Cashing In

I have been sleeping a lot the last month or so, since my last trip to Taos, banking up the hours of rest, getting all I need, fighting off the flus and colds and "other" things that have taken down any one of my over 40 students a week, not to mention retreats and travel and other petri dish circumstances I am quite often exposed to.

Before I left Taos, Natalie warned me that maybe I shouldn't hug my students any more.
I have stopped kissing those (there are a few who do that) on the lips.
But I knew I would get sick eventually.

For the last three days I have cashed in on the germ bank, fought off a cold, gotten into the cold, and now I can feel myself coming out. "Easy there," the cowboy riding the horse of this illness warns, "no reason to push too hard."

Just got off the phone with one of the folks in our Madison Miksang community who has been sick now for almost a whole month - one thing after another, never fully recovering. So yes, I am going to take it easy. Do one small thing - go see the Rauschenberg exhibit at MMoCA and then come home and continue to rest.

Now it's time to cash in on all that sleep, and the more sleep I've had over the last few days. Cash in on my lymph nodes, my ginger teas, my immune system, which has had a month now to get strong and fight this off. I'm banking on it to stand up strong.

Escaping In

I've been reading this last week like it is going out of style. Natalie says to us, when we are meditating, "Meditate like this is your last minute on earth," during the last minute of the meditation session. Katagiri used to say it to them, now she says it to us.

I've been reading like each book is the last book I will ever read - On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett. Good books, no doubt, excellent books, in fact. Not bad ones to be the "last" books I ever read, heaven forbid. But I haven't been reading them like that, voraciously, only because they are good. This morning, waking, wanting to rip through another, I had to admit to myself that I am also reading out of escape.

I'll never forget reading in some Adult Children of Alcoholics or Adult Survivors of Abuse book that "these children" (meaning I am one of them) tend to read to escape. In the last year I have learned more than I did in college about reading to learn - about structure, style, to really appreciate where the author was coming from and, as Natalie says, "To get inside his/her mind." This has lead to a very different kind of reading, more attentive, less escapist. I've also read more memoir in the last year than ever before, and those can feel harder to "escape" in some ways, for me, at least.

I am clearly escaping into others stories, and I am not here to say this is bad. Last week in Taos was tough - I told some of my students that I hemorraged writing (one newer student worried that I was talking about it so "negatively" but I don't see it that way) - scenes from my sexual life from ages 12-28 poured out of me at all times of the day and night. Just writing this now, I realize it makes sense that I might want a break, and I am not so sure that "escaping" breaks into books right now is a bad thing. Living Lucy Grealy's face through Ann Patchett, following, like a detective, the beach honeymoon of McEwan's doomed newlyweds, these are not escapes into their problems (versus mine) but deep divinings into how these authors, whether in the form of memoir or fiction, depict these difficulties and joys.

So there, writing about it, I remember that we can escape into things, not just out of things. I am still in my life, still thinking about all that arose last week. I am done writing about it for now, have written many other things this week. All this reading is not a "problem," I see, if it ever was for me. I am just as present, just as joyful, just as compassionate, for the fictional or memoir rendered people, and still present for the real persons in my life. I'm doing alright.

Thanks for letting me check in on your web time, world.

Behind/Ahead

I'm back from 4/5 weeks in Taos, spread apart over the course of a year. The trip has become "easy" now, my BFF from the intensive, Maryam, and I have decided. We are so used to the flights, the trip, that we were able to shake it up big time this time, take stops along the way, meet up in Santa Fe and do separate legs, coordinated through texting and my iPhone GPS system. Fun had by all before and after, and during, well, as I described to my students on retreat with me the weekend before I left for Taos for a week, Imagine 6 days of nothing but sitting, walking and writing in silence.

Everything drops away, all the surface everythings, and everything rises to the surface, all the underneath things. Out went work, students, paperwork, email (though I checked it to make sure nothing big was going down); up came my entire sexual life from age 12-28, and, well, this time, that was about it. 6 days of my sex life. That's a lot of sex and sexuality. I woke up writing about it, fell asleep writing about it. And it wasn't all sexy, let me tell you.

I come back to this life, this day-to-day classes and assignments, students and paychecks, and I feel behind. Not as behind as if I had left it all behind and not checked my email or phone at all, but there'll be a few hours of catch up for sure.

But I also come out ahead. The writing is still pouring out, as I joked in Taos, hemmoraging out of me, practically. With the acceptance of my second chapbook of poetry (Dreams of Movement) through Finishing Line Press (announced right before I left) and many more projects on the burner, I feel ahead of wherever I would want to be, not so that I need to stop now, but so that the balance is built in - I can relax on writing and pick up the work slack, while still writing, and neither will take over. this year has meant so much to me, still does, in making a true equinimity with teaching and also being a student. "Closing the gap," as Natalie Goldberg talks about to us in Taos, "Close the gap between what you think you are writing and what you are writing," and in my case "What you are teaching and what you are learning."

Behind on tasks, ahead on appreciation.
Behind on submissions, ahead on rough drafts.
Never behind on Love.