A Long December

One of my students had to leave class early tonight because she had tickets to see The Counting Crows, another of my favorite bands from my college days.

Although this tune wasn't on the album that I had on repeat in the early 90s, it is one that I heard recently and contemplated, in particular, these lyrics:

I guess the winter makes us smile a little slower

Yes, I guess it does. I guess it makes just about everything a little slower, and requires me to be a little braver than when it's warm outside...

Here's the rest of the lyrics:

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast
And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven I wish you would
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl
And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California I think you should
Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean I guess I should
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Colorblind

My coworker was listening to music today at her desk -- some of which I didn't recognize -- but I knew this voice when this song came on:

I am colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am taffy stuck and tongue tied
Stutter shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am fine

When I was like 20 years old, I loved, loved, loved the Counting Crows, and although I don't seek them out anymore, I do still enjoy their stuff when I come across it. I've always found their lyrics semi-nonsensical, usually in a good way, and this song is no exception.

I'm particularly responding to the "pull me out from inside" line -- it kinda feels like that's what's going to be necessary for me if I'm going to get to the point where feeling good isn't predicated on no one messing with the story I'm telling myself in that moment about why things are the way they are and how they can be fixed.

True surrender is hard for me. I suppose it's hard for everyone, but I know it's hard for me because I've always needed to control things to feel ok. Trouble is, I'm old (wise?) enough now to 1) know that I can't control things, and 2) recognize that I tend to feel best when I'm not trying to control things. But oh, how I want to...

I mentioned the other day that my acupuncturist said my kidneys are really in need of some love, and tonight I was talking to a friend who owns Louise Hay's book about what it means when you have issues with a certain part of your body. When she read me what it said about the kidneys, it talked about disappointment and failure and dealing with those things like a small child. And that really resonated with me.

I am disappointed that my lover moved away. I do feel like as hard as I tried to make it work, and I tried really, really hard, I failed. Never mind that that was never my job. And then when my friend tells me, as she did tonight, that she sees me meeting someone who wants to have a family and wants to live in Madison and it won't have to be so hard, tears roll down my face and I shake my head and say "But I don't wanna meet someone else! I wanna be with him!" That sounds maybe a wee bit childish, eh?

The Counting Crows know how it is:

I am covered in skin
No one gets to come in
Pull me out from inside

Yep. Something or someone's going to have to pull me out from inside. And I guess I'm just going to have to ask for the willingness to let go of what doesn't work to make room for what does, even if that's not what I feel like doing, because:

I am folded and unfolded and unfolding
I am colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am fine

No, I'm not ready, and I'm not fine. But one day I will be. Pull me out from inside. You'll see...

Time and Time Again

My inner ipod was shuffling on the home theme this afternoon when I found myself singing these lyrics from this tune:

So when are you coming home, sweet angel?

Which is apropos because my boyfriend went to Brown County, Indiana this weekend on a mountain biking and camping trip, and today he's spending the majority of his waking hours driving back while we anxiously await him.

The rest of the song doesn't super fit -- it's kinda depressing and I'm feeling very up. So maybe I'll just close with these road trip like lyrics:

I wish I was travelin' on a freeway

Beneath this graveyard western sky.

I'm gonna set fire to this city

And out in the desert, yeah, we're gonna ride.

Time and time again...

Perfect Blue Buildings

It's hard to believe it's August already. I get a little sick of people saying that, but I have to admit that it is pretty astounding how quickly summer slips away.

It has been a good summer, overall, and the last couple of days I've had some alone time with my daughter, which has been really great. She helped my boyfriend and I celebrate two years to the day we met with a fun summer evening of riding bikes to a favorite local restaurant.

She even took this photo of the happy couple post margarita --
methinks my man wears the tequila better than I do!

The next day, which was yesterday, I heard these lyrics as I pedaled into work:

Said how am I gonna keep myself away?

How am I gonna keep myself away from me?

Keep myself away...

How am I gonna keep myself away from me?

Keep myself away...

How am I gonna keep myself away from me?

Which for me, really isn't the question at all. It's more a question of how I'm going to stay connected to myself. After years and years of practice, I'm really, really good at this part:

Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby,

And try to keep myself away from me.

But not as good at staying connected. I had a private yoga session with my teacher a couple of weeks ago, and he outlined a home practice for me. I know it is what I need to be doing, and in some sense I want to do what I need to be doing, but I just can't seem to show up for my practices. Even when I do the whole sequence, which isn't often, it feels like checking tasks off a list rather than really tuning in to myself: my body, my mind, my spirit. Why is that? Am I so afraid of what I'll find there? 

I've spent a fair amount of time reveling in my reclaimed love lately -- spent a really great weekend away together that I'll blog about soon -- but even that seems to be, at least in part, a way to check out of what is going on inside me -- and I haven't been willing to do the hard work of integrating my own needs with his needs and the needs of our relationship to the extent that I probably need to in order to stay connected to myself:

You got an attitude of everything I ever wanted.
I got an attitude of need.
So, help me stay awake, I'm fallin'...

Nope, it's nobody's job to help me stay awake -- that's up to me. What'll it be, SJ, at 6:30 am on this Thursday? Back to sleep or showing up for your practice for real this time?

Accidentally in Love

I remember early on in my newly single life, chatting with a friend about the kind of man I thought I would (and didn't think I'd) fall in love with. You never know, she said, you might just fall in love and not really have a choice. At the time, I didn't buy it. Of course I had a choice. I always have a choice.

Which is certainly true, to some extent. But not entirely. Relatively early on in my long-distance relationship with my current man, I tried a couple of times to shut down my feelings, thinking that it was for the best because the distance was so hard. "You can't just turn it off," my sister warned. And it turned out, I really couldn't.

Cue the Counting Crows:

So she said, "What's the problem baby?"

What's the problem I don't know

Well maybe I'm in love, think about it every time

I think about it, can't stop thinking 'bout it

How much longer will it take to cure this

Just to cure it 'cause I can't ignore it if it's love

Makes me wanna turn around and face me

But I don't know nothing about love

Come on, come on

Turn a little faster

Come on, come on

The world will follow after

Come on, come on

Because everybody's after love

So I said, "I'm a snowball running"

Running down into the spring

That's coming all this love melting under

Blue skies belting out sunlight, shimmering love

Well baby I surrender to the strawberry ice cream

Never ever end of all this love

Well I didn't mean to do it

But there's no escaping your love

Now that he's out here and struggling a bit with the Midwestern landscape and a stressful day job, I think at least a little part of my man is finding this love a little inconvenient. Lucky for me, for the time being at least, accidentally or not, he is in love, so we're doing our best to make it work:

Come on, come on

Move a little closer

Come on, come on

I want to hear you whisper

Come on, come on

Settle down inside my love

Come on, come on

Jump a little higher

Come on, come on

If you feel a little lighter

Come on, come on

We were once upon a time in love

We're accidentally in love

Accidentally in love

Accidentally in love

Accidentally in love

Round Here

This morning I had the privilege of meeting and talking with a woman who has had, by all accounts, a very difficult life. A life plagued by alcoholism, abuse, poverty, profound depression, periods of homelessness, heartbreak... As she shared openly about her life, I felt compelled to do the same. In so many ways, I am more fortunate than she. I've never known poverty, and I've always had a home. But alcoholism? Abuse? Depression? Heartbreak? Those I've known all too well.

I'm grateful to be in a place now where I'm largely liberated from all that heartbreak, and I think I'm at the point where I no longer wish my life had gone differently. In Tibet, the monks and nuns are said to offer up this prayer: "Grant that I might have enough suffering to awaken in me the deepest possible compassion and wisdom." Sitting at the table with this woman, and really hearing her story in a way that only a person who had lived a part of it could, in a strange way, I felt grateful for my suffering. Without it, I don't think I could have offered her what she needed in the same way: an open heart, empathy, and compassion.

The song that came to me on my bike ride home was this one, which was on repeat for me when I was wrestling with depression both in a low grade way in college, and in a big way, after the birth of my second child.

For me, this was always the most compelling part of the song, and when my internal jukebox played it tonight, I sent up a little prayer that someone, or something, will catch the woman I met today when next she's falling, because it seems inevitable it will happen again:

She says "it's only in my head"

She says "Shhhhh I know it's only in my head"

But the girl in the car in the parking lot

Says "Man you should try to take a shot

Can't you see my walls are crumbling?"

Then she looks up at the building

Says she's thinking of jumping

She says she's tired of life

She must be tired of something

Round here she's always on my mind

Round here hey man got lots of time

Round here we're never sent to bed early

and nobody makes us wait

Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late oh

I can't see nothing... nothing round here

Will you catch me if I'm falling

Will you catch me if I'm falling

Will you catch me cause I'm falling down on you

I said I'm under the gun around here

I'm innocent, I'm under the gun around here

And I can't see nothing

Nothing

Round here