the Party (2)

 Emily Happy 95th Birthday, my do you look so very good for your age and all of your friends have gotten all dolled up for the occasion. This poor man though he looks bored and uninterested in the idle chatter of the woman and their coffee clutch. Intimacy damn it, he wants intimacy!  I am having a tough week my father-in-law is in the hospital and his disabled wife has been home alone.  I thought I could swoop in and help make everything all better. But last I checked I dissolved that red cape into the same pool with my armour and the realization that I can't make it all better overnight and that the responsiblity of aging parents is so much greater than I is painfully settling in.  My office also seems to be a bit more stressed than usual this week. I couldn't get myself to yoga last night, but I did sit an extra time this morning to help wiggle myself out of it.  I'll get there, just might take me a few more days to have some clear thoughts to respond to everyone. And Arnold, Thanks for sharing the pictures and for stopping by. What is the first thing that came to your mind when you attended Emily's party?

I don't know if this will help - but when I am trying to work with caregivers I remind them that there are no perfect solutions - there are only options to choose from.  Sometimes that justs help to bring them face to face with the problem and the fact that some things can't be fixed.   We just make choices.

Hang in there.

 Thanks Emily, That does help a lot. I will use this to help me keep a better perspective. I guess what I didn't get at first was the amount of time it might take to figure out and navigate a proper situation for them both.  

All the important UN visitors this week, like the president of Iran, are staying at the hotel across the street from my office. We are surrounded by security, black cars and trucks, barricades. You can't walk out the door to pick up a sandwich without taking notice of at least ten guys dressed in black and quite frankly I am really tired of the dirty looks for just going to and from my office. There has been protestors yelling Free Tibet for four long days now. I work on the 32nd floor and can still hear them roar, over and over again. At first I was talking to a colleague how great it is that they can express themselves and have the freedom to protest. We walked down to see their signs to collect their papers and to recognize their message on the first day.  Now into our fourth day I am weary of the noise. I'd like to walk down to the corner and invite them in. They can have some tea and relax, they can sit with my behind my desk with me.  We can have a great time if they would just please stop yelling so I can get some work done! I am just weary in general so that doesn't help. I am tired and frustrated, overwhelmed and cranky. I am trying to be patient and let it pass, but it bubbles up on me in spurts and this morning I actually lost track of an entire 45 minutes. I sat on a stool to put on my shoes and I am not sure where the time went but 45 minutes had passed and I was still sitting on that stool without my shoes on. Perhaps I am losing my mind, or I am being hijacked by my unconscious thoughts. Who knows. 

 Hey Emily, I don't think they are coming back. We'll have to ask a question ourselves. I feel like this is a game of double-dutch, we have to find the right timing and place to jump in to keep the ropes in balance and the rhythm of the song going. 

On a different note, I finished the book Eat, Pray, Love Sunday night it was a good treat after a two long hikes in the rain up at Harriman and a long bath. I know you said you read it and I'd love to chat about it.  I feel differently now than when I first began reading it.     

I agree, and I  can see how you were disappointed in the end of the book. It does feel a little too fairy tale and neat in its packaging.  There is definitely a difference in the last section on Indonesia. I believe the difference was that she stopped sharing as much of her internal thoughts and started to just tell a story while in Indonesia; a story of the new relationships and love affair as a result of her new outlook and place in the world. She was clearly dealing with fewer demons, meditating twice a day and practicing her new approach to suffering. But she stopped sharing her journey from the same perspective.

I felt a similar disappointed when there wasn’t this type of sentiment in the postscript (is that what you call it?) Final Recognition and Reassurance.  Very few times in life does someone get the luxury to drop everything, travel and work to repair and renew behavior in a radical way in some pretty amazing places.  Very few times this type of journey ends with a lover in Bali that  says, “Well, I Iove you, I want to spoil you and I want you to live in four different very desirable locations with you and we'll work it out.” (I am sure there were still struggles with this scenario and I am sure like all of us she struggles with practicing and staying present every day. But I regress and that is beside the point).

I think my problem with the story as a whole; more so in the beginning is that she doesn't have awareness. And maybe somehow this ties into what you are saying about it feeling too neat.  I am not sure just saying she doesn’t have awareness can explain it well enough. Let me know but here is my take. Although there are many, 'guides' and 'teachers' that cross her path and aid in her evolutionary growth on this journey she doesn't have the awareness to understand the scope. Without that awareness how can she step back and stand apart from the experience and see the change from a fundamental standpoint. She was more of just living in it.  I am not saying that she didn’t make great strides and accomplish great growth.  There never felt like this wow moment. Wow, I am lucky, wow, I am grateful for this journey and wow, I am amazed by how far I’ve have come.  There was never an understanding of the privilege of such an experience. Even though I say this I did feel this shift of belief and realization in her actions. She couldn't of successfully had a healthy relationship with Felipe or stopped accommodating Wayan, as she had her husband for years, and her friends back home without the growth.

I’d like to believe my observations are correct and the wow, ah ha, grateful for this amazing experience are in fact there and that in her telling of this story she chose to not include a commentary on it. Instead she allowed her actions to speak for themselves and lead us to this conclusion on our own and didn't need to write it out.  To me, it would have felt more real if she had delved into it a little bit.  I think she was trying to portray this when she called home and her friend was complaining about her relationship in the way same she had in the past. I think she  was trying to make the point that when she got out of her own way, her own obsessions and was true to her own needs and sincere (showed empathy to others) that everything else in life works out, the universe supplies.  

I related to her on many levels  that I won’t get into as I’ve already mentioned more than I’d expected.  One of my most relevant experiences was six months after leaving an abusive relationship in which my ex-boyfriend continued to try to stay in my life and was not going to stop battering me unless I did something drastic I signed up for and participated in a nine week semester at sea. It was on that boat, with wet ropes breaking through the soft skin of my palms and lonely nights of puking over the side of the boat that I picked up all the shattered pieces and put my self esteem back on my frame piece by piece until I was ready to face the world again and until I remembered that I was love and deserved love and that life had to be better than this and I was going to find a way for it to be. I have been grateful for that experience every day since then and that was over 13 years ago. That being said could you, or I, or Om could tell a similar story without going on a yearlong journey? Absolutely. Would it be as accepted and praised because it didn't fit into the Hollywood mold of happy ever after? Maybe.  But I think the bigger discussion here is - Why do others want to hear a story like this? Why is it hard for us to feel genuine when suffering ceases and ends up as a happy ending?  Because it feels too unreal, too unreachable? Because we cannot believe that there is another way of being?

I am almost embarrassed to say that I was frustrated when you came back from your retreat this summer and you were so centered and so at peace. You were so happy and so supportive of us all. You said so easily, all you have to do is sit and everything will settle. It was all too sudden for me. I said to Om one night that it just didn’t feel real that you were all of a sudden completely aware, and  ok. As you shared more of how you got there I started to really understand that you were in fact there…. At this place of peace.  

of course, in the great history of america
there have been rulings that
um
there's never gonna be absolute consensus by every american
and
um
there are those issues
again like roe v wade
where i believe are best held on a state level then addressed there
so
um
you know
going through the history of america there would be others, but...

well
i would think of any again that could best be dealt with on a more local level
maybe i would take issue with
but
um
you know
as a mayor and then as a governor
and even as a vice president if i'm so privileged   to serve
i wouldn't be in a position of changing those things
but in supporting the law of the land
as it reads today.

------

Couric asked her what SCOTUS decisions other than Roe v. Wade she disagreed with... in the middle Couric asked, "Can you think of any?"

you never would have known.

Sarah Palin,

Governor and Poet.

beautiful.