Category — Inside My Head

I have a few minutes to write a post before I hop off to the next thing. So here I am, with screen before me. This feels strange, it has been a remarkably technology-free time.

I went on a hike today, with the resident naturalist and a bunch of other people. I think we all felt that we needed to get out of our heads. We’ve been reading a lot, marking words with pens, analyzing, discussing. It’s been beautiful.

And every day the constant hills and valleys of self-congratulation and self-degradation. I’m pouring Cheez Whiz all over my brain with this stuff, who can think when they’re thinking about themself?  I will publish, I will never publish. She’s much better than me and I’m totally okay with that and I’m confident in my voice and who am I kidding I have no voice at all, just a dull whine in the desert, the whine of trucks in the distance. Nothing worth listening to. Maybe some air brakes thrown in.

So when that starts up I’m thinking about this:

The woman who cleans the condos on my floor is a small Mexican woman who reaches my armpit and is seven months pregnant. With her seventh child. I know because I asked. She smiles sweetly when we say hello to each other every day and she pushes this gigantic cart around and cleans all day, and so I will get out of my head and tell my insecurities to shut up already.

The first talk this week was about empathy and humility, two of the greatest tools in the writer’s toolbox.

I’m learning about a lot more here than just writing.

Sometimes these periods of silence come to me. I’m not sure what to say.

I keep thinking about those pelicans and how beautiful they were when they dove. Just a straight plummet, down into the water, and they pop back up and shake themselves off: no big deal. Whatever, water off my back.

Oily feathers, that’s what I need.

When I was young I wished that I had brown skin and long straight black hair. I don’t wish that anymore, but I find myself wishing that I had a happy-go-lucky personality. Do those exist? Because for those of us over here, it’s hard to believe. You just laugh? Enjoy life? You don’t have to compose a small story about your sandwich to enjoy it? Or draw a picture of it, or dip it in wax and feathers and set it on fire?

I need a lot of trimmings in order to get out of my mind.

Here’s one trimming that really, really helps.

Are you ready? It’s a good one.

Community.

I’ll say it again: Community. Oh, sweet togetherness, normalcy, cooking together and eating plums and standing barefoot, shifting from foot to foot. The comforting moments in this strange summer have been solitude and peace coupled with the right amount of community. I need space, it’s true. I can’t think with all those other voices in my head. But I love to be with friends who have purpose and love filling them up and causing them to overflow.

If it’s not a normal part of your life, I strongly encourage you to make one day in the week that you have a communal dinner. It could be with one other family, or two, or three. Take turns cooking or cook together. You will look forward to it, and you may even dread it, but you will always be glad that you made the effort. Jesus ate with people. People with very little, all around the world, continue living and working because of the strong connections of their communities.

Tomorrow I drive off into the East for the Writing Conference. The book and the conference have been occupying the 32% of my psyche that is left over when the kids are done with it. I’m nervous and excited. I have nothing to say, my friends. I know about as much as a newborn baby.

Or a pelican, leaning in for the perfect dive.

I am looking for hymns everywhere, because now more than ever I need a song in my mouth.

Everyone who wants to be a superhero thinks that he or she will be able to swim upstream, against the deafening flow of the current, away from the direction we are all being taken, not entirely within our will.

I find myself leaning against depression and being overwhelmed by this culture. Instead of making conversation, I am mute in public. Just swept along. Just in that loneliest herd; all the cars on the freeway. I thought I could swim against the current, but it turns out that the swell was so big that it tossed me deep into the earth. It is so different here, so different from the small space I found for myself among a billion people in India.

My own bent toward melancholy is something I march against every day of my life. I am deeply joyful and deeply sad. Disturbed. It’s why I can’t watch disturbing movies, there is too much under there that is already roiled and seething.

So I’ve been walking. Okay, Rae, maybe it was too much to think you could be a superhero, but how about taking a walk everyday?

Okay.

On the first night there were the donkeys. And then the second time, in a different town, I walked to the beach and there they were. Pelicans.

And oh how they dove. Oh I wish I could dive like that, throw myself toward the water and cut into it until it pours off and I take flight again. They were incredible. I sat and watched them for a long while, sat in the sand beside the platter of a moon and watched them dive, and dive, and dive.

The night before last I went walking to the beach again, and this time there were no pelicans, but it was okay because my heart was already thrumming with the music of the Brazilian drum troupe that somehow had appeared on the sand. Why so many Brazilian people were gathered on the beach, playing drums and dancing, I’m not sure. (Maybe something to do with the World Cup?) All I know is that it was another step into reorienting myself in the world. I danced a little, just a little. I sat and smiled into the waves. I sat and smiled and smiled.

We are a gathering people. We need connection. We need to stop the current of isolation, to swim against it with all the power our little fat, torn up salmon bodies have. Or dive into it, cut through it and feel it falling off of us.

There is such a huge difference between solitude and isolation. Solitude is something you seek, to find rest and quiet within yourself, to be with God. Isolation is a lack of ability to touch or hear anyone around you. It is a scary place.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t need time to walk, to muse, to watch pelicans and pat little knee-high donkeys on their heads. To speak with God to say thank you and i love you i love you again and again. And help me, because i don’t know where exactly i am. Because it has nothing to do with isolation, it has to do with the reorientation with that we need, to hear the earth and the heartbeat of God.

The current doesn’t even touch Him.

I went for a very long walk today and I found a tree.

And some miniature donkeys. They were very friendly.

And I found the moon.

All of those things were beautiful to me.  The evening air almost drove me wild. It reminded me of dusk in the summer in Edmonton, far north when the trees let down their heat and the lit windows had me peering inside them. When I was a dreaming child. When I believed that I may one day overcome this unraveling self of mine.

Who knows, maybe I still will.

Last night I sat in a wood fired hot tub with my husband. It was overcast, so we couldn’t see the stars, but we knew they were there.

A single flame of a candle, in a glass-paned lantern, bowed to us. It waved, and bowed, and bowed again. I was touched, to say the least. It was the last night of my first thirty years of life. The small flame saluted those years and looking up and out into the sky, I felt, like I often do, the magnitude and tininess of earth, of the world and all my small years.

If we weren’t held down, we could just fly off. But we are held down, by a force greater than us, and millions of miles away, brilliant orbs swirl and dust the universe with beauty that we will never see.  I am made to be here. I fit this place. Earth.

Coming here to Humboldt County is another homecoming. I used to live in Northern Mendocino, which we practically considered to be Humboldt, because we drove north, over the line, for every little thing. We left that land, and that river, not without tears, (Many, many tears) because it was the beginning of a deep healing that was carving its way into my bones. Carving into bone may not sound like healing, but I need Jesus words to be corkscrewed into every calcium-fortified surface.

Whether I believe it or not, I am made. Breath of God sustains me. I am held up and loved and the hand of God gently cups the crown of my head. I am not too high-strung or sensitive or anxious to be loved by him. I stand on the hill of his regard and the whole universe spins before me. I have been cast down, but I am lifted.

Soon after we left this place, our house was crushed by falling trees in the middle of the night. We learned then not to doubt the path that God has laid for us, not to look back. We learned also, that dangerous things can happen in safe places.  Do not imagine that you can pad your life, that gentle voice said. We were justified in our faith, in our decision to leave.

Now we are visiting friends who have made space for us.  It is a second home, a fourth home, a sixteenth home. Being welcome here has eased the sting of leaving.

I went away and found more healing. I found that I could get through fear and love a foreign place more than I ever imagined. I found that jungle sings inside of me, even as much as forest. I didn’t know that was possible.

I found that earth is mine in a way that I didn’t know before, and it has nothing to do with ownership, with citizenship.  I can’t really own anything, can I? I went away and left everything I thought I had owned, and found new life through loving things that have nothing to do with my place of birth. The universe is spinning, and I love the farthest galaxies.  I am allowed.

One thing that my faith teaches is that we are adopted by God. Not only servants (though that too) or devotees (though we are in fact devoted) but adopted children. It means that in loving the farthest galaxies, I am loving something that will in fact be mine one day, loving it in longing, but in the most respectful and honoring way, owning it. Now is the same as later, in essence. This is what the Prodigal Son did not understand, and neither did his older brother. All that I have has always been yours.

I own nothing, and even tomorrow is not guaranteed. These first thirty years have been adventurous and fiscally strange. Things are always dicey when you are surrounded by trees in a windstorm. But I love these leaves and grasses like brothers. The flowers in these fields stand on the hill of their Creator’s regard. Jesus pointed to them, when he was telling the people of his care for them. Oh these cherished small things.

I went away from here, and then I poured my love for this place into a book. My friend told me a story, and that story ignited something inside of me, and I took all that longing for a place of my own and put it into words that immortalized something about the beginning of healing. It exorcised my grief, and taught me that we don’t lose things, really, just like we don’t lose our childhoods.  The children that we were stay inside of us, and so do the places that we’ve been.

Is it an ocean of grace?  Or an ocean of regrets.

Are we what we do?  Or how we feel.

Or something different, something in between, something the size and shape of the perfect smooth rock that you close your hand around, just to feel its weight.

I have been struggling with anxiety again lately. It’s okay, I’m okay. It is not fear, I have nothing to fear.  It is a sort of discomfort in my own skin.  I can’t relax, can’t enjoy.

But I’m learning to observe it from the outside. The best way is to be the author, the painter, showing what I see, not bringing things into the tangle.

I am learning to be silent, to silence the seething within with patience and gentleness.

Those are not true feelings, Ducky, just fold that laundry and make it really smooth.

It’s okay to sit and read for a minute, don’t jump up just yet, Love.

Did you see that glimpse of river through the jungle?

Did you see those short cows in the road, confused and clustered around each other? I laughed, you can laugh, too.

You haven’t done anything wrong.

*

I’ve been picking up hitchhikers lately, on my scooter. Not who you might think of, when you think of a hitchhiker.  These are old ladies, looking for a ride to the village center. I almost wrote elderly, and then I erased it, because the term doesn’t seem to apply, here.  They are old, but not elderly. They wear saris, but sometimes tucked up between their legs, like a dhoti. They are carrying their bags for the market.

They are surprised when I stop.  And they hop on the back, sitting side saddle, the way traditional women do, and some are so light that I can barely tell they are there, while some rock the scooter a bit and I have to re-evaluate the way we take the turns.  I drive slowly.

And then I have made a friend for life.

*

I haven’t been the best friend to myself.  Today we meditated on the wisdom that comes from above, that is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, then open to reason, then sincere… There were others, I don’t have a bible on hand right now. (You can read it in James 3: 13-18)

Gentleness is a great gift.  I will ask for it and wield it in my house, with my family, spread it on my table like a cloth, throw it on the walls like a bucket of water, so it runs down and covers all of our mistakes (and hopefully washes some of the crayon off the walls.)

And then I will wrap it around the small stone that I have in my hand, like a blanket.

Well, not to be a tease or anything, but I didn’t get my list done. It’s taking more time than I thought it would, because I really want it to be a good list, a fun list, a thought-provoking list that I can consult on a day that is dragging its heels through the cow pies. And I went to the market today and it is the day before Diwali, one of India’s biggest festivals, and it was CRAZY.

(I can’t remember if I told you about the time, just before we left the Himalayas, when we were all skipping down to Chinua’s concert with the Turbans, and Leafy came running back up the trail crying, with a face that was black with something gooey.  “Did you fall in mud?” I asked, as he was approaching.  “No, it wasn’t muuudddd!” he wailed.  And then he was surprisingly calm and cheery, while I was very grossed out (as well as impressed by his skillz), because he had tripped and and fallen in perfect alignment with a Leafy-face-sized fresh cow pie. It was a soft landing, there was that you could say for it.)

I liked the discussion in the comments. Dinah Soar talked about what a difference surviving cancer made in her thoughts about regular chores, and how willfully changing her thought patterns helps her love even the most mundane things.  And Sheryl talked about being the Crocodile Hunter, and Tj talked about transforming her thoughts

“to realize that “God is my home”. All that deep longing I sometimes have that I want to be home, even if I am at home, is really my longing for God,”

which is beautiful and oh-so-wise.

There are things that will hold us back from being playful.

*Worry.

*The idea that we aren’t allowed to enjoy what we do.

*Self consciousness.  There is something very beautiful about sitting and watching the play of very young children, who pay no attention to anything but the thing they are focused on. And right now, there is a man just outside my house, taking a bucket bath at the well, STARKERS. He is not self conscious.  Let us all take him as our example.

One way I’ve learned to deal with self consciousness is to pay more attention to what I am seeing than what people are thinking of me.  It helps, especially being a foreigner in a staring country.  I don’t care what people are thinking of me, because look at the pretty colors! And are those lemon cucumbers?

*Lack of imagination.

*Lack of wonder.

And again, it all comes back to being like children. My children don’t lack imagination, wonder, are only a little self-conscious, and don’t worry all that much. They definitely have no problem with enjoying themselves. Thoroughly.

I think I have come to a place where I am very capable at rolling up my sleeves and getting down to business. I no longer cringe at my time being thrown around like whitewash, and I do love the creative work of raising a family. But I get the super mom label all too often, the “You’re a Hero” words more than I like, because the super mom image creates distance and throws up an instant fence. (I’m not talking about internet space, here, but with the women I meet in my travels.)

And I do reach for my work hard guns all too often. So I want to tear those banners down and be the child that is loved and whole and not perfect. Loved. Whole. (Though broken, what a paradox.) Not perfect.

Full of wonder. Not wondering if anyone is noticing how hard I am working.

There is so much work to be done, especially in a family of six.  It almost never stops. When one load of laundry is taken off the line, another is ready to go on. When one meal is cleaned up, it’s almost time to begin the next. Sometimes we work very hard for leisure, also (as any mama knows who has gone camping).

A woman can work very hard. She can organize and make lists, and she can tidy and straighten and wash and reorganize and dunk her baby in a bath and dress him and put him to bed.

But not all of a woman is made to work. The soul of a woman contains so much more- there is a girl-child inside, ready to play!  Sometimes the girl-child is upset, because there has been no time to play, no time to laze around and read on a window seat on a rainy day.

But there is work to do. So, there must be a way to bring the two together! Surely God did not make us to forget how to be children (Jesus suggested the very opposite when He said, “Unless you become like children, you will not see the Kingdom of God”) and surely He is not a great taskmaster, always hovering and waiting for us to account for ourselves.

My dear friend in Varanasi said to me, when we talking of this very thing, of making pots and pots of chai and running around and serving and hosting, “But what about the Girl inside?!”  Other people may forget the girl-child, but I don’t think we should forget her.  And if you are a man, you should not forget your boy-child. Actually, this is one of my favorite things about my husband. The small boy that he was is always lingering just below the surface, so close that sometimes they are one and the same. Sometimes that boy bursts through (often!) and rolls on the floor laughing or picks up a sword to play with the kids. I want to be like this.

And yet, the children who are children both on the inside and the outside, they need to eat!

So. I am making a list of ways to play while I work. Tomorrow I will show you my list.  I think I will illustrate it and put it somewhere in my house, somewhere I will not forget it. It is necessary, for my survival, as a woman, a girl-child, and a seeker of the Kingdom of God.

The first thing we noticed was the heat, which wrapped around us lovingly in a thick wet hug.  Without much rain, this monsoon season has been almost unbearable, with everyone watching the skies for some cooling precipitation.

The next thing I noticed was the stuff everywhere!  Living on the mountainside like we have been makes a visit to the capital a jaw dropping experience.  And then I noticed that our boogers were already turning black.

It has improved here, though, over the years, since they instituted green fuel technology in the auto rickshaws and buses.  The auto rickshaws themselves are like small yellow and green beetles, swarming by the hundreds, overtaking and passing the larger, more sluggish automobiles on the road.  Some of the vehicles are ridiculous, in already tight spaces, giant SUV’s make driving almost impossible.

Then there are the people, the millions of them. The row of men napping on their bicycle rickshaws on the side of the road, cracked heels dangling off the vinyled edges of the seats.  The acrobat children who flip on the sides of the roads to get us to look and them, wanting money for their child labor efforts.  The colorful saris, the dupattas and scarves everywhere.

Sometimes in culture-colliding moments, I feel the world tilt like I have a severe case of vertigo.  Such was the case today at the U.S. Embassy, when I sat in the waiting room and watched the woman with the freckles dispense advice and forms with a Mid-Western accent, her comfortably padded figure an ideal of smiles and friendliness.  The room slid dangerously from left to right, the chairs all stacking up on one another with my strong sense of dislocation.  Where were we?  Technically America, but in the center of our India.

Now I have broken away for a moment, jubilant with the success of our passport mission, knowing that Solo’s passport will be in our hands in two weeks, with a train ticket for tomorrow night in hand, hardwon by Chinua.  I’m running around to do some shopping, finding myself in Khan market, another culture collision, where there are stores I can’t find elsewhere.  It’s a strange place, guarded by security companies to keep touts and beggars out, which makes it a simple shopping experience, but a little uncomfortable, since everyone seems to be so much cleaner and wealthier than I am.  Should I be here?  Or should the security guard stop me at the entrance?

It is much like the embassy today, where I wiped my baby’s head, damp with sweat, and considered our flowy and sun-faded clothing, comparing our dirty, cheerful selves with the pressed clothing of the other inhabitants of the waiting room.  The damp curls on the sides of YaYa’s face trickled sweat down her cheeks and I wondered how the others had managed to arrive at the embassy perspiration-free.  Possibly they jumped from air-conditioned car to air-conditioned waiting room, rather than piling into an auto rickshaw like the six of us.

I can’t imagine a mall in the West where some people are kept out and others are let in.  On the other hand, there are strict No Soliciting signs on the doors, which would definitely prevent the men who trail me for blocks, demanding that I pay attention to their handkerchiefs or towels or chess sets.  (I particularly love the way the chess wallas react to my “no”, offering hopefully, “Backgammon?”, as though I possibly detest chess but am an avid backgammon player.)

Have I idealized the West?  Or is it true that a working child would not be allowed to turn flips on her face on the dirt on the side of the road?  It’s hard not to blame the government here. And then there is the woman we met so many years ago, a beggar with a baby who called out “Chinua!” as we walked down the street, marveling at our four children, none of whom we had, the ten years ago that we spent each day sharing a meal with her.

It’s a homecoming in a way, this Main Bazaar in Paharganj, the backpacker’s ghetto.  I spot the guest houses where I hid away, my teenaged self in utter shock at the way the world had been ticking away in the dirt so far from me in my clean Canadian cul-de-sac.  The beggar woman looks amazing, clean and healthy, barely any older, walking home with us to make sure that Chinua will take her out for a meal.  I consider this woman, young, with a home, with English skills better than most people I meet in India.  She is so friendly and lovely that she must have a different opportunity somewhere else.  But maybe the begging life is addictive.  I mean, she’s famous around the world, in a way.

Everything here has something that contradicts it.  With a mind like mine, always in overdrive, it is difficult to be at rest.  No matter where I go, there are questions and answers, and there are contradicting answers.  Now I will go and find Kid A a birthday present (ahead of time) in a mall where I am an outsider, just a hippie in a well-dressed throng, trying to find something that will not break in a day. I am both wealthy and not, and very aware of both.