Collateral damage

“In Albany, some of Mr. Spitzer’s staff members were clearing out their desks as Mr. Paterson and his top aides prepared to move into the executive offices. Charles O’Byrne, a longtime assistant to Mr. Paterson, is replacing Richard Baum as the governor’s top aide. Most other top Spitzer loyalists were expected to depart.”

From today's New York Times

As everyone talks about the demise of Elliot Spitzer’s political career, I cannot help but to think of the dozens of innocent professionals damned as a result of Spitzer’s personal choices.  The often unnamed, unknown staff whose lives orbited around this once powerful man are professionally devastated.  Working tirelessly, in some cases for many years, they are now shoved aside to make room for the next wave of advisors and assistants, schedulers and security.  While this is the natural flow of political change, it is a different set of circumstances when your boss is ousted by scandal.  The person for whom you fought, in whom you believed is now forced from office, disgraced.  With him goes your paycheck, your health benefits, your work and more important and harder to replace, your trust.  The populace of New York has been betrayed by this man, yes.  But that is an anonymous betrayal.  The people who spent countless hours working for and with this man must now contend with the impact of his duplicity on the whole of their lives.  The damage of the powerful is expansive and lasting.  

No logo lapel pins

Today was the day I was supposed to be a finalist for a respectable, well paying job with a bank.  I was supposed to wear a new suit, something black and designer.  My hair neatly cut to a professional shoulder length, my nails trimmed and polished in some inoffensive off pink.  My cheeks, a healthy rose color - the perfect balance of foundation, powder and blush.  I’d look rested despite getting up before dawn, the magic of expensive concealer.  I planned to carry my leather briefcase packed with my organized, well researched notes on banks and bankers and banking.  I’d also have a lipstick and a hairbrush and a toothbrush, I’d probably carry a first aid kit, too.  I’d leave my house before the sun was too high and I’d hop on a plane because people who have respectable jobs with banks are hoppers not shleppers.  I’d go from my airport to their airport to a taxi to a big building.  On a floor high above the city, in a big conference room, I’d hope my new suit isn’t too wrinkled and my lipstick isn’t on my teeth and my new hair is still neat.  All of this to try to convince strangers that I’d be the best choice for the philanthropic executive position.  The entire time I’d be hoping that no one pushed too hard on what a philanthropic executive is supposed to do because I’m still not sure - phrases like generate revenue, represent the brand, act with integrity flow like water finding the cracks in pavement.  I’d do my best to secure a safe position that requires dark suits, polished nails, professional hair and just enough makeup.  I might even meet the man of my dreams among the ranks of businessmen and bankers.  Yes.  That was the plan for February 12, 2008.  The wait was to end today.  I was going to charm my way into the end of the wait, to making myself and everyone else around me comfortable by getting a job,  going back to work, the way I used to work.  Going back to something.  The prayer women would be free, the priest could stop buying lunch, the friends could stop biting their tongues. The whole ugly transition would be over.  Finally, an organization who would take me despite my damaged reputation and failing body.  But something happened on the way to the bank, my truth - ambivalence, resignation to expectation not passion or calling or vocation - emerged at critical juncture so Tuesday February 12th didn’t go as everyone hoped.  No plane, no conference room, no pretty smile, no job offer.  I started the morning with an awful yoga class.  Back spasming, I ran off to meet a wise friend for coffee.  I sat and unloaded the tragedy of the wait not being over and the gulit of spending several days depressed by the lack of a comfortable bank job.  I purged my mind of the spinning inanity.  He said the same thing he always says, wait.  You have to stop and wait. Wait for it.  Wait for God.  Wait for the truth, wait because if you don’t wait, you’ll miss it and that’ll be a whole lot more painful than continuing to wait.  I’ve heard it before but it never sounds the same when I repeat it to myself.  When he says it, I recognize it’s fundamental truth, it’s resonance in this unknowable, unmanipulatible part of me.  He says go to the place where you find peace and feel love, that’s what you need.  I say I have two dogs to take care of and they are’t allowed on the beach.  Go to Runyon Canyon then.  Get outside, clear your head, be loved by God doing nothing.  Stop.  Just stop.  The alternative is to spend the day looking at postings for more jobs I don’t want or watching daytime television.  I decide to take my unpolished nails, unkempt hair and bare face with the big black dog and the little white dog off to the canyon on the other side of LA.  The windy roads are all going up, way up in the hills, the kind of roads I loathe.  My fear of heights is most acute in the car in high places where the world drops off with no warning.  Runyon Canyon is one of those places.  This is no cruise down PCH to Malibu.  It’s stressful and scary. No sooner than I refocus for the last few turns do I hear the immediately recognizable sound of a vomiting puppy.  As we summit Mulholland, I see my beloved Lucy is sitting in a large puddle of puppy spit and puke.  She’s more green than white.  Thankfully Kali (my yoga teacher’s dog who is staying with us for a few weeks) decided to stay away from the mess.  We arrive, finally.  I clean up as best I can while Lucy drags her vomit soaked leash through the dirt outside the car.  Great.  It’s her new leash, the expensive one with the fabric goldfish pattern, I bought at the fancy dog store in Bayhead, New Jersey.  Finally wrangling the two dogs, we set out .  Clearly Kali is a hiker, the nearly 100 pound lab literally drags little Lucy on her stubborn stomach up the hill.  This is a new form of leash breaking.  I let Kali off the leash in part of save my puppy and my right arm.  Off she goes.  Here we are just a day into caring for her and she’s gone  off a cliff or maybe it was just down the hill.   Emerging from the bushes, Kali went right back on the lead.  Tethered to the tripping Lucy, held in check by a stumbling me, Kali pulled ahead.  Struggling as I was with dogs and a leaking backpack, it was no surprise when I landed on the ground.  My ankle turned in, my knee skinned, my dogs just standing around confused.  This, this is not the soaking in love experience I was hoping for.  This hot, dirty stressful walk in the hills isn’t what I imagined.  Yet there I was standing on the side of this mountain covered in sweat and water and dirt with the faint smell of dog vomit still swirling around us.  There, I was being dragged and dragging and looking ridiculous and I was still thankful I wasn’t wearing a suit sitting in a conference room trying to convince people of my absolute calling to be a philanthropic executive.  I’m not sure it was that moment that I decided to stop looking for a job.  I’m looking for a life, the kind of life that rewards the tenacity of someone who falls down and gets messy yet still gets up and keeps walking.  No suits, no inoffensive nail color, no professional haircuts - no more trying to fit into an identity that requires a logo lapel pin -  I’d rather be out on the trails covered in dog spit and sweat and sun.

It's Virginia Woolf's birthday

Here's a little Virginia Woolf from this morning's Writer's Almanac...

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.  But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison."

Be careful when it comes to fixing people

It's a simple rule.  If you don't know someone, don't try to fix them.  This is especially true if they haven't asked for help and you haven't asked for permission.  It's old wisdom, covered as far back as the gospels.  It's a cold and rainy day in Los Angeles.  My body is stiff, my range of motion is limited.  I went to yoga anyway, I wanted to see if I could loosen up.  In one of the standing poses, the instructor came by and moved my knee out an inch. An inch is nothing except when you have a rheumatic arthritic disease that limits how far you can move your hips.  That inch was the difference between tolerance and pain, health and injury, walking freely and limping.  The instructor had great intentions.  She could tell I knew what I was doing.  I had a strong position, with a little adjustment, she was making it stronger.  How often have I done the same thing?  How often have I imposed help without enough knowledge, without asking permission.  How many people have been hurt by the unintended consequences of my helpfulness, of being caught up in what I know instead of aware that there is so much I don't know?  As I limp off to bed tonight, I pray that I become more present and less instructive in my relationships.  Waiting until someone asks for my help, waiting to know them well enough so that I might actually be helpful, I inch forward in my own understanding - physically and metaphorically.  

Defining vision

According to the handy Apple dictionary, vision is defined as "the faculty or state of being able to see."  The second definition, more applicable to my current circumstances is, "the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom."  The last description moves into the realm of supernatural apparitions. 

My comfort with visions follows precisely the hierarchy of definitions.  I am a visual person.  I like to look around, to observe the things going on in the world.  My photography is about capturing a moment and attempting to draw out it's beauty.  I rarely pose a shot, I never do studio work.  Everything you see on this blog is a snippet of some experience that I was having.  My pictures are of things that I notice.  I wasn't always interested in looking around.  I was the victim of a violent crime.  For a long time after that experience, everything scared me.  I couldn't make eye contact, I'd be totally overwhelmed walking into a new environment.  Every thing, every person was a threat.  It took a lot of practice, small and slow steps to overcome the paranoia of victimhood.  There was a time when I did not think I would ever see anything but danger.  Now I understand that the way I see is informed by the redemption of trauma, it is the result of reigning in  what was once a dangerous case of hypervigilance. In the refinement of neurosis, I have new eyes for everyday beauty.  I see more than I ever did before.

Vision as the ability to think and plan with wisdom and imagination seems to be the next big challenge.  The tension that grips my whole body when I think about having a vision for my life is totally debilitating.  I am overcome with a single thought - "I DON'T KNOW."  I find the question threatening and the questioner a sadistic tormentor.  Ask me anything, anything except that.  I am of sound enough mind to recognize how irrational my fear is.  I even have an image that captures the insanity of it.  There I am clinging to the top of a flag pole, crawling 20 feet in the air to get away from the relentless need for a vision.  Me, terrified of heights as I am, holding onto this cold, slippery silver pole, hoping I won't fall.  Every time I look down, I see crowds of people whispering about my lack of vision.  "Yeah. She's the girl who has no vision," says one woman in a stinging whisper.  "If she only had a vision, she might get back to doing something with her life, she's become such a lazy cow" replies the woman standing next to her.  "Well,"  her friend responds conspiratorially, "I hear she's just impossible to be around. Doesn't play well with others, if you know what I mean. Nothing special enough about that one to put up with the personality.  And, you know the things they said about her and the former boss."  A third person joins the conversation. "Do you really think she slept her way to that job?"  The first woman raises her eyebrows. " Maybe she isn't that bright.  After all, she is perched at the top of a flagpole and no one knows why."  They all laugh.  "Everyone knew she would break eventually."  There are other voices at the bottom of the flagpole.  Kind and generous, encouraging voices.  I'm starting to hear those more clearly.  The volume is turned down on the din of criticism and doubt.  But I'm still terrified, I know there's a crowd of people out there, everywhere, ready to shred the vision.  Ready to mock and gawk and say she's kidding herself.  With that kind of imagination, it's not surprising that I don't find immediate joy in crafting something that will expose my deepest desires, my dream for this life.  I want to protect that, it's too fragile to hold up to the world.  I understand the faulty logic here.  I admitted at the outset it was irrational.  The parallels to the time when I was afraid of everything are real.  I knew it was irrational then.  I knew that I wasn't afraid of the person standing in front of me.  I was afraid of the potential that they represented.  I had to rehabilitate my vision. I recall it was hard work. I had to limit the visual field in the beginning.  I had to move more slowly, tenderly taking in the people and the things around me.  I had to give my brain enough time to see something, to understand it and to decode whether or not it was dangerous.  It was an intense time of deliberate intellectual and physical engagement.

  

The path to restoring or perhaps to finding the vision I lack now isn't altogether clear.  I think I'm doing the things I need to do to find my way to a vision and a voice for it.  I think cultivating disciplines of patience, of preparation, of waiting are part of coaxing into the conscious world something that already lives below the surface.  I think I am doing the right things in the right places but I can't be sure.  It is impossible to know if I am just wasting time, indulging insecurity, jeopardizing some unrealized potential.

I long for some reassurance that I am progressing but visions are too big to get bogged down in scorecards and timelines.  Visions change lives.  Real visions are what change the world.  And, so, I end with the third definition - "an experience of seeing someone or something in a dream or a trance, or as a supernatural apparition."  This week is when we celebrate the life of a man who changed the world because he had a dream and the melodic voice to sing it into hearts despite massive, terrifying obstacles.  From Moses to Martin Luther King, Jr, great visions are always inspired by God.  I believe in this God who in the face of the impossible, in the direct confrontation of human fears draws us into an inspired identity.  I may not be comfortable with this God but I do believe in him, that much is clear.

Holy light

I spent this morning in the presence of a holy man.  The best part of the waiting comes on days like today.  If I weren't waiting, I would have been too busy to have this experience.  If I were all neat and pulled together, I doubt I'd spend as much time seeking out voices of wisdom and maturity.  If I were settled into something new I'd be doing that. Maybe I'd see someone outside of my normal circle now and again but would I be present or would I be glancing at my blackberry every few minutes.  I can't adequately describe what happened or why it was so special. The beauty of the holy is it's elusiveness, it's overpowering gentleness. My soul is fed by holy encounters, my energy vibrates with gratitude for the experience - be it walking on the beach in Malibu or kneeling in a church or the amazing moments when you see God in the person sitting across from you. Today I was privileged to hear a life story, a human narrative marked by tragedy, love, failure, greatness, grace.  It was mythical yet delivered with stunning and genuine humility.  It was the kind of story that reveals God in the world, in my friends life, in my life.  Is there a greater gift than being the source of light that shines God directly into soul of another?  I think that might be the truest and most important call and I'm thankful for the holy man who spent his morning with me and did just that.

Snuggling with my edge

The edge to which I refer is a yoga term.  It is the point you reach when you can go no further.  Your body is stretched to it's limit.  The edge, once you find it, is where you stay to breathe.  Working inside your edge sounds easier than it is.  The space at the end of your capacity can be painful, it can be brutal, it's the place you find your body shaking, it's a hair's breadth to tears or relief. With my lame, damaged body the edge is precarious.  I'm an athlete at heart, my instinct is to find the breaking point and move to the place right past it.  Chronic pain tames that compulsion, living gently in this body is a choice I make.  Yoga is a great physical outlet because it is all about the present, the body in that moment.  I drift between careful and reckless, my yoga practice is about a maturing understanding that is neither.  I've developed a new intuitive sense of self that recognizes the always moving edge more easily.  Today I was reflecting on the metaphysical edges and my dull, almost nonexistent sensitivity to them.  When have I pushed too far in demanding strength or courage in the face of disappoint?  When do I sink too quickly into despair?  I had an interview today for something that was promising.  After the call, I was a little disappointed.  I tried to rally the faith I wrote about yesterday. I saw its edge, I stretched into it and it hurt.  I knew that I wouldn't hold that space forever, the disappointment would fade, the anxiety would subside, something would change.  While snuggling up to that edge wasn't joyous, it didn't kill me either.  I'm still a little bummed but a few hours of holding a posture of near teary is about all I can take.  Time to let that go and move on.  That's the best part of the edge, you can chose to let go and cook dinner for a dear old friend instead.