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| February 2006 Day by day, the roses in my container garden are starting back from their crew cuts. Each bush sprouting new blushing growth at its very own pace though all get the same sun and water. (A lesson in this.) The first daffodil opens in one of the numberless terracotta pots around my patio. The winter “greens” are producing lustily, providing me with daily batches of fresh Russian and black kale, red and green chard, red and green mustards, bok choy, arrugula and romaine lettuce. I–with “standing” permission–visit the grove in which I used to live to pick whatever citrus and avocados I need or want. I love being able to gather so much of my own food from where it lives. In the mountains, old man's beard and mustard bloom. Along the road the neon of acacias shines blindingly. It's been feeling like spring (almost like early summer) even as we've hardly had any winter or rain. So many of us in Ojai have been uneasy about this heat when we should have been having rains and coolness. Everyone around the shops in town has been talking about how flaky and disoriented they've been feeling in the midst of this abnormal weather. And then, this week, winter re-emerges. Cold days and frosty nights. Rain that leaves scatterings of snow on the mountains I see from my window. And, oh, the huge billowy cumulus clouds in every direction! Such a delectable vision. So wonderful to build fires again. To watch the flames furl and dance; to hear the crackling, to smell wood smoke. Coming back from errands one day this week, I notice a red-tail hawk calmly perching on the phone line near my hot tub. She sits surveying my little wild meadow and me as I come up the path. Such a treat! Owls often now in the trees on the trail I walk in the evenings and on phone wires above the road I take to get there. It seems so magical that I chance to look up just when I pass under one that's perched, bobbing its head looking for prey. And, the ever-growing numbers of birds at my feeders every day. Racquetting, singing their little hearts out in the shrubs and trees around the edges of the meadow. I love this delicious wildness I find right here in the middle of “town!” After what's seemed like a very long two months, I finally made my way to the computer to rework the old introduction. Ten days ago the words I needed to recast the introduction–to fit the manuscript's new working title–just flowed right through me onto the screen. I've sent it off to Debra (my agent) to see if it works for her. If it does, we'll be on to helping me to write the “book proposal” she'll need to add to the introduction, selected chapters, blurbs and whatever else goes into making the packet she'll use to sell the book. Now, I'm back in wait-and-see mode for at least the two or three weeks that she thinks it will take her to get to have time to read it. I seem amazingly open and patient, trusting the timing of it all to be just as it needs to be. Trusting the Grandmothers' energy in the whole of the process. And, what a process it's been, this getting-to-the-rewriting! Though the actual birthing was simple and took only two or three hours, the journey to those hours was a rocky one. Working still at unraveling the constriction in my lower mid-back that felt intimately connected with that journey, I began seeing my former chiropractor. The work with my Feldenkrais-healer guy seemed oddly not to be enough by itself. Eve, an 82-year-old passionate-about-bodies dynamo of an Italian Mama has been gently and persistently coaxing my spine back from various compensatory misalignments. (Amazing how the body figures out ways to rebalance structural imbalances.) Each session with Eve seems to unearth a torrent of emotions that wash over and pummel me for hours afterwards. The first two sessions opened me to huge outpourings of intense rage. No content, just roaring, flailing fury. Stomping around the house, bellowing, (“I hate this!” “I can't stand this!” “Stop it!” “No!”). Apologizing to poor Ms. Pretty who ran cowering from my first day of storming to hide under the bed. So intense. Pure rage energy. No frame of reference for it. I love that all these years of working with myself leave me unafraid to be awash in such a stormy rush of raging. That I know how to make a safe space for myself in which to let it rip through and out of me. (I did start putting Ms. Pretty outside for most of it!) Though there was no content, my deep belly sense was clear that it was old. That it was energy that had been locked in my body/back from years and years ago. Stuck, stashed energy having much to do with my mother: her often-murderous resentment toward me, her neglectfulness and her mistreatment of me. Just as I've spent years releasing that rage from my psyche, here I am-at last-releasing it from my poor little body. The next two sessions with Eve have left me caught in waves of equally intense sadness, sorrow and grieving. I find myself sobbing deeply for no apparent reason. Gut-wrenching anguish comes up suddenly in the midst of walking, doing my morning Reiki, sitting here now writing. I wail and keen, cry as if my heart is breaking. Again there is little or no content. Only an overwhelming feeling of bereftness. Occasionally, memories of random moments in my childhood rise up as I weep. Inevitably, in these brief flickers, there is my mother's compelling absence, inattention, coldness. Never a shred of tenderness, only harshness in her presence. This profound grieving continues to thread its way through my ordinary life. I feel so grateful to have now a week of unplugged, retreat time ahead of me. I need the open, uninterrupted time and space to just feel these incredibly sad feelings that are releasing from my body-memory. For all the powerful emotional releasing, there has been only a very modest, just noticeable unsnarling of the constriction in my lower thoracic spine. Constriction that doesn't affect or interfere with most of my normal range of motion. Constriction that I wouldn't even know was there if I never arched or leaned backward, or touched that area of my spine. Mostly, I remain patient, assured by the x-rays that there's nothing “serious” going on in my spine. Knowing that over time, I will get to the other side. To the place where the constriction ultimately resolves itself. I had had the thought that actually writing and sending off the revised introduction would create the conditions for that resolution. That taking this huge step into a more expanded and expanding vision/version of myself would constitute the literal breakthrough. For much of my life, my body used to respond with ailments of one sort or another just as I was approaching thresholds of expansion, of becoming more fully myself in the world. Sties, colds, infections, stomach troubles, backaches, strains and sprains were some of the ways I seemed to “have to pay a price” for going forward. For going beyond the limits in which my mother had lived her life. For becoming an ever-fuller version of myself than she had been comfortable with. I still feel that the constriction in my back is connected with this going forth. But, it seems, the unsnarling process has a longer trajectory than I'd imagined, sigh. So, I am moving very slowly in the face of the storms and the forward motion. And, waiting–with great patience and no agendas–seems what this time is about for me. Waiting for the physical release. Waiting for word from Debra on the next steps about the manuscript. Waiting to see who it may be that will come to be living in the main house once my landlord moves to her new home. Waiting to see if the new living situation on the property will work as well for me as the current one. I'm tired a lot in the midst of the waiting. More likely to buy (and add my greens to) soups at the health food stores in town than to make my own. Not finding the energy to do a much needed cleaning of my house, or to go on any major hikes.Sleeping and napping a lot. And, most days now, crying and sobbing at odd and unpredictable moments. It all feels quite okay and often quite fascinating to the me who watches the unfolding. To visit the Bulletin Board Archive Table of Contents Site Directory (for non-frames viewing)
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