Extreme Fear

About a year ago I was interviewed by an author who was working on a book about the science of fear. He was reconciling, or dealing with, the subjective perception by the person as well as the science of the body.

I just got a note from him that his book - Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger - is coming out on Tuesday.

I have no idea what the book actually says, but Jeff was a terrific guy and I enjoyed talking to him. We spent a few hours discussing Panic, Anxiety and ways the non-professional, regular-Joe sort of person deals with Panic and Anxiety and how it affects our life and our bodies.

Some folks may want to take a look. (He tells me in a note that I'm "the star of Chapter 5" - I hope that is a good thing!)

Waiting

Spending the first week of Advent away at a retreat is a kind of three dimensional experience .... like the kind created in those virtual roller coasters. Yet there is nothing virtual about it. The darkness, the waiting, the sense of something about to happen. It is real. So I'm quite fortunate that I could take a few days this week and go do that - go wait.

Here are some thoughts from my time.

Humility – pulling up to a Monastery and choosing to simplify my life for a few days was scary last year, and yet this year felt like a welcome relief. I have a tendency to pile things on my plate, to add mischief and misery to a life that is pretty well blessed. I work hard, I volunteer, I read, I write, I do art, I decorate for Christmas, I spend a lot of time with my family …and I sometimes get all of it tangled up into a big ball of nonsense.

The humility comes in the recognition that I can simply let it go. I do not have to struggle with the knots and the tangles.

Walking up the wet, brick steps and seeing the potted herbs by the door and the fat black-and-white cats lolling on the porch, I know that “it” is not as complicated as I sometimes believe.

Serenity – there is the sound of cars in the far distance. The way you can hear them hum along a road through the winter air. And yet the trees, standing stark and still in the yard bring me back from humming automobiles to a place of serenity. If I choose to see and hear, I can look at a crimson oak leaf stick to the slate and form a picture perfect outline of a life lived out to its full extent. I can hear a faint plop of an old rain drop fall finally from the eave onto the ground next to the church. I can hear the sound of my own breath, quietly in my mouth. I can stop. Fully. And even though I am hurtling through the atmosphere thousands of miles an hour while spinning at a rapid rate, I feel a stillness that can be felt anywhere. If I just choose.

Again, the humility because I do not have to judge my inability to do this in the hustle of my daily life. I’m just grateful that I can find it anywhere.

Gratitude – I think there is something about serenity and humility that leads me naturally to gratitude. And vice versa. Gratitude brings me to the center of stillness because I cannot be grateful and agitated at the same time. Maybe come can. God bless them. I, however, have to forego the agitation in order to be thankful for what I have and what abundance my life is made of.

Rhythm – natural rhythms are not easy to hear, to feel and to live by. I have set myself up to live by the clock, by mealtimes, by “oh-my-god-its-11-oclock-I-have-to-go-to-sleep” and other fairy tales.

Yet, when I take the time out, and simplify my life, I find that even I – complicated I – can tune into natural rhythms feeling tired and feeling energized, feeling hungry, feeling full in ways that are sustainable and intimate. Taking the time, to set aside the ‘other stuff’ and rest awhile, I find that there is an easy intimacy with myself. There really isn’t a lot of judgment or chaos. I can feel the chill in the air, I can feel a laugh start deep in my abdomen, I can yearn for the touch of my husbands hand on my cheek. And I can recognize these as parts of me. And my rhythm.

Love. Another story. Being written, being told, being born. Not the pink hearts and candy kind. But the stuff of life and death. And its big. Another story.

Retreat

I am heading up to Conyers, GA for a retreat at The Monastery of the Holy Spirit. It's quite a place. Quiet. Unplugged. Beautiful.

You can see them here: www.trappist.net

I'll be back on Thursday evening. Different.

Old Stuff

More Panic Stuff... re-read a journal entry from ten months ago:

"I went to a shrink today – been having a few panic symptoms on the edge of my life. Rather than waiting till (or to see if) it gets all huge and center I decided to go have a talk about it.

It was nice seeing him again – it’s been two years. Life is good and we chatted. With about 15 minutes to go we spoke of the anxiety. He surmised that maybe I’m ready to put myself out there – writing, painting, school, whatever – and that maybe that frightens me. Makes me quake.

So I am thinking about that. It sure seems trite. SURELY I’m not that trite. Surely not!

Hmmmm. So I will write. And dig out the book and the stories that need revision. And open the blinds in the little studio room. And get the blankets off of the easel.

At least I still have a bottle of Xanax if I need it. :)

I think I’ll use this blog for my stories and my fiction. Just to see what it looks like. And write thoughts and rants and journal entries elsewhere.

(This is what I do – organize myself out of creating anything)"

Challenging myself here.

Hobgoblins

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet, Self-Reliance, 1841

I love this quote. Even though I do get some small comfort from consistency myself, I find that it is a foolish comfort most of the time.

This bit from Emerson comes up for me today because there is a person on the periphery of my life who is consistently, and I mean one hundred percent, consistently negative and insulting. It’s amazing.

Hurtful at first. Then, not so much. So consistent are the insults that I can do little more than laugh now. So predictable. So shallow. So small-minded. And he thinks he’s very suave and sophisticated. He fancies himself quite the poet and storyteller and general life-guru. And yet his remarks to me could be computer generated.

I’m amazed that I could be hurt by people so easily when I was younger. When there was a need for them and their approval. It was a tough time, to be so needy, to be so vulnerable.

Life and experience and time seem to have converged to not so much protect me from people who want to hurt, but simply to give me a different plane to experience it on. Something deeper, something that moves quicker, farther, faster. I don’t wallow in or feel the sting. Oh I know there are people who can smash me. But I doubt anyone can simply throw a dart, or hurl an insult, and get the reaction they want (and need?) any more.

Doesn’t stop some from trying – which is, in itself, another story and one I may find worth exploring.

I'm Really Going To Do It

I'm going to quit wasting time.

I'm going to quit going to a particular online community that has degenerated beyond anything I would want to be associated with.

I'm going to spend my days writing my own creative stuff.

I'm going to spend my days also drawing and painting.

I'm going to fan the flames of my creativity, rather than engage in the excesses of snark that I can get sucked into as a distraction.

I'm going to continue to eat fresh salad out of my garden twice a day.

I'm going to continue eating all the sweetest radishes in the south until the row is gone.

I'm going to continue to identify the birds coming to my feeders.

I'm going to continue to clean out my attic, and go through all my old pictures albums.

I'm going to de-pile my house!

Really. I'm going to do it!

Turning The Soil

Turning The Soil

Knees pressing, back stretching, shoulders pulling, hands reaching deeply into the damp earth, she begins the garden early, early in the day. There is a lightening of the sky, but no sun yet. Birds tentatively chirp and chit and cluck as they test their tongues for the task ahead. Dawn will break soon, and the earth will move into a new day.

Turning the soil over in her hands, and watching the clumps dissolve; kneading the dirt like a luscious loaf of bread to be baked, this has become her ritual for gardening. The soil releases a smell of dank, earthy, richness that she can’t remember smelling anywhere else although she has walked this earth nearly 87 years. Only down on her knees, now-gnarled hands working the soil personally, intimately, this is how the special smell releases its aroma.

The garden gets smaller and smaller. She realized that a few years ago. It was unconscious for a long time, leaving off a row here, a section there. Stopping when she got tired, there was a little extra room for scattering sunflower seeds, or putting in a few stones, or just letting the grass reach a few new tendrils. Then around her birthday, what was it? three years? four years ago? She realized she just got tired a lot earlier, and wasn’t making the garden as big. She was shocked at first, that she could have fooled herself for so long. So proud that she was able to garden when so many of her friends were either dead or in wheelchairs.

Ah, the pride that goes before a fall. She is glad to know, now, that her garden diminishes with passing time. Her garden, her gardening, has a natural life and rhythm. She doesn’t have to think about it, or worry about it, or fret. She can simply reach down, and turn the soil. Now and then her thoughts wander and she can see the tiniest of garden patches. Maybe just a few feet. Of turned soil. Where she will rest. For eternity.