, a graying, frightened, subdued man. This monster, the same monster that ate the other half of the pair of red mittens that always make it to school but never home, lived under every bed skirt, behind every closet door, inside the pockets of every winter coat.

The floor plan has been opened up. A wall knocked down to make a great room, ceilings depopcorned and raised, fans added and appliances updated. My room, however, was significantly smaller than it used to be; the closet wouldn’t hold a fraction of my current wardrobe. But the dead fly was still etched into the paint on the window frame of my bedroom, wings splayed open like a prehistoric fossil. As a child, I would run my fingertip over the outline of its wings, imagine how it died, drowning in beige paint, slowly realizing it was trapped. No matter how hard it tried to move it would never be anywhere but on this windowsill in this bedroom.

Outside the window was the orange fence, still standing after almost thirty years. The woman, hands on blue-flowered hips, watched me. Her hair had grayed, but I would have known her anywhere.

“I know the story of that fence,” I said to the two men with young bodies and strong hearts who were fixing up our house to resell. “When we moved to Arizona, we sold our house to a black couple. When we told our neighbor, the next day they built the fence. They stopped talking to us.”

The young men, young in the south of 2008, not the south of 1980, or the south of 1940, stopped installing the kitchen sink.

“They saved my dad’s life, you know,” I continued, even though these young Southern men were surely demonstrating ancient Southern politeness. “Her husband performed CPR while the ambulance was on the way.”  

The woman hadn’t moved from her driveway.

“Looks like she’s alone now.”

“Her husband died a few years back,” said one of the young men.

This woman, older than my mother, was frail enough that I could push her to the ground while my young self shouted at her all the things she’d always wanted to:

    You betrayed us!
    You abandoned us!
    You gave me a New Testament for my birthday and then built this fence!
    I am glad you are alone! I am glad! I am glad!

But I didn’t say any of that. I have driven here in a red convertible rented car. I will drive away in less than an hour. I can no longer hear the golf match, the Remington’s keys, my friends playing kickball in the yard across the street, my father’s limp left foot tapping the floor.  She is standing still, wearing a blue flowered housecoat and pink slippers, and I am glad.

I press my fingers one more time against the fly’s immutable skeleton. “Well, it’s sure been a long time.”
  

The young men, boys really, with their strong legs and strong hearts, nod to me. The house is so small now, it seems impossible it once held us all – mommy, daddy, sisters, and monster. I have grown through it and around it, my own strong heart, strong legs inching into the eaves, making sure the chalky red paint, the orange fence, the woman in the blue flowered housecoat, the ancient fly, do not dissolve into the same places as Ben Hogan’s win, my father’s blue-black scar, and the girl I used to be.

This is the fence now. It was orange when we moved in 1981.

 

This is the side of the house where there are still spackles of red paint.

This is where the fly is embedded in the window sill.

Baryshnikov Meets James Dean

Patrick Swayze is dead and I am crying.

I don't have time to cry now. I have to get to work, read papers, go to a curriculum meeting. But I am instead in my office at home destroying the makeup I just put on.

 I was nineteen when Dirty Dancing came out in August, 1987. My father and I went to see it in late August, just a few weeks before he died. As far as I know, it was the last movie he saw in a theater. I've always equated the last song of the film, "The Time of My Life", with Dad's death. I like to imagine, though I have no idea, that if Dad could have, he would have gone out singing that song.

When Patrick Swayze leapt from the stage into the audience in the final dance number, I like to think I felt a little like young girls felt when they saw Elvis for the first time. Swayze's virility, his presence, his devotion to the moment of the music still makes me catch my breath. To move, not because the next dance step calls for it, but to move because your body responds in full force and without your conscious direction to the music, is one of the deepest sexual and life-affirming things to witness.

Dirty Dancing was perhaps not the most intellectual of movies. Not the most challenging of films. But if you were a young woman in 1987, I'll bet you remember watching that man move across the screen and wiggle something awake inside of you. I'll bet you remember his line, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," and I'll bet you remember feeling something unexpected in your chest and in your spine when he looked Jennifer Grey straight on and with just a twitch of an index finger, made her shake.

Last week, I had to buy reading glasses. +1.50. The girl watching Patrick Swayze in 1987 couldn't imagine reading glasses. Couldn't imagine most of what her life has become, but most of all, couldn't imagine what it feels like to clearly no longer be the kid. Forty-one may be the new thirty-one -- whatever --  but perception and vitamins don't change the biology. I am stepping into a different space as I leave hippy clothes and peace signs and some of the openness of youth. I realize that there are things I will probably never do in this life. Some doors may open wider, but some doors do shut forever.

Friday is the 22nd anniversary of dad's death. Last night, Patrick Swayze died, and today I am crying. I am remembering that moment when it seemed, just like when Swayze leapt into the audience, that the future would always be huge, everlasting, ever expanding, and completely mine. 

Yes, Virginia, It'll Happen To You

Forty-one arrived earlier this month like a meal with too many beans. At first it was yummy and fabulous, and then later ...

I don't physically feel older, but let's just say I'm noticing some things that have probably been there for awhile. Case and point: the sagging breast.

Gents, feel free to stop reading.

Ladies? Here's my truth. I've never been one who was really jazzed about having a large chest. I'm always amazed women pay for such an inconvenience (shirts don't close, back pain, shoulder pain, chest pain, bras that have more steel in them than the Brooklyn bridge). I appreciate mine because without them I'd look like a pear, but since I never wanted children, their biological purpose never mattered to me. I wanted to check a box on the way into this world -- NO. Won't be needing breasts this time around. Thanks anyway. Want to be able to wear strapless things. Want to once, just once, go out in public without a bra without looking like I should have a can of Pabst in my hand and chewing tobacco between my lips.

But Something. Has. Happened.

My bras hurt. I can't wait to get out of them. I am burned by the straps, pricked by the closure. I thought I must have changed sizes, though I haven't had any weight fluctuations. A few weeks ago, I reached the point of almost taking my bra off in the middle of Cost Plus because it was driving me so insane. It had been a little over a year since my last bra fitting, so I thought I should give it another shot.

"These trying economic times" have taken away my Lane Bryant store from the mall. The only store in town where a woman with a chest larger than a 36C can enter and know she'll be among sisters. But it closed last year, and those of us who require bras be functional not decorative, are left proverbially flapping in the breeze. If I lived in a larger town, there'd be more options, but in Prescott, well, I'm left with the perpetual youth and size 2 that is Victoria's Secret.

The Victoria's Secret in Prescott is nothing like the Victoria's Secret in an urban area. Here, the mannequins are in cute PINK pajamas holding tiny stuffed dogs. Down in Phoenix, the mannequins are splayed open in the display window, red and black push up bra and thong advertising what they're selling. But even here, in a store about sleep not sex, a woman knows whether or not she belongs in Victoria's Secret. I do not. But I was at a crossroads. I'd have to venture into the girly-girl pink store and find a bra fitter.

Flashback to fifth grade. I'm the only girl who has to wear a bra. Not because I want to. Because I have to. I learn to cross my arms over my chest. I learn to slouch. I learn to wear shirts with necks up to my chin. I learn to be embarrassed of my own body.

Girly-girl pink. Fifth grade. And, lo and behold, a bra fitter who's in the fifth grade. Really, I'm sure she's at least eighteen. Well, seventeen. I'm sure she's at least an A cup. 34" around? Maybe. After she's had a cheeseburger at least. Or three.

"Ma'am?" ugh. "Do you need help?"

She's adorable. She's eager. The yellow measuring tape is longer than she is. She has the body type I've always wanted. She has no idea I want to squash her.

"Yes. My bras are driving me crazy. I wanted to get a bra fitting."

She whips into Bra Fitting Professional and whisks me off to the back of the store.

Ladies, I've got to tell you -- I want a bra fitting from a woman who has to actually wear a bra. I want a bra fitting from a woman ten times my size who knows how they pinch and hurt and squeeze and don't fit right and can tell me honestly which style is really going to work and which one is going to feel good for a week and then begin its slow torture. Which ones won't make the dreaded uniboob, and which ones won't create that boingy-boingy bounce that makes you feel like you should stuff dollar bills down your chest.

But this was not to be. The only other person working in the store was also very young. Very petite. If I ever own a bra store, I'm staffing it with women who wear 50F cup sizes. No one will be intimidated to walk in my bra store. But I digress.

When I was about ten, my grandmother and I went shopping. My grandmother is the only family member to also have a large chest. We were in the fitting room and I accidentally saw her without her shirt on. I will never forget. Never. I remember clutching my hands over my new breasts and begging them not to ever do that.

Age and gravity are the great equalizers.

The very young very small girl is efficient and sweet. "38DD." She smiles like she just gave me a cookie.

"Are you sure? That's the size I'm wearing and nothing fits."

"Ma'am." ugh. "You know that over, um, time, they move."

Yep. Just like all those beans I had for dinner.

You little girls best be gettin' out of my way.

And One Day There Was Nothing Left

the center of the backyard patio

The clearing out began in my twenties with money. Credit card debt. A job that really didn't pay much at all. A shrieking loneliness that seemed to be filled only by the transactions in the stores, the exchanges with the clerks. It wasn't the objects I purchased that I craved. It was the conversations. Phoenix was so terribly lonely.

The clearing moved on in my thirties with grief work. Jungian analysis. Movement work. Yoga. Writing. Healing. Returning to stuffed pain and yanking it free, sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter. Learning to be in relationships again -- my friend Carol Anne, my friend Gus. Letting people into my house again after swearing that following the abusive relationship I had in college, I would never ever ever (not never, not no how, not never) let anyone into my space again. My space would be safe.

Before I moved to Prescott, Gus helped me clean out my dark hidden room. He had to kick the door down to get into it. I'm never terribly subtle in my work. We moved out boxes and boxes and boxes. I recarpeted the house. Tiled the kitchen floor. And then moved.

Then, the body called. Excessive weight. Imbalanced food. Sticky painful shoulder that made me feel sixty five, not thirty five. High blood pressure. Bleeding gums. Yoga moved in then, and over years, stretched me. Made space. Breath moved in. Friends in Prescott: Carolina, Cain, Revital, Grace -- helped me feel part of a community. Helped me find openings where I thought were only fences. Keith came then, and from the first conversation we had in his old truck in the parking lot of Outback, I knew he was my partner.

Then, the joints called, which sent me back into the body, learning qi gong, joint opening, abdominal massage, kettle bell training, and shaking. The more I shook, the more the fire stoked in my belly. The more the fire stoked, the more the earth, which is my dosha, my constitution, began to crumble and move. The more the earth moved ... well, you know that song.

Clearing out the body made room for the writing. There were books. There were teaching opportunities at amazing places in the country. There was a window to a world I didn't think I could touch.

The body called again, and this time the spiritual journey was cleaning the house. And finally, the outdoor landscaping was finished yesterday on my 41st birthday. I've never cultivated an outdoor space. I've been sitting in the patio with my tea and watching the birds and yellow jackets and butterflies come to the plants. I look through the trimmed alligator juniper to see not just the moon, but the birds making a nest in the branches. I talked to the flowers. Touched the velvet leaves. Bought a hose attachment that would let me water lightly, not in my usual forceful way. Wrote down the names of the plants -- the ones that would come back next year and the ones that wouldn't. Cain chiseled a hole in the fence so the water would drain and not stagnate in the patio. We dug a hole and put in river rock along the wall and out into the common area so the water had a place to flow. The whole house began to move.

I am tired. And even though I just got back from New York and could attribute the fatigue to the trip, I know that's not what it is. I am tired from carrying everything and holding everything for so long. I am tired in that great way you are when you finish a workout. The good exhaustion that says, yes, you worked hard and now, my sweet, it is time to rest. The good exhaustion that leaves you loose and flexible, not tense and rigid.

I'm a little unsteady without all the weight, but that's OK. My house can hold me. My earth can hold me. My friends can hold me. My writing can hold me. And without the heaviness, I will find ever higher places to fly as my heart remains rooted with those I love, my center grounded, my unsteadiness as perfect as wind.


back patio before the work





view of the backyard patio now



front yard before the work



front yard now




rock formation for rain drainage







Each day, let something go.

I Can Win A Pre-Paid Cremation!

Historic cemetery in Davidson County, North Carolina

Somehow, in the Great Junk Mail Computer, which is so obviously a PC and not a Mac, I have become switched with my father. It happened when I moved to Prescott. I began receiving targeted junk mail about social security, AARP, Medicare Plans A,B,C,D and huh?, life insurance offers with the cute Snoopy on the front, invitations to refinance so I could live out my golden years in luxury, and notifications of the senior citizens' early bird buffets (which, in Prescott, are bountiful). I finally figured out what had happened when I received something from AARP preprinted with my name and birthday -- Laraine A. Herring. 01/20/41.

Nope. That was my dad's birthday. And, incidentally Great Junk Mail Computer, he's been dead 22 years. I know. Windows Vista sucks, doesn't it?

Today I received an envelope with a big blue banner on the front: Win a Pre-Paid Cremation! I had to open it. It's not every day a 40 year old woman gets a chance for something that spectacular. And it's only Monday. What could my Pre-Paid Cremation prize entail? Fireworks? Tony Orlando singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree"? Ice sculptures or a personal eulogy from Clinton Kelly telling the world how fabulously I put outfits together? Alas. None of this could be mine.

The personalized letter contained seven punctuation and spelling errors. I would not entrust my mortal remains to a company that misuses an apostrophe and believes that there is such a thing as closure in the grieving process (facilitated, of course, by pre-buying a cremation plan.) A girl has to take a stand. Furthermore, is this the kind of mail I can look forward to as I age? Makes those viagra junk mails look better. If I complete the reply slip, I can even be entered in a monthly drawing! Oh my. I had no idea life was going to get this good.

I believe in the right to die. I don't want to hang on for months or years on life support. I believe in the right to die on one's own terms, and I believe each person has both the right and responsibility to ensure there are provisions for the disposal of his or her body in a way that feels comfortable. I also understand that this company has a right to sell its product. It's the Ed McMahon You Might Already Be A Winner! tone of the letter that got to me. That, and, for me, the idea of cremation in the first place.

I love the earth, and I want to go back to it. I don't want to be cremated. I don't want to be scattered. I don't want to be inhaled by someone else. I want to be under a tree -- a big one like the ones I can't find here in Arizona. One with roots that go clear to hell and branches that go straight to heaven. Preferably with moss and birds that are red and yellow and orange and green. And maybe a rabbit. Definitely a squirrel. And lightning bugs. Hopefully a cat or two.

Cremation, like beer, is for other people. Not me. Even if it's free. Even if they pay me. I go back to mushy, muddy, Southern earth. How else am I going to hang out in the branches and haunt everybody?



a handful of earth

cries aloud

i used to be hair or

i used to be bones



and just at the moment

when you are all confused

leaps forth a voice

hold me close

i'm love and

i'm always yours

- Jalaluddin Rumi, translated by Nader Khalili



Cat guarding Chopin's grave in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

Domestic Vision Quest

A big PSHAW to those of you who think you need the great outdoors and bright sun and bugs and no indoor plumbing or showers to have a vision quest. Pshaw. You can do it in your very own home! All the elements are there, and you can go to the bathroom indoors and take a shower whenever you get too icki-fied.

Here's how it starts. You go to see your teacher and friend (you remember the one -- the one who somehow convinced you to eat quinoa and barley and swing a 27 pound iron kettle bell around your house) to talk about bizarre happenings in your body. Turns out, all you needed was to get more white fish to balance out the orange fish in your living room. :-)

Seriously, your teacher comes over to your house and politely doesn't mention the pile of shoes in the living room (there was nowhere else for them to go!). He spends several hours in deep contemplation at the state of your house. You suddenly see your house as someone else might (as opposed to the "well, it was so much WORSE when you lived in Phoenix" lens.) You realize that indeed your house is choking, and that's really a shame because you love your house, and it probably doesn't know how much you love it since, well, you've been strangling it.

He tells you that you've lost 30% of your body mass in the past two years. Your house needs to lose at least that much. He tells you to imagine that the house is shaking. What would it get rid of? He tells you to look at each space in the house (yes, corners, drawers, and that Dark Place Where No One Knows What Lives There) and ask it if it can breathe. Take out what needs to go for that space to breathe. He leaves you with incense and a promise that he and his wife will come back and help you create a space outside the house as well. (You are She Who Kills All Things Green and know you can't manage that part alone).

You, being you, having remained stuck, suddenly erupt with a fire in the belly and spew out everything that's clogging the pathways. You work for 4-1/2 days straight. You haul car load after car load off to the dump or Goodwill or the battered women's shelter. You make piles of things for friends. You give things to Keith's children. You burn burn burn for three hours in your backyard chiminea journals from high school and college. You burn your therapy notes. Your therapy art work. Your notes and letters and pictures from things that don't matter. You find bank statements from banks that don't exist (and didn't exist long before this year of The Dead Bank). You find mortgage papers from a house you actually never owned (this one's a mystery still).

You touch every book. Every article of clothing. You try on every garment you own. If it doesn't fit, it goes in the bag. If it's too big it goes away (you're not going to be that size again). If it's too small, it goes away (you were actually never that size). You sort your jewelry by color and pass on what others might like. You pare down your scarf collection from oh, say, a hundred, to thirty.

Time loses meaning. You don't know if it's Friday or Sunday. You eat when you're hungry. You take a shower when the dirt and old energy is too much to keep holding. You become loopy from lack of sleep and your internal censor vanishes as you babble. You wonder who will emerge from this journey.

You hit the proverbial wall on Saturday when you enter your office. This room has (had) things in boxes you just carried from apartment to apartment in Phoenix, to your house in Phoenix, and then to your house in Prescott without opening them. You know (or you think you know) what's in them. You open them and you find something different from what you expected. You thought you'd find your younger self and that you'd want to keep her. Instead, you found the baggage of your younger self, and you realize you don't need that. Your younger self is not in the boxes. She is inside you, and she whispers, "Yeah, it's been 25 years. It's done." And you know it's done, and though you cry, you also dance. You give thanks.

You find pictures of yourself looking like you never remembered you looked. You find transcripts and letters of recommendation and handouts from every class you ever taught before everything went electronic. You find expired medications and cosmetics.

Empty space used to scare you before you felt what space felt like in your body. An empty wall used to feel like fingers scratching on a chalkboard. This is not true anymore. You now know every single thing that's in your house. Down to the silverware and socks.

You call your teacher and tell him to bring it on. There's room for the next thing.

(Side Note on Soundtracks: I chose a pandora.com station I created called "I Will Survive". It played disco hits from the 70s and 80s. The thump thump and familiarity of the songs helped keep me moving. Do NOT choose a soundtrack of, say, Leonard Cohen. You'll end up drinking yourself to death and pushing everything back in the closet.)

Some sample pictures:

The living room.




The corner of the living room towards the kitchen.





The corner of the living room going up the stairs.




The bedroom closet!!




My desk with my fabulous Mac.




The corner of my office.





And finally, the bottle of wine Keith and I will share tonight at the Thai House.