MotherGrief Part 1

Hold me, for I am in grief.

Today I have a very deep delicate awe that I don't know how to express. I feel unsafe being held or being seen and my heart is a wildfire, my lungs are full of the ash of what was.

Today I am in grief.

I am pickled in a Deep delicate awe with a film of fearing being misunderstood on top, Making my experience difficult to see into from the outside. It's difficult to be with and so it's hard to share because I imagine it will be difficult for you to be with it, too (perhaps I am wrong)

But I'm not sure if it's okay for me to share. There is some primal "I have to be so careful" urge surrounding this precious weighty grief-awe. If I do share, it must be received in a certain way so that I may be seen in and allowed to have my experience. I value this grief experience like a lantern on a dark path.

I have a very specific desire and I don't know how to be or with who in order to fulfil that desire. My "shoulds" come up. I tell myself I really should reach out to this friend or go over here and have a walk or look at these flowers or write about my mother's life or go back to work or don't go back to work and take more time and don't rush but also the wheels do keep turning. All of that for some very specific and hard-to-nail-down desire.

All of that for the very simple desire to be with my mom.

At this moment, my nervous system is driving hard through rationalization and explanation to avoid the very hard truth that she's not here in the same way she was anymore so I can find other ways to nourish the parts of me that she would nourish.

Still,

The feeling is that I'm

Crying out for mom and there's no mom

crying out

crying out

crying out

"But Riley, there's love!"

How do I tell you I know this and still am in grief at the same time?

I sometimes share my heart and am told:

"At least at least at least"---NO

This is Hard

"Oh, it is hard? Welcome to the Club. The Life is Hard Club where you join when you run out of baby fat and all that is left is the truth that was there all along, which is that Life is Hard."

But please do not tell me it is Hard, either, do not welcome me to any kind of club, do not amass me to being a statistic, this is Real.

And yes, there is Love.

There is a very primal dance teacher in me

and learning this part of the dance of my life is difficult

It brings up things I've been avoiding and now I have to face all at once

Like do I turn the volume up a little louder and dance a little harder?

"No, turn it down, only the fools leave the volume knob turned up"

And I don't know how to express the ways I would hide, hide, hold, hide, swallow, hold, bury, away, away, away, I'm fine, fine, fine, it's okay.

And since I don't know how to express it, I hold it because it's easier to hold than to express wrongly and get the wrong thing back.

That's nasty to show my precious grief and be told "at least".

And there's so much of it

"At least at least at least"

There's so much "Doesn't-Quite-Understand-Ness". It's one thing to not understand and to offer that discomfort honestly, there's just all the Stuff that comes up for somebody who doesn't understand and wants to but doesn't know how but thinks they should so they just pretend. And I don't have the capacity to take care of that

And so I hold,

I hold

And what I have to offer is just an invitation to the very difficult dance within the self, to whoever hears my grief song, I'll turn my volume up, and that's good. Sometimes you and I will hear the same melody or beat and we will do two different dance moves but they will be in rhythm and that's Good.

Like in a "Makes it all worthwhile" kind of Good.

My shoulds come back up and I set them down and turn back to the grief.

I don't know, death itself isn't the thing. The death itself isn't that big of a deal, we all knew she was going to die. Maybe it goes without saying, but it's the little things surrounding the death, like the timing and the duration and the chores that she doesn't do anymore and the conversations she used to prompt that she doesn't prompt anymore and now there's this unprompted emotional burp within me that she used to know how to work out of my system but now it's stuck and I have to be fussy and learn what aches are really just burps. Stuff like that.

The death itself is just the contrasting color so that I can see the Thing Which Is a Big Deal.

And that Thing is

Lovely and is

everythingforeverywhere

And I'm in awe of that because I can see everythingforeverwhere lit up all so nicely by the bonfire of her death.

Today I have a very deep delicate awe that I don't know how to express.

And I feel the despair of a careful urgency pressed up against not knowing how to express or to whom or when,

And I see the Energy which is my beginning and my ending,

And I see all my little plans, efficiencies, stories, supposings, interpretations,

These stories are the quilt blanket of me,

They are insufficient and they are flimsy cotton fabric held against the vast expansive Void,

But they keep me warm tonight and are made of the place where I am

And in that place,

I am Held.

We ran out of paint while painting the ceiling so my mother did this texture herself. I realize now with her love of art, this is a vast mural which can only be seen when the viewer pauses to look up. She has a hidden beauty.

An Essay on Fallen Trunks

Dear Beloved,

 A tree lives in an ecological dance of energy.  As it lives, the tree breathes in and breathes out its life. It moves the energy available and sought-after and dispels the energy spent. Perhaps in its life it found sunlight above and shaded out other trees below. For me, I feel indifferent to describe this, I can imagine no nefarious plot of one tree over another. Certainly it is true, one tree's flourishing life is another tree's crippling shade.

When this large tree dies, when it falls over, all the sun it gathered to move and reassemble the forms around it, the empty trunk is a cathedral of nourishment and shelter for those scavengers who might take up home here. The dance goes on beyond the tree's most immediate consequences of being. The dance is what brought the tree into being, and what brings it out! The joke is the energy from the sun is spent so haphazardly into the cosmos, and that energy is most certainly the hub, the most physical bass drum hum of the song of our planet.

I consider the way energy moves around me, how do I know what energy is available? Where do I store it, how do I know what to store? When do I know to spend it? Where is it spent? Sleep, rest, food, hunger, thirst, fullness, quenchedness, these are all words describing energy and structures which energy moves through. I consider these systems and consider the words economy, subsistence, capitalism, socialism, these systems of trade, philosophies and agreements for common ways and means of moving energy, holding energy, releasing energy.

Across the news here in Portland has been the resounding gong of calling Wildfires a consequence of Western Colonialism. Be it through land management and controlled burns, or climate change as a whole:

• https://www.opb.org/news/article/northwest-plants-animals-wildfire-help/ 
• https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/899422710/to-manage-wildfire-california-looks-to-what-tribes-have-known-all-along
  
• https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54278988?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/ce2gz9mdde3t/wildfires&link_location=live-reporting-story
  

The wake of death in conquering of the native people lead to the halting of the ceremonial fires which were set by this land's original inhabitants for generations. These ceremonial fires now being looked to by the Western Authorities as legitimate and necessary when massive wildfires grind the industrial machine to a halt. Grounding helicopters, challenging power grids, invading the comfort of even the most climate-controlled, season-resistant homes. 

I thought to myself in my two weeks that perhaps what we call a tragedy, some more ancient cultures called the season. When night meant a darkness which would halt work. When winter came halting chills, without insulation and coal to burn. When summer brought blistering heat that dulled the mind to an idle trot. 

Perhaps climate change could be a reintroduction of

"...I believe that as inheritors of Western civilization, we must humble ourselves enough to return to these atrocities in search of some piece of humanity that was lost there. For without this missing piece, we will not survive.

"In effect, that search itself must be what we do for a living - that search for a lost chord that imparts meaning to those of us who can no longer find ourselves in this strictly mechanical economics of things. And while it is true that many of us may very well merge with our machines to eat coal, others of us will not do this, and at whatever moment we jump ship we'll have to extract our identity from the story of the capitalist machine and find a refuge in these other stories of the soil, of falling leaves, rotting wood, of blood, bone and bacteria; these stories that we've lost and found so many times."

-From "Eternal Return" by Paul Feather, as featured in the Dark Mountain periodical, Issue 17

I consider the capitalist machine from an ecological standpoint: Perhaps how when the wolf dies, the deer consume the mountain. Perhaps capitalism or consumerism is an overpopulation of something much more serene and pure, like the innocence of a doe. Perhaps to hate the consumerism and desire for comfort is not so effective as it is to recognize the role of the wolf in the whole story.

I wonder about capitalism's wolf. Perhaps it is the idea of the wilderness itself, preservation of the unpredictable. Perhaps our wolf is the experience of the big bad seasons. Perhaps this Great Smoke and these Great Terrible storms are guardians of the planet, in effect, though they are unbiased consequences of a system finding new balance.

Perhaps this climate change is making space for us, rather than destroying us. Perhaps it is clearing out a space for us to sit as our fragile human selves, humus, oh to be humble in these times.

So I look for the fallen trunks. 

 

 

For those who are intrigued by this work:

https://dark-mountain.net/

 

One White Man's Thoughts on "The Social Dilemma" Today

An un-essay, for those who watched The Social Dilemma, and those who like to read my writing:

I’m thinking about these profit-oriented algorithms which make space for chaos and misinformation. 

Thinking about the illusion he’s talking about, the negative connotation of "illusion". What's the opportunity here for me? What if this is an opportunity to see what a really grand illusion is like so I can identify more nuanced illusions?

I’m thinking about “if we can’t agree on what’s true, we won’t be able to handle the real issues.” What if this is capitalism dissolving itself? That it was always going to get to this point and a system was always going to eat itself. 

I think about Attention. 

—

“What I see is a bunch of people who are trapped by a business model, an economic incentive and shareholder pressure that makes it almost impossible to do something else.”

This reminds me of the land development industry. How disconnected the investors are from the land. Such vast quantities of money which only hope to seed the land and hope only to grow in the eyes of shareholders and only by the measure of economics.

Which is to say, what if this social media problem is NOT ONLY IN SOCIAL MEDIA. These attitudes dwell within our whole system. Because we value money. That's what money is, in some sense, a language of value. We spend money to create MONEY. Of COURSE. Value begets value, perhaps this is natural and good, simply with misdirected Attention.  

Here's some more nuance: As a capitalist with a bank account, I ask myself: am I making more than I’m spending? Good. How can I widen that gap even more? How can I earn the most and spend the least?

There’s something worth articulating in here.

The attitude of making more and spending less works as a gas pedal for white people to get from struggling to make rent up to a point of having money to invest. This is the ideal story. 

Something breaks there, though. What do I do with the stockpile which adds up over time? Once there’s enough to invest, there’s enough to share, but I continue to ask myself only one question: Am I making more than I'm spending? How can I widen that gap? 

There’s no check point which tells the earner to do that. The attitude remains “make even more, spend even less”.

Maybe it begins so innocent as: "A rainy day is coming. Keep a nest egg."

These ideas don’t seem unreasonable!! But they’re in a vacuum. They don’t account for the storms raging for my neighbor. My neighbor is outside of my nervous system. I am disconnected from my neighbor. As a bachelor, I am only connected to the energy systems of myself, responsible for only myself, and I get brownie points, I get pride, I get righteousness when I carve out a piece of my self and give it away. 

My "nervous system" expands when I have a family, perhaps. The tracking of spending and saving become more weighty. Money in and money out. Is there more coming in than there is going out? Can I create an artificial delay between dry seasons where I can survive? Can I build a big enough reservoir that I can be COMFORTABLE in a dry season? But where do I consider the end of Myself in this consideration? As a bachelor it stops at me. 

Now here is social media, this grand nervous system!! But it is attuned also to MONEY. But money in the centralized way. As if the whole of social media is a field and I am the crop. Who is the farmer? Who is the farmer's family?

We who programmed social media do not understand the interconnectedness of us to the land, nor of ourselves to each other, these algorithms reflect this disconnect. 

My question to you: what do these algorithms point to? What if instead of balance in terms of crops in and crops out, they could speak about balance in terms of a planet's diversity and resilience? A measure not of "never-had-to-fall-down-ness", but instead a value in "getting-back-up-ness". We look not to the wealthy for guidance but the poor who again and again show the human spirit?

This idea is already familiar! This is already the American Ideal in the abstract. 

What does it look like to write algorithms which understand the interconnectedness? For software to understand excess and lack. To understand both of these are equally unhealthy to even the software itself. The machines have checks and balances for temperature and voltage. These algorithms for regulation and balance exist within mainframes. 

We have the statistics to understand how a poor person behaves relative to a rich person. Obviously one corrective model would become perverse under different circumstances. These models are already outside human control. Designers have fallen prey to their own designs already, so why not this? 

How do we remove nobility from these systems, too? I do not believe any path forward will be comfortable. Perhaps even meaningless. I write this paper only for my own pleasure. 

Perhaps instead of justice simply feels like breathing. We breathe in and breathe out with faith the air will be there. Our breathing out is NECESSARY. Our breathing out MAKES LIFE WHICH BREATHES OUT INTO US. 

What does it look like to apply this to money? I am not compelled to stockpile air. What if money was not fire for warmth for power but air to breathe? What if money was not just fuel for lights and friends, but erosive like rivers behind dams. What if dams are not all bad? What if efficiency works until it, too, spoils? How do we recognize efficiency which has spoiled?

The exercise of visioning is pleasurable in itself. I have no agenda for change or focus, but untangling and unpacking, decompressing, making a mess as an opportunity to put our room back together differently because it would feel good to do so. Not because there is a better way to arrange the bedroom, but because I am changing and it feels good to express that change in physical space.

—

Advertisers are paying for my attention so I stumble upon their company. They are asking to be seen. They keep my focus on my phone and put messages in front of you, baked into whatever you’re paying attention to, otherwise.

Funny, though. Scottish tartans, I’ve been told, were a marketing technique to get people to buy material. Still, they are romanticized. 

My intention here is to find little leverage points against these systems. Chinks in the armor of giants and the stories which wrap their illusions. My advantage against these forces is that they see me only as a simple raw nerve ending, a consumer deeply entranced by the game of the system I inhabit. So I am.

My advantage and my sovereignty is to accept discomfort as I am able. Perhaps discomfort has always been the way to integrity in connection. The documentary states that the each new technology has threatened a way of humanity, but, the documentary says, social media is different. It adapts beyond the powers of the creators. Such an energy, but without nefarious intent, simply oriented towards energy. Energy in the form of advertising money woven into what we are most excited by — which I interpret to be polarizing nobility rooted more in feeling than in circumstance. 

What makes social media different is that it is adaptive. Its goal is to retain attention, because the programmers measure attention in dollars and cents, which is the value.

I’m not going to try and save the world but I can reflect on this, myself, as a participant and as one who intends to be a father one day.

—

Is regulation the answer? Data tax?

[this is a hard question to form. Perhaps the very desire to formulate a solution so suddenly is part of this social ecology? Why am I compelled to find an answer? What does it mean to ask more questions? What if there is a better question?]

Who produced this movie? Where did the money come from? What are they motivated by?

The interviewers talk about freedom, does this documentary define freedom? How many definitions of freedom are interpreting this film? 

—-

Perhaps the energy which scrapes the old stagnant ways free is anger. Perhaps the energy which breaks through the shell, the birth canal, is grief. What does it mean to just stand and watch and grieve?

—-

We created this and we have the chance to change it. 

Are we going to change this?

We have to.

Trapped in Space, Free in Time

A photo of me at the end of May, 2020, after 3 months of quarantine

Dear Beloved, 

In March, my outer world constricted and my inner world opened. My calendar lay barren and I returned to cycles of childhood loafing and time-scarce anxiety. Over the months since I've been tripping over artifacts of quick, sharp, potent, unprocessed times in journals and mementos, expanding and integrating the texture of them in the spaciousness of an open schedule. Breathing life into soft corners of me which have only arisen once or twice, I itch away dead skin, I quietly gather piles of trash as my body slowly settles into permission to enter fires of grief and release to smoke and ash.

In my own time with quarantine, I've carried with me a small idea from Augusto Boal, founder of Theater of the Oppressed. As I understand from my limited knowedge, he was arrested for  the practice using street theater to give voice to the voiceless. He reflected that in prison he became trapped in space, but free in time.

After months of feeling kept into a jar, the Oregon Wildfire Air arrived. Portland has filled with some of the worst air quality in the world. Even with sealed windows and doors, the main floor of our house filled with unhealthy air, sequestering the communal spaces and grounding me to my room as if I ought to think about what I've done. So I am called deeper into restricted space and abundant time for solitude and reckoning with The Void.

An air filter fan for the smoke in our house

In my own experience, I've been imagining the hive of bees called Portland being lulled to sedation by the last shout of a vast forest and can't help but imagine the natural effects of climate change, which we call storms, will be both terrible and gentle. Perhaps we will be too late to save ourselves and each other from the supreme discomfort of a changing climate, but I believe each of us will discover clarity in our own right time, and balance will always come and go in cycles. The belief I carry in my heart says there is room at the table for all. Everything will be okay. There is Enough.

Feeling some tough feelings on Saturday, September 12, 2020

 

There resides in me a deep care which does not trust the world. I do not want to give what I do not feel is seen by the receiver. I do not know who to help and I am afraid to know. I haven't begun to really consider those who have lost everything they knew. The grief, the constant grief, the holding-on, the frustrations, the projections, the listening and the not-listening, I am distressed to know this is all here, that I want to fix the world and the fixing can only happen in me. I remind myself everyone's path is their own and mine is mine. I can't help who it is I can help. I can help. I delight in my helpfulness when it comes from my heart and I feel seen in my wholeness.

With all lost to the fire I can't help but feel hopeful to see this as an opportunity to build back in alignment with the visions of pressure-cooker quarantine. All the thought and visioning we've collectively had with new ways of being already, new ways we could be, I can't help but see chance to rebuild differently.

Some flowers from times with cleaner air

With the destruction of land comes the opening of land. With the release of the past comes space for the present. Destruction and creation are stories told relative to the narrative of humanity. Where we create cities, we destroy habitat, and perhaps where cities are destroyed, new habitat is created. What opportunities are there to work with these massive energies outside of us? I consider this practice is already at work with the stock market. People arrive to the market and "earn" money by putting money in the right place at the right time. Can we ride climate change in this same way?

The ending of some diversity comes empty space for new diversity to fill. A blank canvas invites creative expression. I carefully tend this vision of walking into change within me. I gently hold the parts of me who refuse to grieve because they refuse to let go of what was, who are holding so tightly to a return to what was, so I can walk lightly into what can be, which begins with myself.

/// "What's that?" /// "...a circle." ///
A latest sketch on top of 15 years of journals

 

This sketch above most completely expresses my understanding of how I form the narrative of who I am and who I think I should be. Certainly the language from the outside has helped me begin to navigate who i am in relation to others, a keystone in any relationship, but it is up to me to step into and actually explore the Truth of who I really am. Each day I revisit the scribbles with only the word "circle" in hand, and each day I learn new words like arc, spiral, swoop, slorp, swoosh to explore and express the nuances of me. I understand I am constantly changing and as soon as I master one word, a void appears which none of my vocabulary can completely master.

 

I stepped into my 27th birthday with the intention to find new perspective which would help refine the intentions I have for my life. I offer my gratitude for all who made time to send me a note or a call or a gift, I sincerely dwelt in a nest of diverse offerings.

The fruit of the love I received is expressed below in the form of an intention-writing exercise an acquaintance of mine shared. Each intention is written in the present tense as if I am already doing it, with a strongly emotive adverb. I offer this to everyone as an invitation to take on what feels resonant, leave the rest, and perhaps as a seed to one day play with an intention-writing game, too.

I begin like this:

I am joyfully committed to the knowingness within me which begets the intentions I must set to serve my highest good and greatest growth.

• I am courageously stepping into discomfort to be known by myself and others in my wholeness.
• I am enthusiastically crafting space for my lover each day so she knows she is found both as a projection within me and a complex and perfect sovereign being outside of me.
• Each day I generously release my pride and ambition as an offering for the sake of knowing grace and inspiration.
• I am nimbly aware of and respond to energies which open and close within me. Gentleness and slowness for the opening, and patience for the closing. I know when to be with energy like anxiety, restlessness. frustration, despair, fear, excitement, activation, joyfulness, and whimsy and when to let go.
• I am thoughtfully and generously creating the world I live in with how I direct my attention and resources.
• Each day I lovingly create time for that which my heart desires. I trust my heart's knowing to guide me to a more full life.
  
• I lovingly and intentionally revisit the past for perspective and awareness of my trajectory. I am lovingly releasing my attachments with gratitude and trust they and their memory will return at the right time. 
• I whimsically adjust the knobs of myself (visions, attention, feelings about feelings, thoughts about thoughts) in pursuit of playing with the song of each changing moment.
• I thoughtfully permit what I judge to be "messes" as opportunities for self-study and opportunities to move or work with stuck energy.
• I am skillfully navigating all the transitions of the departures and arrivals of my life. I understand grief as a mirror image of love and disappointment as a reflection of agreements, assumptions, and desires of each individual person.
• I am whimsically concocting treasure hunts each day in pursuit of manifesting my heart's desires, which I trust to make for a fulfilling life.
• I am eagerly speaking to and unpacking words of resonance in pursuit of inspiration.
• Each day I generously offer my energy (attention, time, resources) to space-building in reverence to the void, which I perceive to be a vast, ineffable, and unconditional Love.
• Each day, with my words and the spaces I hold with my attention, I joyfully weave trust into my social network, that it may ripple out into the greater resiliency of my community as well as my own personal well-being.
• I am passionately in pursuit of knowing the wholeness of others as well as revealing the wholeness of me through vulnerably expressing direct requests, boundaries, and brave curiosity.
• I am aware of and lovingly bringing abundant nourishment to the parts of me which are holding on to incomplete ideas which helped me navigate connection in the past and can now be filled with the knowledge of the present awareness.
• I am carefully tuned into the wisdom of my body which asks for nourishment and I am serving them each day with gladness of heart.
• I am passionately attuning my awareness of circumstance to the vision of my most authentic, diverse, and whole self each day.
• I am joyfully noticing the pathways in which love is given and received within myself and others I am connected to.
• I am diligently aware of the ways I engage in numbing behavior to regulate my difficult feelings.
• I am wholly awake to and am lovingly dismantling the patriarchal and white supremacy culture structures within me through relational activism and listening. This dismantling is meaningful and inherently rewarding work, nourishing me and those I am connected to.
• I am lovingly opening my awareness to the ease of life's inherent beauty. I understand my circumstances are only manifestations of how my attention navigates the conditions I perceive to be my reality and there are larger forces at work than my will, that nothing is certain, and each breath is a gift.
• I am lovingly bringing light to all the shadowy corners which I am called to walk down in each unique season of life.

And I end this way:

 

I am joyfully committed to the need to understand and receive the knowingness within me which begets the intentions I must set to serve my highest good and greatest growth.

 

Till next time,

Riley

 

Cleaner air is coming, reach out, friends, reach out

Hello from Montana

Hello From Montana,

The sky really is big here. The colors breathe from blue to grey to blue again.

I keep imagining myself like folded steel. Heat, fold, press, fold, press, heat. The days feel most like spirals. The same routine but each day is different. I carry a flame of hope within me. I feel more fragile than before. Like if I broke I would never be the same. I’m not the same. Every day I’m breaking and realigning the script of what I think I ought to do given each moment-to-moment circumstance. The script of where I am and where I’m going, what I’m made of, and what I’m made to be comes into and out of form like warm putty in nervous hands. I consider the round-and-round-ness of my thoughts like a quiet vortex in shallow water.

Attention. Awareness. To notice the script at all! I once dreamt I stared into a mirror so intently I saw the human eye reflected in front of me as a separate body and I wondered where I went and how I knew I’d lost track of myself. My day is full of songs like these like a song stuck in my head but it’s a dot pushed and wafted between a landscape of hurricanes full of thoughts I’ve been meaning to be rid of for a very long time, but without them I am bleached linoleum blankness.

These vortices which I resent for holding me back are what bring me comfort. Too much comfort and there is no growth. Too much growth and there is no comfort. Perhaps, just my being alive shows how balanced it’s been for me.

—

The heater turns on when it gets too cold in this room and I’m contemplating how my place in the world right now is so comfortable. I consider the cost of the systems paid by my ancestors and neighbors to bring me a heater which turns on when the room begins to chill.

Sometimes I leave the room to be outside. I walk along the hill, between the trees, and under the sky. On my walk back to my room from the hill, I noticed some mushrooms growing on the path. The mushrooms showing above the ground are a fruit of the mycelium under the ground. I understand mycelium to be a conduit for trees to send signals back and forth. On my walk back I imagine the path to be alive, I imagine the path’s awareness of me. Or the trees awareness of me.Trees move towards light. I wonder how aware of that they are. Or if they just do move toward like like I breathe. I wonder if tree awareness falls into vortices like me. I wonder if vortices of thought shape the trees. 



—-

I’ve been sitting in the water of the lake at least once each week. Just deep enough to sit comfortably with water up to my neck. My skin hurts with chill at first when I enter the cold water, I find that walking into it slowly my skin temperature adjusts and once the cold stops hurting, I notice many more intricacies of the temperature gradient of the lake.

I can wade in up to my shins quickly enough, and my thighs I notice are more sensitive. I get halfway, then the cold laps some pretty sharp sensations up my inner thigh, especially as the waves go up and down, they challenge me to walk deeper by stretching the edges of my willingness to enter the cold water.

I’m up to my waist now and my legs are comfortable; the next sensitive area my attention rallies around is my belly. Working my belly in, every inch is hard-won, and the lolling of the lake oscillates between being above my “edge” where my body is still uncomfortable in the cold, and below my edge where my lower half is adjusted to the cold.

I take long strides along the lake edge, rather than into it, so each step brings me only slightly deeper, keeping a constant discomfort as one inch of skin adjusts to the cold at a time.  Then I’m up the pain of cold to my chest and I rest there for a while, belly submerged. My forearms go in and out of the water, hurting, getting used to the cold, then feeling numb even though by now my feet are adjusted and delighting in the energy of the water.

As I walk in, I consider my boyhood memories of being yelled at “just dive in! like a band-aid! It’s going to be more painful if you stretch it out like that!” I consider my experience now, allowing for a longer, apparently “more painful” experience. Is it more painful? Haven’t I chosen this way? I am keenly aware of the discomfort of the lake’s rippling surface as it challenges my willingness to be in its embrace. I feel supreme resistance to the thought of submerging, remembering the traumatic urge to breathe deeply in the cold. I consider submerging for some time, and finally decide to drop my entire chest up to my shoulders into the water. It hurts, but in a minty fresh way. I feel the hurt of the cold subside and eventually the thought of dunking my head sounds appealing, so I do that. It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t feel like I’m conquering fear. Final submergence feels like an indulgence, in contrast to the rest of my painstaking wading.

I swim with delight, aware of the slightly warmer layer of water towards the top of the lake, and an increasing coldness gradient down to my toes. I feel the joy of my engaged muscles feeling themselves move against the gentle resistance of the water. I play with the sounds and feelings of the water as I splay out my fingers and cut my hand through the water column like a sword through the air. I think it should be fun to splash, but I do not splash. Instead I slow down and watch the ripples of the surface. I slow down more, I notice debris and the way they float so quickly bobbing back and forth. I notice an ant on the water’s surface. One leg is in the water, but the other legs are spread out enough to get purchase on the surface tension. I decide to push him back to shore with my benevolent breath. So I slowly walk my breath behind him, blowing on the surface until he reaches shore. He’s washed onto land and I think I lose him for a bit, then I notice him crawl up and make his way up hill. I watch him for a while.

Eventually I grow a satisfied weariness and am called to sit. The sun feels warm, but my skin is still acclimated to the cold, so I sit in the water up to my neck.

Here I am sitting on the bottom of the lake, head above water, taking notice of the energy of my body. There is stress and I work my way through, inviting whatever I can to relax into the sit, feeling gravelly lakebottom hold me. I notice as I relax, my core tells my body to keep my head above water, and I let this happen as unconsciously as I can, like my breath. My awareness gently takes up and releases control of breathing, pushing, pulling, reacting to the tide. Now the lake is playing with me, the energies up against and away from my body’s need for air. I am a third party watching the dance between the lake be a lake and my body be a body. In flashes, I lose track of the difference and allow the circumstances to be.

Then I am reminded my goal is to have a oneness experience with the lake and I wonder how I am doing and if I can achieve this more deeply and more quickly than now. I consider my walk into the water, my body’s adjustment, the stories and memories which came up as I went in, and how often my mind has gone to the memory of the last time I got this cold in the lake and went to take a hot shower. What a rush that was and what a rush that will be soon.

I go back to trying to be at one with the lake, then I think of how trying to do that makes it harder to do, then I think about how I want a hot shower, then how I shouldn’t want a hot shower because it’s indulgent and comfortable, and how the discomfort of sitting in the lake is fruitful. Then I recognize the discomfort as an expression to myself of my capacity for self-discipline. Then I think about how great I am for having self-discipline and how I’d like to be more disciplined in other areas of my life.

Each cycle of thought between the hot shower, self-discipline narrative, oneness narrative, pride narrative, shame narrative, each arc of swirl into the next, I’m able to notice how each narrative inspires the following narrative, round and round. For a brief moment I’m able to track these thoughts just as I watched my body hold itself up in the lake. Layers of awareness! This sparks a new dimension of the thought-vortex, and eventually my body tells me I’m cold enough to have a shower because it starts to shiver.

—-

The hot shower after a lake-sit is very different than a hot shower just out of bed. In the lake-sit-hot-shower, I consider the profound pleasure afforded by discomfort. I remember the supreme resistance to diving into the water all-at-once. The aversion to discomfort. How that same aversion to discomfort arises both in instances of stepping into the lake as well as into my emotional growth.

Then the idea which comes up, saying “you need to be better at overcoming discomfort so you can grow the most in the least amount of time”. I view this as an industrialist idea which exists within me, and I allow myself to be uncomfortable about being afraid of discomfort. This first discomfort of discomfort is the first step towards walking forward into the lake where I intend to flex my body and show my dance moves while I am alive. To let go, let my body keep itself upright, to let whatever parts can relax to relax, let the buoyancy of the water hold me up, let the lake gravel keep me still, and notice the temperature gradient and all the littlest ways that the lake is.

Change the World, you say

Beloved Reader,
Dear Co-Creator,
Play with me as I process:

Today as I pour my hot cup of tea, I consider my privilege to consider responsibility, obligation, a call to arms in a world continually falling apart each time I open my eyes. I have been a guest in a garden this last Spring growing cut flowers, and a fresh batch of yellow tulips is up today from the soil. Another plant, before it flowered, was thought to be a weed and it turned out to flower rather beautifully. The keeper of the garden tells me he's glad he didn't manage to pull them all out.

Today I feel pulled in so many directions, so many paths forward. The urge to return to my comforts and desire to be Good. To speak and to be silent. To be vulnerable and be hurt. To be silent and be rewarded by a self-perpetuated culture of advantage and complacency. To be clumsy, to save this person and these people. To acknowledge my power afforded by my advantages and so perhaps my responsibility.

I consider what I consider to be "Enough" from me against the backdrop of a crumbling horizon.
The past several months have Deformed me.
I will never be the same.
This is for me to know, and I know this is True.
and
I am the only one with patterns I can control. 


So I am responsible to control me by this logic!
If I am not a part of the solution I am part of the problem
(This feels like Dualistic thought. Another example:
If I am not changing the world for the better, I am changing it for the worse.)
Here's a skimmable skippable readable belief I carry around related to Dualistic thought: To call out a thought as dualistic is to unknowingly participate in an agenda. To participate in agenda I do not agree with is to be manipulated. To participate in agenda I believe in is patriotic. To refuse to play the game at all of "With or Against" is to be a coward? Or to be named "other" and shamed fought battled to be control to be fodder or gunpowder? And ultimately unwillingly thrown into the game at the cost of pain, shame, exile to Wilderness.

"If you're not with us, you're against us."
"If you don't play my game it's gonna cost ya."
Opportunity, Reputation. Those who control the resources control the price on not playing the game.
The idea of Power was true on the playground and the idea of Power is true here.
This idea of being classified into compliance makes my hackles go up just to express. I want to pick a side proactively so I don't get lumped into the wrong side? The losing side? Oh to refuse to play! To not choose is to suffer and to choose too late is to choose poorly! The ultimate shame of refusing to play the game of WWII! The price of not playing goes up, up, up. I feel like I can't just "end up" on the good side. I feel like the good side must be chosen and committed to. All goodness seems to have an aspect of commitment. Commit to God. Commit to Loving. To be uncommitted is to be lazy, an adulterer. Duality, hm.

"Can't we just Love?!?!"
No, this, too, is called Spiritual Bypassing.
Unpacking my process is called White Fragility.
Laying these thoughts out in this way is called Gaslighting.
I am Horrible, which is called Self-Pity, a Pity-Party, a defense I use to stealth-cloak myself from a Dualistic occasion, competitive game.

My inner child is here and he is so frustrated. My inner patriot is here. My inner life coach. My inner angry protester. My Special Snowflake. My Alt-Right. My Freedom Left. My inner Moderate. I carry my politics like a sloppy necklace. I am white I am white I am white I am white I am white. I am  delicate, willfully ignorant, gaslighting gaslighter, hypocrite preacher. I preach false love in pursuit of God. There is my privilege. To dwell in self-composed righteousness.

Oh, let me mire in my Privilege. Here is my Inheritance I take ownership of, I call on all the work of my ancestors to Claim this Truth of Me:



“I am. There is. That’s it.” says the singular One.

Says God.
Says grace.
Says the wordless Wub of Being.
I use this mantric idea as a rock step in my partner dance of discernment. I throw it all out and I am One and I build again from there. So I am in a partner dance with my little time, but still we dance and so acknowledge the same song. Call the song the mythology of Death.



When CHANGE THE WORLD becomes spoken in the context of the partner dance whose rock step is DEATH, even control of others comes through careful REPOSITIONING of MYSELF, my vantage point, my perspective, the context or frame which surrounds my lens of the world.

A poem:
"I am going to die.
I need to change the world for Everyone!
Everyone is going to die.
I need to change the world to save the world, 
The world is dying.
The world will die.
Is that all there is to say 
This flickering candle in my chest?"

So I ask, where does this eagerness for control come from? Save the world. To save the world by some loudest and kindest and most holistic agenda? To Control what I may in a Responsible way.

I ask myself, as I stir my hot tea, on what hill will I die with my one life?

I consider my responsibility to this garden.
The time it takes to pull weeds instead of read about the world.
The engagement and attention it takes to notice what plants are asking for.
To study the other caretakers of plants and carry their lessons in the yard.

Because my sense of responsibility is linked very directly with my sense of control, although I have been taught I am in control of my destiny. Work hard, earn reward. If I am rewarded, I have worked hard, I am responsible. If I fail, and I have control, I am “irresponsible”.

If, on the other hand, the work is out of my control, I am not “responsible”. It is unfair to judge me as "Irresponsible" if I had no power, no control. To judge one who is powerless is against the rules of the society I abide by. The weight behind Fairness of a judgment is due to the consequential nature of being named irresponsible.

Irresponsible children lose their privileges.
Irresponsible drivers lose their license.
Irresponsible parents lose their children.

This garden began with the soil (or perhaps the garden began with an idea or intention, if you like!). These pesky weeds with blue flowers grow everywhere. I am too slow to pick them all. How shameful, how irresponsible.

“Responsible”, as a societal label:
To be heralded as responsible is to be in control of what others EXPECT I Should-Be-In-Control-of. The idea of connecting the social Title of "responsible adult" as something I can only receive "Externally" is important.

To be called Responsible, to me, is to be given safe passage through an institution. When one Responsible Person calls Me Responsible, it doesn’t matter if I actually respond to what I have control of. Just like if I get caught speeding it doesn’t mean that I speed all the time. The way I thought it was supposed to work is that To Be Caught Speeding means I must speed often enough to warrant create an unsafe environment.

Some greater statistical analysis can tell me, by way of ticketing, that I am being unsafe. That's what I thought. Some wisdom of past stories, past experiences, higher knowledge of the species can inform my behavior so I do not harm in the way others have mistakenly brought harm.

That was my idea of law and order.

George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Elijah McCain

You all have died for so long unnamed and I am naming you now to begin to feel what my body has capacity to feel. Still, simply naming is not Enough in my eyes. I invite and so seek the rest of your story and those who have witnessed your lives. Spider Man says I am Responsible so long as I have Power.  I have Power so long as I have Breath.

—-

I consider My Privilege in the face of the reformation of “The System” which I name a trade game started years ago. The trade game fought with "off the grid" and the trade game which has wrapped more and more STUFF into the game. Nobody has to play, but there is a COST by those with Power, and the cost of not playing has increasingly become Cold Hungry Torturned Death.

To name "the system” is to name my bias. To name my bias is to out myself in the game, to out myself in the Duality as somebody's "Us" and somebody's "Them".

I know Nothing At All.  For now I believe the following:
+ Listening to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color will Save Everyone
+ Every dollar spent or donated is a vote
+ Power Always comes with Responsibility
+ The Path Forward Will Be Hilarious and Nonsensical
+ Everybody is Already Worthy of Love

And so comes Relationship. Ah, sweet holy, a word for another day. My tea is low now, the last bit, the rate I drink my tea ends with this cold, bitter drop. I feel it a waste to throw it out so I drink the tea out of obligation.

The tulips are up and while I gulp the dregs, the tulips are picked by the hand of the garden's keeper. I consider our control and our responsibilities in the garden briefly and I stand up to go inside and clean my mug.

Take it up with me, those who are looking to spar, to sharpen, I have said my piece and I am here to listen.

Summertime Anti-Racism BlogPoem

Dear Beloved,

I am doing my absolute best.
I am a woodpile who hears a whispering tale of sparks and fire.

I can only imagine what anybody else is experiencing right now.
I do not know how anybody's experience feels.

---

What I’m noticing about myself at this point in my process:

+Today I notice the RELIEF I feel pouring through my Black Lives Matter and Anti-Racism-Education resources, articles, blogs, YouTube videos. I acknowledge my schedule and pressure to align my energy to my priorities. I fear this time to receive and to listen has come at the cost of my own "nothing day" relaxedness and well-being. I do not know what this means, exactly, and still I recognize the sensation of breathing fresh air which has come with my study.
(My most comprehensive resource below:)
https://www.michaelcaloz.com/race-for-white-people-part-1/?fbclid=IwAR1ZdQC2N8XAbJ8lq190Bb-BR98_ImKcH7Leixm31bz6jitwoAuERo5ly2w

+ I build common vocabulary from common ground.

+ When I feel seen and heard, it is easy for me to share and listen.

+I build into my process moments to check in and make space to express discomfort.

+ I know the process I follow to build trust and I know how to make space for that process.

+ I visualize listening as wiggling my headphone wires until the music catches and goes through.

+ The energy that I turn towards listening and acting with the Black Lives Matter movement is harmonious with the environmental movement and so begins with racial justice. I see how they are connected.

I’ve been playing with this idea of:
“How I do anything is how I do everything.”
Dismissing parts within myself is dismissing communities as dismissing aspects of the earth. Viewing productivity and industrialism within myself gives me lenses to view productivity and industrialism in my relationships, my career, and the ways I vote.

My vote is my attention. My vote is my dollar. My vote is my ballot. My vote is my little choices in every day.

Trying to change others is an act of trying to change myself. I invite myself to notice when I take the words of others personally. I am deciding to accept others work to change me as work to change themselves and I hold that so gently because I cannot be changed by them, I, ultimately, must be the one to buy in.

Still this pressure!
What does it look like
Within me
What does an energetic relief valve look like in an online space?
Can this pressure fill balloons?
Can this pressure be a pressure washer?
Can this tension fire arrows?
Can this tension hold a sail?
Can this pressure bring fresh water to freshwater taps in homes and fields?

How do I recognize the language of call in my everyday life?

I am a woodpile surrounded by sparks. I am an oil tanker on a dry hot day on grinding wheels.

The woodpile can burn and it’s a disaster or the woodpile can be chopped and cared for and keep us warm all winter until the summer comes.

So it goes
So it goes
So it is

Riley

POEM: The Hum of the Machine Generator

The machine is spinning and I don’t know why, but I don’t want to stop it if it won’t start again. I don’t want to run it if I don’t need to run it, but I don’t want to stop it if it doesn’t start again.

What does it do? It spins round and round but I don’t want to stop it if it don’t start again.

I think of the quiet I imagine the longing I imagine the coldness if it doesn’t start up again.

I’m feeling pretty good, but I don’t know if I should, while the robots are all purring I find myself all worrying if I turn all the lights off will I feel even better and if I miss them all, will they start again?

It’s all bound to stop and it’s all bound to start, the dance it keeps on going, there’s noise and there’s quiet.

I forget how the quiet can move me so. My mind fills with with ideas of expecting noise. When the noise doesn’t come I feel so unsafe and wrong. If I turn the machine off, can I turn it back on?

Will I feel stuck in the quiet? Will I meet the face of God? Will I feel my heart a-Twitter as the chills take over my bones? Will I start to feel a hunger that I’ve never known before? Will I cry and long and rage to turn the engine on again?

Will I see again the stars, as I fade away, myself? Will I regret what i once had when the lights turn off again?

Will I think of my comforts? Will I wonder what I’ve done? Will I learn at last what I had when the engine’s only cold and still?

It was a joy to get it running and a joy to turn it off, I remember the struggle, too! But now that it’s running I wonder what I don’t remember missing. I’m feeling rather numb to all those quiet feelings before I turned the machine on.

The machine is spinning and I don’t know why, but I don’t want to stop it if it won’t start again.  

 

 

RE: A Rich Man's Thoughts on a Bonfire

Good Evening Beloved,

I begin by invoking the idea of "Love is light is energy". To know love to know light is to know dark, cold, is to know warm, to know too warm or too cold. I invoke this spectrum of "attunement" VS "out of tune" rather than "hot" or "cold". The discomfort of too much or too little of any quality, rather than having the wrong quality. I'll define Love here not as Noise nor Silence, but the song which occurs between.

Love is my chief value and my first lover, my only most perfect life partner. Born out of love and into love, it is love which calls me down the pathway of my journey.

...

The sun is down. Energy has been distributed, parcels of firewood.

(I am the shepherd of my firewood parcel. My bank account is my flock. My net worth is infinite. My wallet my home my possessions are my flock.)

The bonfire is low, and I like the bonfire, I am the bonfire, I am the bonfire and I have arms, I can reach out and place parcels of wood, I am at a beach party, I am in the woods at a campfire with good stories, there are friends with guitars singing. I like being warm and I like the party. I like the tribe. 

The tribe is not be-all end-all, no, the tribe is not everything, there is the entire wilderness which is alive. The tribe, this society, feels like everything right now, it feels precious in the vastness of wilderness. The tribe guides me and teaches me and knows me and gives me the nourishment of feeling the giving of support and being supported. The tribe shows me what I agree with by having disagreeable quality. The tribe shows me what godlove is in this way. The tribe teaches me what it is to be loved, to love. The tribe shows me who I am. The tribe is a nourishing vitamin to my human experience.

The nourishment of providing. Being provided for. Providing for myself, providing for others. Providing the opportunity to experience withholding.

Dams are batteries. Dams hold energy. Dams demand maintenance. Maintenance is energy. Holding onto things is energy. Storage is energy. Space is energy. Dams silt up over time. Dams are an idea which exist within myself, too. I store and withhold energy for droughts. I maintain and neglect my dams. Downstream rivers will feel this. The valley of me is inundated. Everything is tradeoffs. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. 

My idea of "waste" is just energy escaping my eco-system as defined by my attention. If I cannot see it, it is gone. Is it gone if someone else sees? I try to maintain energy within my system. Energy spent is energy returned. This is the idea of investment. Investment with returns can be its own withholding. Its own dam.

Withholding is a part of the process, too. To be a withholder is a part of the path of being human here, now, as myself. To be a withholder is to know withholding. I withhold while I am called to withhold, even with the shame of being judged by myself as a withholder. A withholder is an archetype of the shame-inducer "selfish". The antithesis to "sharing is caring". A withholder is inconsiderate and uncaring and deserves consequences, says my judge.

The beach party bonfire.

I get to identify where the flame is low and where this firewood will go. To me, my withholding, to others, even to my detriment. My detriment for oversharing, undernourishing, my detriment for holding too tightly. Fear, shame, guilt. I offer this human experience. 

Every dollar is a vote. Dollars are energy. Voting is dollars is energy. What if instead of "how can I grow my investment?" I asked myself "what do I want to hold up?" Holding space takes energy. Where I spend my energy, how I spend my energy, WHY I spend my energy begs the question of values.

So many are asking for support. Shame says bleed out everywhere. Give here, give here. To support by way of shame is to endorse shame. To support by way of love is to endorse love. 

I am a part of the bonfire, too. The campfire is me. I love the sounds of chatter and guitar and beer cans and the smell of wood and the sounds of the night contrasting the coziness.   

So I close by setting down this thought:

Love is light is energy. I am the shepherd of the energy which I only call "mine" by name. My energy is not my worth, but instead my flock, it is I who leads who teaches my flock who I am. I am born of love and live by love and love is what calls me on my way.

Whimsy Reflecting on Misfortune in a Time of Uncertainty

An open letter to Beloved humans:

It's worth prefacing this whole account by saying I've been intending to get a "dumb phone" as a replacement for when my current smart phone gave out. And my smart phone was certainly on its way out.

My car got stolen (for a second time since June 2019) on Valentine's (Yes I did have a date planned and the plans fell through and also my brother was stranded to the bus system at the train station).

I found my car a week later (three blocks from my house) with the ignition ripped out and I had it towed. While trying to fix it in the driveway, I dropped my phone on the driveway, which brought the impending "What phone will Riley get?" decision moment which I was avoiding TO THE FOREFRONT.

and I decided to get a SMARTER phone.

Decisions have been made. I am going to be the owner of my first iPhone! Getting a refurbished iPhone 7 instead of a slider phone.

Nophone life, however brief, was interesting, lasting from Saturday until Thursday (during which time my laptop hard drive decided to give out). I'm noticing there's anticipation for new phone
and some habit, some tick that wants to CHECK something. But not having a phone gives that tick PERMISSION to RELAX. Like "nothin' I could do, boss! Phone was all gone, I did my best, I have relieved my responsibilities for connectedness."

Ahh.

Noticing not having a phone is generally more of a relief than a stress, at least for a while. I'm wondering how I can build boundaries with myself to continue this practice of relief into having-a-phone-life, even if it's sometimes. If I could reinforce some inner discipline to create an inner-sanctum.

(Without a phone like I CAN'T do ANYTHING and so I'm less anxious to TRY to do EVERYTHING. This feels like the crux.)

Having no phone feels as if there is no requirement for an inner boundary, or self-discipline.

I'm limited by the circumstance and the circumstance is teaching me a new way to relax
that I usually don't allow?

[Hello Coronavirus?]

When the circumstance changes [cough cough]
When I have a phone within my reach

I am the holder of the limits, rather than the circumstance.

I'm wondering if I could use a self-boundary to bring in that rest. What would it look like if I could give my permission to myself to release that responsibility, even just to recover?

Does the feeling of spacing myself from my phone call on the experience of losing my phone to teach my body how to relax? Can I self-guide myself to recreate this sense of "ah, I don't have a phone, I couldn't even if I wanted to, I am free of this responsibility."

Reflecting on this is a joyful exercise.

(a socially distanced hug)
Riley

Pi day, Portland, Quoronantine

Snow and Virus Flurries and Pie Day

It’s snowing today in Portland.

Pi day and I’m at the pie shop. Random order Pie Bar. I’m not sick, but most people are staying home from work next week and I’m worried because I’m not because I don’t have a computer. Mine just broke. Hard drive death.

Whew.

Corona flurry.
I find myself returning to headlines and articles. I get saturated. Something new closed. There’s an argument for why it should close sooner or stay open longer. There’s another event being hosted online instead of in person. Cancelled in person. Stay connected. Isolate. The market crashes. The country is breaking open its piggy bank. Where would that money have gone otherwise? Where will we be in months from now? My eyes hurt, the speculating gives me a headache. Right here and now I am good, we are good, the people I hold most dearly are raising up prayers and visions of peace. I have love in my heart. The response to this new unknown starts in me. The unknown becomes a playground of possibility. I am sober and alive.

I’m putting stuff off. Attached to doing this work I keep putting off. Car needs repair. Computer needs replacing. I know I’ve been putting off my taxes, but now I don’t have a computer. I keep meaning to go mattress shopping. I have resources but I fear I am mismanaging them. Where will they be in a few weeks? Am I fulfilling needs or inflating my lifestyle? I am ashamed of decadence. Self discipline is so much self inflicted hurting. Negative reinforcement. Stay warm stay fed. Wash your hands.

The thoughts come in cycles. The worries take turns. I’m thinking about my car now. The ignition has been ruined for weeks and I took apart the console to try and fix it and now it won’t go back in. Also the front tire is low. Maybe flat.

I’m thinking about escapism. Having drinks or eating sugar, snacks, playing old video games, drinking coffee just for the weekend buzz. Visions are tantalizing, and cycles of shame wave in and out. I consider that the pleasure of purchasing is within me, so I put my wallet down. I turn to writing. This feels like safe escapism which is record keeping which is also a safe form of expression. Which is free, which is healthy and productive and creatively nourishing for myself and for others. Writing is resonant with my heart and my hands. Here I am, writing.

I also haven’t done my taxes. Telling myself I will when I get my new laptop. There’s one in the mail, but it’s refurbished and 5 years old. I thought a lot about this. I fear being swindled or mistaken. I also fear purchasing a new machine out of fear. My pride fears advice. I like to believe money can build a repair economy where it can. I believe money represents energy (and so also time) more than it represents gold. Every dollar is a vote. Every vote is energy bringing ideas into life. I believe I can encourage quality over quantity with my dollar.

So I am home. So it is Saturday. The house is quiet and there is a gentle camaraderie. We are baking cookies and watching Frozen 2.

Another friend says she is flying back from Colorado soon. She says we can watch the world fall apart with instruments in our hands. I am learning Pink Floyd’s “Time” today. It resonates with the quiet recreational moments framed by the fleeting nature of mortality. Today I reckon with the dread and the joy of being alive and at least one kind of temporary. I believe that in this mindspace there is fertility for reverence.

Stay warm, Beloved. Keep your lanterns lit. Maybe watch Frozen 2 if you like. Disney released it 3 months early just for this pandemic. Historic gesture, if you ask me.

Peace,
Riley

Ode to "FITTIBUB"

This year's sentiment has been "Be Here Now", and for me that has been centered around the idea of Release. I use the word release like letting go of how I think I want in order to feel good and focusing on just feeling good with whatever I have, whatever is right here right now.

I've learned that I have been gifted tenacious social energy that feels like "anxiety" when neglected. I have a lot to settle down before my delicate inner self is tuned into another person, even when I want to be open, open, open. My own opening and vulnerability can feel like I'm forcing you to be open and vulnerable and that shuts people down. 

I've been trying to find a way to make it clear that I don't want undue pressure on a connection, I don't want you to share what you don't want to share, but I still want to share that I want to share. (I don't have to tell you THE STUFF, I just want to tell you THERE IS STUFF). Part of me opening up involves me asking you to open up, to gauge what you feel able to receive of me.

I've found vocabulary to navigate my own sensitivities and anxieties in tandem with my curiosities and have developed my practice for guiding somebody through my nervous system so I can help them help me build mutual trust conducive to an "authentic relationship" full of YES and NO and EDGES and BOUNDARIES that guide the wonder of HUMAN RELATIONSHIP. 

TA-DA.

At its best, this practice has cultivated a cozy and meaningful intimacy that deepens and heals. At its worst, a discomfort that indicates a mismatch and feels like abandonment and "let's not talk" or feels like "not good enough". To this point, I've called it "connecting", or "diving deep", "unfolding", or "opening", but there's certain connotations that weigh down the real intent of my curiosity.

Enter "Fittibub", stage right.

DEFINITION
The word "Fittibub" as I use it, is a state of intimacy between people where involved parties share both OPENING and CLOSING sensations (vulnerable truths, desires, hesitations, curiosities, boundaries, edges) in order to digest TRAUMA (whatever triggers, wanderings, upsets, and unfit projections separate the person from being present) to cultivate TRUST and so find rest in a place of presence, peace, and whimsy in relationship.

Fittibub is akin to and used similarly as the word Hygge, which we'll define here as a feeling of warmth and coziness in a group. A pleasant family gathering with a warm fire on a wintery night, say. Fittibub is along those lines, but more intimate, and more curious, and feels more like two children playing in a sandbox, or with a chest of toys. I've experienced Fittibub most potently in a space with just one other person, as this is the most nimble and adaptable relationship in terms of buy-in.

PROCESS

BEGINNING
Fittibub begins with a seed underground. An honest desire to connect from both people. To really be known, even if that desire is buried beneath fears. Roots set by the water of whimsy and the nourishment of shares and listening composting the soil. The sunlight of presence continue to feed Fittibub's expression. Cultivation often passes through sensations of discomfort or awkwardness and is reset to the pace of the participants.

PARTICIPANTS

There is room for everyone and all feelings in Fittibub because Fittibub lets go of what is unnecessary and returns to where the attention, the energy of connection is. Fittibub understands that all involved parties are worthy of being in Fittibub. Nobody can earn Fittibub. Nobody can achieve Fittibub. Fittibub is cultivated like a garden. Fittibub is always available to those who invite it in.

Fittibub considers first and foremost only those parties immediately engaged in Fittibub. 
In a party of 2, there's 4 participants to be acknowledged. There's 1) my idea (or projection) of me, 2) my idea of you, 3) your idea of you, and 4) your idea of me. Fittibub expresses judgments and projections as curiosities. Generalizations about "the way people work" are best expressed as "the way I work" and "the way You work". This is believed to cultivate presence.

PRESENCE
Fittibub remains in the present moment by expressing when thoughts of the past (longing and regret) and the future (hopes and worries) come up and is interested to identify what sort of present feeling drives the participant to move into the past and the future. 

LANGUAGE
Fittibub understands that language is "house rules", and that definitions are not absolute. Fittibub extends its leaves with "tuning" to check the difference between what is "said" and what is "heard". Fittibub understands that there is a difference between what is SAID and what is HEARD. Crossing the distance between what is SAID and what is HEARD is accomplished by slowing down and "retuning". Fittibub slows down and "retunes" to each new connection and each new upset or wave of energy. Fittibub agrees to pause whenever anyone takes anything personally, and to reaffirm the relationship, the connection.

EXPRESSION/CONNECTION/TRUTH
Fittibub understands that connection is more important than the sensations of the body. And that expression of the sensations of the body are what sustain Fittibub. Fittibub makes room for food and water and welcome touch and space and stretches and bathroom breaks. These are good moments to check in and see whether Fittibub wants to adjust or feels complete. Fittibub makes room for true (what is felt in the body) pride, shame, and desire to be expressed and acknowledged. Fittibub invites those participants to share their Ask, their expression. Fittibub follows "Yes" and makes space for "No" and "I don't know". None of which are more desirable in principle than the others. 

There is no falling behind or getting ahead in Fittibub. Fittibub makes time for all uncomforts to be heard and understood, and addressed to the best abilities of those involved, and so can move very slowly. Fittibub is first and foremost concerned with finding the unique pitch, tone, and tempo that comes out of each participant, like an emotional drum circle.

Fittibub is paced so participants remain on tempo with noticing and presencing reactions that arise in their body. Assumptions that are made and stories that are woven to orient around those feelings. ("I felt bad when he said that, he must have meant that to hurt me")

A response to a share might be "how did that feel to share?" This takes the attention of the other away from the weeds of the story and into their body, their now, with the person. A response to "how did that feel to share?" might sound like "I feel relief like a weight lifted; I feel surprised to have said it; I feel fear in how you might respond."

LISTENING
Fittibub listens, affirms, reflects, and unpacks because Fittibub has a vested interest in what the other person is paying attention to. Fittibub does not want to HAVE the other's attention, Fittibub wants to UNDERSTAND what MOTIVATES the other's attention, as vaguely or specifically as that attention (whether it be "opening" or "closing" in nature) wants to be known.

Fittibub pays more attention to energy (tone, body language, context, word CHOICE) than words alone. Fittibub understands words are only scaffolding to relationship. What-is-said kneels before what-is-true. 

Fittibub understand that expression and listening are more important than fulfillment. This makes room for The Ask. Fittibub understands that language is "house rules" (no definition is absolute, words are just used to convey meaning) and so pauses to check the meaning of each word.

COMFORTABLE SILENCE
Fittibub is as comfortable in silence as it is in dialogue or play. Fittibub notices nervous chatter or nervous silence and is curious about the source of nervous energy.

Fittibub uses boredom and disengagement not as a judgment of worth, but as an indicator that the connection is not making space for all the attentions involved. This is a moment to check in, whether you are bored or The Other seems bored.

FOR ITS OWN SAKE
Fittibub has no end-game, but is aware of and curious about the attention of the Self and the Other. Fittibub is steered by Whimsical and Meaningful Curiosity and fueled is by epiphany. 

INVITATIONS
Each curiosity presented is only an invitation. Fittibub does not expect fulfillment so much as listening, attention, and space.

Fittibub is curious for curiosity's sake. Fittibub is expressive for expression's sake. Fittibub only wants to hear what wants to be shared.

EDGES
Fittibub understands and gently explores Edges as ways to healing old trauma and expand what's available to the participants. ("edges" feel like "I'm not sure about this, let's slow down and proceed carefully")

BOUNDARIES
Fittibub understands and wholly respects Boundaries as guides to connection to avoid triggers. ("boundaries" feel like "nope, nope, nope, that's wrong for me")

TRIGGERS

The road to Fittibub invariably triggers people. Fittibub understands that nobody is responsible for the trigger, but makes space to unpack a trigger. By discerning the difference between an old trauma response and the truth of the involved people's desire for connection, those involved in cultivating Fittibub proceed carefully through "edges"  and so evolve their state of Fittibub. 

It is a return to trust that moves trigger responses through and returns to connection. Trust is the campfire. Trust is the energy that binds relationship and dissolves old wounds. Trust makes room for life to move through participants, in all its uncertainty. It is the north star that moves participants through discomforts like hurt and doubt.

TAKING SOMETHING PERSONALLY/FORGIVENESS
Fittibub admits when something is taken personally, and understands that taking something personally is self-inflicted, and that there is no shame in this. It becomes an opportunity for healing within the container of Fittibub.

FORGIVENESS
Fittibub releases stories not relevant to the connection. It identifies sensations and holds space for presence. Forgiveness is the death of what was assumed. Forgiveness is the confession of being wrong. The airing of the shame of being wrong. The witnessing of shame. Fittibub is a steady stream of projections and second chances.

Fittibub allows forgiveness because it releases the pride of being right. Fittibub starts over when the conversation dies. Fittibub dies and dies and dies again. Fittibub lets go of "I forget where I was" and understands that tracking details is less important than connection, which is defined by everyone's attention noticing the same thing at the same time.

RE-TUNING
Trust is paramount to the sanctity of Fittibub. Forgiveness is invited to be abundant. Trust-building happens at a pace that is comfortable for ALL participants to express EACH assumption as they arise. A conversation that moves too fast is full of assumptions. To slow down is to make room for assumptions to be shared and affirmed or dispelled.

Fittibub can be stopped at any time by any of the participants. Fittibub only wants to have what wants to be had. To receive what wants to be given, and to be given what wants to be received. It is my understanding of Fittibub that people usually have something that others want and want something others have. Fittibub is a Way of emotional exchange, closing a circuit to pass electricity between hearts. 

INNER CHILD
Fittibub is a connecting, deepening and healing endeavor. Fittibub is a dance of the minds. Fittibub is a homeostasis of more than one nervous system in relationship. Fettibub is fun at its healthiest expression. While in a state of Fittibub, all involved parties have made space for their inner child and have access to otherwise unfettered joy and whimsy. As this joy and whimsy inspires new activities, new edges and boundaries will arise, those in a state of Fittibub can pause and dispel unwarranted fears or unpack and explore in a mutual search for "same-page-ness" to bask in mutual presence and wonder.

COMPLETE

Fittibub knows when it is done and when it is not. Fittibub understands there is a difference between being "done" with a thought and being "complete" with an interaction. Fittibub does not need to be done to feel complete. Completion does not reflect the potency of the interaction. Fittibub mindfully disengages upon completion. 

ETYMOLOGY

The word itself was born in pursuit of the thing it describes. Ice-breaking is the first act of Fittibub. It is rinsed and repeated into more refined depths of connection.

The word Fittibub was born in a game of banangrams intended to instill a sense of hygge between the housemates and the visitors before our group Friendsgiving. I caught myself stressed out trying to keep up with the game, which requires making scrabble words with letter pieces. I thought it was funny to just see what kind of silly words I could make instead and decided my laughter was more important than my competitiveness. I made myself laugh enough times t

o convince the group to join in my game, so we set out to assemble "and define" fake words instead.

One of the players, destined to be a Fittibub pioneer, drew the letters B-U-B. The next letter she drew was "I", and so held "I-B-U-B". The next letters she drew were "T", another "T", a second "I", and finally an "F". Each letter called themselves to the nonword, "Bub" and so gave way to "F-I-T-T-I-B-U-B", which had the group in deep belly laughs, speculating its meaning.

The bracelet "FITTIBUB" was far and wide the anchoring act of thoughtfulness that bridged connection between triggers. It wasn't supposed to be made, but I made it because I thought it was funny to bring to the show. It served as the inside joke that survived a relationship to the fires of mistrust and old relationship wounds that came up as I pursued connection with this person.

Fittibub was given meaning on a date between two people who do not live in the same town, who decided to connect intimately by way of heart instead of bodies. Fittibub is the word I use to describe experiences I have had before and now experiences I will have later.

Fittibub lives in its use. If anyone has had an experience like this, or would like to, please use this article as a basis, an inspiration for a place to go with someone who you'd like to connect with. Instead of "let's hang out", we could say "let's bring in some Fittibub"

Remember, even born in a state of whimsy, words have power.

The keyboard and the touchscreen are mightier than bombs, fires, and oceans.

So says Fittibub.