Pacing

Life has been whirring by at dizzying speed for months now. San Francisco with Roz, reuniting with John, meditation time at Harbin, then back to LA for separating spaces with Hany and splittng time with Keli, then off to visit Roz again in Connecticut. One sweet week of lovemaking then on to Rosie in Philadelphia, excitement, surprising depths of oceanic love, mind-blowig sex, old friends and connections wriggling out of the woodwork, plans to move to New Orleans with Keli and Hany, feeling closer as we work out the details, then the email from Keli with the expected limit of one night a week with me (you're making too much out of it, no I'm not, yes you are, shut up, leave it alone already) and the contraction of fear, what is this? what do I want? Mark and Michelline come to visit for ten days, but then three days in the dread phone call from Keli, "My mom had a heart attack and died this morning". Driving straight back to Downsville through the night without even the radio for company, my thoughts so loud they drown out everything else. Two and a half weeks of trying to let go and say goodbye, resentful that my departure is felt as a whimper and not a bang. Pouring out my love, only to find it chnged into some other love, not what I expected at all, something sticky and yellow and unrecognizable. Who are these people? Who have I become? Then back to Philadelphia, floating through life, unsure whats next, emotional roller coaster rides with Rosie over Howard, Pax, Mattick, god knows who else, then I', leading TBS- come learn Intimacy Skills from me! Ha! Ha! But it goes well mostly, and everyone is in love with everyone and I am healed, except that I'm starting to feel sick by the time I leave I have a cough that sounds like death. Drive home and sleep a little then two days of carrying heavy things through the rain feeling sicker and sicker all the while, and now I live at Aron's house where the walls are falling in and there is tension in the air along with the sweetness, and no one is helping me with these heavy boxes as I cough my way up the stairs and sleep in an unfamiliar bed in hopes that drywall will soon be put up in my sooon to be shared bedroom with Rosie but then Rosie is waking up at 2am to leave for her court date in Virginia and her 10 day visit to Davi and she's kissing me goodbye, and I'm back to sleep, only to wake now, in the late Wednesday morning to...nothing. The whirr has stopped. I'm suddenly still. Positively dizzy with stillness. What now? I don't know.

I'm in the studio with Rosie again. People would think I was a student here if it wasn't an all girls school. It supports Rosie when I hang out here with her, and it gives me access to a high speed internet connection, but it also fills up my days and makes me feel busy all the time. Not that I'm sure what I ought to be filling my day up with.

So, I've got $70 in my pocket, another $150 in my bank account, and about $11,000 in debt. I quit smoking today. I'm leading TBS in two days and I feel underprepared.

My life has come unmoored and I feel adrift. Sometimes this is exciting, a grand adventure, other times peaceful, a lazy float down the river. Now I am confused and impatient. Where am I going? What am I doing?

Yesterday Rosie and I went to Aron's house to discuss moving in, fixing up the house, and to meet Bill, a friend of Aron's who has taken on the reconstruction project. Bill was great, centered and honest and immediately smitten with Rosie. After he left Aron and I sat together on the roof talking about plans for the house, for little business ventures, for how to live together. I mentioned my credit card debt and my intention to get a job to start paying it off and Aron tried to offer to pay it for me but I couldn't get clear about what he wanted in return and I closed down, fearful. He sensed my closure and got triggered himself, replaying old conversations about saving the Earth and environmental activism. It was all very disconnecting.

On the way back to Rosie's house Paxus called and told me he had a four hour layover in the Philadelphia airport. Rosie bought us both tickets for the R1 and we went out to spend some time with him. On the way Rosie got a call from a boy that she'd met at the legalize marijuana march. This prompted me to share my fears about Rosie dropping me whenever a pretty boy was in sight. I told her that I wanted her to flirt and meet whoever she wanted to but that I also wanted to be acknowledged. That I sometimes felt dropped and taken for granted whenever a shiny new opportunity came along. Almost as soon as we got to the airport we found Pax and took a cab back into the city, giving up our round trip tickets on the R1.

Jason came over too and the four of us went out to Tangiers for drinks. After a while Rosie's friend Kelsie joined us too and we were having a great time drinking and laughing. Kelsie is amazing. Almost crazy in her strange mix of frank openness and inexperienced naivety. With only a third of a gin and juice for encouragement she was loudly proclaiming her dismay at her suspicion that she's bad at sex. So loudly in fact that the bartender started to comment and make her uncomfortable. I felt oddly charmed.

Pax caught a cab back to the airport and the rest of us made our way back to Rosie's apartment. We were having a wonderful time up in the bedroom, talking, cuddling, even reading poetry to each other. Then Rosie got another call on her cell phone. Her friends Tom and Howard were in the area and wanted to hang out. Rosie invited them over and hung up, but Kelsie, Jason and I weren't too keen on adding new members to our little party and said we wished we'd been included in the decision. So Rosie offered to call them back and tell them not to come. She called, but what came out of her mouth was that the friends she was with didn't want anymore company but sure, she'd come down and hang out with them for a little while. Just five minutes, a walk around the block. So Rosie got up and left Jason and Kelsie and me to go see her other friends. Five minutes became forty and Rosie brought them into the house, downstairs to keep them apart from us, but that just made it more awkward for me. I started to feel trapped. I wanted a smoke but didn't want to walk past them, these strangers who knew only that I was one of the folks who hadn't wanted them to come. I was pissed off and unable or unwilling to share that I was pissed off.

Even so, I was able to put those feelings aside pretty easily and enjoy the time with Kelsie and Jason. That all changed once Rosie came back and those two went home though. Rosie fell right asleep into a drunken Coma and I lay still in the dark, breathing hard. Rosie tried to cuddle me and I shrugged her off. I went downstairs to smoke. I tried to read but I couldn't concentrate. After about 45 minutes of trying unsuccessfully to process my emotions I went back upstairs and woke Rosie up. "Talk to me," I said.

I told her how I was feeling, and she started to cry. She tried to leave and I grabbed her. She tried to push me off, but I wouldn't let her go. "Stay, talk to me.," I kept saying. And she did. But then she got defensive and we fought. She started crying again and I reached out to hold her, but she pushed me away. This made me mad and I went back downstairs for another smoke and a sulk. When I went back up we made peace and snuggled up together. I'm always saying that jealousy is my favorite emotion, but I'm getting sick of myself. I don't want to be such a drama queen.

I am sitting in the Monroe Airport, letting the changes in my life sweep over me. Keli and Hany just waved me goodbye. The biggest goodbye in a long long time, because as of right now I don't live with them anymore. I'm on my way to Rosie and home, in Philadelphia again. It feels unreal. My tears are tears of bewilderment.

Now I've boarded the little puddle jumper that will take me to Dallas on my way to Philadelphia, on my way away from Downsville. We left for the airport in a rush, and somehow I didn't get to say any goodbyes to anyone except Shelby. I'll miss Bill and Shelby, Jeff and Trish and Joseph and Jared. Even Tempest I think. I remember feeling good and excited about moving out. I remember the strength of my conviction that this was what I needed to do. Right now though, I only feel sad and heartbroken.

I can't wait to hold Rosie in my arms and feel some love amidst this devastation. Reuniting with her is the bright spark in this. Her presence is what gave me the courage to make a hard but needed change. I'm so grateful to her for letting me back into her heart after I left her even though she wanted me to stay.

Meditation

Meditation allows the practitioner to intentionally settle the mind so as to reconnect with the experience of being. This is useful over time, because there is a particularly troublesome habit of mind, called the ego, which cannot survive in a still mind. Meditation is a purifying process in the sense that weeds out the most pernicious habits of thought by virtue of starving them. Ego is like a disease which we are all susceptible to (in varying degrees) and meditation is its treatment. Meditation is useless as a practice to the enlightened because to be enlightened is to be unaffected by the ego delusion.

Conditioning

All thought is conditioned thought. It is the nature of thought to be conditioned in the same way it is the nature of water to flow downhill. The process of conditioning cannot be stopped. It can only be improved. Awakening to the present moment is the way to improve the conditioning process. Conditioned thought is just thought patterns formed by past experiences and interpretations. You are conditioning your thought patterns right now. To attend to this process is vital to improving it. When you attend to what you are experiencing right now you bring the full power of your attention to the pattern of thought you are feeding into the conditioning process. By doing this you create your present experience and sow the seeds for you next present experience. You cannot stop thoughts arising from your previous conditioning from coming- they come, that is the nature of thought. What you can do is attend fully to your reaction to that thought and its impact on your life right now. This process of attending to what is happening right now will, over time, support conditioned thought which is useful (comprehension, modeling, insight), and allow conditioned thought that is not useful (prejudice, reactivity) to gradually atrophy. If you hurt your hand you know only that you want the pain to stop. If your realize that you hurt your hand by slamming it in the door jamb, you will be less likely to slam it again next time. Similarly, awakening cannot keep you from getting hurt, but it can teach you how to stop hurting yourself.

Nature

I have been enormously grateful for the voice deep within myself that reminds me, everything is nature. I live in a world where nature is held as dichotomous with man-made, where nature refers only to flowers and trees and squirrels and tigers, and I've learned to move in this realm. But deep within there has always been my voice, calling, "rocks are nature too, so are metals, and chemicals, and compounds, and concrete and buildings and airplanes and the people-who-make-them". And if it's all nature, then it's all real, which is to say it all exists beyond the labels I might attach to it. It all has existence. And existence is me.

Everything Changes

I have a bad habit of writing the least while the most is going on. I'm sitting in the bus in Downsville, LA feeling lonely and depressed. I'm wondering how I could have ever thought I was satisfied here. Keli and I have been having problems relating since winter, maybe because Hany and I have been having problems relating. I started to travel more and more, and this only fed Keli's discontent. Everything started to come to a head while I was on a six week visit to Rosie. We were talking about buying a house together in New Orleans. We even made an offer and had it accepted, but then Keli started talking about stability and reliability and how she'd be spending six nights out of seven at home with Hany and maybe one with me in my little efficiency at the back of the house and I couldn't ignore it any longer. The dream broke. It seemed my relationship was all ready suffocating from insufficient time and attention, and this shift was in the exact opposite direction of what I'd been needing and wanting. Suddenly, I started wondering why I was moving to a new city just to live a satellite life. Living with Rosie had been so wonderful, and I couldn't ignore anymore that I didn't really want to go home.

I was just starting to rationalize again, think up new structures, new ways to arrange space, new plans and schedules about how Keli and Hany and I could better manage our time and find better ways to relate. Then Keli called and said, "My mom had a heart attack and died this morning."

I drove straight through the night to make it home about 24hrs later. On the drive I had plenty of time to get clear about my emotions. I drove the whole way in silence, without even the radio. I started out anxious, then all I wanted was to be supportive of Keli, and I felt grateful that there was something real to focus on, some way I could connect with Keli beyond our relational difficulties. But as I drove on, I started to get angry. Up until this point we'd talked only about what wasn't working for Keli and Hany, and how my actions (going away so much, being withdrawn and distant when I'm home) contributed to that. Now I was starting to discover that I had a few gripes of my own. I was sick of always waiting around for Keli, and sick of the lack of emotional space to be myself in our house, in our relationship. I was tired of feeling shoved aside, unwanted, an invader in my own home. Then I started blaming Hany. I reminded myself of all the times I'd supported his relationship with Keli, even when I felt treated badly. I felt betrayed, like Hany had fed on Keli's discontent at my being away, and convinced her that all she really wanted was to be with him.

By the time I arrived in Downsville I was out of it, wired with too much coffee and fuzzy from lack of sleep. No one greeted me when I pulled up. I went looking for Keli, and Joseph told me she was at her mom's apartment. Another woman was looking for Sue's apartment too, obviously wanting to convey her condolences. I showed her the way in and called out. A sleepy, puffy faced Keli came out of Sue's bedroom and into her living room. I got a casual, "hey, you're back" and Keli was hugging the stranger, crying on her shoulder while the woman said she knew how hard this must be for Keli. I felt confused. I was hurt by the casual greeting after I'd just driven all night long, but at the same time I was aware of how self-centered these emotions were in the face of Keli's tragedy. This whole drama just got worse as the funeral preparations got underway.

After a little while Keli came for a walk with me and we went down to the pyramid. I wanted to just put all our relationship stuff aside, but I was still reeling from the cold reception and Keli could sense how stiff I was. She convinced be to talk about it and I let her have it. Told her she wasn't a very good friend, that she never stuck up for me, that she sold me out to conciliate Hany. I got so mad i kicked over the big candle and it's wax smeared into the plywood wall. Keli just listened. I told her I was moving out. She cried a little, and asked me questions. I told her how pissed I was at Hany and she said I should confront him. But then she said she had to get back to her family and we went back up to the house.

The next morning I shouted at Hany. Blamed him for stealing Keli, accused him of stabbing me in the back, told him he had no loyalty. He cried and shouted back. Told me I didn't know what I was talking about, told me he'd only ever spoken well of me to Keli, tried to get her to understand me. Said I was just taking the easy road out by blaming him. Told me to look to my own self. I realized he was right and I apologized, but he railed on for another couple minutes before it sunk in that I wasn't shouting back anymore. We made the best peace we could, which felt like it was better than it had been in a long time. Keli came in to find us chatting amiably in the living room, and when we told her what had happened she almost cried with relief.

I wrote this poem for her:

I am a child,

Cake uneaten,

Crying because someone else

Got a bigger slice.

And you

(Wise mother)

Do not scold

Or berate me

But let your heart break

With the pain of my folly.

And live again,

Through me.

I am powerless

In the face of your love.

The gravity of stars is paltry.

Yours is more subtle

And further reaching.

Do the planets feel this way?

Heartbroken to be only satellites,

Eager to grow up,

Break free,

Roam the universe.

Desperate to be sucked in,

Annihilated,

Made one with you?

Do the stars watch,

Caught themselves in the same

Web of cosmic forces,

With your open hearted

Love?

I read it to her on the way to her ear doctor's appointment, and to my delight, she loved it. She'd been wanting me to write her a poem for a long time, and knowing that, I'd wanted to for a long time, but none had come before. I was glad of this one. I was glad too to be hanging out with her too, and I thought of all the times she'd asked me to go with her for this or that errand and I'd said no because I was involved in some computer game or tv show or pot haze. I thought of how living with Rosie for a while had encouraged me to get into life more, and how good it felt to bring this back into my relationship with Keli.

The viewing was hard. Really hard. I told myself that I was just there to say my own goodbye to Sue and be an emotional support for Keli, but I ended up feeling estranged and auxiliary; badly in need of support myself. Everyone kept asking who I was and I kept saying, "I'm a friend of Keli's". Relatives and friends were lining up to shake Hany's hand and offer their condolences to Keli's new husband. Sometimes, if I was standing next to Keli, people would ask her if I was her husband. "No," she'd say, "we're really close friends." This went on for more than four hours. I wanted my support to be more important to Keli than other peoples opinions. I wanted her to want to cry on my shoulder and share her grief with me. Instead she was "on" talking to all the family and friends who crawl out of the woodwork when someone dies. I was just hanging around feeling uncomfortable and sorry for myself.

The next day was devoted to preparations for the funeral, and I didn't see Keli much all day. I ran errands and tried to find ways to be helpful. Shelby got me to help with the printing and editing of the funeral program, and on the front cover I read, "Sue Bryan is survived by Keli Bryan and her husband Hany Nagib and Jeff Bryan and his wife Tempest Bryan". My heart dropped. Later that evening when I finally got to spend some time with Keli, she asked how I was doing. I said I didn't want to talk about it, but she encouraged me to do so anyway and we'd already talked about how all that time I spent dealing with my emotions privately had kept us distant, so I told her how I'd been feeling at the viewing and when I read the program. At first this went well. She said she could see how hard that would be, but then she started talking about how there was nothing she could do about it, and I got triggered. I said she could shout it to the world and let other people's opinions be damned, and she got mad. She was tired too, and decided to go to bed. I spent a lonely night in the bus trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong.