Kind and Generous

 Natalie Merchant's 57th birthday today. I always dug her voice, and this song. 

Monday. August 14th, 2017

I stumbled on some searing memories last night while hunting through a huge folder of cell phone camera pics stretching from April 2017 through February 2018 (after which I lost the camera in the wilds near Alamos, Sonora). It was helpful to encounter what was reality for a time, because it reminded me of Marsha Linehan's radical validation phrase: you feel this way because it IS this way. Yes, these things happened, they were true for you, you meant every word you said, you felt everything you thought you felt, you wanted what you wanted. I had been interrogating myself along gaslighting lines recently (what is wrong with you? why can't you just be normal, forget it, move on. Forget it, Peter, it's Chinatown. Just get over it, etc.) Remembering the plain reality is salutary, because it puts in perspective my continuing experience. It happened, it was real, it was profoundly important, and, instead of being exasperated by my process, it helps the process make sense. It is not me being stuck, but actually fucking honoring an amazing and unforgettable experience. 

We are in such a hurry these days. I get it, since it's not ideal to be wearing a flaming shirt. 

“The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.”

(TS Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets)

That people are able to make space for an experience of the flaming shirt, as transient as that is sometimes, and honor the truth of it going forward, is something close to a miracle.  

It's windy and in the low 50's outside, clear blue skies and fresh air. If the wind doesn't kick up more fires, the crystalline clarity of autumn in LA will continue. I vaguely wondered this morning if I should fire up the wall heater, Phoenix boy that I have been. Instead, I put a sweatshirt on. Many of my friends around the country have either had snow or are supposed to get snow this week. Time turns.