Choices, Priorities, Holding Myself Accountable

What happened to my priorities, and how can attention to them dig me out now?
There are many ways to sabotage, lose oneself. Like allowing oneself to get sicker.

"You are where you focus."
"You must have a clearly defined goal and a burning desire to let nothing in your way until you achieve that goal."
"You just have to get your priorities in order."
"You must walk your talk"/"Do as I say, not as I do."
We've all heard some version of these, whether in unsolicited advice from parents or in any success-oriented self-help book.

Always, making choices--Would you rather have this, or would you rather have that?

On a 'small' level, this just has to do with knowing what you love, and cultivating that.
I love persimmons, and when I lived in CA I harvested them from October well into December, eating them freely, reveling in their ripe translucence against the slanted fall sunshine. 

 Now that I live in Alaska, and buy them at the store imported from far away and quite expensive, my relationship with them is different, mediated by dollar and calorie amounts I was able to forget back there and then. Nonetheless, I buy as many as I can afford, and Phil and I enjoy every last one, first as festive decoration, then as sustenance that nourishes on more than one level. I choose the persimmons over the extra dollars in the wallet.

What have I been choosing instead of being a writer and being stabilized by lithium??
I love writing; I have a burning desire to be a writer. In order to walk that talk:
I should always choose to be writing, or reading for writing, ahead of any other thing. Which means putting it before my paid work, and charging much more what I'm worth for what I do. I should make sure I write down on paper all the writing I do in my head.
But also:
In order to walk the talk of being a writer, or any other activity for that matter: I should have been doing more than I have been doing--everything in my power--to avoid falling farther down the spiral of not-eating--losing appetite--not-being-able-to-eat--losing-more-weight.
Even if my burning desire had simply been to be able to hold a conversation, or to be able to remember what I did two minutes ago, or to take a hike without seizing up or getting dizzy, or to be able to travel, or to be left by myself, I should have been doing this.
I have wondered what sort of writing would result from not being able to remember what one did two minutes earlier. I guess you could look back and see what you had there, but that might just perpetuate the muddle. Pretty sure my blog post before last was virtually unintelligible.
Even for the sake of something small.  So much more, then, for the sake of something big? Like one's life purpose, and being able to continue taking the medication that made so many things possible and sanified?
In my small defense, it's not as thought I was continually consciously choosing not to feed myself: rather, it was a stream of small-picture excuses and avoidances that built a majorly deficient big picture.
 So. I'm in the hole. I'm not traveling over Thanksgiving and we're trying to work it out so that Phil doesn't have to cancel as well (which would leave me feeling terrible, but my ND doesn't want me to stay by myself). 
I know what they'll make me do if I go back to treatment. I have to prove to everyone that I can do those things myself, here, at home. But who is going to have any confidence that I can do that, based on the past six weeks? 
We're not even talking the "what if I don't do it," the "or else" at this point--they're talking about my survival, and I still can't internalize that as something seriously genuine (or genuinely serious).
With so many things in jeopardy now; with the aversive knowledge of what it would be like in treatment; with the injunction not to leave me alone (when I'm so craving some quiet time at home), I feel pretty motivated to show I can do it. I picture a huge chasm with a railroad bridge collapsed into it. The mess of ties and girders is mending back together in the shape of a spiral. I'm the train-wreck at the bottom, getting the wheels back on, limping over to the tracks, gradually following the spiral up toward a winter sunrise.
I'm writing about something this personal partly because it pertains to and impinges on the life of a writer, but also to hold myself accountable. I'm letting it be known that I want to climb out of the hole. I'm putting the three cups of coconut cream per day out there as something that can be mentioned.

The Dangerous Affair of the Black Dog in the Night-time

Plus Sides to House/Dog-sitting:

• Indoor plumbing, including running water (including warm water, shower, laundry)
• Lots of space, so you can spin in a circle without running into something
• Full-size kitchen with a full-size oven (I was the main appreciater of this)
• Impressive dvd/streaming/tv set (Phil was the main appreciater of this)
• Lots of indoor plants (we only have room for a couple if we want to be able to set down a cup or piece of paper)

Minus Sides to Dog-sitting:

• Dog hair on your plate
• Being woken multiple times in the night by a dog obsessed with her dead bunny out in the yard but not wanting to stay out
• Getting stuck somewhere (home or a trailhead) because a dog isn't coming when called
• Dog coming home wearing a stench so noisome, the other dog recoils 
• Two dogs puking in the wee hours of the morning, having feasted on porcupine bones during a hike
• And, the BIG minus--take a big, goofy, brave foolhardy dog, like the one on the left below (she's much bigger now than in this photo from last year, a fair bit bigger than the other dog)...

 ...and take a bluff like this, with our cabin eighteen feet back from it (our neighbors where we're staying are just a couple hundred yards farther back, and Phil had been working down here with the dogs running around...

 ...and I got home at 6pm last Thursday to be told K had been missing for several hours. She didn't show up for dinner, which was a bad sign. We checked all closed doors in the barnyard, checked the truck...
We called the radio stations, the animal shelter, the police. We called everyone in the neighborhood. Phil and another neighbor drove everywhere looking. 
This is a big black dog on a dark night. Phil walked all over our and our neighbors' properties, paying special attention to the bluff edge where she'd been fascinated earlier.
Phil walked up the highway checking the ditches.
Phil drove the truck out on the beach, all the way up to beneath our cabin, shining lights up. He thought he saw a pair of eyes 30-40 feet down from the top of the bluff, the area to the far right of that photo.
Phil burst into the house, where I was working, and told me to come quick, this was an emergency, we got to get the dog, pretty sure she's clinging on to the edge of the bluff.
Phil, torn elbow tendon, bum knee, plantar fasciitis and all, ties a rope around himself, we deadman it around one of those posts up top, I hold on, and down he goes. First time, wrong place, so up he comes; we tie off to another post and try again. Yes, there she is; not enough rope; untie, pay out more--for a moment I'm all that's holding him there.
Stupid dog, very pleased to see Phil, but she doesn't want to climb up. And why did she never respond when he was calling from above?
Phil ends up having to climb one-handed while pushing her up with his knee and other hand. Did I mention she's a big dog?
When she gets to where she can sort of see the top, I start the cheerleading endless stream of noise which is so totally out of my character it just seems totally ridiculous--Come on K, yes come on, good girl, yes, you can do it, come on--blah blah...But it worked.
We got her home, and the first thing Phil had to do was pick her up and carry her all the way to the bathtub. She was caked. It took both of us scrubbing and soaping for several minutes. 
Almost done, I left Phil to finish up, and went to fix her dinner.
When I came back, there was a zig-zagging flail of muddy tracks all over the bedroom carpet, and she was back in the tub. Phil had let her out without realizing there was clay impacted between every toe, and she had done a dizzy happy dance all over the bedroom carpet. The funniest part about that was, the cleaner had just been there that afternoon; the whole place was, or had been, pristine!
I think we finally got to bed around 1.30.

On Integrity (Part 2) -- Word-playing, Coconut Cream Again

In my previous post, I requested your indulgence in allowing me to explain my circle picture in the context of integrity.
You know I love words and etymologies, right? Promise not to be bored if I play with them for a bit?

Entire=Intact=Integrity. 

Yes. "Entire" comes into English via French, but all three words come from the same Latin roots. "Intact" has the closest meaning to the literal Latin--Untouched.

So, "Entire" comes from a root meaning "Untouched," and so does "Integrity."

How does that work? Interesting to consider that entirety--a sum total--and integrity--a moral characteristic--could be the same kind of thing.

Try this on for size:

Something can be Entire because it is untouched--nothing has been taken away from it. Also, nothing has been added to it. Both kinds of 'touching' are relevant--subtraction and addition--if you put too many pencils in the pot, you might break the pot (or the pencil), or warp its shape. Entire means not too much, as well as not too little.

Someone can be in Integrity because their intent/affect/character is untouched--unmoved by circumstances, concepts, intentions. Perhaps it's a case of entire congruence between a person's attitude and that of external circumstances. Perhaps, Integrity is a kind of wholeness. That's a good way for me to understand it, even without the etymological connection. Integrity is a kind of wholeness in the same way as Entirety: it's being untouched--no pieces missing, no extraneous pieces added.

Then I find myself moving to circles within circles, and some subversive thought patterns. Who says what elements make me whole? And of what whole am I, in turn, a part?

Is drinking all that coconut cream part of being in integrity, if I do it? Is it touching me by making me entire, or is it squishing me outward like the pencil pot?

Is drinking pints of extra liquid before weighing in part of being in integrity? Is it making me entire by allowing me to present the required weight? Or is it out of integrity because it's squishing me outward in a fictitious manner?

Are my intentions sufficient to define integrity? For example, does my intention to show the required weight on the scale by the end of the month so that I can stay on a vital medication mean that making up a lot of that weight with water is in integrity, given that I didn't state the intent to actually gain weight? 

At which level of existence is integrity defined? Microcosm--Am I out of integrity if I pull the skin off my fingers, 'touching' myself by removing parts of myself? Or are those parts unnecessary? What about brain cells that get wiped out by lack of glucose and fatty acids?

Macrocosm--does my presence, absence, alteration, or death affect the integrity of my family, my social circles, my MFA program, my employers? Does it make those groups incomplete? Or does it remove a small appendage, easily cauterized; symmetry easily restored with just a little shuffling? 

And--am I just a member of family, social groups, etc? Or am I also a member of the universe of the hallucinations? I'm in and out of their world all the time, but I don't see a lot of my friends and family every day either. Would they miss me? Do they need me to be there for integrity? Do I have to pick which universe I exist in, for integrity's sake? (Hallucinations get worse if you're in ketosis...Yes but they were pretty bad in treatment at times, being stuffed...)

I went from playing with words to speculation about the cosmic implications of those words and their meanings but that's all pretty abstract for a life and I'm starting to doubt that I make sense here. 

My naturopath had me sign a contract today that I would get all that coconut cream down, so as I start to find excuses not to do so and fudge around, as of course I've done already today, I will have a piece of paper as a prop to consider my integrity and impeccability of word. I already called him once to clarify a loophole I'd found. Phil said "Of course he didn't mean that" but getting the clarification rather than just using the loophole may have been an act of integrity.

Here, I stop. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to say, but clarity has fled today.
I even managed to close this window, thankfully without losing the entire post. Please bear with me. I continue working on being impeccable with my word.
Perhaps the magic word is that coconut cream and food will help me be better in integrity, in whichever universe I exist, however I am present.

On Integrity (Part 1) I Know I Will Fall

My thanks to a very wise friend for our conversation around today's post topic. 
Before I get to it, today's funny thought:

All year, I've been habituating myself to the 'cold rinse'--cold water for the last seconds of my shower, as long as I can stand it up to 30 seconds or so. This practice is supposed to be so good for you, it can help you lose weight, lol, by stimulating 'brown fat.'  (I'm not going to risk giving a mangled explanation, so there's a link if you like.)

As most of you know, we don't even have a shower, so our washing is inevitably a chilly process when not skipped altogether. Showers are another luxury of house-sitting, or being in treatment ;) . Well, after all that habituation, with outside temperatures down in the teens and twenties now, let me tell you my enthusiasm for the slap-in-the-face-tingle stimulation has plummeted. Wimp that I am! Or not... See next topic.

On Integrity
As I've been settling back into working and, hallelujah, writing, I've been trying to learn co-ordinates. What the co-ordinates of my own life are now, with all the different parameters like medications, ultimatums, needing to be accountable to others over basic things like nutrition. My co-ordinates given the apparently endless upheaval of moving, traveling, shifting in our life. Basic things that become oh so complicated. What the co-ordinates of this blog. What the co-ordinates of my creative writing, with the specific issues and topics I'm working on this  year.

The concept I keep being sent to, over and over, on the Internet, in books, in conversations; as if it's pinned on the teleprompter or supertitle or in the sky everywhichway I turn; on the insides of my eyelids as I sleep, is:

Have Integrity of Speech

Speak in Congruence with Reality 

Be Impeccable with Your Word

I started getting this message soon after beginning to realize how awful my self-talk is (has been). So, above, I confess to being deterred from cold showers by its being very cold outside, and immediately call myself a wimp! Is this being congruent with reality? What kind of reality am I trying to co-create?

A lot is at stake here, as I have been tapping on the communication 'nut' for several months now--I've mentioned it before here several times. Initially, it was just a matter of developing greater sensitivity to the 'between the lines' portion of what people say, that I never used to understand (and that isn't really speaking in full integrity anyway). Then, it was intense vigilance of myself, mostly choosing not to say things that I knew would not be productive of anything except a same-old same-old fight. Vigilance including not beating up on myself when I messed up. (That might have been the hardest part.)

So, up to this point, my efforts have touched on exterior areas, ensuring that communication is a functional bridge between people.

Now, though--truth, impeccability, congruence? In my speech, in my writing, in my actions?

This is exciting. Also scary, as I know I will fail over and over as I learn how to do this. I have the feet to walk this path, but they've been tucked away for centuries as I slide around on my butt, so they are fast asleep and will have to go through painful pins and needles to awaken. I will do my best as I find my feet and my feet find the path.

I've messed up at least once today already. But when I'm sitting quiet, not really thinking about anything, the idea "I'm having integrity in my words now" often enters my head, with excitement and a smile.

The most recent poem I worked on also made efforts in this direction, with the intent to include both heart and rational impulses as its wings. I feel like I'm making the same efforts with my blog writing too, including expression of my honest uncertainty where to 'position' the blog and how/when to add food/recipes back into the mix.

Speaking of food, the 'food' area may be the last unconquered territory. The ultimatum issue is very scary for me. Perhaps the scariest part of it at this point is the prospect of having to eat a caloric surplus at all, let alone consistently enough to add a lot of pounds. (See, I can't be complete even there!) I've had two weeks, I have two more weeks. I can do superficial things with water and clothes, but my cosmic message is to move away from the exterior and into core truth. Can I be impeccable here? Can I be impeccable without manipulating the nature of intentions around this? Impeccable in my actions and in what I say about them?

Maybe not yet.

If you can bear it, in my next post I'll give a short explanation of why there's a circle graphic around 'integrity.'

Much love.

Touchstones--50 First Weeks Resumed

Remember all the way back in the third week of January, I started my "Fifty First Weeks" series of Monday posts, intended as all Mondays the rest of the year? Things went a bit off course, didn't they. But (not to steal my own thunder) the whole principle of "Fifty First Weeks" is that one can always start a day, or a time of day, as fresh time.

(Have you ever tried to braid rocks? Me either, but I'm trying to now, to braid touchstones with a return to returning, and returning, and returning to the metaphorical saddle.)
Stones can impress, can be similes in their very being. They can also protect. Helmet rock:

Things went off track and I went away, and then I came home and things continued hectic; I didn't get back on track and I didn't get back in the saddle and I didn't write all that was in my head, and I felt like an unmilked cow.

Glittery objects picked up don't always retain their luster, and the perspective is very different on opposite sides of a hill.

I knew my attitude was wrong: that I should have seen spending time with my mother-in-law in a beautiful house, taking care of cute chickens and a pair of neurotic little dogs who somehow like me, as a wonderful opportunity; possibly a source of much poetic inspiration; rather than a tightening in my throat. The same for numerous other activities this past month or two.

I forgot to remember where I came from this lifetime, or three months ago.

I forgot to remember where I came from on the scale of this universe.

I forgot the ease that comes out of moving with the flow. Actually, that's seldom been easy for me, and I also know that the flow can be a destructive onslaught--the rocks underneath our own home are under its threat.

What flows can move rocks and pile up mountains out of what has been moved.

 I need to accept that our life here is going to be studded with visitors and travel and other chaos, and not use that as an excuse to fall in the hole. Learning to work around these must be part of my challenge in life, which means at some level I have chosen it.

After all, I seem to pick up the same rocks over and over again...

I always have potential poems going through my head, and wish I were better at making the time to write them. The most upsetting part about the recent sequence was the feeling that that voice had gone quiet; that only the disinfectant tinnitus was left, more unbearable than silence

I'm finding my way back to that little opening of space in the midst of the heavy clay (a different sort of hole to fall into), since...

There's constriction in my throat, a lot of 'throat chakra' "stuff," energy I need to work with.

...even a stone can mime singing. 

The message over and over is, Do the work. Do it no matter your complaints about the circumstances. Mess up, and start over.

And sometimes, you'll pick up a rock entirely different from all the others, with a whole new metaphor within it.

I was gone for a long time over the summer. Physically, I've lost almost all my reluctant gains during that time. However, all along and even at the time I said the most useful aspect of the whole experience was all that I learned about communication, boundaries, awareness of other people's intended self-portrayals rather than blurt-empathy. 

And these past few days, I keep getting the message to be more precise in my own communication, more fearlessly honest, more impeccable with my word. I take that to heart in my conversations; I take it to heart in my creative writing also. Thus far, I've been pretty cranky a few times--but I can always start over.

Speaking of which, I'm aware that I haven't posted a single recipe since I got home. The reasons for that may be obvious superficially; I'm also still puzzling over what this blog is about. I'm ready to make some changes, even if they're just cosmetic, but recipes at some level of frequency will return.
Much love.

Lament for Fall

"April is the cruelest month," they say--perhaps because it fails to fulfill promises, spring struggling to break out of winter like bubbles of steam trying to break out of liquid water. As for autumn? Many people's favorite time of year, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..."

thank goodness for the barges that allow us to ape that fruitfulness here

 In these polar regions, though, spring may be more exciting--think The Rite of Spring--visceral eruptions of fertility through ice. And here, for me, autumn may be the cruelest season. Were I still in CA right now, I'd be harvesting persimmons, just getting into oranges. Better not to even think about HI's harvest this time of year.

Here, though, fall is a paper-thin prelude to a long winter. We were harvesting cranberries in full fall colors in early September; in late September, blueberries through the ice. Before October is over, the convivial fire ring at our neighbors' (where we're house-/menagerie-sitting now) looks like this, the garden beds off to the left languishing similarly.

 And our garden beds are blanketed with thin foam (gosh this one's close to the edge!)

You see this dark cast to the light also: yes, "light" can be an oxymoron at this time of year. I like bright fluorescent light shone right in my eyes--except when I'm driving! It's true, the sun is so low in the sky that when clouds aren't in the way, it shines directly into the eyes.

 

We've been floating on the meniscus of surface water pooled over freezing ground; buoyed by warm south wind storms like in the last two days, floating from one house- and dog-sit to the next, soon to fly out of state altogether for ten days; also enjoying visitors, principally this wonderful lady: 

Phil's mom is 89, whip-smart, strong, full of wisdom and positivity around life. She brought a breath of the bounty of Oregon fall with her. 

Now, I'm trying hard to get back on track with work and, please life-force and all the angels, my creative writing, and so to pull myself out of my physical tailspin. More on that soon--I had to post my lament for fall first.

Intermission--The Art of Finding

Seems things have been getting heavier around here as I've been getting lighter. Obviously there's more to be said about that--perhaps I owe an explanation--but let's have an intermission. I have lost so many things--objects, people, opportunities; and I choose to live without so many things--amenities, luxuries, status... As such, much of what is delightful and nourishing in my life comes from things found...

Things like wild blueberries, tiny, almost hidden, full of goodness and deliciousness that couldn't be bought.

 Things like this rock. I pick up rocks every time I hike the beach, which is several times a week. Generally, all the rocks I pick up fall into a very similar category in terms of size and color. Occasionally there's one with a special shape or color. But this one I picked up two weekends ago, with the tiger face that can also be a sheep face and also many other faces and expressions is the most amazing rock that's eve come to my hands. It was washed up on the Homer Spit, and who knows how deep in the ocean it has been, from how far it has traveled, to be a found object and muse for me.

Things like this--what is it? Magnifying glass? Telephone receiver? Goofy toy, anyway.

 Things like the potato people, slightly different every harvest.

 Things like a whole sea urchin, whole except for the life force, every geometrically placed spine present, delicate filigree.

 Things like this chip of fir bark with its own little figure drawing inside. I found it when I was down in WA at the Sandwich Academy.

Things like this piece of charred wood found a little way up from Bishop's Beach in Homer. Does that or does that not look like a fish?

I end with the rock again, since its coming into my life feels almost mystically significant. It's an odd kind of significance that I haven't yet figured out for myself--I've never been a cat person especially, although I have always been a rock person and a person who finds faces in objects without objective faces.

Mastery of the art of losing may not lead to disaster, suggests Elizabeth Bishop. But perhaps living with the daily losses that are life, I -- perhaps we -- can come into a space where loss is exhalation, finding is breathing back in. And perhaps, somewhere in there, is balance. That's my prayer for today.