A series of taxing days, requiring total openness to circumstance and the schedules of both my sister and my brother, and an opportunity to reflect on a great many aspects of life, which reflection is still ongoing. My sister has been in the arduous process of applying for a refinancing of her mortgage, an arrangement that will create much needed financial stability for her, and set her up in more of a retirement situation, rather than having to find freelance work or otherwise scramble. At first, it sounded like the appraisal was going to be a simple matter, but she suddenly learned that, in spite of the global pandemic and all, the appraiser was going to arrive on Monday, and would be inspecting the entire property. This led to severe anxiety and even panic on her part, since her financial stability rests on the appraisal reaching a certain dollar amount, and in her own estimation, the property was a "fucking disaster zone." For a couple of days, I was in reassurance mode. Her rage seemed bottomless at times, and she finally started expressing anger at her dead husband, for dying, for leaving her with "this entire fucking mess," and for not being there to help her sort it all out. Then, the day before yesterday, we went into her dead husband's room, where she had not dared to venture since he died, and set about completely clearing it out. The experience helped me understand a phenomenon I had heard about in the past, but didn't really get until now: how, sometimes, people just leave a dead person's room exactly as it was when they were alive, and never even change or move anything. I removed more than a dozen extra large trash bags of clothing, belts, shoes, boots, hats, and clutter. As I did so, my sister alternated between rage and sobbing. A repeated refrain was that he had intended to take care of this, or that, or some other thing, but just hadn't gotten around to it. It was astonishing and odd, clearing away the personal possessions of a dead man, most of which went directly to the trash, even the most tenderly sentimental and personal of items. Trash. Personally, I would have donated all of the clothing and many other items to a Goodwill or whatever, but between the pandemic and my sister's desire to just get rid of all of it, it went to the dumpster she has on her property. The room was completely transformed in very short order, which I could tell was a huge relief for her. Her dead husband was a very "large" person, that is, he had a gigantic footprint on their property, including his office and shop and outdoor storage for his HVAC business. But at least we were able to almost entirely eliminate his presence from her house. The rest will take a few days. Yesterday, we tackled hours of outdoor labors to try to make her deck, pool deck, yard and garage look more presentable. Yet again, every problem or mess presented as something her dead husband was "going to take care of but never got around to." After about five hours, the place looked a lot better. But, of course, everything was a reminder of him, and it was a difficult day, again, for her. My approach was to just do whatever I was told with no questions or suggestions. By the time we were done, I could tell she felt better. I doubt that everything we did will have any impact on the appraisal whatsoever, but that, of course, was not the real purpose. I crashed out for a while, feeling like I had been in a radioactive zone of rage and sorrow for two days, totally understandable but challenging for empathetic me, and then I packed up and drove down to my brother's and parents' in Allentown. My brother has been doing certain home care things for my father since January 25th, every night and a few times a day. There are home healthcare workers who come in from 8:30 to 5:30, six days a week, and from 1:30 to 5:30 on Sundays, but there's a series of tasks that have to be done at bed time to put my father to bed, and then sometimes some other things during the day, as well as a getting up ritual on Sundays, etc. There's also a baby monitor that's on all night, since sometimes my father tries to get up in the middle of the night or has other issues, like getting his foot stuck in the hospital bed rails or whatever. So I am going to take over for about 10 days while my brother gets a break, after 90 continuous days and nights of being on call. The bedtime job involves disrobing my father, emptying his catheter bag, removing his diaper, using rubbing alcohol on his penis and genital area due to the catheter, applying zinc oxide to his genital region to prevent diaper rash, applying lidocaine to the tip of his penis because the catheter is annoying, putting a new diaper on, and positioning him appropriately in his hospital bed. I watched and took notes last night, and will try it on my own with my brother's supervision, before he leaves. My father is too stubborn to allow the use the Hoyer lift that the home hospice program provided, so there's a lot of lifting and positioning. He's not particularly heavy, but he is tall so I guess my main worry is that I won't move him around properly. It's also surreal to do catheter care for one's own father, and he's not always pleasant or in the greatest mood, so I expect he'll snap at me, etc. This has been a recurring theme: providing care for people who are angry and frustrated and can take that out on the person who is showing up to help. It's been challenging for me to set boundaries gently but also let a lot of things go, with compassion. If I were in either my sister's shoes, or my father's, I'd be irritable and probably mean, also, although I tend to stuff my crankiness and continue to be "nice" to people, even when I am annoyed. Being around my sister has been like seeing my own tendencies toward bitching, negativity, and catastrophizing, externalized. It's been a powerful instruction in letting go of victim mentality, reducing the habitual angry or irritated response to minor annoyances, and generally just facing life in a more flexible, positive, and sanguine way. It's weird how one habitually lives and is unconscious of one's own tendencies to be irritated or annoyed or angry a lot of the time, but how unpleasant and anxiety-provoking it is to be around the anger and irritability of someone else, and how it can help make one's own habits a lot more clear. My sister also goes into a helpless state easily and often, in spite of thinking of herself as "strong and independent." Physically, she has beaten the shit out of her body for decades, and is disabled. She would definitely qualify for disability benefits, but is far too proud to admit that she is disabled, and would never apply. She shows her strength and independence as a myth in this way, among many others. For example, the smallest technical difficulties are a complete mystery to her, and she doesn't pursue any kind of solution on her own. Her dead husband was obsessed with strange gadgets, and so she now lives in a world full of solutions to problems that he came up with that are sort of complicated and patched together. She can't fix these things on her own, because he left her no instructions, and she doesn't follow instructions anyway. For example, a lamp in her office has a broken switch. Instead of getting the lamp repaired, her dead husband bought a remote switch that you plug the lamp into. She tried to move the extension cord that the remote switch is plugged into and "the lamp wouldn't work." It turned out she had plugged the lamp into the extension cord, not the remote switch. But she was unable to troubleshoot even that extremely simple situation, move the lamp's plug to the gadget, and be able to turn the light on and off. Her entire physical world is rigged in similar ways, and I'm sure "unsolvable" problems will continue to pile up on her, because she lacks any resilience or ability to be patient and do research. I told her a few times that everything has a user's manual on the internet, but she entirely lacks the skill of accessing information and translating it to a solution. She has relied on a cleaning service for more than a decade and so does not know how to use her own vacuum cleaner, let alone have the physical strength to do the vacuuming. She will not seek physical therapy or a remedy for her disabilities. She also stubbornly refuses any kind of emotional or spiritual help. In these ways, her "strength and independence" creates problems for others (myself, currently) who have to show up for her chaotic emotional life and physical helplessness. For example, my parents' hospice program provides for a counseling social worker to visit (or, with social distancing, call) and talk with them. He offered his services to my sister, so she might have someone to talk with about how she feels and what she is going through. My mother, afraid to broach the subject with my sister (which tells you something), asked me if I would ask her if she was open to talking with this counselor. I usually refuse to engage in this stupid family system triangulation, but this time it seemed simpler to just go with it. I mentioned it, and, of course, the mere mention of talking with a counselor set my sister off on a cascade of irritated and defensive resistance, including statements like "talking to counselors does no good. I'm always smarter than they are and I can't see the value in that. What's there to talk about? I'm sad all the time and that's that, talking about it would be a waste of time," etc. If she were able to contain her contempt to simply her own perspective, it would feel safer. However, she judges anyone who uses counseling services as weak, stupid, and foolish. Once again, the self image of "strong and independent" is revealed as a total sham, a fantasy, extremely brittle and miserable. Her brittle egotism doesn't even pause to consider that the person to whom she is ranting might find great value in talking with a counselor. She is not capable of the simple switch to speaking for herself while maintaining space and respect for others. I have to work consciously to let go of my own sense of being offended by her rants, when they are related to things I personally value. Meanwhile, in spite of being a laryngeal cancer survivor and having experienced kidney failure, and having an infarcted spleen, etc., she continues to try to quit smoking and drinking without success. She sees not being able to smoke or drink as a terrible deprivation, and that of course makes it even more difficult for her. Another example of her contempt for how other people try to find happiness comes out in barely concealed ways around my sobriety. "If you had just lostyour husband and were dealing with all of this stupid fucking shit beleive me, you'd be drinking again," she said the other night, while drunk and miserable, and I didn't argue. What would the point be? Her egotism and suffering means her own misery and her won habitual ways of trying, and failing, to cope are simply the only imaginable ways. The suffering is tremendous, and my main work is to detach myself with love, and remember that it is her suffering caused by her choices, and that I am separate from it. Meanwhile, observing my brother get my father up this morning and get him dressed, it occurs to me again how much I take for granted. For my father to get out of bed, it takes a lot of assistance. It takes several minutes for him to traverse the 15 feet or so from the bedroom to the bathroom, put his dentures in, and then to the dining room for breakfast, about five inches at a time. Then, another elaborate process about an hour later back to the bedroom, and the incredibly laborious series of maneuvers to get him in clothes. One rarely thinks about how complex the simple task of putting on a shirt, pants, and shoes is, until one watches someone else try to dress another person who really can't help much. The elaborate process is quite arduous. I asked my brother why it is done every day, and it turns out it is more for psychological and emotional reasons, as apparently just staying in a robe or pajamas all day is connected to severely disabled people feeling more depressed. I hadn't even thought of that. In the midst of all of these things, I continue to answer reviewer comments on the species distribution article. I have given up looking for a job at the moment, but should start again. Probably listings are starting again, with people thinking a little bit into the future. It's been devilishly difficult to be motivated. I might be teaching online in the fall, as I expect ASU to cancel in person classes until January 2021. But, as with everything right now, who knows? One nice thing about being down here in Allentown is it's a few weeks ahead of my sister's place, spring-wise. Here's a flowering cherry tree.
My sister went across the street to visit with her motel and restaurant owning friends, and got into some vodka, and was 90 minutes late for dinner. I had already gotten into bed, figuring she would just go to her house when she got back. In her drunken state, she was ranting and rambling and very unpleasant to be around. I realized also that my misophonia has been an issue with her, as she is a very loud chewer, talks with her mouth full, makes a lot of smacking noises when she eats, and so on. It's probably just the normal level of eating sounds, but for me it's like nails on a chalkboard. I hadn't really consciously realized how unpleasant it is until last night, when I kept her company as she took an hour to drunkenly eat her dinner and talk too much. The other thing I only just consciously realized is that her preference for a sit down dinner at the table every night is wearing on me. It's not really my style. When I live alone, I usually eat standing up, scrolling on my phone. The direct human interaction over food is not a high value of mine. The other things that are unpleasant and/or annoying about her include her complete helplessness with technology, her combination of mild disabilities with no efforts to take better care of herself, her continuing to smoke in spite of being a laryngeal cancer survivor, her irascible, irritable, put upon victim attitude, and her know-it-all difficulties listening to anything I say. Haha. I think that about covers it. Re: technology, she is refinancing her house and the bank wanted her to text a photograph of the front and back of her driver's license, and she had no idea how to do this. On the one hand, it's good for me to have a chance to be useful, but I wrestle with a lot of judgment around people who are helpless with these things. It's funny for me to encounter that feeling of superiority. I realize she is still awash with grief, and her ways of dealing with it include a lot of irritability. I'm not judging her as much as just observing, and writing it down. I think it's interesting that I see her for like an hour or two every day and it's just rough for me. I feel like I have to brace myself, and then I feel relieved and like I have to decompress when she leaves. I'm such an empathetic person that I can physically feel all of her many emotions in the air, when we are having dinner. I've started the project of selling a bunch of her dead husband's electronics on eBay. I've also gotten back into responding to reviewer comments, looking for work, working out, and attempting to take care of myself. Oh yeah, meditating, also. Rising into the next best thing to do often feels like an intense exertion, but lately I've been able to tenaciously push through. "What's the last thing you want to do? Do that first," has become a war cry. Weird and difficult times.
"The existential drama is a chronic low level tragedy that no one even notices- like Willy Loman although not even worth a play- maybe one of those steely cold and aimless short stories in the New Yorker about apathetic, anomic rich white people cheating on each other with other apathetic anomic white people and not even really caring much when it's discovered. You can live your own story as best as you are able, or you can play a role in someone else's, and put most of your energy into being the person in their story that they wish they were living. When we make a deal to be the character in someone else's story that makes their (fake) life come true, we might as well go jump off a bridge. Living your own story whether it "makes other people happy" or not (which we can't fucking do anyway no matter how hard we try) is painful because it means saying fuck you to the world to the degree that the world tries to force you to exist for others and their fantasies and their ideas of what their lives ought to be like. The latter, being the person someone else needs you to be for their life to look like what they think it should, is the weakest sauce there is, however, and the saddest part of all is that the person for whom you are playing the role in order for their story to be true ultimately does not care about you in the least. You are merely a means to the end of them living what looks like the life they think they should live. You are only useful to the degree that you help them look good to their family and friends, and most of all, to themselves- to the degree that you are helping them live the life they think they should be living. To the degree that you are their good wife, good husband, happy householder, reliable bread winner, to the degree that you keep yourself out of sight at any and all times when revealing anything authentic about yourself would scratch that look good. Everyone is telling a story with you in it. Even if you are one of their main characters, if you are just a fucking plot device, well, that's misery and loneliness." I wrote that and posted it as a Facebook status last year on this date. Not sure if it originally came from this blog, or if I cross posted it here. Don't feel like going back to look. It's amusing to me that I sometimes post this heavy shit on Facebook. I still do this. The ensuing conversation last year was pretty good. Not one man said a word, which is interesting. All of the people who replied were women, all of whom aware to some degree or other of having played the role, or having asked others to. Things have been interesting, since my "intentionally single and unavailable" epiphany. I have several occasions a day to notice when I am trying to get the attention of women, or when I am motivated to interact with a woman in a flirtatious way. I'm in that phase of awareness where my old patterns are glaringly obvious to me. It has also become more apparent to me how much I value the friendships I have with women, with no expectation of a sexual or romantic connection. I think, like Dante, I am led by "the feminine" toward some of the best things (for him, it was heaven, but I wouldn't go that far). Men disappoint me regularly, except for maybe two or three. It snowed here last night and there was a quarter inch brightening everything up at sunrise, all that shining winter, in early spring. It has melted off now. I feel weepy and ruined today, and have no idea why. Just one of what I have recognized will be, for however long, a "bad day." Learning to accept that I have good days and bad days, or good stretches and bad stretches, and to roll with it. To be kind to myself, leave room for emotion, not try to shoehorn the feelings into a narrative. I recall that, three years ago, I had in mind a little mantra that seemed to have been delivered to me from the cosmos, which was "the story that it is not a story is not a story." It resonated at the time because I was telling all sorts of stories about the ex and her new beau. It helped me to ease off of that and to just feel my feelings and create a little bit of space. It's feeling useful again these days. The story that it is not a story is not a story.
Sixteen years sober came and went, April 11th. It's been a wild ride, for sure. I figure if the past three years haven't induced a relapse, my recovery today is pretty strong. That's a good realization. Submitted the dissertation to ProQuest this morning, and filed the copyright request through them also. Checked my bank balance after days of anxious avoidance and things are okay. I still haven't gotten my government bribe, and every penny of that is going toward the article processing charges for Ecology and Evolution, because of their mandatory open access publishing system. I'll tell you what, it is a serious impingement on my motivation to address the reviewer comments on an article, that, when it is accepted, will cost me $1700. Before I started to publish, I had no idea that even highly reputable, high impact journals are charging authors to publish these days, if they have a mandatory open access policy. Well, my committee chair co-author is pitching in some funds toward that, but has not specified how much. Every time I sit down to work on returning that manuscript, I recall the financial hit in a time of total financial shut down, and stall out. It just seems like the biggest rip off. If I had a job in the fall, it would be different, of course. And, of course, getting a job also hinges on publishing. Catch-22. Meanwhile, I slogged my way through revisions on another article and submitted it to the journal Taxon. There are no article processing charges for that journal, since I am a member of the International Association of Plant Taxonomists, but there is a color figure charge of about $650. It seems so retro that they charge authors for color figures. The whole publishing system just seems like total shit to me. And they know they have authors in a tough spot, since publishing is absolutely necessary for employment. Anyway the deal has me quite discouraged and having a difficult time summoning much motivation. And revisions and responding to reviewer comments takes a lot of energy for me, for sure. I also realized over the weekend that the job search involving more than a dozen rejections (or just no response, which I find irritating) has me flat out demotivated as well. I kept beating myself up for procrastinating on checking job boards and so on, as well as getting going on an application for a postdoc, but this morning I was like, hey, wait a second buddy, *anyone* would be a little discouraged by the total lack of traction. Just go easy on yourself. And, re: the postdoc: it's a stretch, a highly competitive program, and I am looking at stretching and stretching and stretching my own research project idea to fit their program in the first place. I used to have all this fire for bullshit and re-framing things to fit opportunities, but after like 12 times doing that and being rejected anyway, I am feeling a combination of resignation and resentment. Not a helpful place from which to get all optimistic and sell myself. My sister continues to pose a variety of emotional challenges for me, mostly around not taking on her moods. She reminds me on a daily basis how empathic I am. On a practical level, I agreed to take on the project of loosely appraising and selling her dead husband's old musical and stereo equipment and some other items, creating an account on eBay. This will give me a dumbass thing to do to while away the time I am resisting both article work and job search. It also definitely feeds the need I have to be useful, which I am also meeting by cleaning her house once a week and cooking dinner most nights. In matters of the heart, a dumb meme someone posted on Instagram ended up hitting me hard, and making me think, and led to a series of realizations and resolutions. To wit:
At first I just chuckled and moved on, but then I started thinking about it. I suddenly got this very fierce and fiery feeling of "oh fucking hell no!" in my gut. I want to be free and clear of imaginationships. No situationships. And I don't want haunted love, as beautiful as the Tal Wilkenfeld song is. I want to be clean, clear, single and have integrity. I want to be single *with intention*, and contain myself, so to speak. I also especially do not want any narratives about exes. The past is past, is dead, there is no more past. Those people do not even exist anymore, as unforgettable as the experiences will always be (or at leas until I don;t recall anything, and then, talk about the past being dead, right?). No past, no future. Heart, be here now, kind of thing.
There are many opportunities via social media especially to feel pursued, or to pursue, even if half-assedly and vaguely. A couple women in the "real world" are interested in a relationship, or at least, in a situationship if not an imaginationship. And I realized with some force that I am absolutely fucking sick and tired of the grey areas. Not as a result of the behavior of women I know, who recently have much stronger boundaries than I do, but in my own bloody and torn up heart and imagination. I have kept things vague in some cases because I have felt unavailable and bleeding out, still. I think some women have (wisely, no doubt) kept things vague, in that realm of possibly maybe, sensing that I'm a risky venture at best these days. The reality right now, today, is that I have a few friendships with smart, compassionate, inspiring, grown up women, and those friendships are very valuable to me, and in some, there has been an undercurrent of sexual tension, or flare ups of interest followed by distance. I get why all of these dynamics would exist in each case, for the same or different reasons, depending, but I suddenly felt this intense desire to just be fucking clear, period. Nothing. No anything. No hang ups, no situationships, no imaginationships, no maybe, no what if, nothing, no goddamned thing. No thing. I am single and unavailable. It's odd but it is one of the very few times in my life that I have consciously realized that I want to cut off all lines of projection, hope, "maybe," possibility, playing flirty games, being open to what might happen, and just take some time to be completely, intentionally, decisively, 100% single and unavailable. Closed for business. It feels like a great time to do this, since of course we're all socially distancing due to the pandemic anyway. I'm especially eager to be in an actually lived, manifested, creative, mutually supportive, PHYSICAL, daily or at least real partnership with the right woman, when that is even possible. And until then, I want to honor the friendships I've developed with women but at the same time clear my psychic, astral, and heart space. Marie Kondo of the heart. Working on doing this with kindness, self compassion. Having that realization also made me realize, by contrast, how muddy, hopeful, unconscious, and vague my state has been for a long time. My boundaries have been bad, my heart mashed to bits, blood everywhere, lots of unconscious hopes and fears, a lot of precarious energy. There have been a very few clear, kind, supportive moments I have let myself have. I have cherished those but realized I have been assuming they were ephemeral, that I was somehow bound to be trapped in the haunted and bloody uncertainty zone. A friend of mine helped me realize, a couple months ago, that things can be safe, nurturing, supportive, reliable, kind, and clear, and that I don't have to roll in broken glass at all times. It has taken a couple of months to realize the degree to which my own bad boundaries have really fucked me, and fucked me again, and how I simply want to be clear, clean, self contained, mostly free, and stand in integrity. How odd that it has taken a long time to identify what I want. I guess it's typical. I have to remind myself regularly that I am still in early relationship recovery, really, only having started in earnest about three years ago, and following a decidedly non-linear path since then. It's also true that wanting this clarity and integrity means dying completely to some hopes and wishes that I've secretly cherished. Not only in particular ways, but also in lifelong, general ways. That a lover would solve my problems. That my loneliness can only be healed by a woman. That my happiness is contingent on the behavior of my beloved. That my life is complete within a partnership. Intentionally standing in single unavailability means that all of that gets discarded. It's a painful letting go, for sure. Even when I realize nothing is permanent, and that standing fiercely in single unavailability shall pass, it's still painful letting go of a lifetime of expectations, especially in the context of feeling like they "could have" been met, but were unable to be met. But no, no fucking could have; if could have, then would be, and would be real and reliable, and is not; so could not have. Period. Could have can go fuck itself. Kindly. I still love fiercely, but I'm learning to accept that, with absolutely zero expectations. Part of what is making these gears tumble into place is accepting how I feel. Trying to change how I feel meant also trying to manipulate or hoping to manipulate the outside world. Accepting how I feel leads to letting go of all hope. And that's the ticket.
I had gotten distracted enough over the past month (I've been back east for about a month, with all this family stuff), that I had stopped certain meditation and self work over this time. Yet again, it has given me a chance to encounter just my naked, raw self, with no attempts to moderate or soften or adjust or "work with" my authentic emotional life. I think these periods of zero emotional and spiritual discipline or practice end up being very important for me, because, for one thing, I end up just having whatever feelings I have, whenever I have them, and I get a chance to realize more authentically where I'm at. There's a need to work with my emotional life, though. I mean, it's great to let it play itself out in its raw and naked and fierce ways. But it's also necessary to show up for it with some skills. I am getting to a place where I don't value one over the other, that is, I don't value the cathartic ferocity of my raw emotional life more than the "recollection in tranquility" of a meditative and moderated life, nor do I value the moderated reality more than the wildebeest realities. I think this weird diptych has been huge in my life, with long stretches of time feeling ugly, fierce, on fire and getting frankly exhausted by the drama, and then long stretches of time "working" on meditation, moderation, trying to practice compassion, understanding, loving kindness. My wildness judges the practice as some fake motherfucking bullshit, and my tender heart judges my wildness as some toxic negativity and only worthy of being "processed." It's good to be in a place in life where the two are finding ways to be friends. The either/or space is becoming more both/and, and it feels more energetic somehow. It's one interpretation of the Strength card in the tarot, represented here in Amrit Brar's rendition.
As much as I rebel or over-romanticize (two sides of one coin), the middle path is golden. For example, I offered to vacuum and mop the floors in my sister's house this past Saturday, and, without realizing it, I had become mildly ego attached to "what a good person" this made me. When I went over there, and started vacuuming, my sister for some reason had her anxiety go through the roof and responded by having to hover and supervise my work. That really made it apparent how ego invested I was in being a savior for her, as I felt my hackles go up. I kept my rebellious and defensive responses to myself however, and then it became apparent in a meta way that the *real act of service* was in fact just letting her boss me around. This made me chuckle inside. Like, clean floors come and go, but having a person around after one's husband has died who you can get anxious about and boss around? Priceless. This is an example of the middle way. The awareness arising when one can feel those feelings but at the same time step back just enough to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. Anyway, I miss spring. I miss people. I am enjoying some friendships with some others that have resulted from stepping back from social media and writing longer emails. I am enjoying isolation. For the most part. But my feelings in general are fucking fierce right now, whether fond, ferociously angry, sorrowful, you name it. And I'm just letting all of them flow like that gorgeous Ten Mile River outside. Here's a cactus flower picture, herald of spring in my beloved, forever distant, Sonoran.
