Getting Found From the Woods, or Back On Meds

Okay! As promised, here's the story about my adventure in the woods--was it really just yesterday? It really was. Time is doing strange things here. I seem to say that a lot. 

Something else I hear myself say a lot is how much I love being in the woods: being surrounded by trees, the way the light dapples and refracts (that word again). Well. I learned some lessons in the woods yesterday, both about being in the woods and, because I can't help it, metaphorically.

I went to Sandy Creek Park, which is a pretty, nicely kept park that appears self-contained. There is a lake with a bridge over it, a beach, children's play areas; over the bridge, some camping areas and some trails around the lake. Had I turned left on the lakeshore trail, I would have made a gentle sweep around the park area. I turned right. I hadn't paid attention to know that in that direction, the lake went off way past the boundaries of the park, almost out of sight, not self-contained at all.

I learned yesterday that being in thick woods for several hours with no clearing becomes claustrophobic. I really was a tunneling worm, although for extra dimension, a little bridge was where I rejected that paragraph of a book review I was writing in my head, and that upward draw was where I composed those nice sentences for the next essay, so that the sentences will always be colored by that part of the trail and, if I hike the trail again, various sections of it will be redolent of whatever sentences I was working on there.

Even so, after a while I was suffocating and really wanted a clearing. After longer, I was tired and ready to be done. Remember, I started the day so tired I could barely get myself out of bed. I kept going and kept going, thinking "it's a lake; surely I'll get back to where I started eventually!" Or at least to another exit from it and a trail back through the park.

When I was sooo ready to be done, I found this big, beautiful bridge. Perfect timing! This was obviously going to take me to a grand exit. 

Wrong. It led to a disused trail and a locked cattle gate. I climbed over the gate into a cul-de-sac with a mixture of grand houses and trailer homes. I asked some folks who'd just pulled in to their property where I was and how to get back to the park. They said I'd have to go back the way I came, several miles--safer than going along the highway. It was 6 pm at this point and I'm not in AK now with 20-hour days! I mentioned that, and they said I had at least a couple hours of daylight. It's much darker in the woods, I almost wailed. Yes, fair point, it is., they said. They absolutely did not want to help me out, even by talking to me. 

So, the best I could do was plan to go back the way I'd come as near to running as possible on my tired, blistered feet. Yes, I cried. I put a sad text on Facebook but more importantly, texted my friend with whom I'm staying to let her know I'd no idea when I'd be home. She called back immediately to say get back out to the road, find out where you are, and I'll come pick you up and take you back to the car. Wow, really? Wow. Okay, then. 

This time, though, I got a different answer from the cul-de-sac. A couple just heading out on their own walk saw me, asked if I'd come from the trail, and said of course they'd take me to my car! Apparently it wasn't the first time they'd rescued a lost crepuscular hiker who faced dashing back through the woods for miles. And it was a long way. Several minutes down the highway. I am so grateful to that couple. They were unconditional warmth and kindness.

So, obviously, the first lesson learned is "Look where you're headed for." Don't assume the lake is commensurate with the park. I had hiked almost halfway around it, seven or eight miles, but that left probably another ten. 

But the second lesson has to do with the two different cul-de-sac encounters. After that last excursion off my meds, I was describing to my psychiatrist how blessedly soon after getting back on them I resanified. "You're so lucky," she said. For many people, the meds don't work so quickly after those sins of omission and sometimes don't work as well forever after. Then she looked me in the eye and held the contact. "Don't take it for granted," she said. Similarly, I have blundered off road or off trail or on unknown trail so often all my life. Somehow or another, I've been rescued, picked up, brought to safety. Last night, though, for some time it looked like my only option was hike back the way I came, in darkness, with no guarantee I'd be able to follow the trail let alone notice the side-trail up to the parking lot. Don't take it for granted that I'll be rescued. But do be grateful that I'm so lucky.

Does it resonate?

What and Whom I'm Missing

Wings? I was talking about them before...and there's more. A wingless bird in the woods.(Have you seen what those goshawks can do in dense woods? Amazing wings.) I'm writing this now because I'm lucky enough not to be still hiking in the woods in the dark, which will be tomorrow's story.

My time here is drawing toward its close and there are so many thoughts and impressions and reflections I really should be sharing. I should be giving a wise and thorough summation of my experience. That will come, promise. But I'm experiencing an odd lack of peripheral perspective, as if either I'm in a tunnel or I am myself an extruded tunnel shape through bunched-up time--a kind of worm. 

A trip out of town this weekend,my friend took me to see some of the wonders. Waterfalls. Even more impressive than the cascading water were these sheer, impassive, straight rocks. They had such a feeling of permanence, solidity, unapologetic selfhood, that beside them I felt not just insignificant, not just unreal, but nonexistent--leaving no worm trail to a past, sending nothing forth to any future.

I'm soldiering on (soldier-tunnel-worm), not feeling despair--only perspective. Two things add to this "tunnel" feeling and those are two wings I have lost. Or maybe I'm a centipede after all and they're just two legs from a hundred. But they sure feel like two wings.

Have you ever been surprised by how much you hurt for another person? One of my missing wings is mostly healed, just an absence noted from time to time, a scar on visiting terms with the opened-up world. The other is a gaping conduit to the opened-up world, a hole that wants to be refilled.

One wing is Phil. There's no shadow of doubt that our mutual decision to remake the relationship from romantic full partnership to friendship was the right one. But now we no longer have each other for the regular common-or-garden companionship to which one becomes accustomed and which can make life smoother. Phil's felt its absence too, I know. I've been keeping up on his news and keeping him up on mine fairly well, and while that feels like good friendship maintenance, it reminds of the wing that was once there.

The other wing is my friend M. Or are we even friends anymore? It's two weeks now since I screwed up. Two weeks to focus on being here, to keep my head down and work really hard, some of my favorite kind of work, and let impressions of this place seep in, as I'm poked from the inside many times each day with recollection that I'm not sharing these impressions and stories with her, that I have no idea how she's doing. That I miss her, that I want to know how she's doing, hear her voice, which I replay in my head. 

So perhaps I am capable of caring about people after all, something I've doubted about myself most of my life and worked hard to compensate for. I ask that the holes or scars or missing places where I'm so sad let the light in, send light back out, invite friend back. I don't even know how to think about it, but there are so many involuntary feelings and hurts.

I have a story about my venture into the woods today, involving the different ways of people with respect to kindness and a much longer hike than I had planned for on my barefoot-shoe-shod feet. Now that this post has gotten long, I'll save it for tomorrow. One thing I am learning through the work I've been doing here is the importance of having the entirety of a piece of writing in mind with every sentence you compose. And erring on the side of "short." So, more tomorrow, with love.

Writing, Spinning, Flying

Do you still need wings when you're spinning in a circle? You better bet you do, because once you've (been) spun around enough times to have no idea which way is up, let alone north, you're going to tumble--the "petal" in "centripetal" means seeking. Seeking the center. You'll need your wings like petals to help you seek the center without making an impact crater in it. To finesse your landing so you don't land on that centipede.

In this place you can come across a tree doing "chair pose"--or is it a diplodocus climbing out from its burial?

Several times this week I've forgotten where I live. As in, what state do I live in. A state of in between, to paralyze--I mean paraphrase--a line in a poem about birds.

As an editor, in between just as much so as I am as translator. Lately I've been editing with the Chicago Manual of Style open, and Merriam Webster's also, and a clean tab in my browser to check names, facts, dates, and any other thing that might be mentioned in a piece. (Yes, MFA-ers, for you too!) Perhaps I always should have, all along, not just some of the time. I skip back and forth between these arbiters of rectitude, the idiosyncrasies of the writer, the idiosyncrasies of this reader, which call into question the very concept of rectitude, of a ground to land on when you stop spinning. An "idiosyncrasis" is literally a "personalized bringing-together-of-things-into-rapprochement". I said "literally," not "literarily." Terra incognita, new and strange. And presumably that's what we're interesting in producing when we aim to produce writing of the best quality--not a museum piece to be peered at through darkish glass but writing that lives and engages and sparks and changes and is changed by its readers. In amongst--since "between" properly refers to two things--in amongst other editors, torrents of submissions arriving daily, the intersubjectivity of what's good and what isn't, the reality checks from one another...Always between what I refuse to call a slush pile (following Stephen Corey's lead) and Stephen (the editor in chief) himself.

I find myself pulled ever more into the meta-level business of "talking about literature," which at its best is useful--a well-written review lets a lover of books know what's good to read by means of a good read--and at its worst is flakey gossip and name-dropping. Reviewing books and editing them are allied pursuits, no doubt. I find myself in the dilemma of how much to "give" when I'm writing a review. For example,if a writer raises a concept or image that could be explicated in terms of one of my most treasured, original nuggets I'm saving for some of my very best work,do I give up that nugget to talk about the writer's work? And when the work is done, when does sharing stories shade into inappropriate gossip? Writers talk about each other all the time. It can also be fun to talk about mistakes in writing. But I don't ever want either to mock or to be otherwise off color. I'm hoping a certain rock I ride will help me distinguish what is and isn't appropriate to talk about in this connection.  

Meanwhile, not only is it making me a better writer; I'm actually writing more, even as busy as I am. Spinning in a circle on first one wing then the other -- testing --poetry --prose -- which is the better vehicle for my thesis? Should I ditch both and become a helicopter instead, write my thesis in a salad spinner of words? I find I need both of them on both wings or else I end up spinning in a circle of petals and centipedes. The question is whether poetry or prose gets to drive. Can you believe it's still not clear? The arbiter is going to have to be the feel of the thesis, as if I know what that is. And "know" gets too much emphasis... What about you guys? Do you know what your theses are yet?

These topics--the Georgia Review and Athens, the editing, the book reviewing, the choices as writers and readers--to be continued.

Barefoot Shoe

I only got a pair of barefoot shoes because Cost-Co had them cheap, and I needed something besides my sneakers (which were all I had besides boots) for my Georgia trip. Apparently, they're a big thing right now among runners. "Barefoot shoe" is a textbook oxymoron, isn't it? But it got me thinking about how useful and prevailing a metaphor it is, too.

I was seriously, literally barefoot for sporadic periods throughout my twenties. Stanford's campus in spring rains, so manicured and smooth; the treacherous redwood cones off in the woods. Athens, Greece, where I lost a good pair of Birkenstock knock-offs at the American School of Classical Studies having left them on the landing one time too many. Hawaii was where it stopped. Initially,  despite centipedes and machetes, I was flauntingly, exultantly barefoot. Even in the dark. Since I climbed barefoot, I still mostly walked between trees barefoot until the inevitable careless time I stepped on a spike and was hobbled for a few days. Not that the flip flops I donned thereafter saved me from centipedes.
Still, after shodden years in Alaska, bootees even indoors, I'm attached to the idea of barefootedness. Those paddles that bear our whole bodies, bare to the ground--grounding.
I need a barefoot shoe as cartilage to smooth the contact. Diamond on the soul of my foot, carbon on the palm of the ground.
My ego needs a barefoot shoe. Oh, when my abilities were called into serious question my barefoot ego was jabbed and poked and opened up to painful and disastrous potentials bleeding all the way down to destitution and death. But when my abilities were seriously praised here it was like stepping on soft sand, healing, softening, but afraid of the sand getting in the wounds and inflaming the ego.
My diet has a barefoot shoe. This time last year I was drinking stevia-sweetened tea by the gallon and eating less and less. This time this year, I'm drinking stevia-sweetened tea by the gallon and eating less and less, the bittersweet of the stevia a literal oxymoron in how it fills me. BUT--last year I was on my way to Foie Gras Farm and nothing I could do to gainsay that. Or, I was actively dying. This year, I'm at the Georgia Review, parlous, fragile, transitional, but not going to no Fois Gras Farm. The barefoot shoe is the coconut milk.

If I have a can a day, that's about like two Ensure pluses. Divided in three, that means I get in 260-ish calories per meal despite whatever else I do. This would be pretty good all by itself. And actually, the coconut milk tends to be a gateway drug. Mostly, not always, I've been hanging onto the daily can (I daily can? Most days); somewhere in the whole mess of me the part that wants to stay functional wins out more often than not. So those "one shredded carrot and teaspoon protein powder" or "single grapefruit" meals are quite generously barefoot-shod by the coconut custom.
Do I always pick the right barefoot shoe? I left work yesterday, my blood sugar tank empty, my mug half full of half-caffeinated tea saying I knew I shouldn't borrow from my adrenals(the half empty part) but was going to anyway (the half full part).
At a light, I rolled forward and tapped the car in front. After ten minutes of horror, tears, hunting through the glove compartment, cursing myself for causing such trouble to my friend, for having an accident in a strange place in a car not mine, the other lady came over and said really there was no need to call anyone; there was no damage. Down by the railroad tracks in a quiet neighborhood, a near miss of the park I was trying to reach, I got back on the phone.Toward the end of my conversation, an SUV came out of the nearby house, backed up fast, and hit the back of the car! A dent this time, so definitely my friend would be upset (she wasn't). Lahillala wi wi look what I did should I not have been parked there omigod how surreal...and back to pieces I went.
But this morning, cockily caffeinated, grapefruit in one hand, small bottle of coconut milk in the other (like those motorcyclists with the helmet dangling from the handlebar), I headed out to the car never doubting that everything would be fine. And it was, but what about late this afternoon after working intensely all day, when the sugar-tank is empty? Will I look for free coffee samples at the grocery store?

What are your barefoot shoes?

Free Hand and Responsibility

I love this work. I so admire the people who work here. I'm irrepressibly grateful they're letting me work/play with them for this time.

This is some of how I spent the morning. The Georgia Review receives many preview/review/advance copies of new books (solicited and unsolicited; some of the unsolicited bizarrely inappropriate). As well as the couple of lengthy review essays that come out in each issue, there are several short reviews, usually of three collections looked at together. The editor responsible for this asked me to go through the new books and make some logical threesomes (I did two 'fours' and one 'two' also). So, some neatly piled books with some notes on top of them. I did poetry and nonfiction. This was round three.

How much fun is that? How much fun that was for me, anyway. To read snatches of many books, snippets, pieces, and make determinations as to what would make good review material. You almost have to write the review in your head to do it! And maybe I will.

So far so good. Lots of fun, also the actual editing and critiquing I've gotten to do. But as I continue to question my ability to take responsibility, be appropriate, etc., I have this little nagging prodding spiky twig in my shoe reminding me that I have no real responsibility here. Sure, I'm helping out, but after this short stay I'll be gone and the regular people will continue.

On the other hand, I was given a stack of poetry submissions to look through on one of my first days. I picked two poems out of the pile and showed them to one of the assistant editors. We dismissed one of them, and I took the remaining one to the editor in chief. And it turns out he's probably going to accept it--the assistant editor and I get to work together on some of the reservations we had. !!! Isn't that cool?

But again, am I going to be able to do my best? Is my best as good as it used to be/as good as I thought it was? My MFA thesis is taking shape in one of the shadow lives paralleling this one, and it tells me that part of what's going on is a refinement in understanding of what I really want to do with my one rich and precious life. That this will help define what my best truly is, no matter my level of basket-case-ness. Perhaps that will help the responsibility come too.

For now, I'm grateful for precious friendship. I don't know how I could be here without my friend with whom I'm staying. I'd have spontaneously combusted by now. For great conversations, advice, shared experience. Let alone a comfortable place to stay. For now, I'm grateful for this so desired and so matching-the-desire experience at the Georgia Review.

I've taken up residence at the only window in the Georgia Review offices, right by the humming refrigerator, with my back to the business manager and her beautiful plants. A high view of a leafy campus. The familiarity of being back on a campus. Even some quilted blue sky this afternoon.

Georgia Unseen

I've been in Athens, GA for a week now, so what's up with the lack of posts and Athens pictures?

Well, maybe partly because of the fog and rain that have predominated instead of expected sunshine, I haven't been very inspired to take pictures. Some permissions I need to request also.

What I will say, in case I didn't already, I am loving it here. The Georgia Review--what an honor to get to work there for a couple weeks, in a wonderfully functional work environment, with people who love their work and are passionate about it and are fine writers too. I'm sure it's not perfect all the time--nothing is. But even though I was dead with fatigue by the end of Friday, I was expecting to recharge over the weekend and looking forward to Monday. Looking forward to Monday?! How does it get better than that? For me, even better would be to have an editing job at a literary magazine where you could work from home some of the time; to be able to focus in on something without the distractions of the workplace--like drilling into the roof and hammering; we're on the top floor and it was like they were drilling into our heads, but moving around like a psychopathic polyphonic poltergeist. And without the exhaustion of getting through the five-day commute and the stress of being around people all day. Well, and yes, the full-time editors do work at home at times. It really is that good!

So yes, gratitude abounding. Also, desire. Dear universe, writing, translating; this too. More, please?

Have you ever had the experience of moonlighting on what is essentially your dream job, and seeing that it really is as wonderful as you thought? What is your dream job? Is the universe vast enough that we can all find jobs to do that are what we love to do?

On this much, clarity. Otherwise, unseen, lacking like the photos. Where am I going after this, with this? Aren't I too busy to take on extra work? Should I move to GA? What the heck should I eat for dinner? What happened to my gut?

I'm letting my gut take its time. Much to process. I made a serious professional mistake, or series of mistakes, a few days ago, no doubt due to a combination of bipolar-based behaviors. Coming at the same time (in a different context) as doing this work I'm loving so much, it's given me serious self distrust, fear something like that might happen again, fear of my instability or am I no longer as fast a learner as I always have been or could I screw up something so important again. My gut was (physically) sick for two days. Washing out the fear, the shame, the pride, stubbornness, grandiosity that led to the mistake in the first place. My gut knew what was needed. I was still in the fog. I didn't see.

Never let doubt paralyze and pretend to you that you won't keep learning. As long as you're alive, breathing, moving, some part of you is learning something. Sometimes it's the same lesson over and over and over. Unburying the talking, squelched gut. It's saying something.

I intend to remember my gut is attached to my mouth. ("Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, divine Wisdom.")

The Seven and the Thirty, and Petition for Forgiveness

I haven't said much about my Israel trip since I returned from there, simply because of everything else that was going on, and the HAWMC stuff, which I think I'm going to bow out from next year.

 But I do love the way a death is honored in the Jewish tradition and that of my family. I like the gentle impartiality of numbering by dates. The Shiv'a underway when I was there is sitting (shiva) for seven (shiv'a) days from the death. And today is the "thirty"--the dedication of the tombstone thirty days after the death.

Small bereavements happen all the time, perhaps even more often for nomads like myself. In the threadbareness of my travel pressures, my rawness, I think I may have lost someone very important to me today. But the space and pace of the honoring of the dead that happens as with my grandmother allows the grief to flow and metamorphose, to celebrate the life that was, and allow what has been extinguished to become a part of the mourner him- or herself, a portion of wisdom.

Some pictures from my sojourn into mourning.

I love this uneasy symbiosis of plant and canopy. 

Here's the whole thing, just for context. This is where my mom and her brothers, uncles, aunts, received guests all day for those seven days.

There were prayer moments; one of my cousins is giving a little homily here...

Two of my uncles, one with two of his grandkids (my mom and all her brothers are proud grandparents)...

It was so good to see my mom laughing hard with two of her aunts.

I showed this picture before, the beautiful spread on the seventh of the days.

We ate leftovers for days. They fueled many practical/technical discussions, including about the tombstone that was set today.

On the left of the above photo, in the red hood, is Rekha, who lived with and cared for my grandmother these last four years (or more?). She is from Nepal, and she is one of the loveliest, kindest, most practical, outside-the-box-thinking, sweetest people I've ever met. We had so much fun together. 

Some of the "clearing up Mama's things" was fun, like dressing up with this beautiful sari my mom had brought her from India. Rekha first...

...with a flourish! And Rekha put it on me too.

We turned up this necklace and clip-on earrings my uncle Eliyahu had made years ago (the uncle with the two grandkids on his knees). I wore them all evening, enjoying the little green hearts of the wrought petals. I thought I'd last ten minutes at the most in the clip-on earrings, but they actually didn't bother me.

Standing tall and with her unmistakable upright bearing, that's my grandmother a very long time ago. The cute guy in the foreground with his little boy is my uncle Eli again, the one who made the necklace and earrings. Maybe he even made them around the time of this photo.  And who is that on the rocking horse in the back, her dress all pulled up her knees? Why, that would be yours truly. About two years old. If we could rewind time, take back all my mistakes and screw-ups and all the people I've hurt and angered along the way, my grandmother would be vigorous and strong again. 

I love this picture--my mom and her three brothers and Rekha, who really has become part of the family. 

    

I didn't think I'd get emotional writing this but my tears are making it hard to see what I'm typing at this point. I offer them to be tears that wash without sterilizing; that scrape off crud to allow lucky forms of life and thought to seed in its place. Grief washing into wisdom. Forgiving the past for not having been different. Letting go of wondering how I could have dismantled my life sooner to get to Israel sooner, which might not even have been good. Forgiving old age and osteoporosis for making my grandmother's last years so uncomfortable. Forgiving my grandmother for her hypervigilance about appearances and her escalating tirades. Forgiving her for bereaving my mother. Forgiving her for dying, which means I can't die for a while. I forgive.

Forgiving myself for all I have destroyed through my unconsciousness, and for all I have ignored that only wished for the water of my attention. Asking forgiveness of all I have angered and annoyed through my heedless behaviors.

Please, forgive me...