Lessons in Survival

Lesson in Survival, by Joni Mitchell plays on Pandora, the icy rain clinks against the window pane, the sound of cars on the busy street outside remind me that there is a life outside my room, outside my head. Cars drive on, life moves, I am not stuck in the feelings of fear that wash over me. I connect to my teenage self, the one that took the bus to the record store to buy For The Roses, the Joni Mitchell LP, the too serious and often sad 13 year old who then took the bus home and listened to the beautiful song, Lesson in Survival, knowing somehow I would grow up and live. 

Lesson in survival, when I’ve come to a place in my life, once again, where the road ahead is not as clear as I think I’d like it to be. So, I am hesitant, afraid, feeling alone and weary. There is only so far ahead that we can create a game plan for. We make our plans, they unfold, here we are in the dream that we held so dear, days, weeks, months or years before. So, I try to pause, and know, and feel it in my bones, that here I am. So, I need to rest, if only I will permit myself, this small luxury. Listen to the rain, the icy cold, the cacophony, the meter that changes all on its own. 

I have created a life that is too crazy for even me to live. Too much to do, too much to prove. Now how to untangle the good from the bad, the real from the projected, the authentic energy that will reverberate like a good chord, from the clanging that drowns out the untrue beliefs I hold onto, that I can’t yet deconstruct. Do I really want a doctorate degree, what in the end will this mean, to me? How can I stop trying so hard to move the pieces into a place that feels like open space? How to just stop by the side of the road, breathe in, breathe out, and let those who will, take a minute to bask in the moment, living, instead of surviving, come sit beside me.  

Gregorville

So, this past week, on Tuesday to be exact, right when I was turning off of Hennepin Avenue onto Washington Avenue on the way to Megan’s voice lesson at MacPhail; I had this overarching sense of being Gregor, the character from Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I felt completely like I was a bug, on my back, intractable, stuck and helpless, thinking that someone could come along at any moment and squash me, if I wasn’t well, so big. I remember this thought/feeling, because I shared these thoughts and feelings with my friend who I spend the half-hour of Megan’s lesson, chatting with.

I enjoy this time with her, her son at piano, two working moms, taking a break. I am envious of her, as she has found herself a job in Chartre, France, and had just returned from Chartre, and Paris; finalizing things for her and her family’s move there next month. Here I was, stuck in Minneapolis. It seems ironic as I write this, as Minneapolis was my France only years ago, when I was stuck, really stuck, in Owatonna. The story of Gregor, has been on my mind then, for days, my own stuck feeling, haunting me, scurrying in the back of my mind, like a bug.

Perhaps Gregorville is a state of mind, which I think was mostly Kafka’s point, (besides all the political and sociological implications of The Metamorphosis). For me, Gregorville is the place that Minneapolis becomes in the winter— dark, bleak, short days, cold nights. It emphasizes the elements of the story for me, stuck in a job, to keep the family going. Stuck in a system that seems to perpetuate fear; food prices rising, the fiscal cliff (why not a fiscal prairie?) guns and murder and mayhem on the news. A system that continually asks the questions, “Can I get off my back?" And, “Will I survive?”

This is also a personal dilemma, as was Gregor's. Choices for me between taking care of myself, and taking care of others, including my family. I've known for a long time now that I'm not taking the time that I need for myself, to take walks, to go to museums, and I continue to wrestle with the guilt of not taking good enough care of myself, when for a really long time, it was enough for me to be able to take care of my children. I worry that I have to choose between taking care of myself and providing for myself and my family. I need to believe that I can do both. 

And so, in this new year, in the bleak mid-winter, I use my energy to pull back from the capitalist system, from the patriarchal system, from any systems that try to drain my energy, and out of that negative pull. I pull far enough away into the system of abundance,  (where the air is better), full of enoughs, with gratitude that surrounds me. Gratitude for a place to be, people to be with, and love solid enough that it knocks me off of my back, and onto my feet, no longer a bug. Keeping warm, keeping safe, keeping fed, in the bleak mid-winter. Spring is inevitable. 

Oil Can

January 2, 2013

I have five minutes before I need to get my daughter her thyroid medication, every day, at 7:30 am I perform this pill ritual. Then she can wake up feeling ok, and I can know, (thank God) that she is finally ok. 

It is the second day of the new year and my mind has been filled with all the things I should have done, have left undone, things that I told myself I would do, “by the end of the year” and the fear of making a mistake chases me until I stop, in a panic, out of breath, and realize that there is no mistake that can’t be undone, and that really, really, everything is ok. Just last night, in reading Awake at Work, by Michael Carroll, the author talks about the difference between seeing mistakes as enemies, rather than teachers, and it is nice to think about mistakes as teachers, as the opportunity to slow down, and re-think something, rather than something to avoid, because, they (mistakes) are, after all, inevitable. This, however does require a change in my thinking, a letting go of all that I’ve believed as long as I hold onto thinking that mistakes are to be avoided. Letting go of all the anger and fear of myself, and others and all the “mistakes” that have been made. 

I hope this to be the year that my memoir on being the mom of a teen mom, Mother Love gets published, and that I find my writing stride, remembering that I hope to leave a small dent in the world, a dent that lets people know that they can think differently, that they can change their minds, and the world opens up a little more when they do. To think that having a child young is not a mistake, but a chance to say yes to life. Not in a guilty, pro-life way, but in a real embracing of what life offers us sort of way, believing that offering us a child is one of the best things that life can conjure up. Changing our minds can lead to our heart chakra opening a bit more too. My heart chakra creaks as I move it to open, but it is necessary, and I think if I relax a bit more, it might just begin to move on it’s own, like a flower blooming, instead of being like the Tin Man, needing oil. The Tin Man, who in the end, found his heart, open, beating, blooming.