Share #20: The labor and the gifts of camp

Dutch walking artist, Monique Besten, suggested we try to find a way to share a meal before MyShare ends. With 5,000 miles between us, we're not going to sit down at a table together. Can we find some other way, some inroad, a way to beckon one another?

Monique is currently in process, walking from Spain to Paris, for a climate conference. She's walking alone, in the front and backcountry, through cities and towns and farms. Next week I'll be in a rustic camp on the Olympic Peninsula. I have a friend with a few acres there. He hired me to plant bulbs and chop wood. I said I'd do it because the land is good for me, because the air is good for me, because when I work on his land, as I've done before, I begin to feel vital and strong within minutes, within hours I feel super capable. There must be some elixir there. This friend, with the land, works in California, but this land, here, in Washington State, is his heart land. Developing this into a mountain oasis is his passion.

I told Monique I'd like to try to share with her while I was there in the mountains. For me, it will be a relief, someone to eat with. I'll be doing heavy labor and will need the fuel, but at this time of year there are no bodies on the mountain, there's no one to share with. Even in summer, it's rare to see a car up on that road. There are lots with cabins and chalets, but most are seasonal. When you're settled into camp, it feels very remote.

Monique asked if I'd be online. I didn't think I would be, but even if I were I'd prefer to meet in some other, more sensory, imaginative way. I imagined calling on her while I was working, listening for her call. I wanted to intuit her. Explore this distant share.

I was told I could bring in a can of gas and run a generator if I wanted, for electricity, for lights at night. I will use the gas lamp and the wood stove. There's a grocery store in Hoodsport 8 miles away and a general store before you leave the paved road. I won't come off the mountain once I'm there, but it's nice to know if something happens I could walk out and get help.

On Saturday afternoon I went to the Goodwill to look for suits. I had the idea that a suit might help me connect with Monique. In 2012, Monique Besten donned a 3-piece suit and began walking. As she walked, she stored memories in her suit, in images and bits of texts. She sewed something new into her suit each day. Since then, Monique has been on many distant and distinct walks and is always in a suit. It helps her reflect on how she experiences the world.

I found a few wool suits in smaller sizes and tried them on. They were large enough to pull over my clothes, but too expensive and really too big to consider buying. In the end, I decided against the idea. Then I thought about wearing my poet's dress and imaged chopping wood in that. It was a romantic notion with no grounding in the reality of the conditions this time of year. It's a rain forest after all and it's in the mountains and it's nearly winter and it's meant to be raining all week and my poet's dress is fitted and linen. I brought it anyway, just in case, but never put it on. Instead, I found a pair of over-sized vinyl rain pants with suspenders and a matching hooded jacket at camp. These were ideal for the conditions and, underneath, I wore many warm layers.

On Sunday night, I drove west from Seattle and spent five nights on a ridge between Hoodsport and Lake Cushman. I'd planned to go alone, but at the last minute my partner asked if he could join. I was still coughing and knew I could use help with the wood, so I said yes, even though I worried it would interfere with my share and knew I was needing time on my own. I suspected I'd have to fight for my share, then would be fighting myself and it would become impossible to connect, but in the end it required that I share with Monique on a deeper level.

In 2011, I lived alone in a canvas yurt for a month on this land. I've spent weekends there with large and small groups of climbers and friends, hauling gear, digging ditches, gathering brush, burning the cleared logs to thin out the 2nd growth forest and reduce fire danger, giving the rhododendrons rooms to breath and planting native trees.

I've never met Monique. A friend connected us online. He met Monique at an artist retreat and knowing my work and her, he said we needed to meet. Monique is a conceptual artist. She walks, sometimes for months at a time, in a 3-piece suit. At times, she has a pack on her back. She undertakes all kinds of journeys. Sometimes she wanders. Sometimes she explores. She's always searching for a thread. She walks to various destinations, to art and social and political events. As she walks, she composes mind maps, she organizes her aesthetic in threads inside shell.

She sews bits of her experiences, as images and text, inside her suit, hidden to the outsider. Each day she sews one image or line of text into her suit. Her suit then becomes a record of her journey. She has embroidered a QR code onto the back of her jacket. When you scan this, you can inside her suit, into her memory bank, her way of seeing.

This idea of collecting and hiding, of inviting intimate glimpses into our selves, makes me think of the ways in which we scan people with our eyes, with our fears, with our stereotypes and criticisms and hopes. How we show ourselves to one another. How the layers of people peel back as we look at them, closer and closer, as we linger, longer and longer.

Last year, my brother gave me his old i-phone. It's an i-phone 4. At first, it felt like a miracle. I didn't know I'd be able to use it as a phone. I thought I'd be able to use it as a camera. It's been six months and I still don't have any apps and it's always on silent and I don't get online and I don't use it to locate a location and I delete the images I take soon after I take them. It seems as if this object is corroborating with my general experience of rupture. I suppose, in failing to use this fancy phone in the way that it was meant to be used, for the purpose it was intended, I am undermining it, weakening its powers, dismantling its foundation, denying its ability to offer me ease or comfort or some kind of advanced or elite experience. This feels, in ways, similar to what I am experiencing in my own foundation.

Monique and I chat online at intervals and follow one another's work. I've read about her journeys on her blog A Soft Armour and have wondered about her resources and her fears. Does she have things in storage? Can she go home to live with a family member if she wants? Where does she leave her computer? Her bicycle? Her winter clothes? The suit she is not wearing?

Monique began her current walk before I began MyShare. She contacted me en route to ask if we could make a share. I was glad she did as I'd been wanting to. I suggested this week in the mountains and she agreed. We went away from that conversation not knowing how we would share, or at what time, or on what days exactly, but we were agreed we would do it and so we did.

I was off then to plant 2000 bulbs and chop one cord of wood and haul three water-logged, wood pallets 2/10th of a mile up from the dirt road to camp. It lashed cold rain sideways for a day. It snowed 4" the next day. Everything melted over night, then it was sunny and warm for two days! Not predicted. Then it froze again. I could have stayed on and on and on. I was happy and returning to health, but there was a retreat to attend and a friend's dog to care for and I had to be home for these things. I made reasons to have to be home for. But that place in the mountain on the ridge brings out something rare in me, something vital. Every time I am there I feel it, a shift to vigor. Within two days, my cough began to wane. My lungs began to stretch. My core began to strengthen. I don't know if it is the air or the work or the climb up to the camp or the combination of things, but I think it is still more than these. One day I will explain.

There were 1000 daffodils and 1000 crocuses to plant. I had first to prepare the soil. The soil on the ridge is orange and rocky and clay and incapable of nourishing these flowers. I dug and hauled a barrow of clay from the outdoor kitchen to the cleared hillside, then hauled a bag of compost up the garden path to the site, then mixed the dirt with the compost and dug little cups for the bulbs with a mini shovel and placed them in, 2" apart, then covered them with several inches of new soil. The results were ribbons and patches of dark, loamy, orange-flecked beds over the hillside. It took 2.5 days to plant this one box of bulbs from Holland Bulb Farms in Holland.

I spent all week planting Monique on the southwest slope of the ridge, in little pockets, heads up, roots down, blanketed in hand-mixed soil. A week later, when I returned, I read that daffodils are not native to Holland. They're from Spain and Portugal. And even though most of the world's bulbs are developed, produced, and exported from Holland, none are from there. Perhaps this is why Monique is in Spain. She's searching for the wild daffodil. Following her undevelopment to its wild roots and causes.

In the end, the ways in which I found Monique were simple and unexpected. I found her when I wasn't looking, when I wasn't pushing for a share. I was sometimes irked when my companion rose early. He never rises early! What was he doing rising now, when I was looking for some time alone, a little breakfast with Monique. I barely had time to light the fire and already in his company.

How could I find Monique if I was never left alone? But then my friend made the most amazing meals and we ate together, hungrily. And he carried bags of compost and split half the wood and I was grateful for him at every turn and we laughed together and he hummed and rang the triangle for dinner. And then, well fed, I found Monique on the slope, in my work, planting bulbs. That was all mine. I planted every bulb in the box. Monique and I shared not so much food as labor, not so much satisfaction as hunger. We found each other in expansive moments between spurts of labor, witnessing the galloping wind in the trees, the peek-a-boo view of the canal, in the way our fingernails hurt in the freezing dirt. We shared moments of rest and deep breaths and now Monique and I are together in that soil, planted and planning how and when to bloom.

When I got back from the mountains, I learned that Monique had been side-tracked and went to Germany for a time, then back to France. She was regrouping I think after the cancellation of the march. Protesters are marching for climate change, not only in Paris, but worldwide. After the recent attacks in Paris, however, demonstrators are banned from gathering there, so now the clashes and the guerilla art and the installation of thousands of shoes at the Place de la Republique.

And none of this is stopping Monique. Her journey goes on, her search is a wave on the beach, beating a steady pulse through this, her funnel, art. Walking. Art. Her participation is full. If we could all be so all in, so deeply committed, we'd be awake and connecting, I'm certain.

Thank you, Monique, for walking for me, for sharing with me. For your work and your words and  your passion, thank you.

Share #19: French fries

Today was a wash. I waited all day to eat. By 5pm, I had expectations. It doesn't help that I had only a bit of bread yesterday.

I walked to the bakery again today, in the rain, preparing for some future meal, then I cleaned a house and moved my things. These days, I move every few weeks or every few days. I've been house-sitting since February, in different houses, for friends with dogs and cats. This November, I will live in eight houses. How odd. It doesn't feel like a choice I made, but my yeses keep equaling up to this.

My name has been passed around and people have been contacting me and I have been saying yes. Now I'm booked through January and sometimes I'm double booked. These are friends and friends of friends and it's hard to say no and, well, I was meant to have been gone by now anyway--to Mongolia, to Northern Italy, to Paris--but I'm still here, and I don't know if I'm coming or going. Should I set myself up or divest myself entirely? I seem to be divesting myself. But what for? I don't know. I'm torn or I'm waiting to discover or I am trying to understand myself. In the meantime, I'm saying yes to everything and everyone and every house and every animal and every time and every day. I don't know if this is hindering me or helping me--abide.

I told Scott I'd be available to share a meal after 5 today. I thought that meant he'd arrive in Seattle at 5 and we'd eat soon after. Hunger thought that. He thought it meant we'd meet somehow, sometime, after 5, but not necessarily at 5 or close to 5. It was raining hard. I was cold and discontent and hungry.

I called Scott when the homeowners returned, at 5. Where was he? Was he on his way? No. He was at home. Abiding. He asked if it wouldn't be better for me to come to him. Arrg. My hunger expressed its expectations to him. He said, "Don't be mad at me." How could I be mad? It's true, we didn't have a definite plan. I said I'd drive to him.

Scott lives in Renton, 25 miles east of Seattle. I headed south from Ballard on I-5, slowly, past a stalled car. Traffic was backed up. There was construction on I-90 then and traffic was down to one lane from I-5 to the floating bridge. All in all, it took 3 hours to make the return trip. Under normal, non-rush hour conditions, it takes an hour to drive from Seattle to Renton and to Seattle again. By time I got to Scott's house and we drove to a gas station, I was in an unsettled state. I went in to pay for the gas and stood in the wrong line. Three other people got into the right line in front of me. The man in my line was checking a lottery ticket. I turned around and saw and smelled a fast food window. Ahh. French fries. There is an adjoining McDonalds. I turned towards this smell and ordered some fries.

Over the past 20 years, I have eaten at McDonalds three times. On each occasion, my usual decision making process was undermined. Once I'd bicycled 15 miles in the snow and was early for a job and needed a place to stay warm. Once I was in a foreign town, headed north a 3-hour bus ride and had no food with me. The bus stop was in front of a McDonalds. This occasion was no different. I hadn't eaten in 12 hours. I knew I wouldn't eat anything substantial in the next hour. I needed something to tie me over and here was a wall of fat frying and I caved in. Scottie had no trouble sharing these fries with me. We stuffed them in our mouths in large handfuls. They were nothing special and I won't remember them later. That evening, we made a real meal with a salad and vegetables and sat down to a table and shared a share.

Share #18: Olive bread

I didn't eat. I spent the entire day writing and caring for dogs. Four dogs require a great many walks and meals and medicines and cleaning up after. And I'm still coughing. And I should be doing more to cure my cold. Steam. Baths. Lemon ginger tea. Yesterday I had juice and tea with honey and herbal remedy and Airborne. I am doing what I can.

I got a tip on a community dinner at the F.O.E. in Ballard tonight. If I went to this dinner, I would miss my 7pm class. I've been attending and facilitating Field sessions since 2008 and am attending this fall's session. The Field was started in 1986 by dancers in New York City as a place to show works-in-progress and get non-directorial feedback from peer artists. For me, it is a place to grow and experiment and listen and articulate my aesthetic and support others in growth. I was planning to show a share tonight. I didn't know exactly what this meant but these days I never know exactly what I will share until I begin sharing. As a precautionary measure, I walked to the bakery in the afternoon with two of my dogs and bought a loaf of olive bread. The olive loaf is made with green and black olives and is formed into a big pretzel that can be hooked on a peg on the wall. It is an awkward shape. I put it into my jacket and walked home with the dogs.

There were six artists at The Field tonight. As usual, we let bravery dictate order. I let hunger dictate mine. By the time I showed, second to last, I was very, very hungry, I hadn't eaten all day, but it felt good to wait. I pulled a table and two chairs into the center of the room, introduced myself and gave the title of my work. My Share. I invited those who wanted to share food with me to the table. Those who didn't want to share could witness from further away. Everyone came to the table. I spread out a cloth and placed the bread on the cloth and some olive oil in a bowl beside it and set out a package of English digestives. No one came prepared for this meal, neither hungry nor with food to share, but I asked anyway, "If anyone has anything to share, I welcome you to share it. It is not necessary, of course, by welcome." Amanda tore open an orange. Rebecca poured out a bag of Ghiradelli chocolate squares. The table felt very full.

I started by tearing the bread and handing pieces around and, of course, talked about Golas and my search for the truth. Carolynn said her life was one big search for the truth. She has a tattoo of the word truth on her throat. I hadn't seen it before, but there it is, very visible. "How and where do you look for the truth?" I asked. She said she looks for the truth in her work. Beth said she's found some truth in Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements: Be impeccable with your word, Don’t take anything personally, Don’t make assumptions and Always do your best. Amanda said these same concepts were explained differently in the five yamas in Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga, or Rāja yoga, the eightfold path, explained in a book she is reading called The Art and Science of Raja Yoga. The Yamas are restraints or ethical practices that lead to right living. They are: Ahimsa - non-violence, Satya - truthfulness, Brahmacharya - control of the senses and celibacy, Asteya - non-stealing, and Aparigraha - non-covetousness and non-acceptance of gifts. The mastery of each of these restraints is meant to imbue one with a different superpower, one of which is the ability to see the truth unveiled, or to know God.

Where do we find the truth? Where can we begin looking? Are we looking already? Do we know the truth? Does it reside inside of and, if so, how can it be concealed from us? Gurdjieff looked for the truth in ancient artifacts and in various learned people. Bas Jan Ader looked for it at sea. I am looking for it in books and in people and in myself.

Share #17: Double cheeseburger & onion rings

What a day! I was satisfied in enjoying everything I craved today--body, mind and spirit--from a hearty breakfast to a long walk, from a visit to the beach to a memorable dessert, from a double cheeseburger and order of onion rings to some enticing conversation.

When I placed my order at Red Mill, I gave the name "Wandering Cloud." It was nice to hear them call my order, "Wandering Cloud? Wandering Cloud?"

There is a Red Mill at the end of my street, at the end of the street on which I am staying. I have no street. I stay on other people's streets. It is 2 minutes by car and 15 minutes by foot to that Red Mill, but I cannot and do not go there for meals. I've asked several people to meet me there, to share a meal. No takers. Here now was the burger I'd been craving, in my hands. I took it in, visually and bodily, in large bites. I was glad my companion was hungry too.

I'd been putting this friend off. I'd been too busy all summer, with work and with my mother and looking for a place to live. I couldn't find the time to meet. Here I was now needing someone to share. I reached out and he was there. We met at the Red Mill on Phinney. I got there early and gobbled up some Thaddeus Golas, the author of The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. When my friend, Scott, arrived we slipped into a booth.

I forget how it began, but I of course brought up Thaddeus Golas and he told me about his experience of work and life, about his desires and frustrations in life. And he looks at me and thinks I have something figured out. I have something on him. I am living without fear. Oh no no no.

To me, it sounds like we're experiencing some very similar things and feelings, but then what is a feeling--a reaction to a reality, a perspective of reality? We both, I think, have the feeling that something is wrong. In fact, we might even know exactly what is wrong. But are we willing to change it? Do we know how to change it? Do we know where to begin? Is this a total systems failure or a simple perspective ?

Why do we do nothing to change our lives when we know what it is wrong? It's easy to loathe ourselves when we can see the damage we are reeking and do nothing to affect a change. When we neither have the energy nor the skill to apply the lessons we feel you must be learning or know deep down we contain. Is this apathy? It is not apathy, though it affects me as if it were. And makes me self-hating. Or at least weakens my confidence. Is it fear? Yes, in large part, it is fear. Is it confusion? It is confusion, and more. And more.

There is a lack of energy and of understanding about the situation. In this case, I believe the knowledge of what we think we need is making us unhappy. If we didn't know what we needed, to be whole, or that we needed, to be whole, we might be happy (read content, at ease, calm, confident). But we're usually so wrong about what we need, or this is one way of putting ourselves down. If we cannot love ourselves as we are, we will never raise our vibration level or achieve a sense of peace.

So we are unhappy where we are. We see where we want to be, but are unable to make the changes necessary to move to that place, the great changes we believe this shift would require. Maybe we think it means quitting our job. Maybe we think it means traveling the world. Maybe we think it means giving away our belongings. Whatever it is, it's 180 degrees from where we are at present and requires that we give up our ideas about ourselves and the world, which is basically everything we know and love and that's huge because that is our safety. It sounds clear and simple when we read it in a book, but in our lives, it is either terrifying or paralyzing or exhilarating, depending on our willingness to move into that state.

There are valid excuses for staying where we are. If we give up our job, we won't be able to afford our rent. We will lose our lives and maybe our health, but then we may gain these. If we give up our apartment and live on our boat, we might be breaking the agreement we made with our cat who lives in our apartment, or we may be freeing our cat to live with someone who stays at home and gives our cat a better home. If our cat comes to live on our boat, he might pee inside the cabin and then our boat would become worthless, or he might use the litter box as usual and have a different but happy existence. Such silly traps we set. We cannot win. Applying Golas here, we can say, "We are equal. What you can achieve, I can achieve. You are vibrating high and I am vibrating low. I love myself for vibrating low. I love myself as I am, for being afraid to let go, for loving my cat, for not being ready to change."

It seemed to me that Thaddeus had something to say to Scott, as he had something to say to me. When you know what is wrong and cannot change it, that is where you start. Love yourself where you are, for not being courageous enough to make the leap. Instead of praising those around us, the courageous ones, we just love ourselves where we are. This, in itself, raises our vibration. We don't debase those around us, but see ourselves as equal. What they can do, we can do. It is our choice, at this time, or any time, to do it, or not to.

Inhale, exhale. No resistance.

Share #16: Hot cereal & pecans & pomegranates

Breakfast

It is hot cereal with brown sugar and butter I crave, but I haven't had that since starting My Share on 30 October. Hot cereal is one of my only routines and it feels comforting to me, but who will share with me in the morning? Everyone is so busy with their routines, feeding themselves, getting ready, catching up, rushing off to work.

For two years, I've been in the habit of starting my day with a bowl of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free 7 Grain Cereal. I usually have several bags on hand so I don't run out. When Love asked me what I was in the mood for yesterday, I told her about what I'd been missing. Walnut biscotti from Macrina and hot cereal from Uncle Bob. She offered to come back for breakfast the very next day! Big heart in that Love.

We made plans to go to a cafe and write, then walk to the beach, but when the day came I got out the hot cereal and put two servings in two pots and suggested having some. Love was game and even offered some the toppings she'd brought for our afternoon treat--coconut toasted pecans and pomegranate seeds.

During breakfast, I read part of a letter to Love. It was a letter I wrote to an old friend three years ago, when I was already two years into limbo. It explained my condition, or circumstance, or experience. I kept a copy because it was, at the time, the clearest thing I'd written about it. Whenever I tried to tell anyone how I felt, it sounded like nothing and they just fought with what I said. It was a 4-page letter. I'd just come across it this morning while organizing my things and felt it might more clearly explain what I was trying to say yesterday. Upon hearing the letter, Love said she understood and no longer wanted to remedy me. She trusted me to find my way. And the clarity of the writer, once again, trumps the speaker!

Like anyone, I tend to slip into that role, the role of healer, when someone tells me about their struggle. How can I help? What can I suggest? Will my story shed light on theirs? It wasn't until Burden of Purpose that I practiced deep listening, for the first time maybe, and let my companion offer me their burden without answering them, just receiving it, and walking alongside them, trusting them to find their own way. Like anyone, I need reminders about this, that listening is a powerful gift.

I pulled out The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment and pointed to page 44, to something I read last night. Thaddeus Golas talks about truth and self-love in his book. As she read, I saw how precisely it spelled out her life and mine. She seemed to scrunch up her nose and not be connecting, but then I thought that wouldn't be uncommon, for me to find relief in something that wasn't offering it to others. Perhaps it's just for me and what I need to hear?

Golas is saying there's no need to wait. I can, at this moment, expand into enlightenment. It is within my ability. Everything is available to me. When I hear, for the first time, what I already know, the same book in me opens and I experience equilibrium. Whether it's an author, a doctor, a politician or a friend. The news is the news that I know.

Golas says when we love ourselves, just as we are this moment, even if we are lost or bad or sad or hateful or broken, we raise our vibration level. That alone changes us, changes our lives. He says what I deny will manifest itself in my life. "No resistance." I must allow everything. I suppose this means saying yes a lot. Golas also says a few things about truth that I find helpful. "Facts are limited truths." "Facts have roots in truth." "Delusions are denials of truth." And "We don't need facts to be wise and loving."

The Cafe

Love was swathed, top to bottom, in shades and textures of purple, periwinkle, plum, eggplant and rose. A broad smile under a bright woolen hat. Long blonde hair streaming out over a loom knit shawl. Purple dress and striped leggings.

We walked to Cafe Fiore. I brought an article Marcia Wiley saved for me, about a poet who saves a forest. I'd been waiting to read it. We read it together, at the cafe, then did some writing. I wrote on my biscotti bag: "I am doing what I need to do, though it feels like nothing. This circumstance is my school. And I am its honor student. And its drop-out. And its teacher. And its founder and janitor too. I fund this school. And have a child who attend. It is a good school. Why do the teachers strike? Why don't the children learn? Why aren't their more backers? When will I graduate? I should have home schooled or tried the Carden Method and applied the arts more. O, I did. And, o, i didn't. And so well. And o well."

The article was a tear jerker. One Poem That Saved a Forest was written by Jacqueline Suskin and published in Yes! Magazine in Summer 2015. Above Marcia's studio door is a large painting with one word, "Yes!" It's not surprising to learn that Marcis subscribes to Yes! She practices it in her her life and is all about empowering others, especially children and women, to practice it. Yes!

Suskin's writing, in both prose and poetry, was clear and moving. She wrote, with compassion, about befriending a senior vice president of a timber harvesting company in California, a company with a nasty reputation for clear cutting and toxic herbicides. Her story, told in type-written notes, explains how she met this man, as a man, where he was, and through their meeting and eventual friendship, played a role in helping him save a large tract of old growth forest.

Her story invited me to accept that, if I am present to what is before me, at this moment, if I am able to love everything as it is, I may be doing the very thing necessary to raise my vibration and release me, and those around me, from suffering. Suskin reminded me to separate the human souls from the human actions. What I see in ugly garb may be the very thing that needs my love. And from those to whom I appear ugly, I can hope for and desire love.

To the Beach

From the cafe, we walked to Golden Gardens, down the great long stairs. A man with a dog passed us and pointed out we were both in purple. I'd noticed Love's purple, but not my own. Now I saw it. My pants were purple-blue, my shoes had purple trim, my powder blue rain coat over my raspberry thermal layer mixed to purple. We are equal beings.

We sat on the beach for a moment. The weather was dry, but windy and cold. Then we walked home via the marina. We saw various things that fascinated Love, a tree with handles, a window that went straight through a house and looked through another onto the sound. Then she told me about a creative action she once gave as a present. She photographed three doors, offered those images to her father and asked him to choose one. She said she'd knock on the door he chose and meet the person inside and relate the story of that meeting to her father.


Ice-cream Sundae

Love had but something into the freezer when she first arrive. Was it time for a treat? I brought out two bowls and she scooped up some Molly Moon's pumpkin ice cream and dressed it with warm chocolate sauce and coconut toasted pecans and pomegranate seeds. We sat down in the breakfast nook. It was enough just to look at it. To smell it. She said, "You deserve it." I flashed to yin/yang, the deserving facing the undeserving, a split world, but then I had to agree, I did deserve it.

It's a wonder how many things had to come together to make this miracle--the sun, the rain, the tree, the bean, the plant, the cow, the human head and heart. How did humans get to be so lucky? We both flashed to the very evident suffering of humans and knew, we paid and will continue to pay for our pleasures in pain. The one creates the other. So yes, I deserve it... but what if I didn't?

Share #15: Bread, butter, tea, salad, sliced pink grapefruit & a periscope

At last I shared a meal with Love. She offered weeks ago, but I was too sick to accept. She even offered to drop something off, something healing like soup, but I felt that wouldn't be a true share. I'd miss out on her company and all she has to offer. I begged her off when she wanted my community, but maybe I saved her from getting sick?

Love was on her way into Seattle and said she could meet me on Sunset Hill. What did I need? Nothing. I needed her. The meal was already laid out. It was after noon. I'd missed breakfast again and was hungry. We shared a green salad and warm bread and butter and fruit. I think I talked more than I ate. Since my accident, when I am eating with others I notice how my mouth is no good at the movements necessary to chew big bites of food. I feel a little self-conscious and spend energy focusing on the mechanics of chewing. I don't remember experiencing this alone.

Somewhere during the meal, we got to talking about our feelings about our lives. How are we feeling about where we are, not where are we, but how are we feeling about it,  where we perceive ourselves to be. Are our feelings a true indication of where we are? I think our feelings have less to do with our whereabouts than they do with our perception of our whereabouts.

Love began with the idea that we have eyes because we see and that we have bodies because we need to move in and sense the world. She'd just been with poet Wendy Mulhern and had been investigating this. I agreed, we manifest our world, and maybe even ourselves, in being called to this life, but when did this happen--at birth, at conception, or is it ongoing, with each passing moment?

What do we need to understand ourselves right now, to be whole? Healthy? As we move through life, as we wake up to certain truths, what do we need then to understand? When I say, "I am lost," I am saying I cannot match up my understanding with my experience. How do I know I am lost? Can I not trust myself to know? What am I loving? What am I avoiding? Are these good indicators?

Love offered a series of questions she'd learned from a teacher. I'll substitute my own current crisis for the situation at hand. "Am I in limbo?" "Am I sure I am in limbo?" "How do I feel when I believe I am in limbo?" "Who would I be, how would I feel or react to the same circumstances, without this belief?" Love answered about her own situation with a definitive yes. I answered with an "I don't know." I am not ruling out the idea that I might be misperceiving everything and that a little shift in thought might bring all the clarity I need to dissolve what I see as my problem into my path. It's happened before. The only clear answer I had was to the third question. "I feel powerless."

I believe what is shifting is my understanding, my perspective, not my circumstance, not my world. But then my perspective is my universe, so far as I know. All those same gifts, those same hindrances, are out there, in here. I'm sensing them differently, reacting to them differently now.

It's a good thing about me, for my own sake, that I can always rely on myself to react in body--move away from what is harmful, move towards what is good--even when I cannot understand or react in mind. I have good a flagging system. My body leads, and wisely. And so, I must investigate when my body talks, like now when it is saying, "You've been on the path. There is a whole you on the path. You must find it again. You cannot go on as before. But first, you need a  frame." This feels like a trap. I need the frame to find the path, but cannot find the frame because the frame is the path.

We talked about the use of love in realizing our truths. How we love ourselves, how we let go of our expectations. It is so easy, from my vantage, to see the lovable Love, to see how her on her path, but to see the lovable me, on my path, that is harder.

Share #14: Potluck turned potpie

Shanghai Stock Exchange revises trading suspension rules.

It is Sunday. It is the last day of Vanessa DeWolf's beloved Studio-Current on Capitol Hill. There is a potluck to mark this ending, this beginning, to discuss the future of these people and this space. I missed it! I'd been looking forward to it all week. But I'm still coughing and struggling to breathe. It would have been irresponsible of me to attend and compromise those who were there.

Alas, but I was relying on this community. And now I have none. So many of my plans--to commune, to share, to eat--fell through this week because of my cough. It's left me with holes in my schedule and holes in my stomach, but it's highlighted my shares, made me see how much I need the people in my life, made me hungrier, helped me understand, or is it remember, my own suffering and the suffering of my community.

I was glad when Kathleen called to ask if she could do laundry. Yes please. Perhaps she'll share a meal with me? I haven't forced a meal on anyone or made them take a bite of something so I could eat. I could have done that. Or cheated. But I didn't.

There have been several occasions when I was hungry and the person I was with wasn't hungry and so I went without. But tonight it was getting on to dinner time and I'd bought a potpie at the market and here was someone coming to my house who might get hungry just like me? Was she, getting hungry? She said she'd probably be hungry in about an hour or so. O good!!! There was that Snoqualmie Creamery coconut ice-cream pulsing in the freezer too.

Kathleen had agreed to dine with me and called Lee and he was coming too. He brought red wine and  offered two bars of chocolate and a bottle of Source Naturals Wellness Formula, an herbal defense complex for my cold. I made a green salad with goat cheese and heated up Deborah's Homemade Pies chicken pot pie. What a smell to fill the house! And everything was tasty and afterwards--ice-cream! And chocolate! And a movie!