Texassssssssssssss

June 26

You know you're in Texas when the world is full of pickup trucks, the very air smells like cow ass and no matter how many hours of driving go by you're *still* in Texas. In fact, it took me 5 days to get to Arkansas. 

Because I stayed at the swanky Omni Hotel in Fort Worth for 4 nights, for the Botanical Society of America's annual conference. Crossing West Texas from Van Horn to Fort Worth, I was reflecting on the Karpman Drama Triangle some more and began to formulate a kind of recipe for getting off the victim vertex, which I wrote about a little bit in previous posts. Like many intellectual formulae, my schema sounded glorious and completely reasonable, but of course my heart in my chest was repeatedly roiled by jealousy, sadness, a searing desire for retribution, ill will toward A and her new person and a sense of hopelessness if not downright despair. 

The main angle on the despair was the persistence of these bitter and painful feelings, in spite of all of my best efforts to either cathartically heal from the heart or redirect my thoughts from the head. The simple fact was that I was still hurt and hated both A and her new person and wished them ill. And all of that grotesque self-centered fear peppered my chest with buckshot repeatedly and without my knowing when or to what degree the thoughts would rise and flare, raging blazes of wildfire.

But I continued to reflect anyway, and when the wildfires would arise I would return to my usual prayers, cultivating the spirit of devotion in the face of my unregenerate humanity. 

God help me. These are sick people just like myself. How can I be helpful to them? Save me from being angry. It's in the hands of the universe and it's finished in the hands of the universe. 

And the Brahma Viharas: 

May A and her person have happiness and the causes of happiness
May A and her person be free of suffering and the causes of suffering
May A and her person never be separated from bliss without suffering
May A and her person be in equanimity, free of anger, bias and attachment

May A and her person be well
May A and her person be happy
May A and her person be peaceful and at ease
May A and her person be full of lovingkindness

In this way employing the spirit of devotion to something greater than myself, as well as my endlessly tedious story, to work toward lifting the searing pain and anger. And, as I may have mentioned before, I "don't believe" in God, so prayer for me has nothing to do with petitioning an actual being. It's the most powerful way I know of turning my attention to the spirit of spaciousness, letting go, devotional and more universal love without conditions and, ultimately, one hopes, freedom. My higher power is this experience of space and opening, this expansive and welcoming energy. In addition to a multitude of other dimensions which I'll talk about some other time, or not. 

So I'm driving across West Texas employing spiritual means to ameliorate emotional turmoil and imagining writing about all of it-- basically an archetypal Percy moment. Music remained important all along the way, with me reveling in the car stereo and the weird alphabetical trip through all my album titles. 

The view out of my 14th floor room at the Omni in Fort Worth

After arriving in Fort Worth and still smarting a little from realizing I would spend about $80 on parking in a nearby parking garage over the next few days (how you know you're in a probably interesting if not merely overpriced part of any city), I settled into the hotel and realized I had three straight days to focus on botany, the 15 minute talk I was going to give that had taken hours to preapre, hanging with friends, discovering Fort Worth and relaxing in a very nice room. The rough and tumble hurtle from Phoenix to Fort Worth had a soft landing, at least. 

But in grief and loss, nothing is linear. I was also still in that echoing space of thinking of A and how she would have liked this or that, how impressed by the hotel she would have been-- all those thoughts one has about someone who has gone missing in the world but is still in one's heart for better or worse. Even more than that, the realization that it had been much more important to me than I realized that A admire and support my path through the PhD and my work with plants. I hadn't been conscious of her gradual withdrawal of interest and involvement. When I went in a few months earlier to do my comprehensive exams, a few friends of mine sent me notes of encouragement that morning, but A had completely forgotten I was even doing it. Later, after I had passed, out of spite I didn't tell her directly but posted it on Facebook. Her only comment was "I am proud of you." This weird coldness especially stood out against a background of effusive congratulations from hundreds of friends. 

These kinds of things are death knells, over and over. The bell tolls for this partnership, buddy boy. It may in fact have been that very moment when I began to realize the clock was ticking. 

So my being at a botany conference provided a valuable opportunity to work through those feelings of being abandoned by someone whose admiration I valued, in the middle of my purpose. There are those times in life where you realize you are actually far more alone in an endeavor than you thought. Then you might have to suck it up and forge on, knowing you can make your own ground under your feet for it, if it was ever an authentic path to begin with.