The Carved-out Hollow Space Inside

I’ve just come back from my first visit to Austin, which I loved.  I was there for work but found lots of time for taco-eating and wandering around.  I like being in new places and exploring (and did I mention the tacos with enough emphasis to convey their fineness?).

I presented a paper, which I first had to construct (I’d done some ahead but not much with so much other work to do), so that kept me busy.  I wrote about narratives of grief and loss, which was good for me to delve into.  It cheered me, oddly enough, to dive into it, painful as the topic is.  My own grief is strong because my father would have asked to read my work and would have wanted to hear about it and my marathon.  The world doesn’t feel the same without having that–the person I want to tell when I’ve done something I’m proud of (which isn’t all that often or easy for me to feel, but it does happen on occasion).  But this is how grief is.  It’s not going to be “over” because the loss isn’t just a temporary hiatus from which all will ultimately return to normal (such as it was, and it was not all good, far from it, but it had some good and it’s what I knew).  That “normal” is finished, so it’s not there to return to.  This is just how it is, which is fine, or at least it will have to do.  Such as it is.

26.2 and no more miles to go before I sleep. . .

. . .not that I’m saying that in a deathwardly-leaning kind of way like the poem feels to be. . .actually crazy things like marathons make me feel far less interesting in sinking into the deep dark in any sort of eternal way, a little cozy sleeping, yes, but not so much the deep blackness of total oblivion today.    

 but anyway, I had a zippy (for me, compared to others my pace was only a bit over glacial, but for me zippy) first half or so, and then the sun came out and my non-heat-acclimated self promptly ejected all its salt, which is rather an important thing to have when attempting to contract muscles.  so things got a bit rough until I ate a pack of salt and suddenly felt interested in participating again.  of course there were 12 or so miles left.  I won’t go on and on describing it but I ended up doing some run/walk and finished with six hours eight seconds time (I’d been hoping for closer to 5:30, but then again I wasn’t sure I could do it at all).  

This kind of thing is so good for me because it’s about working with what I’ve got (not expecting myself to be more or less than what I can, just doing the best from where I am).  This is all incredibly opposite from the way I’ve operated much of my life–or tried to–I never really could pull off being utterly self-reliant and apparently totally in control and with my life and self looking all together and on top of things and composed all the time.  I feel very much the ugly sheepling in my clan, but that’s all right (except that it’s lonely) because I don’t want to live their way so not being capable of pulling it off is no loss.  And nobody can really out do me in the let’s-try-some-crazy-thing-that-I-might-very-well-fail-at-category.  I win there, hands down, and sometimes I have to accept my award for this category lying in the ground because that’s where one of these attempts has taken me.  Needless to say my hair is often out of place, in fact I don’t even know what in-place would look like.  Not in my constitution, apparently.   

But venturing out takes me to crazy-fun and crazy-painful places.  I saw the group dressed up as ducks for reasons I didn’t catch, and the Dominican nuns in full habits, and the champagne and strawberries spectators, and the kids giving us high fives in the less fancy parts of town (we did go through town, let me tell you).  

It’s fun to be out with 30,000 of my fellow obsessive intensity-seekers.  

There was some serious intensity, including pain and discomfort of an array of sorts–crampy leg muscles (pretty much all of them during the unsalted eeabee episode), brain saying this is appalling (at various points it occasionally went back to stating or yelling or muttering this message), leaden and/or burning muscles, my pale skin pinkifying in the sun, feet complaining about the amount of footstrikes. . .those things, especially.  

I slid into a trancy-state a couple times for variety.  It’s interesting to explore the many ways of producing the kind of mental toughness something like this requires, and running relatively slowly may reduce the aerobic intensity but it also means it all goes on a good while longer.  It also of course requires a certain perverseness, but there’s no shortage of that here.  I’ve got that, and some to spare.  

My lovely massage therapist was volunteering,  so I got a treatment from here (and encouragement!) and can’t wait to see her for an hour on Tuesday.  I’ve been loungey like my cats today, recovering, and savoring that process–the whole process, actually–I’ve come a good long way from how I used to be and this kind of thing shows that to me.  A true journey.  Sometimes I forget, or don’t notice, and only look at how much still needs to be done.  But for this little minute, I’m perched in the aftermathglow and standing still a moment.  

Running, Running, and Running Some More!

T’day I’m off to run a marathon, my first.  I was reading something where they used “marathon” as the adjective for some crazy-excessive-overdosy kind of endeavor and here I am seeking it out!

I’m excited and a bit daunted but that’s how I like it.  

 

Post 100! My dictionary of various tidbits, entry one.

underworld, descent into.  a phrase, referring to an archetypal journey into the shadowy unknown, a quest that offers both danger and rewards.  a romance.  a dream-expedition, one undertaken without assurance of safety.  we do not know if we will come back, or if we do, if we will be recognizeable.  but we are impelled to go, nonetheless.  our spirits are restless and our need is great.

on another note (and now for something completely different), I’m off to a women’s recovery retreat this afternoon, so I’m about to go into internet/blog withdrawal, but I’m excited nonetheless.  I am fighting the feeling that I should take work with me–not that I want to–but that sense of obligation is there.  But I did some this morning and will be back all-too-soon.  so I’m off to the edge of the cumberland plateau (no tipping off, right?) and hopefully some silliness and cake.  

thanks to my readers and commenters for making my 1st 100 posts blogging such fun!

 

Seasick on Dry Land, but not Joylessly So

Why should we want to be untouched, unmarred, unhurt?

. . .except for the obvious, that hurting hurts. . .

But other than the obvious, why else?  No else.  

As Yeats–his Crazy Jane, actually–puts it, “nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.”

– of them there paradoxes, a paradox box, the only kind of thing that seems–to me–to explain life.

if it may be explained at all.  far far better minds than mine (fifty-three times better, in fact) so no.  Beckett and Kafka say no.  or not exactly.  in a little light reading last night I ran across a quote of Kafka’s describing a feeling of being seasick on dry land.  so heartbreaking–that almost-graspable but utterly-ungraspable sensation of something being wrong in a way that doesn’t make sense–what more can be said?

and yet we sometimes still want to be here, even so, and even sparkle a little sometimes, beyond all logic or reasonableness.

 

 

Anahata, Achey-Breaky

I’m living in Nashville, so I feel I ought to through a little of that flavor over my Chapel Hill-cultivated

yoga-ey sensibility.  Of course there’s tons of yoga here, and lots of music of types other than the one.  

But anyway.

So my grief over loss–of my father and also of the idea of family that I still sort of had but have no longer or at least am beginning to let go of–and fear and shame are all swirling around–all at once this week.  I find this challenging.  It undoes me, disorganizes me, lays me low.  But opening up the heart center, anusara yoga-style or whatever style, is more findable for me than it used to be; fear is not as large; courage is larger.  But I’m still getting a bit undone at times.  I know I have vulnerable spots; I do not pretend not to (in fact I have an odd and possibly counter-productive tendency to announce them rather broadly at times).  And I know that having strength isn’t about not having weaknesses; it’s about working with them.  But the truth is that some days are also about being knocked off balance and over.  Sometimes I fall.  Then I feel like I should pretend I didn’t, for shame.  Shame holds me down, makes me queasy and weak.  Will I let it hold me down without a fight?  Today I fought through one wave, but not through another.  I laid down for it, and it sickened me, as it does.  What will tomorrow bring?   

Maybe another way of leading with the heart.  Grief burns things up, but it carves out a greater space.

Yoga Fire

Not hot yoga in the trademark sense, but hot from our own fire-building work, and dancing.  

Today I want to a workshop–manipura (the solar plexus chakra, sunny/fiery/out-into-the-world chakra)-focused and core/arm balance focused.  I always am shocked at hot intense these can be, cleaning-intense kriyas the like, but a pleasant kind of shocked.  I feel rather detoxed in more ways than the literal.  Sanieh (the workshop-doer) talked about us each thinking of some thoughts to give up to the fire to be burned away.  

We did some free-form trance dance style bits too and then fell spent to the ground, feeling the ground solid and supportive after all that ecstatic movement.  Ecstasy, embodied spirituality, and a good reason to eat a lot of food and salt after.  

I was heartsick and still am but now I’m other things too.

At a loss

This phrase, “at a loss,” makes more sense to me than ever, in the sense that being at a loss is such a central part of loss–that feeling of being disorganized inside, undone.

People talk about how when someone dies we still have them with us inside, in a way.  And I feel this.  But it’s not the same thing as having them here, alive.  Obviously.  But in a way none of this grief thing has been obvious.  It puts us at a loss, undoes us.  We don’t know how to handle it, how to stand it.  Different and contradictory emotions wash over us, restructuring us.  

My father’s voice was so strong, I can’t number the amount of times I can imagine what he’s say about something.  This isn’t an idealizing comment–many of the things were irritating or worse.  Some were wonderful.  And they’re are still circulating, still operational in my mind.  But also not quite as here as they were.  I feel both relieved and bereft of the challenging things, and bereft and somehow satisfied by the wonderful things.  

Complicated.  Disorganizing.

Today though I lolled about with a cold, which wasn’t such a bad thing though unpleasant.  Being sick makes me lighten up the pressure on myself to accomplish things, and aware of the need to be self-nurturing, which as I recall having been told is especially important in these times of being socked in the belly, or even gently nudged, with loss.  

It occurs to me these are things I could be doing anyway, all the time.  

Baby steps.

And a little bounding, I admit; I slipped in a little run so as to not get totally off my training, and to get my circulation going.  I seem to be obsessed–how shocking.  

My dad was that way too.

 

Fatherless, Shelterless

a year today since my father died.  

it seems more real somehow, that he’s not going to come back, that this wasn’t just a temporary change that’ll pass and things’ll go back to normal.

they won’t.  or this is normal now.

I saw a scene between a grown but young woman and her father the other day on a show I was watching, and I realized that’s over for me.  

I can’t quite believe it even yet.  But I believe it a little more now.                                                                                                  

It keeps raining.  Shelterlessness. 

Running Makes You High

Yeah it does. And the physio/neuro folks say so too.from the New York Times today, full story here:

Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect.  

Except I’m not feelin’ that runners high because I’m having a few days time-out from it to let me knee rest a bit–all that getting high can be hard on the knees, it seems.  I’m extremely proud of myself for being so sensible.  Small steps.