Fuck You, God

How I'm feeling. 

That's right, you old white patriarchal motherfucker, I'm talking to you. 

Not that there is a God, mind you, but for the sake of having some Prime Mover or Higher Power to blame, let's just pretend (along with billions of other people) that there is. 

I do not feel thankful today, on Thanksgiving. I am thinking about injustice, fascism, torture, duplicity, inhumanity, war, rape, a mother's horror on being separated from her children, genocide (such as the genocide that underpins this very holiday, or for that matter, the unimaginable carnage in our own Civil War that preceded Lincoln creating the holiday), guns and stupid heartless fucks with their fucking gun addictions, bigotry, demagogues who derive their power from inciting terror and hate in their followers and the plain fact that this trick, one of the oldestin the books, actually fucking works, dismembering of people while they are still alive simply because they have expressed themselves, police shooting or otherwise publicly executing black people, hardening of hearts, fire, flood, climate change, insatiable greed, elephants tortured alive for their ivory, factory farming, people dying of curable medical conditions in the richest nation on earth, fucking Kickstarters for cancer treatment, fucking theocracy in what used to be a civil society based on the rule of law, the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a passionate intensity. 

Should I not be furious at any God who could allow all of this and more? What would the appropriate response be? Should I obsequiously grovel and say stupid shit like "everything happens for a reason" or "God works in mysterious ways" or. You name it. After another mass shooting, should I just send thoughts and prayers? 

It's funny that I only got in touch with how fucking furious at "God" I am last night. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep, and the torments, injustices, horrors, outrages and nightmares of the world would not stop presenting themselves, from the most personal sufferings on a relatively small scale of those I love all the way to the global fuckfest of horror that we currently face. I broke through some old, stale, childish fear of authority and said, out loud, FUCK YOU, you fucking asshole God. What the fuck? FUCK YOU. 

I guess this might be a moment of growth? Especially for a non-theist like myself, who doesn't even "believe in God" anyway. It's good to have someone to hate for all this shit though. The loneliness, torment, injustice, silence and darkness. Big Sky Daddy is to blame. Obviously. 

I don't adhere to banal Richard Dawkins' overly facile formulation that God can't possibly exist because of all the suffering in the world. I like Jung's formulation more, of the great mystery of a 360 degree God as malicious as it is loving, as Jung outlines in his Answer to Job. The shadow as much as the light. This seems to square much more with reality. Dawkins and other petulant atheists are like children whistling in the dark by comparison. Jung's concept is real and it's terrifying, just like existence.  

God is as likely to nail you to a cross as "he" is to provide you with miraculous blessings, *especially* if you catch "his" attention. 

Basically, I'm tired. There seems no narrative line, no reassurance, no cohesion to the behavior of my species. Of course I acknowledge that we are also capable of unimaginable goodness and love. But this seems to arise as much out of us as our tendency to fuck each other into the ground and cause as much suffering as possible while doing it. None of this is cosmic or divine. It's fucking squalor. The image of the young girl in Iraq, splattered with the blood of her parents after they had just been executed by American soldiers right in front of her, comes to mind. What kind of fucking barbaric asshole God would allow something like that to happen? 

So there's my gratitude post. It's like saying, golly, I am so grateful I am not starving to death, suffering miserably as I die of a horrible disease that could be treated except I'm poor, tortured by a fascist regime, separated from my own children because I dared to seek asylum, raped and then publicly shamed and humiliated for reporting it, randomly shot in a mass shooting by yet another white male asshole, struggling merely to survive while the CEO of the corporation I slave for owns five houses, etc. 


"Being thankful" feels like groveling, given reality. Thanks for leaving me the fuck alone, God. It's looking better than the alternative. 

Troubador of the dark, Leonard Cohen comes to mind, with his final arch salvo regarding these topics, a perfect summation of his world view, and an anthem for our times. 

They're lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn't know I had permission to murder and to maim....

Letting what shit go though

It's important when doing subtle work with deeply rooted compulsive behaviors to be as specific as possible. Along the way, I am bound to flail. Flailing is part of learning how to land a punch, to use a violent metaphor. Do you ever read psychological/recovery type stuff like my blog posts and think it's just trite hooey? I sure do. 

I have precisely zero power to let go of her, specifically. I have tools to work on letting go of my own entanglements. There is where I have power. Those are things I can change. 

I am reminded of the eternally useful so-called serenity prayer, which could just as well be called the courage or wisdom prayer. 

I cannot change a person outside myself, or the situation that person is in. That's acceptance. 

I can change my structure of attachments and dependency. That's courage. 

I can recall that difference, and try to find some tiny little shred of wisdom. 

The older I get, the more apparent to me it is that wisdom is the rarest thing for humans. The rarest thing. Being a flashy minded fellow, I have put a lot of faith in knowledge. But all the knowledge in the world can be scant wisdom. 

Accept everything that is not me. Change whatever in myself is causing suffering. Look for whatever tiny shreds of wisdom become available. 

I was reflecting on the so-called St. Francis Prayer this morning, as I do every morning, even though I am a non-theist and know not to exactly (or even inexactly) what I am praying. Grant that I might seek to comfort rather than be comforted, to understand than to be understood, to love than to be loved. Of course there's dangerous traps all through that passage, unwise misinterpretations and self serving motives and invitations to martyrdom and ego snares galore. But, in essence, I like the goal. It reminds me of Joni: Oh I hate you some, I hate you some, I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me. 

I can't will myself to let go. The irony of that hope is hilarious. I think what I am really talking about is taking myself seriously enough to advocate for my own happiness, while supporting completely the happiness of others, even those who are not giving me what I want. Simple. Right? 

anyway, I'll take the long comedy over the close up tragedy any day. I bet when Julian of Norwich had her revelation, she laughed. 

Let That Shit Go

The first installment of this blog was March 6th, 2017, somewhere near the leading edge of Pluto transiting the natal Moon in my chart.  Anyone who knows me knows I have a skeptical relationship with astrology, but also knows I have a fiercely symbolic and metaphorical way of experiencing the world. I think it is this oddball crank-ish combo of fierce skepticism and spooky witchery that drew me so magnetically toward C G Jung, and that keeps me interested in tarot, I Ching and astrology. 

how I see myself

how I probably appear

In spite of the sheer impossibility of astrology having any relevance whatsoever for anything happening with me personally here on this tiny planet, the plain fact is that astrological stories so often completely fit what is happening in my life that it is astonishing. I do not claim to have an explanation, although I have speculated on everything from delusional projection of correspondences in the face of narcissistic attachment to sheer coincidence, to ancient memory of ineluctable internal calendars to which we have been unconsciously tuned for hundreds of thousands of years, etc. 

Be all that as it may be, the plain fact is that the Pluto transit of my natal Moon that went exact in February 2017 coincides perfectly with the complete, shocking, sudden abandonment by my partner at the time. The astrologists all say that Pluto conjunct natal Moon is all about the death of long-standing ways of being with women, as well the emergence of weirdly intense "soul connections" with other women, etc. 

So Pluto wandered around the Moon for a while, going backwards through Capricorn for a bit, and then hitting my natal Moon *exactly* again on July 7th, the very day the loml and I started flirting (well, I started it). Then Pluto wandered backwards some more and then went direct again and hit my natal Moon *exactly* again on December 14th, 2017, at the leading edge of a weirdly intense and problematic time the loml and I visited with each other, which may well have been the start of how wobbly things have been, on again off again, ever since. 

The most recent visit was just the past few days. Originally planned for Nov. 15 through Nov. 21, canceled twice, rescheduled twice, it quickly became clear to me during the visit that it was almost impossible for the loml to carve out time to connect and that her sense of things is deeply conflicted right now (this much ought to have been crystal clear to me before the visit but no). So I shortened the visit and returned yesterday. The brief time that she and I had together was spectacular as it always is, unforgettable, beautiful, surreal, powerful, beautiful. But this is clearly not the time for me to try to fit myself into her very busy life, and I have my own PhD dissertation writing fish to fry (block that metaphor!). It was a simple matter to schedule my flight earlier this week, since Southwest is hoping to free up space closer to Thanksgiving. In fact, the change included a $16 refund. I was able to recognize my own position as something of an inconvenience, able to see clearly that I was an appendage and not made a priority, and act quickly to remedy that and not face complications from the outside world. This roughly all coincides with the Pluto/Moon thing finally easing up, on November 18th, the very day I made all of those swift, clean, clear decisions. 

When this Nick Drake song starts to go around and around in one's head, hoo boy, time to bail. 





All of this is weird, for sure. Going forward, Pluto heads toward Saturn and then Jupiter in my natal chart, staying 90 degrees ("square") my ascendant, Mars and Mercury and staying 120 degrees ("trine") my Sun, until 2023. So there's plenty more Hades on the way, just in a variety of different flavors. I was reading up on Pluto Saturn Jupiter, square Mars/Mercury/Ascendant, trine Sun and it is all very interesting, but much more generally positive than the whole Pluto/Moon thing. A bit of good news. Sort of. 

(Also interesting-- I recently completely reconfigured my timeline to complete the PhD, with the hope of defending in April 2019. Lo and behold, unbeknownst to me until just now, my second Saturn return begins in April 2019-- whereas the first Saturn return, at around 29-30 years old, is often seen as a symbolic rite of passage into the structures and commitments of adulthood, the second Saturn return is supposedly more about completion, the creation of new material and practical circumstances, and a growth in wisdom.  In fact, the very day I had tentatively scheduled my defense which is also my 15th anniversary of being sober, is the day the Saturn return begins, using the rule of three degrees on the way in and two degrees on the way out). 

Meanwhile, I am deep in the throes of wrestling with quantitative, scientific reasoning and embracing that arena as a welcome respite from incredibly intense, sometimes overwhelming emotions. The chapter I am currently working on for the dissertation has proven extremely challenging. This is not necessarily a bad thing, these days. The biggest challenge is that this particular chapter is kind of boring. And the work that lies ahead is mostly drudgery. Such is life. 

Regarding the loml, I have (completely?) resigned myself to the simple fact that we are not going to be together in any significant way, perhaps ever, but most likely at least not for years. (My affections remain bone deep, my desires are unchanged, my willingness waits as patiently as ever). It now feels to me that she and the universe have been bellowing this in my ear with a megaphone for months. I would not choose this and it isn't what I want, but I respect her decision and understand it, while at the same time disagreeing with the fatalism of it. My disagreement is easy for me, however, so I don't think it matters. 

The plain fact is that I am not important to her in any practical, manifest or livable way, that I am not a priority and that I am in fact fairly far down on her list at this time of her life. This is neither harsh nor unfair. It just is the plain fact. Of course, this has been the plain fact for months on end, but waking up to it, accepting it at face value and simply stopping my fight against the plain hard fact of it has taken me awhile. I think I can be forgiven for that delay, (if I can forgive myself), but it is clearly time for me to move on and let go. 

The loml in fact gave me a very nice big mug, with an image of a meditating person, and the words "Let that shit go." She said, "I have no idea why I was drawn to give you this," and I laughed and laughed, internally. Of course, she also gave me a couple pink marble hearts that are very sweet, and so the paradox of everything we have experienced with each other is encapsulated. In my own foolish romanticism, I attempted to give her a risky gift which she left with me, and which now has gone into a large box full of my past. I think it is also symbolic, since I am sure she "didn't mean" to leave it (twice), and "just forgot," I bet, but this is of course more significant than that.  

It's interesting especially to not have broken up, so to speak, but simply to have accepted that things are what they are, intractable and as solid and real as a brick. There's no point in either "staying together" or "breaking up" when one of the two people in a relationship is by necessity an afterthought. Yet, we both think of each other constantly. We'll miss each other every day. We will reconnect on a profound level no matter the intervening time. Paradoxes abound. 

One of the hooks on which I get caught is that she has a much stronger capacity to at least appear steely, unmoved and unconcerned by the failure of our being together than I do. Astrology would say that this is because she is a Capricorn. 

Note also the heart of the Virgo in this utterly hilarious illustration

It's weird that I have long had the fantasy that she would suddenly message me:  "I'm leaving my husband, I've gotten a nice little apartment in a great neighborhood, we have arranged an exact half time custody deal, and I can't wait to create a life with you." I fabricated and foolishly fantasized such an event out of utter thin air, since there has never been anything like any indication that this was even remotely possible, let alone probable. To the loml's credit, she has never created the impression that we had a shot at being together, other than in the first rush of our intense connection, a long, long, long time ago. Well, about 14 months. 

A recent event that sledgehammered home the reality of my current position was her arrangements with her mother to visit our adopted hometown, where the two of us have visited each other three times over the past 16 months, each visit very powerful for me. The announcement of that family trip, including husband, was made on Facebook, without any communication with me or warning. People's actions speak much louder than their words do, and this reality was quite a wake up call for me. I *still* resent this and have work to do to get free of that resentment. 

It amazes me how much it takes for me to get the message that I am largely out of someone's picture, and I am struggling with some fierce self-hatred, wherein I regale myself with what a stupid romantic idiot I have been. Not helpful. But I arrived in her city a few days ago, in spite of all of this, with candle, roses, incense, a little string of festive lights I bought at CVS, a romantic risky gift into which I had put a lot of thought, and set about creating a romantic atmosphere in the Airbnb where I was staying, as has been my wont on other visits. All of this courtship behavior was hopeful but based on zero prior communication. All of it seemed clownish and idiotic and a way for me to set myself up in light of the dawning reality, and how clear the prior indications were that romance was not in the picture in any strong or definite way. Believe me when I tell you I am working on letting myself off the hook for what I see as foolishness but what is understandable. I guess. ? 

She also did not change her work schedule during my most recent visit. I know it is possible for her to do so, since clearly she has had to do so in order to make the family visit possible. But it is not a priority for her to do so while I am visiting. I acknowledge these facts without rancor. But it has a pang to it, not a rancorous pang mind you, but a pang nonetheless, because when I originally scheduled the visit, I had, for the first time ever, made a request that she actually make an effort to carve out a long stretch of time that we could spend together. Under our initial arrangements for the visit, before it got canceled, she had agreed to do this. For me to make the arrangements to go to her city, and to invest the time and energy in the actual travel, is a big time and energy suck. My choice, I know, but when it feels barely even acknowledged or met, how can a person not feel slighted or taken for granted? But I guess after she ended things between us, but then I told her I wanted to visit anyway, and she agreed, the old agreement to carve out a long period of time was moot. I didn't ask, however, (I see now that I didn't want to know) and she did not communicate to me anything at all about what the schedule of my visit would look like. And her repeated confessions of feeling conflicted and guilty, which for some reason I was finally able to hear and accept. In spite of which we tumbled toward each other as we always do. In spite of which the prognosis is not at all good. She enters now into the season of having to show up for family, in all the ways the holidays require of married people with children. I wish her well in everything, sincerely. I guess if I were a relationship oncologist, I would say the five year survival for this grade and stage of relationship is maybe 3%. Lower than for pancreatic cancer. 

It occurs to me that I have clung tenaciously to the red thread of hope for months longer than many people would have. I'll have to find ways to be kind to myself for that, as well. I do not think my essential behavior or love has been codependent, however. I only see my codependent compulsive behavior in all the ways I have tried to control, manipulate and orchestrate, instead of just letting go and acknowledging what is. My resistance to feeling rejected, abandoned and less than is so fierce, I obviously am capable of very strong persistence in various delusions that I am not being rejected, abandoned or treated as less than. 

The most nightmarish moment along this walk was when the loml flipped The Switch. Those of you who have been reading for a while might remember the post about The Switch.  Lo and behold, the loml is yet another woman who has The Switch. From passionate proclamation of undying love to zilch. Zero. Subzero. Instantly distant, "I can't do this anymore," expressed without any tenderness or sense of regret. "Sorry for the injury" was a phrase that actually was uttered with a tone of absolute coldness. Just straight up unemotional distance. And that, my sentimental friend, is that. Sorry. Unilateral and sudden. Absolute and detached. Practical. Frankly, terrifying. Not my style, most of the time. I understand it better now, and I get the fear that underlies it. But it's a nightmare to encounter, when one is emotionally invested in another human being and has been formerly met with warmth and affection. It flipped back to more warmth later, but the experience was like jumping out of a plane in the dark without a parachute into a sky at 50 degrees below zero, it was so unexpected (to me) and out of character.  

Onward into other levels and degrees of Hades go I. It seems there are a great many experiences on the way. I'll endeavor to stay awake for them. But a resolution that is crystallizing for me is to find ways to make those people a priority who make me a priority. And if no one is making me a priority, making myself the priority for myself anyway. I am an excellent partner for someone, someday. I've done a shit ton of work to be a better man. I continue to do that work. I'm generous, passionate, kind, supportive, a true feminist ally to the full degree I am able, dedicated to the domestic proposition that all human beings ought to do equal labor with children and home. I'm intense, sure, but I'm not boring. I make an honest effort to get to know authentically and attentively a woman and what she likes and how to show up for her. There are a lot of ways my character defects fuck with my relationships still, and I realize this. But I am worth being a priority for someone, especially since I have a fairly devoted relationship style myself, even when codependent compulsions are not driving me. 

It's time for me to take my wants seriously enough to insist they be met, or to forego even the most amazing and intensely passionate relationships where I am way down on someone else's list. I want an available person, within reason, within the largest healthy view of interdependence and being present, and if none is available, if even the loml is not available, I want to be present with myself. I would make many concessions and be flexible and open if the loml were able to meet me. She has made it abundantly clear she does not want to or is unable to. 

It's time to let that shit go. 

Fiona, gone and not gone

Nine years ago today, my partner at the time and I had my dog Fiona euthanized, as she was suffering with late stage stomach cancer. The true turning point for her was a morning about a month earlier, when I went into the living room where she was sleeping and she thumped her tail a few times but didn't get up, and I filled her bowl with breakfast and she didn't budge. This was a dog whose entire life revolved around food, every day of her life up until that day. I knew something was terribly wrong. 

We put her on boiled chicken and rice for a while, and that grabbed her attention, but even then, she couldn't eat much. I put her on tramadol and her mood improved somewhat. Her other huge morning excitement was our session in the backyard with the tennis ball. These last days of hers she would gamely go out, pee, look at me to throw the ball, which I would, and then she would start out running, and after a few steps, slow to a hobbled walk, get the ball, and walk back with it, dropping it at my feet. We'd repeat this maybe three or four times, instead of the unlimited infinity of times she had previously preferred, until she would drop the ball at my feet and then trundle to the back door, and turn and look at me. "Let's go on in," she'd say with her cataract clouded eyes, "it's bed time."

Age 8, in my apartment in Los Angeles, so happy the carpet had been cleaned, ready for her digestive catastrophes to begin anew

Over the 13 or 14 years I had her, or she had me, she was a source of endless, and I do mean endless, nearly daily, challenges. Her shitty genes combined with having been abused as a puppy before I adopted her, combined to make her high strung, nervous, incontinent, digestively flawed and prone to explosive events from either end, with bad teeth, hyper-vigilant disposition and terrible manners. She was a jumper, a food stealer, nearly incapable of relaxing unless she had been exerted for hours, was not leash trained at all and always nearly choked herself to death while on walks, and on and on. When she was a puppy, I was in later stage alcoholism and the two of us made quite a chaotic pair. I never took the time to train her. She was in the habit of climbing up on things to get human food that was bad for her-- an entire loaf of sourdough bread, for example, that was processed by her dog body into streams of the foulest liquid feces you can imagine, in pools all over my office floor at work.

The number of times Fiona and I moved: 13. Her general attitude each time: "Hooray! An adventure!" I simply cannot understand people now who advertise their dogs or cats as available for adoption because "we are moving and just can't keep them." What the actual fuck, humans? It's especially weird because it had simply never even occurred to me to move without her. 

The contortions I often had to go through to keep her and find a place to live, crazy. The first years we were together, she dealt with my alcoholism. Out late, leaving her at home. Drunk at home a lot. I wonder what it all meant to her. I know she would get extra anxious and edgy when I was drunk. She was noticeably happier after I got sober. 

One of the bar hopping nights in LA when I was out until 3, she knocked a jar of hot cocoa mix off the counter and devoured it, and by the time I got home, the carpet was blessed with yet more sweet sickly slicks of rejected but delicious whatever. She loved LA walks, because there was almost always food on the street or sidewalk- gum, hot dog buns, burrito wrappers, vomit (which she had no compunction whatsoever devouring). 

It took me years to figure certain things out about her that a more experienced dog owner and...less alcoholic? person would have figured out much more quickly. For example, whenever I would take her anywhere in the car, she would almost immediately start pacing and whining and nervously sticking her face right over the driver's seat next to mine, panting and drooling. I figured, for years, that she was anxious about being in a moving car, and just a terrible passenger. Somehow it occurred to me once, after years of being irritated by her behavior, to stop and take her for a walk, soon after we set out. She immediately peed a prodigious stream of anxiety pee, and when she got back in the car, lo and behold, she lay down peacefully and went to sleep for the rest of the ride. So I learned that the routine had to be: take her for a walk so she would pee, put her in the car, drive about a mile or two, stop, take her for another walk, then put her in the car and proceed. From then on, she was a model passenger. She must have thought I was pretty stupid. 

As a mutant black lab, one of her fondest activities in all of life besides eating and puking, was anything involving insanely energetic activities in running or still water. For a part of her youth we lived by a pond, and she would retrieve tennis balls from that pond for hours at a time. When we lived in LA I would take her to Ventura County and she'd romp in the ocean fearlessly, although we had to curtail that because she would drink the sea water and become terribly ill. At my sister's house back east, she loved the river and spent many of the hours we visited there retrieving sticks. 

In general, her fierce dedication to fetching tennis balls or sticks led to her breaking her toes many times over, since, with abandon, she would hurtle herself over rocks, gravel, whatever, to get the object of her passion. By the time she was older her toes were gnarled like old tree roots. One thing she would never let me do was touch her feet. In fact, she would snarl and threaten to bite me if I even made a move toward her feet. But a kind, empathic animal healer friend of mine worked with her for a few months, toward the end of her life, slowly gaining her trust and eventually massaging her feet at great length. "Every one of her toes is broken and rebroken several times over," this woman said to me,"what the fuck were you thinking?" Fiona looked at me with a laugh in her eyes, and I said "It wasn't my idea. She wouldn't have had it any other way." 

I once left her with friends of mine in LA so I could travel back to Santa Fe for a week. I hadn't been paying attention really, and she had fleas. My friends took care of her fleas, had her teeth brushed and taken care of. "What the fuck are you thinking with this dog?" they asked me when I returned. "You have an animal, man. You have to take care of it." I was chagrined and ashamed. I have often looked back on how shitty a dog owner I was. Someday I will have another dog, and I'll do the things in detail that being a good dog owner requires. But, in spite of how terrible a dog owner I was, the thing about Fiona is that she loved me endlessly, and everything was always 100% absolutely okay with her. Dogs are so incredible that way. 

My biggest failure as a dog owner was taking care of her teeth. By the time she was about 10, she had several dead and rotting teeth, gum disease, terrible breath that actually filled an entire house. My friend at the time paid to have several of her teeth removed and for a course of antibiotics to fight the gum disease. I had no money at all, and it had simply not even occurred to me that she needed dental care. Absolutely shameful and unacceptable to me now. For a day after she had her teeth out, she lay on her bed. the bed covered with some blotter paper to soak up the blood from her mouth, and I knew bottomless remorse and regret and asked her forgiveness repeatedly. She just thumped her tail and was like "yeah you suck, you dummy, but I love you." She was so much happier after she had those teeth out.  

I miss her terribly still, in spite of how difficult she was. She has come to visit me several times since she died. Go ahead and call me loopy if you want. I know it. Once, when she visited me, she admitted she had been pretty pissed about a lot of things, but that she had completely forgiven me and that she understood, and that I should work on not feeling remorseful or guilty anymore. I told okay, I'll work on it, and off she ran. 

Her death was difficult. We had arranged with a very kind veterinarian's assistant to have her euthanized in our back yard, which had become one of her favorite places in her old age. It was a warm peaceful mid-November afternoon. My partner had insisted that we schedule the euthanasia while it was still light out, so that Fiona could "see where she was going" after she died. The vet tech arrived on time, and Fiona didn't budge from her spot on the living room rug, her tail thumping a couple times. This was totally uncharacteristic for her. She usually greeted any visitor with a lunge, jump, insatiable licking, etc. I think she was probably just in the worst pain toward the end. 

We coaxed her outside. She peed and then hobbled back toward the door, "let's go in huh. it's bed time again." That was a heartbreaking moment for me. No girl, we're not going in again. Come on back. She hobbled back. (I've often thought since then-- there's a moment in every life I guess where the living thing heads toward the old habit, thinking, let's just do this again, and the universe says "no, kid. You're never doing it again. Let's go.") We stroked her, kissed her head. The vet tech got the shot ready. She saw the needle and squirmed and suddenly some of her old fierce fight was back. She hated needles so much. I wish the tech had not allowed her to see it, but he didn't know. He probed and emptied the entire syringe into a vein in her left hind leg. It was as if it had no effect at all. She had a wild look in her eye. I suspect she knew what was happening, although I guess that's superstitious of me. But it was how she was acting. We had to hold her down while the tech prepared a second syringe, almost unheard of. Her heart was strong, strong as always. Under all of her skittish, obnoxious, troublesome behavioral issues, she always unreservedly loved, completely wide open and fierce. I think she may have been the only sentient being on this planet who truly, unconditionally and always loved me, no matter how skittish, obnoxious, drunk or discombobulated and indifferent to her needs I was. A fierce light always blazed in her crazy brown eyes. No matter what, she was always happy to see me, and everyone else, always. 

The second syringe emptied into her. I swear she looked at me questioning why, questioning what was happening. I told her it was okay. I stroked her head and told her "It's okay Finny, you can go now, I'll be all right. Thanks for all of it. But you can go. You can go now." Her eyes dimmed, probably my face blurring, the last thing she saw other than the evening sky. Slowly, slowly, her fierce body yielded to the death cocktail. Then she was under, and soon after, she was dead. Her gigantic tongue lolled out of her wide open mouth, symbolic of how she had lived so much of her life. It was awful seeing her dead. That such an obsidian spark of life could even die seemed impossible to me. The final truth of all of these fierce lives. 

The tech lifted her, her head falling completely to one side, tongue long and lifeless. "She was a strong old girl," the tech said, "I have never had to use two syringes before." He had a couple of clay slabs that he made paw imprints in and left with us. We walked him and her corpse out to the car, and he said, "her ashes will be ready in a couple days. We'll call. You guys take care of yourselves. What a girl she was." 

I had been too embarrassed to show much emotion with the tech there. After he left, my partner and I were standing in the kitchen and looked at each other and collapsed into each other's arms, sobbing. "My God that was hard," I said. 

She had been sick for a couple of years before we euthanized her. I pampered her those last couple years of her life. She had her own futon, for example. 

Shortly before we euthanized her, with her cat friend Pyewacket, the two of them clearly up to something

After my partner and I broke up, the following summer, I took Fiona's ashes back to the pond she had loved so much as a young dog. I sat on the dock she had loved jumping off into the brackish water to retrieve the tennis ball, swim back to the bank, run to me, obnoxiously shake all of that smelly water off onto me, and get poised at the dock's edge to jump again and retrieve, over and over and over and over. No matter when I signaled it was time to go, she would be disappointed. 

I said a few prayers and scattered her ashes in the pond. 

What dies and what doesn't die. I wonder if I'll ever see her again. Her conspiracy with the universe may well include a fierce greeting, followed by her puking on my celestial carpet. 

The pond

JR

November 22, 1995-November 8, 2018

You'll be missed. Your sense of humor, wisdom beyond your years, endless curiosity and combination of humility and compassion combined to create a remarkable human. 

A former student of mine, JR, like many of my former students, didn't give a shit about math. She showed up and remained open minded, and did the best she could, but her heart was elsewhere. Namely, English. She was majoring in English in college and would often lament to me that she had zero hopes of ever being employable. "What do I put on my resume?" she asked recently, "Studied how to read for four years?" This had been much on her mind lately, as graduation approached. Her Facebook status of November 2, six days before she died: can’t wait to finish my degree so that i can look for jobs and tell them that i’ve been formally trained in reading books.

Some other recent posts of hers:

I found out about her death from reading another former student's post on Facebook. He wrote that he had found out, while on break at work, that one of his best friends, JR, had died. Her name went right by me and I just felt compassion for the guy. Then, many seconds later, it began to dawn on me that he was talking about JR.

Having been a teacher for more than 30 years, I have gone through the experience of young people dying many times. It always just seems impossible to me. In spite of knowing the truth of impermanence and the inevitability of death, when someone in their teens or 20's dies, it always seems surreal to me, like it was not "supposed" to happen. 

Apparently, JR had a seizure that resulted in an accident that killed her. I don't know any of the other details. 

She was one of the examples of why I love remaining friends with the most interesting of my former students. It's one of the great blessings of having been a teacher, especially of adolescents. I find many young people to be a lot more interesting than people my age. She embodied a lot of the reasons why that is so. There's a freshness, unfettered wisdom, strength and resilience in all of my favorite people, but especially in a lot of young people these days. It amazes me when older people judge and criticize, usually out of ignorance, the generations that are on the way up. In fact, these are decent, humane, creative, wise people, ready to change the world in their own ways. JR fit that bill perfectly. 

Maybe in JR heaven, it'll be books and funny memes forever.  

Collective Insanity and the new paradigm

Another day, another mass shooting. I woke with a start at 2 a.m. and the dark air seemed alive with anxiety. The news rolls in via social media. White male with gun, unknown casualties, breaking, live, update. Nightclub. 

By dawn we get more detail. Body counts. Hand waving. 

It seems few of the messengers report the whole truth. 

Another. White. Male. 

We're collectively blind to this. Flip the script and imagine if mass shootings were being done by any member of any marginalized group. Think particularly about marginalized groups that have been demonized. The entire narrative would be different. Action would be taken. Would have been taken long ago. 

Few things speak to the endurance of white male privilege more loudly than the collective hypnosis that is silencing the conversation about white male terrorism. 

America is in a hell state now. On the one hand, a depraved leadership maliciously misleading and obfuscating. Aided and abetted by what has become a state run news agency. On the other hand, the beautiful advances toward true plurality that continue, in spite of the top down madness. An openly gay male governor. Unprecedented elections of women of color, including 19 black women judges in Texas. 

It's been interesting being banned from posting on Facebook for the past few weeks, with about a week to go. I have been silenced and have had to read the timelines of my friends with none of the buffering that commenting provides. The main perception that has arisen in me is that *even white men who are trying their best to be allies* right now are as annoying and tiresome as fuck. The main pattern I see is a desire to control the narrative, even from the position of performative allyship. Many instances of a lack of listening. And these are the men who are among the best. 

The rest are quite simply just fucking awful. A friend of mine posted that her grandfather used to say, "when in doubt, vote for the woman." A man instantly had to comment that that was the worst idea he ever heard, because it negates all of the hard work a male candidate may have done to get on the ballot, and if you are really that misinformed, you shouldn't be voting. Predictably, the comment had 8 likes. Every single one of them male. 

These microaggressions each are, well, micro. But the aggregate of millions of such stances in defense of a murderous, oppressive, terrorist cis-hetero patriarchy create an aggravating, toxic climate. Add to this poisoning of discourse the white male terrorist armed with a gun, and add all the rest of the death cry of the old order, and you get a hellish picture. 

My perspective on all of this taken together is that it is the terrified backlash against the gynifying and browning of public life. Or even the flat out de-gendering of public life. The very concept of whiteness erodes. I am deeply grateful for this, as I think whiteness is the fiercest and most killing poison the world faces. Second to whiteness is the idea of maleness. White maleness is the sick iconography of our time. The antidote is women in power, and people of color in public positions. 

I don't long for the mainstreaming of women of color and other marginalized groups. But for the marginalization of white men, and especially for the death of the power prejudice of old white cis male leadership, even the "benign" kind of the old white cis male Democrat. And for the emergence of a true pluralism through which the vast diversity of American experience can find power and representation. I fear that this shift, which is inevitable, will be agonizing along the way. Iconographies entrenched for thousands of years don't just stand up and applaud when the paradigm changes. 

Fuckers get psycho. 

Blue

Everybody's sayin' that hell's the hippest way to go, well I don't think so, but I'm gonna take a look around it though...

An emotional mentor of mine, Joni Mitchell, 75 years old today. Back in the winter of 1983, as I experienced a brutal break up with a woman who was 2000 miles away, a friend of mine was astonished to hear that I wasn't very familiar with Mitchell's perfect masterpiece, Blue, released when Mitchell was 28. Of course it hit me like a tidal wave and has stayed with me ever since, although there are times I can't even get close to it, because of what it still does to me. My sister used to listen to it up in her garret of a room in our childhood home, and my father would roll his eyes and be exasperated and say "why does she listen to that gloomy stuff?"

Particularly amusing to me every year is that River is included in shopping mall and restaurant muzak rotations. The song sometimes sends me to the darkest forest, where a lot of the medium sturdy branches come equipped with rope. But then, so does Christmas, a lot of the time, for reasons I continue to try to sort out. 




Also amusing and aggravating is that people have had the gall to cover many of these songs. I have only heard one person get close to a suitable cover, and that's Prince's truncated version of A Case of You. The measure of the total lack of original talent or vision, combined with what must be blinding narcissism that makes accurate self-appraisal impossible, is revealed when lesser lights have the temerity to not only attempt covers of songs like these but also publicly release them. 

ANYway, Mitchell's 75th birthday today has me reflecting a little bit on a range of topics: sentiment, sentimentality, memory, grief, catharsis, self pity, wallowing, romantic love, heartbreak, bitterness, cynicism, armor, "healthy" relationship, codependency versus legit attachment, unskillful avoidance versus skillful avoidance, etc. Just a few things. haha, etc. 

"All romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café." I know I certainly did. I think one of the stabbing daggers of late stage alcoholism for me was romantic disillusionment and cynicism. It may be true that the most acidulous cynics are originally the fiercest idealists. But the dark kernel inside idealism is narcissism that has nothing to do with love of an actual other human being. That I could have been reduced to snarky ash by not getting what I wanted when I wanted it from women I supposedly loved is very revealing. The passage, which became even more stark in sobriety, was from a two dimensional selfish narcissistic romantic love to the realization that love in action actually means something. It's not sentiment alone but is also generosity of spirit, unconditionality to whatever degree is possible, and an open mind. As people often say in Alcoholics Anonymous, "I didn't have partners, I took hostages." 

Having grown in some of those ways, I am still a romantic and still highly sentimental. An object like a hair tie sets off Proust-level cascades of romantic memory. The loml seems amused by this sometimes. We both know I'm EXTRA. Like, extra af. A friend of mine asked recently, why are you Beyoncé always? haha. It helps defuse the intensity of my waves of sentiment to have a bit of a sense of humor about it and to have advisors and friends who remind me I have other places I can put my feet. 

I don't regret being sentimental though. Joni Mitchell wrote the songs on Blue as a way of not dying from the legit pain she was in. I honestly believe this. Those of us who are romantics after all of this know the feeling that romantic loss will kill us. We may be tougher, have more inner resources for safe grieving and self care, but the hatchet to the heart is always a possibility. It could be one of the more profound differences between me and the loml, this fundamental romanticism. Or it may be that I don't always understand the kind of romantic values and attachments the loml experiences. It's funny from the standpoint of astrology that we are both earth, but that her earth sign is the one famous for emotional zero. Or at least, incredible emotional reserve. Is it always this way or almost always in partnerships? One person carries structure, the other person carries sentiment? Probably not always, but often, and I imagine the roles shift as well. I know the loml experiences emotional intensity around our experience, but I don't always get it, because her style is quite different from mine. I think. 

At any rate, when all is said and done, I am egoistically proud to have fallen in love again. After all of this. After the immolation that was the total catastrophe of the breakup with A. (haha, te dramas!). After Joni's Blue having been the soundtrack so many times, either legitimately or wallowingly, yes, I turned wallowing into an adverb, tyvm. 

However, I feel like the great insight that love is real in action and that the call is to be loving without regard to whether one gets what one wants or not, is a true turning point. The bitterness of the disillusionment of romanticism is a logical consequence of being a narcissistic idealist "in love with" an impossible fantasy. The object of that kind of love inevitably proves to be human and disappointing. The plunge into the general snark that one hears these days about romantic love is natural and understandable. But the way out, if one continues through, follows the red thread, and pays attention to one's true nature as a lover, is unconditionality. Growing up and loving a real actual other person, and remembering that, while the sentiment of love is grand, the action of love is the best of all. This is the way the phoenix of the romantic rises from the bitter ash of heartbreak. If the romantic is to arise at all. Not cynical, not drunk. Maybe still boring someone, over a San Pelligrino, in some dark café. 

But the gorgeous wings grow from not staying in the dark. Risking, and risking again, the real experience. The great sad love song singers know this. The daggers bleed us out but not to death. 

Dia de los Muertos

This weekend, remembering a former student of mine who died of a drug overdose this year, remembering Cecil Taylor, remembering my friend JO who was shot and killed, remembering Jamal Kashoggi who met an end impossible to imagine in its horror and suffering at the hands of the most "confused and unskillful" among us ("confused and unskillful" is the interesting euphemism used by some Buddhists to explain evil human behavior-- more on that another time). 

Remembering some of my favorite musicians who died-- Sonny Fortune, Otis Rush, Randy Weston, Aretha Franklin, Tomasz Stańko, Glenn Branca, John Jabo Starks, Buell Neidlinger, Leon Ndugu Chancler, Hugh Masakela, Dolores O'Riordan.

Even though it was only maybe in the mid-50's a couple nights ago, I lit a ritual fire, burned some dried roses I had, wrote a few things on paper, burned the paper. I hardly used the little firepit I bought last winter, but maybe I'll use it more this year. 

Of the above musicians, besides Mr. Cecil Percival Taylor of course, the one who stands out for me today is Sonny Fortune, who had a brief tenure with Miles Davis in his acid funk rock band of 1975, and ended up on both Agharta and Pangaea, as well as Get Up With It and a few tracks from Big Fun. I have always deeply appreciated the way he shaped his solos when he was with Davis. His solo starts at 7:57 here. 

The death of my friend JO came as a huge shock last week, and I'm still mourning. She was Diné, and joins far too many Native women murdered and missing. She was warm, kind, friendly, a great botanist and had, not too long ago, found an interesting job as range specialist for the Hualapai. A reflection of her soul and character: her nephew was about to be sent into foster care due to an abusive home situation, so she adopted him and raised him as her own son. It was a 10th birthday celebration for him when she took him and a friend of his out to a late movie. She went to drop off her nephew's friend and his house was dark and locked. She went with him up onto the porch and, for reasons still unknown, someone from inside the house fired a gun through the door and the bullets struck her. She died on the way to the hospital. 

I hope her nephew finds his way through all of the grief and loss he has suffered at only 10 years old. 

Ofrenda at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, an amazing place to visit for Day of the Dead

The soundtrack to this time of year for me is La Monte Young's Well Tuned Piano, a five hour excursion into endlessly introverted music of depth. The closing of the year. The submersion of the light. Winter darkness. I remain well tuned, myself, to the change in day length, and my own seasonal depression cycle kicks in around this time. It's definitely more moderate with buproprion and mindfulness, but it's real. 




The former student who died of either a heroin or an opioid overdose was always a rebel. One of the kinds of rebels who is in a lot of pain. You can see it in their eyes, you can tell from the way they use their rebellion as a shield, as armor. Human beings who cannot find a way to suffer directly in confrontation with reality die from avoiding suffering, while pretending to be tough and cool. Softening into the natural grief of life is salvation. 

Recently in my recovery meditation group, we've been exploring tonglen meditation.  "Use what seems like poison as medicine," says the teacher. It's a powerful practice for addicts in particular, who have lived for years avoiding suffering and chasing pleasure. Take in all of the suffering of the world, or of just yourself, or of loved ones you know, with each inhalation. Exhale cool, calm liberation and relief of suffering, and compassion. Turn it around and inhale the suffering, and exhale compassion. Instead of self-protecting and romanticizing pain, while avoiding reality and pretending to be tough but actually being a coward, turn to face the truth of suffering directly, and make a useful offering of service in order to alleviate it. Take courage and use the alchemy of love to offer liberation. At first, of course, I found it confusing and counterintuitive, and frightening. I have become closer friends with the practice. 

I get the armoring though. Loss feels like it will destroy us. Even the armoring is a manifestation of our desire for life. But when I go inward, touch the sadness and tenderness I carry, become friendly with death, the world opens more beautifully to me in return.