A walk in beauty

It's a miracle that I have put together 13 years of continuous sobriety since April 11, 2004. I honestly believe it is a miracle in the old classic sense of being a thing that occurs contrary to nature. Because I know that it is my nature to drink. Drinking and drugging is what I do. It is my nature to suffer from a mental obsession combined with the phenomenon of craving. I cannot stay stopped on my own-- those of you who are not addicts do not know what that means, really. You think I have trouble stopping or it's difficult or I lack will power or any of a thousand other formulations that make perfect sense from the perspective of the rational mind and the world of conscious choice. But my experience was that I could not stop. Was not able to. Did not have the capacity to. That is the mental obsession. 

Then, after I would take the first drink, which I always eventually did, I could not control what would happen. I might have two more and that would be that, although I would probably be cranky. More often, I would give in to the craving and all the brakes would be off. I cannot tell you how many times I said to myself, "Tonight, you are only having two drinks, max." And at 2 a.m. I'd be into my 12th beer and 4th shot of Wild Turkey, yet again. Countless times this happened, no mater what the consequences were. That is the phenomenon of craving. Alcohol crosses my blood brain barrier and I want more. There has to be more. There is never, ever enough-- there's only oblivion. Blacking out. Passing out. 

This combination is the outward manifestation of alcoholism (and all addiction, in my opinion, although some alcoholics resist the idea that all addiction is essentially the same and hold to the idea that alcoholism is special somehow). The ground of alcoholism however is neither mental nor physical, but spiritual. It is a spiritual sickness with a spiritual reprieve. 

This doesn't sit well with a lot of people, since we are all grown up now and don't need God anymore. We've put away superstition, we've discovered the ability of our scientific thinking and our systematic insight into the material world to solve all problems, address all mysteries, cast away the fog of vague mysticism and childish belief in the invisible. 

I get that. 

I also know without a doubt that I am sober because I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. After I fully conceded to my innermost self that I was alcoholic, and came to believe that there was some power actually assisting me in the process of relieving the mental obsession to drink, I have had the opportunity to stay on the path of improving conscious contact with that power. This is how I have shown up for 13 years, one day at a time. Lately, one hour or even minute at a time, although I have had absolutely no desire to drink, in spite of how massive the changes in my life have been. 

In this context, I might be interested in trying to find words to explain what my beliefs are, someday-- but it is truly irrelevant what my beliefs are, beyond their ability to be helpful to someone else, possibly. Beliefs are forms of thought. Consequently, they reside within the tiny human world that I inhabit with my thought life. Like all thoughts, beliefs are delusional and irrelevant to reality. At first, all I had was belief that there was a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity. But living sober goes infinitely beyond that initial willingness to believe. It goes to a living experience. 

Anyway, I try not to get my mind in gear as the tool to best figure out what is or isn't. I have gradually learned, sometimes painfully, that my mind is not to be trusted. I have a lot more consciousness available to me to get to the essential rightness of reality than just my mind. The sense of the ground I stand on truly is felt much more strongly when I quiet my mind and allow myself to walk into something bigger. I don't have to figure that out, but I need that experience like air and water. 

Speaking of which, in celebration of lucky 13 years of extra life that I have been blessed with, here's a version of a closing prayer from the Navajo Blessing Way:

Walking in Beauty: Closing Prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again

Hózhóogo naasháa doo, Shitsijí’ hózhóogo naasháa doo, Shikéédéé hózhóogo naasháa doo, Shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo, T’áá altso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo, Hózhó náhásdlíí’, Hózhó náhásdlíí’
Hózhó náhásdlíí’, Hózhó náhásdlíí’

Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.

In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful…

Linguistic Note: The word “Hozho”  in  Dine’  (roughly translated) Concept of Balance and Beauty. Consideration of the nature of the universe, the world, and man, and the nature of time and space, creation, growth, motion, order, control, and the life cycle includes all these other Navajo concepts expressed in terms quite impossible to translate into English.   Some Navajos might prefer the term: “Nizhoni” meaning  ‘just beauty.”

 

Bill W, St. Francis, Bodhichitta and tonglen meditation

I'm at that point in When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön where she starts talking about tonglen meditation as a way of awakening bodhichitta. Basically, tonglen meditation is breathing in pain, suffering, anger, attachment, darkness and alienation on the in-breath, then exhaling pleasure, wellness, love, non-attachment, light, connection, relief and whatever other opposite on the liberation side seems appropriate. Bodhichitta is basically the awakened mind that strives for empathy and compassion for all sentient beings.

So the practice is specifically designed to go against our automatic impulse, which is to get as far away from pain as possible, as well as to take in as much relief and light as possible. Instead, in a context of breathing meditation, you go toward the heart of the pain and send out as much compassion and relief as possible.

The spiritual framework reminds me again of the 4th step prayer: "This is a sick person like myself. How can I be helpful to this person? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done." It also reminds me of the general framework of step 4, which is to make direct contact with what ails us and is eating our lunch and taking up space in our emotional and spiritual landscape, then begin to find ourselves in whatever those stories are, and really make contact with our role and our reality, the way in which we are pushing our own agency out of the picture. We take in our ailments and send out the spirit of forgiveness or at least a willingness to forgive or at least a recognition that we were cause in the matter. Owning and releasing.

It also reminds me of the opening opposites of the so-called St. Francis or 11th step prayer. "God, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred I may bring love, where there is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, where there is discord I may bring harmony; error, truth; doubt, faith; where there is despair I may bring hope; shadows, light; sadness, joy." To be effective with these apparent opposites means knowing the first of each pair very intimately. Going out to encounter each one of those aspects of our experience in order to show up with something different means being present and bearing witness. While the duality might be an illusion, the fact is that it sure as fuck feels real indeed. So we might as well wade right in and find some ways to bring wellness to ourselves and others.

In the midst of having been wronged, especially, how odd it is to practice letting go of the desire for retribution, validation and acknowledgement. I'm aware of the way my mind sends out barbed and poisoned arrows toward those I feel have wronged me. Anger and resentment put me in a place of wanting justice, wanting revenge and retribution. One of the forms that takes is wishing actual harm on those who have harmed me. This is the gut level direction I tend to go-- and it is on the edge of insanity, let alone very slippery territory, as those I wish would come to harm usually have no idea I am wishing that, and when they do, they just get confirmation that I'm ill and that they are dominating me. This is the self-poisoning way we absolutely give away our power. Putting aside the desire for the suffering of others who have wronged us is one definition of forgiveness-- that can be as far as we ever get. Just not wishing people ill, shooting out those little poison darts of fantasies of suffering and pain.

Tonglen-- sending out relief and joy and wellness and liberation; breathing in misery and sorrow and sickness and imprisonment-- is a way to start letting it all go. Because otherwise we are shackled to those we feel have wronged us. It feels like we will never get any breathing room at all. In our repeated or constant search for retribution and acknowledgement, both of which will never arrive in any satisfying way, we put ourselves in a position of constant struggle. Our entire story is precarious and contingent on what happens outside of us, on what happens to other people and on what was done to us-- not only are we shackled to these sick people but we are also imprisoned by what happened, by the past, by how we suffered and how we were victimized. So this hope for retribution, validation and acknowledgement is hung up on the idea that somehow it would free us from pain, but instead it has the opposite effect. We stay stuck in misery and the people who wronged us go on their merry way, not giving a shit.

Breathing in my own misery, thereby going to meet it in person and without defense, and then breathing out freedom, wellness, peace and ease and loving kindness, also begins a process where I am not alone in my suffering. I am being kind enough to take my own suffering seriously, but then to widen the circle to include all those who have been rejected, abandoned, hurt, who feel lonely, enraged, ignored and fucked over. I begin to awaken that bodhichitta mind and realize that I am just a small part of all of the suffering that is always going on, that people are always working with in one way or another, and that I may actually be able to be a channel of whatever seems to be the opposite of whatever pain I am in. If I can even get a few glimpses of this alchemy a day, that's significant progress in emerging from the morass of misery that I could otherwise allow to imprison, poison and annihilate me, moment to moment.

Serpentine

Cold early morning in Santa Barbara.

The California Botanical Society Graduate Student Symposium yesterday was great. It is very touching somehow that our species can generate such a profound focus on understanding plants. The attachment to animals is more immediately understandable, as they seem somehow more like us and we can maybe be more fascinated or entertained by animals. But our attachment to plants is mysterious and even more touching somehow. Exactly how we identify with and resonate with plants says something about parts of ourselves that grow beautifully in silence, that endure or thrive where rooted, that create beauty in the world without trying too hard and as a natural extension of who we are.

The species that I am studying in Baja California borders on fitting the definition of an extremophile- growing in pure exposed serpentine rock, with high temperatures to 120 degrees and lows to near 40, in saline environments where hurricanes blow through regularly, with low precipitation and extremely high UV radiation.

A series of photographs of Cochemiea halei, my study species, on Isla Magdalena and Isla Santa margarita in Bahía Magdalena, Baja California Sur

I can see more clearly in my current context why I am so magnetically attracted to this taxon and how it manages not only to survive but thrive in its bizarre and forbidding environment. In particular, plants that grow in pure serpentine rock are pretty amazing. 

On another note: Why hotel and motel managers insist on installing families with small children who insist on behaving like small children-- screaming, crying, talking at 5 am, banging things around-- always in the room adjacent to mine is beyond me. If they can't find some crazy little kids to put near me, they can almost always rustle up people who snore all night like warthogs or who have sex so loudly it's a bad parody. Or who cannot hear the television unless it is turned up to the level just below sound cannon. 

Fortunately the gods have provided me with very effective ear plugs. 

Memory and the Underworld

It's like encountering shades, ghosts, spirits, the way strong memories of events emerge. Nothing and no one is actually there (except your mind, of course)-- and yet sometimes these encounters are palpable. If unbidden or nostalgic, extremely painful at times, and definitely with a cascading and triggering effect.

In this way a pleasant getaway to Santa Barbara for a botany conference can turn into a whole series of grief-triggering memories. You are in places or traveling through places that you used to travel through with someone else, but the other person is no longer alive in your life, not in your time.

I passed a strangely sentimental spot where the ex and I had stopped along I-10 on the way back to Phoenix after our first trip to Los Angeles in October of 2011 and I had a strange fantasy: if I could pull off the road I could go back in time and I would be able to tell myself-- you know, about 6 years from now, you'll be passing here feeling intense sorrow because this partnership will be over, against your will. Do you still want to do this? Resoundingly, my 2011 self told me of course, of course, no question. In our rage at someone who takes away something valuable to us, we think of what it would have been like never to have known them. But my reality is always that I would dive right back in again, with a whole heart and no reservations, if given the choice to "go back" and do it over, which of course we do not have.

I also briefly went through Joshua Tree National Park, but all campgrounds were full. Triggering memories of the last time I was able to get there, Thanksgiving 2015, with the ex and her son. One of our family holiday trips. We had Thanksgiving dinner at the Denny's in Twentynine Palms, because nothing else was open. The boy and I made up a little song called "Restaurant Manners."

On the road to other resonances, over and over again. California travels with the ex were good times, without exception. When I moved out of the house, I left a note that said "I will miss you at every turn," and it often feels like this has been absolutely the case. I had thought we were going to adventure together until my heart stopped. You'll have to forgive me if you're tired of hearing about it.

Astrology talks about Jupiter being square (90 degrees separated in reference to one's birth chart) right now from the Moon/Pluto conjunction.

"Beginning of December 2016 until mid-August 2017: This is usually a very favorable influence. It gives your emotions a great deal of power, so that you feel them much more emphatically and are more in touch with them. At the same time you want to establish empathetic relationships with others, to hear their problems, to help out and play a protective role toward them if possible. This influence may make you feel very sentimental about and attached to your surroundings and to familiar objects. Your past is very important to you now, and if there are events in your past that you find uncomfortable, they are likely to come up. There is often a need to confront the unconscious areas of the psyche during this time, but you should regard this as an opportunity to be healed of the wounds made by these energies from the past."

So my unrelenting nostalgia and sentimentality is because of Jupiter. I should have known. 

There are so many other aspects of these travels through the underworld than simply the obsession with this indigestible breakup. I realize the entries here have reflected the obsessive nature of my thoughts in regard to the ex. I hereby declare a moratorium and make the commitment to write entirely about other things for a week or two. 

Like impermanence. Before sleep last night I read Pema's chapter in When Things Fall Apart titled Curious About Existence. 

"Impermanence is the goodness of reality. Just as the four seasons are continuously in flux...in the same way, everything is constantly evolving. Impermanence is the essence of everything...People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain...Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality."

This reminds me of William Blake's 

“Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness/ Which is the swiftest of all things: all were eternal torment.”

 So much so that I had a very strange moment in the motel parking lot at 4:45 am, while brewing up some coffee with my Jet Boil camping stove. After you heat the water and add 4-6 scoops of coffee, you stir it in and then place the French press lightly on top and wait. For the best coffee, waiting at least 3 minutes is good. So I started the stopwatch feature on my Fitbit. Some time went by. I stood still in the dark in the parking lot next to my car, with the JetBoil there. Birds. Breeze. Cars going by. Then I looked at the stopwatch. Only 1' 33" had passed, but I could see the tenths of seconds racing by, rushing this moment this moment this moment this moment this moment headlong into no more no more no more never again never again, and I felt suddenly, deeply relieved. This too shall pass. Far, far more quickly than you think. Blink your eyes and I'll be gone. And the reassuring thought also: in a relative nanosecond, you'll be dead, and you won't have to put up with all this fucking shit anymore. It was not a suicidal thought, it was not even a longing for death in any way at all, in spite of how it sounds-- it was just an insight into the truth. 

It's weird when you're in Hades, the experiences that bring relief. 

hating with a passion

What strikes me as really odd about "love relationships," "being in love," or "romantic relationships," is how closely hate walks with love, or follows hard upon the loss of love sometimes in that context. I think of love more generally as relatively reliable, supportive and desirous of the highest good and/or happiness for the loved. But romantic love brings with it so many opportunities for hatred, for jealousy, resentment, fear, selfishness, loss of self, confusion, bad faith behavior, dishonesty and wounded pride. It's almost like the secret agreement between two lovers is that they are oing to set out to bring out the very worst in each other and destroy each other in the process.

What it's like when it works

When the ex and I first got together, I had already decided that my sane and sound ideal for a future partnership was a long term, poly, non-monogamous set of agreements, with some bottom line non-negotiables. This is important to me because I do want a long term partnership but I do not naturally sustain monogamous commitments over long periods of time. I had had enough of the suffering and downright misery that I created for myself when I did try to adhere to the exclusive dyad. The ex and I talked about this when we first got together. She agreed to what I thought was a very clear set of agreements that felt mutually supportive and idealistic but also practical. I felt like I was adulting in a whole new way. We called our attempt at a new and different kind of partnership "rocket science." 

At couples counseling the one time that the ex and I went, one of her astonishing claims was that she never wanted our initial agreements and that she only assented to them because she was "in love" with me and would have "agreed to a lot of things." She also characterized my desire for a non-monogamous partnership as a reflection of me "always wanting an out" and "never putting her first." 

You could have shoveled my jaw up off the floor. Three reasons for this, at least: 

1). It turns out the entire set of agreements on which the partnership was based were always just  derived from her secretly dishonest assent

2). She was basically accusing me of being duplicitous and having ulterior motives for our agreements while at the same time informing me for the first time that she never felt like I put her first-- the first time in 5.5 years. 

2). She had two sexual relationships with intense romantic elements while we were together and I never had any. Not in person anyway. There were a few hot internet flirtations-- but those exchanges are sub-real and more fantasy than anything. 

This revelation was one of the reasons I did not want to continue couples counseling. Why make time and space to engage in what the counselor called "reflecting and empathizing active listening exercises" when it quickly became apparent it was going to be a chance for the ex to revise our whole history together and re-frame it as problematic from the start? 

She also related during this session that she "always had to drag me into things." That it seemed to her that I only reluctantly entered the relationship, agreed to move in with her, etc. This is partially true. I don't think caution regarding these decisions is unwarranted. In fact-- dear reader-- does it not seem to you that a fuck of a lot more caution was called for? 

Looking back a month or so, it's also true that, if she had stated a desire to reconnect and try to salvage our partnership, I would have assented, even in the face of her critical revisions, her forming a romantic and sexual relationship with my first college roommate in spite of my deep aversion and her silent treatment of me for the entire month of February. I want to learn from that willingness I would have had to salvage the partnership. I really want to get that sick, codependent, smarmy, "yes dear" taste in my mouth long enough to get to know that part of myself as well as possible, make friends with it and give it a safe and non-operative place to live forever. 

Anyway, I honestly outright fucking hate my ex right now. I also intensely hate her new paramour. I don't do well hating people. I don't like carrying them around with such passion. I don't enjoy the physical sensation of tightness in chest and stomach. I don't sit well with the toxic, poisoned feeling that hate casts over my entire consciousness like a chemical spill. I can't stay in it very long or I powerfully erode my program of recovery and it ends up hurting me so much more than it hurts the object of my hate. In fact, because I am so self-destructive rather than violent toward others, usually, my hate doesn't even affect the people I hate in any way at all. They either don't care or are oblivious. 

But the plain and simple fact for now is I honestly do hate both of them. It's not some small negative affect like irritation or annoyance, or even legitimate anger at having my boundaries violated, it's not the even more astringent and heart-stabbing realm of sexual and romantic jealousy (although that's in my guts as well), it's not tempered in any way right now. It is flat out, pure, unalloyed and truly vicious hatred. 

I am incredibly fortunate to have tools to ameliorate this hatred. If I do not, it will kill me. I would rather live and find resilience. So, even though it makes *no fucking sense to me*, I am constantly repeating a modified 4th step prayer like a mantra: 

"These are sick people just like myself. God save me from being angry and hating them. How can I be helpful to them? Thy will be done." 

I have to admit that, *in spite of it making no fucking sense to me* it does help. The continuing inventory work is helping as well, especially finding my own role. Especially seeing the ways I have done to women exactly what the ex is doing to me now. How I have done to partnerships what the new paramour has done. Seeing myself in their defects or, at the very least, turning my attention to their suffering rather than my own, begins the arduous, counterintuitive, humbling and incredibly annoying process of letting them off the hook, Which is, in my direct experience, the only way I myself become free. When I let them off the hook, I'm off *their* hook. I stand *outside* the situation, which is the reality that simply is right now. I'm safe and protected and can even sometimes take a neutral stance.  

Getting back to love is hard work. Or it is the easiest thing of all. Not sure. 

do nothing until you do nothing

Sitting with the principal of non-action a lot lately. From The Gnostic I Ching in regard to Hexagram 5:

A very large part of the Work consists in disciplining oneself to wait -- to take no action until some indefinite time in the future. This is exceedingly difficult to do, and creates incredible stresses within the psyche -- which is exactly why it is necessary. Psychologically, to "cross the great stream" is to subdue all of the autonomous instincts, drives and emotions that are accustomed to responding whenever they are stimulated. As long as waiting creates feelings of stress, you can be sure that the battle has not been won. When you can wait like the superior man -- as if there were nothing else to do, then you can allow yourself to hope that you may be getting somewhere.

Waiting, watching, observing. Gaining a little bit of the ability to watch thoughts rise up, gain power, and then dissipate. Taking Pema's advice to send the thought out on an outbreath, with the word "thinking" gently in mind. Not with rancor or irritation or any other form of aversion or resistance, but with friendliness toward my mind. It's a good way to wait.

Part of hexagram 5 includes the advice to have an attitude of good cheer while waiting. There's nothing to be done, and no way to engage in any effective action, so why not just enjoy the time while you wait? Of course that's harder than it sounds, as reasonable as it is. But it connects up to the basic idea of accepting what I can't change-- if the wisdom is that I can't change it. I remember that my father used to get enraged and be seething with anger if we ever got stuck in a traffic jam. This is a great image for me to remember. It's a classic case of something my father couldn't change. But he expended a lot of emotional energy on an absolutely unmovable situation. 

The poet used to call this "shaking your fist at the ocean." Another way to frame this is the old apothegm in AA regarding resentment-- "It's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." 

All of these perspectives speak to a few essential lessons that are unfolding slowly, painfully, and non-linearly at this time. 

1. I have tools that help me regulate unbidden emotions as well as consciously choose how I respond to them
2. When faced with an awful situation that I don't want but about which I can do nothing, the wisest thing to do is-- Nothing.
3. The best attitude to have while waiting in the face of dangerous or unmovable situations is an attitude of good cheer and acceptance. 
4. This is some of the most difficult work we do. 

swords and cups

A few nights now waking up at 3 and going over in my mind again and again things said, unsaid, done and undone. Continue to be amazed by the fact that the ex is in a romantic relationship with the man she chose. It still feels surreal and creepy, grotesque and sick, toxic and ugly and just not to be believed. No matter how much work I do during the day on emotion regulation, letting go, prayer and meditation, getting perspective, step work, counseling, medication-- no matter. 3 a.m. is the vulnerable time. I am wide open at 3 a.m. and lack skills to either accept and let go or ward off and defend. My thoughts resound without any borders or control. Any sense of a higher power or recourse to any kind of either rational or emotional relief is obliterated.

Adding to how weird everything seems these days is that there is still no communication from the ex of any kind. People like me fill the silence with the worst imaginings. I don't know why I always have to tell some kind of story when I lack information. I guess it's an impulse as old as dirt. But one practice I am trying is not to tell a story when I don't have any information. To just let blanks stay blank.

In spite of chronic upset, I buckled myself to my blue chair yesterday from 5 am until 4 pm and finally finished the revisions on my dissertation proposal. This work requires a clear mind and a clear mind I do not have. It took quite an effort to repeatedly get back on track and recall what the fuck I was supposedly writing about. Eventually I wrote the new chapter on the molecular phylogeny of the group of cacti that my study species is in and did the bibliography and rewrote the chapter on complementary modeling using species distribution methods and landscape genetics. By the time I finished I didn't really have the energy to proof very much. I just sent it to my advisor. We shall see.

The PhD process was so much more fun and so much easier when I was emotionally stable. The sword realm of science and the cups realm of emotion don't really co-exist comfortably. In particular, I have just found it next to impossible to truly concentrate on technical details for more than about 5 seconds. Check out this description from a methods and materials section of a genome skimming study:

DNA isolation and sequencing — Genomic DNA was isolated using a modified cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) protocol ( Doyle and Doyle,
1987 ; Friar, 2005 ). DNA samples were prepared for sequencing by Global Biologics
(Columbia, Missouri, USA) using the following protocol: DNA samples
were quantitated using the Qubit dsDNA HS Assay Kit and Qubit 2.0 Fluorometer
(Life Technologies, Carlsbad, California, USA) and integrity was checked
using the Advanced Analytical Technologies Fragment Analyzer and Genomic
DNA kit (Ames, Iowa, USA); high-molecular-weight DNA (>15 kb) samples
showing no degradation were considered suitable for libraries. A 500–1000-ng
sample of DNA was normalized to 40 μ L in a low-bind 96-well microplate and
sheared to ~300 bp using the Q700 Sonicator (QSonica, Newtown, Connecticut,
USA). The fragmented DNA was blunt-end repaired, 3 ′ adenylated, and ligated
with multiplex compatible adapters using the NEXTfl ex DNA Sequencing Kit
for Illumina (catalog no. 514104; Bioo Scientifi c, Austin, Texas, USA) prior to
being size selected to retain ~200–400-bp fragments with Agencourt AMPure
XP SPRI beads (Beckman Coulter, Brea, California, USA). PCR enrichment
selectively amplified fragments containing DNA with adapters on both ends.
Library validation used the Fragment Analyzer followed by quantitation with
the Qubit dsDNA HS Assay Kit and the qPCR kit for Illumina (Kapa Biosystems,
Wilmington, Massachusetts, USA). Equimolar amounts of each library were
pooled at 10 nM for sequencing. High-throughput sequencing used the Illumina
HiSeq 2000 genetic analysis system (San Diego, California, USA) at the University
of Delaware Sequencing and Genotyping Center for Run 1 (single-end
100-bp reads) and the University of California at Riverside Genomics Core for
Run 2 (single-end 101-bp reads).

Try getting into that while you are grieving the end of a 5 and a half year partnership, have moved twice in one month and have just started on medication for persistent depressive disorder. I dare you. But such was large parts of my life yesterday as I tried to make sense of my own methods and materials section for the genome skimming chapter. Like wrestling a wraith while being assaulted by a banshee.

Fortunately, I have found lab work to be oddly comforting. It's nice and clean in the lab, for one thing. Quiet. You follow the protocol and do the next steps. It's like cooking from a recipe. Order reigns. It's good that I am settling into lab work, since I will be doing DNA extractions on about 120 tissue samples over the next few months.

Anyway, dear reader, the passage of time is not ameliorating my basic misery in any consistent way. Neither are all the work and tools I know how to use. During these passages, we wait and we endure.

No solution because no problem

My first real AA sponsor used to always ask me, "So, what's the problem?" I would tell him some long tale of woe or other-- the IRS seized all the money in my checking account, for example-- and he would pause, and with a glint in his eye, ask me, "So, what's the problem?"

I hated this ferociously at the time and probably still wouldn't dig it all that much at nearly 13 years sober.

But his point was always the same: My self, my story, my ego, my being ensnared by the 8 worldly dharmas-- that was the problem. And he would go further: since all of that is illusion, there is no problem. "So, you don't need a solution-- there is no problem."

Maybe I should read this book:

Easy for you to say, Thubten

I remain strongly attached to feelings of loss, anger, jealousy, astonishment, hatred, tenderness toward the ex and her new paramour. It's not linear. There are good days and bad days. The past 24 hours or so have been very bad indeed. 

In particular, it has become absolutely clear to me that I am codependent like a motherfucker. I am always looking for "the solution" outside myself, without even knowing it consciously. My boundaries often suck. I want to be rescued, I want to be seen. I tend toward partnering so quickly. The performance of love starts to kick in-- morning texts, goodnight texts, romantic messages, etc. I can't do it. Not now. I have a new and excellent friendship with a woman that started to morph over to that performance and I snapped to it in the middle of night and felt such a strong aversion on a core, gut level. Just no. Can't do it. In spite of how fond of this person I am. And how "lonely" I am. Too bad. 

The solution has to come from within myself, and there is no solution, because there is no problem, because I am the problem. So really the solution has to amount to trusting in a power greater than myself to restore me to sanity. "Cold and hot loneliness" as Pema Chödrön calls it is the stone cold truth of my current situation and no amount of fondness for another person can alter that. My pattern is all in the overlaps and I just can't. Won't. But not a matter of will: cannot anymore. Just cannot. 

Powerless over sex, love, romance and my life is unmanageable. The step 1 experience around all of it-- total and absolute hopelessness. No hope. 

Which of course leads to step 2 naturally. Being restored to sanity in this case means taking care of the wildness of my emotional life, making friends with myself, without looking for a "solution" from the outside. Long ago, I stopped even thinking of alcohol and drugs as that outside fixer of problems. Throughout this harrowing break up and Pluto shenanigans, I have never once seriously considered drinking or drugging. 

But I have definitely longed for a romantic savior. A connection that would just ease the pain a little bit. The problem is just like with booze though: with alcohol, if I have one drink, I get the physical craving for more, and there is never enough. With romance, if I get just one flirtation or cuddly exchange or make out or whatever, I get a similar craving, and there is absolutely never enough. This puts both me and the other person at a terrible disadvantage. For one thing, up front, boundaries are bound to erode or be completely obliterated. Obviously I am not "in relationship," but rather, taking hostages and looking for oblivion from my own pain at someone else's expense. 

No more. 

Cannot. 

The 700,000 stages of grief, described in detail

With a title like that, how can you not click? The goal for this blog is to be nothing but enticing clickbait, after all. You'll be amazed at what happens next.

The I Ching continues its theme, with last night's throw offering up hexagram 54, variously translated as Propriety/Making Do, The Marrying Maiden, The Symbol of the Marriage of the Younger Sister, Marriageable Maiden, The Marrying Girl, Subordinate, The Second Wife, Converting Maidenhood, Returning maiden, Making a young girl marry, Marrying a young girl, Marrying a Maiden, Unilateral Action, Impropriety, Improper Advances. 

This hexagram changed into hexagram 11, yet again-- Harmony.  Peace, The Symbol of Successfulness, Prospering, Pervading, Greatness, Tranquility, Prosperity, Conjunction, Major Synthesis, Hieros Gamos, Holy Marriage,

So the oracle is trying to tell me something. Imagine that. 

A lot of grief last night, missing my old life that vanished so quickly. Expressing it to FB friends led to a wide variety of perspectives, as grief always does. Some people immediately go to strategy because my situation is triggering for them. Others are better at holding a space, no matter how small, for it to be what it is. Neither is right or wrong-- it's just how people do. 

Before sleep, I read the perfect Pema Chödrön chapter from When Things Fall Apart, the chapter titled "Hopelessness and Death." 

"If hope and fear are two sides of one coin, so are hopelessness and confidence. If we are willing to give up hope that insecurity and suffering can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path."

"Death and hopelessness provide proper motivation-- proper motivation for living an insightful, compassionate life. But most of the time, warding off death is our biggest motivation. We habitually ward off any sense of problem. We're always trying to deny that it's a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers. Time is passing. It's as natural as the seasons changing and day turning into night. But getting old, getting sick, losing what we love-- we don't see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what."

Which frames yet again why Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking is my favorite Whitman. 

Moving from resistance and warding, protection and defense, hope and fear toward acceptance and saying yes, openness and humble vulnerability, hopelessness and confidence- this is the most reliable work. It aligns with the way things actually are. Whether we like it or not. Of course, the trip is a life's work-- it's not a matter of graduating. At the moment, thrown into sorrow and loss against my will, I am in preschool.  

Repeat Hexagram and into a sunny Saturday in Hades

Here it is again this morning:

I guess I'll be meditating on this. It's not unusual when you do a daily I Ching meditation to have the same or similar hexagrams come up in strings. But this one just seems to be the opposite of my outer circumstances. 

The general theme of the interplay of yin and yang, heaven and earth is supplemented by the texts which mention the departure of the small and the arrival of the great. Or the departure of the corrupt, weak, mean, dark, etc. and the arrival of the upright, strong, benevolent, light. I'll be paying attention for sure. 

The job today is revising the prospectus in between epic cleaning. In between unpacking and evaluating and digitizing vinyl. So much to do. 

The empty storage unit at the incredibly fucking forlorn U Haul on Arizona Avenue in Chandler

The truck fully loaded and ready to roll out.

I moved to the room next to the one I was originally in, with an east facing window and dark midnight blue walls.