Katabatic wind, idiot wind, and so on

I recently stumbled down the weird rabbit hole of the Dyatlov Pass Incident,  which, in typical internet fashion, has attracted the attention of all sorts of conspiracy theorists and others trying to explain what happened, generally people who seem completely unfamiliar with Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation does seem to be the katabatic wind explanation, but that in itself is fairly harrowing, and not an explanation that is particularly reassuring. It does nicely fit the title of this blog, however, as well as having rich potential for metaphor. Some of the other words used are appealing somehow as well, such as williwaw, squamish wind, and piteraq. 

Anyway, the unfortunate adventurers killed in the Dyatlov Pass Incident were prepared. They just weren't ready for whatever happened. This is a perfect example of the crucial distinction between being prepared to the best of one's ability to be prepared, but just not being ready. I have been meditating on this distinction a lot as I prepare for my dissertation defense. The best we can do in life a lot of the time, especially under pressure or where it feels like a lot is at stake, is prepare. We still might not be ready, but at least we're prepared. This comes up for me as I practice the PowerPoint presentation that opens the defense. I have it well-prepared, and timed down to about 34 minutes, every time I practice it. But one never knows. One never knows. 

I am especially antsy about two of my committee members Skypeing in, one from Uruguay and the other from San Diego. If there is a serious technical difficulty with that, the defense has to be rescheduled, which would suck, especially since my oldest friend is flying in from New Jersey, etc. But one never knows. 

Anyway, the thought of camping somewhere already brutally cold but then having a 200 mph wind descend on one's campsite out of nowhere is the stuff of nightmares. I prepare really well for all of my contingencies while cam;ping. I have a lot of experience, and good gear. I try to be sensible. But so much of my field work in Baja was completely off the grid, and I was alone for a lot of it. Looking back, this approach was not ideal at all. In fact, I would not recommend it to myself, in the future. haha. As I arrange for more field work in remote locales, I will be subscribing to a satellite location and emergency notification system. Isla Magdalena, where I camped for days on end, is known for being infested with venomous rattlesnakes, for example. The possibility of falling was high, given the terrain. It was sort of idiotic of me to have spent so much time hiking alone there, let alone the run in with heat exhaustion I had that almost killed me (which is one of these blog posts, but I'm too lazy to go looking).

All of which ties into the great, bitter Bob Dylan song, Idiot Wind, one of my favorites. 



Which, in turn, ties in to a lot of the work I have been doing around self-compassion, kindness toward myself, a more gentle, awakened heart toward my own and others' shortcomings, real or imagined. I have been spending a lot of time with Pema Chödrön's When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times and Start Where You Are, and encountering a lot of facets of my mind, my narrative, and my heart that have proven to be challenging. Most of all, it has become apparent that I benefit from being more gentle, more patient, kinder and more compassionate, toward myself and others, as well as letting go of narrative and creating more space, more often. Meditation has been helping a lot. So much time utterly alone has been helpful, in spite of the sorrow, heartbreak, and tender core that gets touched when there's nothing to do and no distractions. Or, really, because of that, not in spite of it. 

I've been having great interactions with my old friend, The I Ching, over the past several weeks. Recently, things have been pointing to success, transition, good results after a lot of work, and other basically favorable directions, which is reassuring, considering the transition I am in. Last evening, the first hexagram was The Cauldron, sometimes called The Sacrificial Vessel, basically, a large bronze cauldron for creating lasting results for oneself and the world. The changing lines were line 2 and 3, with some appended remarks here from James DeKorne's Gnostic Book of Changes:

Line 2: 

A. The situation is favorable, but you must be on guard to maintain it.

B. Divisive forces covet that which is under your control, but cannot harm you if you are careful.


C. Your idea has merit. (A cauldron with food in it.) Develop it carefully and don't get carried away. (Protect it from the enemies of doubt, over-enthusiasm, etc.)

Line 3:

A. The dynamics of your situation have changed, but you are still operating on old assumptions and have missed the point or not gotten the message. However, the condition is temporary and will resolve itself naturally.


B. The image suggests a stalemate followed by eventual resolution.

Both of these messages definitely resonate. One of the difficulties I have navigating change is waking up to the change that has already occurred, as it is more typical for me to think conditions are the same as they used to be, not realizing sometimes the profound ways that change has set in until I can see it in the rear view mirror so to speak. The whole thing about waiting for things, which has really been a major theme of the past few years, has recently changed. I am no longer waiting for anything. What's done is done, and what is happening right now is all there is. I do often feel like I have missed the point or not gotten the message, however. Like there are huge forces at owrk that I just can't see clearly at all, much larger than my ability to put into proportion. Combined with all of these themes, a repeated message from the ethers has been this landscape of envy, covetousness, jealousy, outside threat to my situation. So this goes back to being as prepared as I can be, and letting readiness take care of itself, since who knows exactly how ready I am?

It reminds me of Peter 1:13: Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 

Which then reminds me of John 3:8: The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

In the sense of simply being prepared. The idea of grace being a cosmic whim, unable to be earned or to be deserving of, but that doesn't mean we can't prepare to encounter it, in whatever form it takes. I have a feeling that there are a great many moments in my life when I have not been prepared, and grace arrived, and I had no idea that is what it was. On the other hand, there have been definite moments when the wind blew the right way, and I was prepared, and embraced the experience as deeply as I was able. Falling in love can be that way, and loss itself can also be that way. In particular, if I am able to let go of gain and loss as concept that I hold fast to, and if I can simply enter more into an awakened, kind, compassionate heart, the grace that might be otherwise hidden from me becomes more clear, sometimes. 

Sometimes. 

Weird that these themes are reminding me of my old Sunday school days, and fairly deep, definitely musty Christian background. I do credit Christianity with my earliest and most primal and inexplicable experiences of the awakened heart and mysterious nature of reality, though, so I guess it makes sense. 

There's a funny re-framing available through this lens of being prepared versus being ready. It occurred to me yesterday that, if I were to suddenly be offered *everything I think I want* or even everything I actually do want, I bet I would not be ready. Like a katabatic wind, that old williwaw of desires fulfilled would probably feel like it could kill me. How funny it is to be human and to think being ready is a prerequisite to saying YES. In fact, the best I can do is prepare, as much as I am able, and show up bravely in the face of the fear of not being ready, whenever possible.  

Winged Heart

I recently caught myself saying "I'm not very skilled at containing or controlling intense feelings of love, or keeping myself from communicating them," and I spent some time after that wondering what it would be like to see my effusive, expressive, enthusiastic and wild, fiery tendencies in that regard as a strength. To rephrase it as "I am very skilled at having and expressing intense and enthusiastically ardent feelings, at being vulnerable, unprotected, and honest about how much I love people." It changed things to reframe it in those ways. It's problematic when good, solid boundaries are violated by my communication, and I get that. But that's not the same as being unskilled at restraining my feelings or their expression. That's just a situation where I can practice redirecting myself and my words, and creating more of a safe space for people who have set a clear boundary. The skill isn't to shitcan how I feel, but to redirect. 

I get wrapped up in what I myself can handle or not, and forget that other people may not be exactly as they seem, so I've been reflecting on that too. I have known some people who just seem completely stainless steel, unable to be fazed, strong, tough and completely detached. But it is valuable for me to remember that my words and choices have consequences even for these people, sometimes, who may not be as tough as they work on showing. 

The defended and the undefended in myself, and in others, always fraught territory. 

I'm remembering simple tenderness, bodhichitta and compassion, respect, simplicity and good boundaries. So much practice. Mistakes are inevitable. 

The Sufi symbol of the winged heart has been appealing to me very strongly lately. 

The symbol was chosen by Hazrat Inayat Khan who introduced Sufism to the Western World: “In brief, the meaning of the symbol is that the heart responsive to the light of God is liberated.”

As an atheist, I reflect on it more as the "awakened heart" of Buddhism, that is, the heart of compassion, the heart of caring about suffering and confusion, the heart of tenderness and openness to the suffering of all sentient beings. When this sense of things is awakened in my experience, I find it easier to let go of things. My jealousy and anger and hurt feelings diminish. My openness to the true and highest happiness and well being of people I love, and sometimes even for all sentient beings, starts to be more possible. It begins in sorrow, for me. In the sorrow that one touches in the human heart, borrowing the phrasing of Pema Chödrön. 

St, Valentine will not be denied

People are sometimes surprised that one of my favorite holidays is Valentine's Day. I get it, since I also have a satirical bent toward aspects of the holiday. In general, people sometimes confuse my satirical or sarcastic humor for dislike of something, and sometimes that is the case, but maybe just as often, I find humor in satire of things of which I'm very fond, as well. Isn't it the case that everything is, in one way or another, fucking ridiculous? While sometimes, simultaneously, sacred and precious? 

Limited Edition

Fundamentally, falling in love has provided me with some of the core experiences of my life, provided access to the divine, inspired a lot of my creative behavior, brought adventure and surprise, kicked me into areas of intense growth that I would have avoided otherwise, and more. Since I'm a flaming cis het, it's also brought me a lot of understanding of the extraordinary challenges women face. I don't know exactly why such remarkable, intelligent, intense, heart-centered, visionary and passionately excellent women have seen fit to throw their lot in with me, but so they have, eventually to varying degrees of chagrin. 

The experience of romantic love has also provided me with the worst suffering of my life. It's an existential kind of suffering, and some might say that, if love lost is the worst I've suffered, I've been lucky. I'd say that may well be, but it could also be that anyone who might judge it thus hasn't had the experience in quite the same way I have. Some might also say that, having been destroyed by the failure of romantic love, I ought to stop being open-hearted in that direction, and be sensible, and (drumroll for the American idea of strength) "get over it and move on." Even if I were able to accomplish this Herculean feat of utter emotional death, I don't want to. Some of my recovery friends, suspiciously cynical and bitter about love, seem to think it's a problem to be solved and done away with, or grown out of, or 12-stepped away. This feels untrue and unfortunate to me. Growing toward loving the beloved in more and more unconditional dimensions instead seems more legit. 

A friend of mine and I were lamenting various vicissitudes of the heart the other night over dinner, and both of us gradually realized we wouldn't change a damn thing. The weird hypothetical, "if you could go back, knowing what you know now, would you change anything?" We both grudgingly admitted the answer would be, no. Not a thing changed. In some cases, so precious and unforgettable that we'd not trade a single nanosecond of any of it. That case is usually also the one that is most painful, as if the combination is a law of the universe. Tell me the universe doesn't understand satire. 

Anyway, behind the crass commercialization and goopy sentimentality masquerading as love, there's magic, life, blood, compassion, tenderness, risk taking, humility, deep mysteries, story, real guts and courage. It seems a shame to me that many respond to the wounds, the pain, and the loss with the understandable impulse of "fuck that, I hope I never, ever catch feels for someone ever again." I get it, believe me, but there's the whole trip out of the dark that I think sometimes gets by-passed, and that's a loss much greater than the loss of the love itself. To think it's possible to be safe in love is laughable. To think it's possible to encounter another human being so tenderly and yet not put risk right at the front of things is foolish. The ability to love is directly proportional to the ability to grieve, and that just seems to be the way of things. The bad news is loss is a part of all of it. The good news is we know how to grieve, grief is perfectly natural and an inherent skill we have, if we just give it space to breathe and give it time and honor it. 

I like to pay attention when I'm in love, and I'm devoted, and I like the romantic rituals of cards, flowers, gifts, the romantic dinner, the tenderness and regard that brings two people to acknowledge each other as mutually extraordinary, for each other. I like to learn about the beloved, to listen and to see, to be seen. My eyes are full of Moon, when it's working, but not in that weird way where the actual human disappears. I'm unashamed to admit it, obviously. I'm learning to live without it, but how could it not feel like a lack? I don't think we get over it and move on. I think, if we're attentive, we just get more skilled at living in spite of impermanence. The absent beloved is no longer a problem to be solved, but just the way things are. It's a form of cowardice for me that I don't want to enact, to try to "get rid" of the beloved, or replace, or reject. It is more a way I want to live to make room for the reality, make a home for the sorrow and loss, but also be grateful for what was possible. 

To stay tender. 

The Inconsolable

A friend of mine and I were talking about how common it is to try to talk ourselves out of things, or into things, or rationalize our way toward acceptance, tell the reasonable story, square things away with some sort of narrative hook, and yet, how rarely all of those exertions actually assuage another part of us that is not inclined to listen to "reason," is not assuaged, and remains deeply wounded by certain events. 

For example, imagine there's a situation in which your heart is fully on the line regarding another human being, and, "for practical reasons," the two of you just "can't be together." It's easy to start that machine of listing and cataloging all of the "reasons," many of which might, in fact, be incredibly compelling, quite real, not even rationalizations. The experience is not likely to be much of a way to mend the heartbreak of loss or the sorrow of disappointment, no matter how compelling the reasons may be. 

There's something like an inconsolable child, or emotional animal, "inside" of us that refuses to accept all of the narrative, reasons, stories, explanations, and "yes buts." No matter how obviously, practically true all of it is. The fact remains, for example, that we were not enough to be chosen. Someone else or something else was chosen instead of us. We were not enough. 

It's easier in some ways, sometimes, when we head forward thinking we are the ones who have made the choice. There's little heart satisfaction in it, a lot of the time, but at least there's a feeling of combined rationality and power. "We were just star crossed, and that's that." Its been true for me, though, that there's still the "soft animal that loves what it loves" left behind, ignored, shushed, "reasoned with," placated, but still inconsolable. "The heart" wants what it wants, we sometimes realize. Reason, reasons, be damned. 

This operates in an energetic way, reason and rationality be damned. My friend was expressing having these feelings around someone who died, who "chose death" over her. Obviously not a rational or even reasonable narrative. But her honest feelings, nonetheless. She felt somewhere "deep inside" that she was not enough to keep her lover here, that her lover's soul didn't want her, but wanted death instead. 

Since we're capable of these odd, probably usually secret, irrational miseries, it seems interesting that we ourselves and most of the people around us are going to try to "talk us out of it." You can probably immediately hear your own or others' phrases, all of those attempts to placate, to "reason with," to console. 

My experience the past year or so has been that the only things that console me are going toward the irrationality of it, not trying to go away from it. Connecting with the hurt and loss, not trying to deny its reality or talk myself out of it. Talking myself out of it plays a valuable, functional role in my being able to show up for necessary life, and there's a value to the narrative, for sure. But the real healing is on a cellular, blood and guts, balls and breath level. It feels like it moves a lot more in the body than in the mind, that's for sure. 

Please, thank you, and no hooks

I flashed on what it would be like to frame all of one's decisions and interactions with the "world" in terms of two simple principles: consent, and gratitude. Consent being basically asking, seeking permission, saying "please." And gratitude, of course, being the thank you in response, whether the answer is affirmative or not. 

There was a tiny fire ring at the campsite in the Sheephole Valley Wilderness and I was going to build a fire in there. But there was a whole community of little green plants and ants and so on living in that protected circle, and there clearly hadn't been a fire in there for months, maybe years. So I asked, do I have permission to build a fire in here? And I swear to gawd, call me crazy (wouldn't be the first time), the answer was a resounding "NO." Turned out it was a wildly windy and dangerous night to have a fire anyway. And at the next campsite over (the second of two, altogether), there was a larger fire ring with ash, and nothing growing in it. The next night, that's where I built my fire. "Thanks, it's nice to have a fire."

Imagine if all of human history had been conditioned by saying "please" and "thank you," rather than the usual sense of total entitlement and temporary, acrid satisfaction with which humankind has fucked over the planet and each other. Imagine if the European expansion into the "New World" had included the humility of asking permission, and the gratitude of finding a way to navigate what is a "yes" and what is a "no." The holiday of Thanksgiving would make a shit ton more sense from this perspective, definitely. 

As it unfolded, taking without regard to permission and feeling smugly entitled or deserving, and becoming violent in the face of clear NO's, seems a lot more the basic framework of how we confront the world. This, I'd argue, without any actual evidence, is the paradigm of the patriarchy. It's what makes rape not an exception, but the rule. It's not as if we have never had permission, but we have never even stopped to ask if we did, in just about every interaction with the indigenous Earth. It reminds me of that ignorant Christian missionary, John Chau, who pulled the stunt of "witnessing" to the Sentinelese, and was promptly killed by them, and justly, rightly so.  Except that, throughout much of our history, the consequences were not so immediate, and the lines not quite so clearly drawn. 

There's a reverent and devotional way of life that includes, at its core, please, thank you, and attempts to enlarge awareness. A difficult part of this reverence is also in letting go, when the answer is "no." It is a silly rationalization to say "please" and then proceed without listening to the answer. "I asked for consent!" is obviously not a good enough reason to take. The universe does, frequently and loudly, say NO. 

Sometimes, even with regard to our most ardent hopes and wishes, much to the sorrow and sadness of our broken hearts. 

I've been thinking about the image of hooks. It might be because the clade of cacti I am writing my dissertation on has hooked spines, but it might also be due to language used by both Melody Beattie and Pema Chödrön, regarding something capturing us, holding our attention, getting us tangled, which they refer to as "getting hooked."

I've been experimenting with letting go of getting hooked in response to the big NO's that the universe has delivered. Think of a kid in the checkout line at the grocery store, fascinated by all the impulse-buy candy on the racks, maybe asking Mom "can I have this? can I have that?" and knowing of course the answer is NO, the answer is *always NO* and has been *NO* for years. But we tend to still have that energy directed to the objects of desire, no matter the precedence, no matter the inevitability. 

So I'm working with just saying "no hooks" and letting something go. Invasive thoughts that would spur hot jealousy, despairing bewilderment, lonely self pity, or some other extreme discomfort, can be met with the simple phrase, "no hooks." Let it go. You got your answer. No hooks. 

It's a necessary tool in the face of a life of reverence, asking consent, when the answer will often be NO. If I want to emerge out of the tendency to manipulate, use wounding or darker magic to capture something I want, push, whine, rage, or all those other states of being where we have gotten a clear NO yet just cannot move off the goddamned dime, I am going to need a way to let go. When I'm hooked, I feel it. The hook sinks in deeper the more I try to shake it. The tangles get more complex. If I can just gently and in a focused and disciplined way, remove the hook, step away, and let go a bit more, there's a feeling of safety and sanity that at least partly settles down.

There's also a lot more energy in wait for when the universe hollers a great big HELL YES into my face, which, if I am hooked and wounded by the last NO, I could easily miss, and have. This goes to the deepest definition of consent, way past "not saying no," to the *enthusiastic yes*, which men in particular need to learn is what consent is, and can be withdrawn at any time, and is fully within whatever boundary, no matter how enthusiastic.  

All of this process goes to spending so much time alone. The past several days, I was free camping on BLM land in silent, beautiful Sonoran Upland. Just me and my grief and anger. In these circumstances, it becomes essential to find a way to welcome one's own thoughts with "basic friendliness" as Pema puts it. My "no hooks" is similar to her gentle word, "thinking," the way to reduce the spinning out of the mind. It has been especially helpful in finding my true feelings, not those that are made more incendiary by attachment to outcome, by stubborn and bitter adherence to story, by the pride and brittleness of my sense of self, my sense of *deserving* and being *denied*. 

No hooks. 

Travels with Sappho: Into the Flood Again

I left Tempe after the last stint, which I had arranged in order to get Sappho's low beams fixed and get her an oil change, as well as generally touch base with something familiar and maybe grounding, after a fairly chaotic and rough couple of weeks on the road. While in Tempe, I did my laundry, reorganized the car, put a bunch of stuff I had been lugging around into storage, stayed with a friend of mine and got some good human Platonic friendly time as well as some cool time with her two dogs and cat. 

But I knew I was headed out again, and decided to go up to Las Vegas to have dinner with a friend of mine who was in that weird, totally surreal and disconnected "city" for the behemoth Consumer Electronics Show, because she is involved in 3-D fabrication and leading edge new design and manufacturing tech. I wanted to talk with her about possible applications of some of the statistical, machine learning methods I've learned in my Ph.D. program to her project, which is a work force training initiative based at MIT. 

So I found the cheapest but not the sleaziest place I could find in Vegas, and we got together for a nice dinner. She grew up in Newport, RI and McCoy Tyner actually played at one of her birthday parties. She said this with total casualness and as if it were the most normal thing in the world. My jaw had to be held in place via the firmest self control possible. Anyway, there might be some ways I can contribute to her project. Time will tell. 

I left Vegas feeling empty and stupid, unhappy and restless, cold- hearted, self-pitying, and angry. I knew I had to get out into the wild again. I decided to go to Death Valley and see about camping up at Wildrose, free camping but at a fairly high elevation, in the foothills of the Panamint Range. I stayed there two nights, with overnight lows in the mid-20's, and it was a definite cold-to-the-bone winter feeling. Some good solitude though. And a lot of time working in the warm car on the dissertation and preparing an article for submission to Ecology and Evolution. Having the cigarette lighter car charger for the laptop was a major breakthrough. 

Sunrise out the "office" window

 Almost full Wolf Moon from Wildrose

No idea how accurate Sappho's thermometer is but she claimed 26F

 One of my favorite spots in Death Valley is way up here

 Experimenting with Sappho's capabilities on various kinds of roads. Amazed by the way she just prowls along, sure footed and with complete control.

 Old charcoal kilns 

The pinks of a glorious winter sunset being caught by the Panamints to the east. The view from my campsite at Wildrose. 

I realized I had to get back on the grid, sadly, to stay in communication with my dissertation adviser and submit the article, etc. I was dreading being connected again, because over the course of a couple days and nights away from human contact, I had found some serenity and peace in my heart. It was a surprise to be able to access that. 

I decided to get connected again up along the Eastern Sierra, where I had never been before. I have always either headed home from Death Valley or to the coast and the enticements of Los Angeles or San Diego. I had often seen signs for Lone Pine, Big Pine, and Bishop, but had never headed up that way. So that's where I went. 

 The wild combination of the low Mohave and the rising Sierras

Echinocereus engelmannii along CA 168 east from Big Pine

 Full Wolf Moon, Bishop

 Took a break from article formatting to drive up into the mountains as far as I could. 

Loved this place

The best restaurant in Bishop is at the bowling alley

A snowstorm blew in down the Sierras while I was there

I had been hoping to retain my peace of mind and heart while spending three nights in Bishop, but this didn't happen. Which is an understatement. I was able to format and submit the article, and make a series of important contacts, etc, but my sense of being heartbroken and bereft started kicking in again. I was avoiding social media, thinking avoidance would assist in me keeping equanimity. But I was also dipping into Instagram a little bit, and every time, just feeling sad and lonely. By the time I left Bishop, I was really an emotional mess. I had the following strange and extremely vivid fantasy while I was there, triggered, I suppose, by the romantic combination of winter weather, the old motel I was staying at, etc.:

I flashed on a 1950's couple, all dressed up, the man with an overcoat and a suit and cologne, the woman in a fancy blouse and pleated skirt, expensive but understated jewelry, and they had been driving for hours across tiny old snowy 1950s California roads, and they had arrived at this old motel where I was staying and checked in, in the middle of basically a blizzard, and they were madly, totally, completely in love with each other. Youngish, maybe early 40's or so. And when they got into the room, they turned the little wall gas heater on, and it made that igniting sound and rush of warm air, and they started taking off their winter things, and the woman took off her jewelry and very carefully placed it on the nightstand, and they smiled at each other, and there was a perfect kind of radiant, warm, shy, and wordless tenderness between them, and I knew at that moment they were both married to other people, and they had come to Bishop from swanky Los Angeles, to see each other for the last time, ever, to say goodbye, but to sleep together one last weekend, to be with each other one last weekend. It was so incredibly vivid and real-seeming, poignant and true feeling, tender and weird. It was so vivid that I myself felt heartbroken for these two, and I wanted to talk them out of it, see if maybe they couldn't find a way out of their situations, find a way to just make this their life. It still feels incredibly tender, loving, kind, gentle and yet the saddest tale. 

Two side effects of solo travel that I had not counted on: the reliance on public spaces like coffee shops for internet also means hearing endless love songs; and, going to interesting places also means seeing a lot of couples who are having a great time together. I guess these things combined to inflame my imagination. I have no idea who The Lovers of Bishop were, but it hit me pretty hard. I hope they found happiness somehow.  

So I set out for Death Valley again, in the hopes that wildness would get me back that brief sense of equanimity from before the Bishop trip. But I didn't really have the spine for more nights in the mid to low 20's so I tried a couple nights at the $16 Texas Springs campground, at much lower elevation, one of those weird national park campgrounds that is not very well designed, where campsites are right next to each other. My mood just kept crumbling, my heart kept shredding up. I was opening to something that I had been resisting, is how it felt. I'll write more about the utterly ferocious storm of emotions that I was about to go into in another post, when I myself get it a little more clearly. Let's just stick with old Percy's travel tales eh wot. 

starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might. 

The two nights at Texas Springs in Death Valley were marked by the usual shitty human campground behavior. The first night, a couple nearby, where the woman just talked, and talked, and talked, endlessly into the night, and then, when they finally did go to sleep, one of them was a ferocious snoring beast. The second night, a couple of women right next to my camp who were up late drinking and talking, just having a good time, but with utterly no awareness of being in a public campground and no effort to moderate their volume. Volume always goes up as more alcohol is consumed; it's like a Newtonian law of ethanol to volume proportion.They also kept swinging a very, very bright halogen lantern around, so it seemed my tent was being swept by a searchlight every now and then. Bear in mind they were an actual distance from where I was trying to sleep of perhaps 15 feet. It is so weird to be out in the great, vast silent middle of nowhere and have to wear earplugs, but this is almost always the way it is in these public campgrounds. 

I decided I had to go as far from humanity as possible, especially since my state of heart and mind was seriously deteriorating. Again, more on that later. Anyway, I went to a wilderness area and I was the only person camping there for several nights. It was so silent on windless nights (which all were but one), that I could hear my own heartbeat in my head. There were a couple of owls. Otherwise, nothing at all, except for the trucks going to and from a mining site nearby, and those were very few and far between, and only in the morning and at night. 

Now, I am back in the "civilization" of Tempe, uncomfortable in my hotel room, but getting a pre-op exam prior to cataract surgery, scheduling said surgery, meeting with my committee chair tomorrow to discuss necessary revisions of the dissertation before submission for formatting review and sending it out to the rest of the committee. 

I reconnected with a bit of social media and someone asked me, "How are you?" I never know how to answer this question these days. I mean, the honest answer is: I am not well. I feel like I'm totally destroyed in just about every conceivable way. I'm heartbroken, bewildered, anxious, living in total uncertainty. I have felt fortunate to have Pema Chodron's company and her book, When Things Fall Apart. I had somehow thought that the worst passages through Hades had concluded already, and yet, from Bishop to now feels more challenging than anything I experienced previously. More challenging than anything I have experienced in my life, actually. 

I'll write about the dimensions of those challenges another time, or maybe not at all. I am, while experiencing a baffling phase of heart and mind, also finding my entire process absolutely tiresome. I am exhausting myself daily. I have no idea how certain friends have been able to so kindly and generously keep listening to me. I can barely even listen to myself. I keep trying to be kind to myself and I keep trying to call a moratorium and just take a fucking break, but the energies are not cooperating, at all. "Things" I thought I had entirely resolved or at least had really begun to move away from have returned so powerfully that at times I feel like they will kill me. Not exaggerating. 

I guess it's fierce weather, and it's not linear, and who knows what lies on the other side? 

Certain annihilations apply

Of course, having made a plea for the importance and authenticity of the experience of falling in love and the loss often associated with it, I can also see why friends and counselors adopt a skeptical, protective, and rational stance. 

As true as it may be that any two lovers who have fallen in love and who risk the vulnerability, exposure, tenderness, trust, and intimacy of that experience are absolutely unique in relationship to each other, everything dear and sacred about that experience is highly likely to be destroyed. 

Whatever seems special to one's lover will be shared with someone else. Whatever flatters our ego most will be a quality or experience in some other man that will rouse the same response from our lover. The most exposed, shameless and tender of all experiences will be shared with someone else. That's the highest likelihood. Nothing will be protected, nothing will be tended or kept safe and secret, nothing will last and be treated with the protective shield it may deserve, probably by either party. 

The most searing and tender, vulnerable ways we open our heart will be destroyed. Those secret and sacred ways will be destroyed either by oblivion and forgetting, or by outright intentional malice, resentment and bitterness, or by duplicity, betrayal and abandonment. These just seem to me to be lain facts out of 42 years of experience in this arena. I have been unconscionably destructive, sometimes even taking the most valuable and sahing it to the ground without even having a second thought. This has also been done to me. 

So it makes sense that those who would like to keep us safe, make us steady and sure, put us back on some kind of solid ground, or otherwise protect us, would introduce some skepticism and even cynicism. We take what is best and most tender in ourselves and open it to a very dangerous animal indeed. The most dangerous animal, in many ways. Another human being. And all of this in spite of an abundance of evidence that we human beings are fickle, flighty, selfish, unthinking, perhaps essential unkind. Unkind and vicious by nature, with kindness and compassion seeming to require years of work and practice. 

Nevertheless, I still advocate for the authenticity and importance of falling in love and its associated losses. Pema Chodron's sign comes to mind, that she had in her bathroom for years:

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”

Because it is obsidian, and because it is my heart

It may be a somewhat overly dramatic "one liner." Maybe we can find that which is indestructible in some other ways. Maybe the stabbing pain of loss is not necessary "annihilating" but simply difficult. But, regardless, showing up for the open heart when life asks it of us seems to me the only living, pulsing, breathing and real choice. 

Keeping it real

I've been drawn toward getting back into a counseling situation many times since the last series of counseling sessions ended, but there's a key element that brings up resistance in me. 

A heart-shaped rock along the strand at Bahía de Los Angeles

There's a tendency in relationship recovery and in therapy to be skeptical about romantic love, to reject the idea that it is very important or real. It's a side effect of a few different aspects of the 12 step approach as well as how counselors are trained these days. For 12 step people, I think it's just that romantic love causes so much turmoil and relapse that there is a perhaps healthy fear and distancing around it. For counselors, I think they are trained to believe in rational narrative and client advocacy, as in, adhering to a role of being a sort of superego for the client, or wise parent, or otherwise skeptical guide. 

I have never had a counselor or therapist simply say to me, wow, this all sounds like a very powerful experience, and I can totally see why you are in so much pain and experiencing so much bewilderment. They have always gone to trying to get me to re-frame my experience along more reasonable, rational and controlled ways. I have friends who do that too. I've described my emotional experience to friends and had them immediately say things like "well, if this other person were available, you wouldn't even be interested," or whatever. I think these attacks on my experience are rooted in their own fears and hurt, as well as a desire to protect me. If someone is "causing me pain," that person is an enemy, period. This is a ridiculously juvenile perspective, but I can see where it comes from.

The problem there is that then my energy becomes directed toward *defending my experience* rather than finding ways to integrate it and heal from it. I don't want to have to *prove* to a counselor or therapist that my experience is real. Or to a friend, for that matter. 

I want to start from the ground of completely accepting that it's all exactly what I experienced. I want to talk with and work with people who take falling in love seriously and honor it and are interested in ways to make sense of it from that perspective. It seems like this is a somewhat rare thing these days. Our culture in general seems to be much more oriented toward being skeptical and cynical about limerence and the depths of that experience. I can see why, but I'm not interested in that path. 

So how would I go about shopping for such a counselor or therapist? I guess I could just ask, how do you work with clients who have suffered from romantic love and loss? I imagine the skeptics and cynics might say something like "I try to get them to see that their attachment was delusional and get them to be more grounded in reality." The right kind of counselor might say something like, "I acknowledge that these are among the most powerful and profound experiences we can have, and work with the client on grieving authentically and finding ways to integrate their suffering into a greater understanding," or something like that. 

The plain fact for me is that falling in love has provided me with, for one thing, the most direct and immediate experience of the sacred, and the experience has been among the most profound and moving of my life. So when I encounter the skepticism, cynicism and rationality of our contemporary attitudes, which sometimes even bleed over into outright mockery or ridicule, I feel wounded and become defensive, and as if my way of contacting the divine is being mocked and rejected. I have no interest in this dynamic anymore, and I simply want to start from a place of total acceptance that my falling in love is a real and true and authentic experience, and that the loss is real and true and authentic, and that I don't need to talk myself out of either, but, rather, find some way to become whole within the plain reality of it. 

A friend of mine recently wrote, in an email:

"bottomless sadness (love that you call it this)...is...evil...and maybe the answer to everything...maybe one of the most important ways of loving...maybe one of the only places from which i can see myself and others...fucking sucks...fucking sucks...fucking stupid." 

Yes, all of those things. 

With Love and Squalor

One cold, windy, rainy morning, camping on the Gulf of California near Bahía de Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, I was lying in my tent and heard a strange but vaguely familiar sound. "What the hell is that? Seal? Coyote? Dog? Bird?" I realized it was the sound of the woman in the camper about 200 yards away, having sex. I felt a modicum of a sort of combined aversion and curiosity as her cries mingled with the cold air. The curiosity was voyeuristic. The aversion was because it all sounded exaggerated, somewhat fake, and definitely performative. And I felt bitter about that, thinking about people and sex and bad faith, manipulative, fake ass fucking. 

I mean, who knows, maybe this guy was the best ever, the love of her life right?, and maybe it was just real and fierce and amazing and she'd never, ever forget it and either these two would live happily and faithfully ever after in animalistic bliss or maybe she'd go on to fuck dozens of other guys but she'd never forget this one amazing guy who fucked her on a cold, rainy, windy morning camping on the Gulf of California. 

But my thoughts (as her wild vocalizations continued) went much more toward cynicism. Fake ass fucking, cowardice, betrayal, duplicity, lies and more lies, convenience, manipulation, heartbreak and 100% bad faith. Of course, this says a lot more about old Percy Hades than it does that enthusiastic woman and her way of responding to whatever her lover was doing, oh yes, oh my god, yes, yes, oh god. And so, it offered an opportunity to take yet another look at my history, my heartbreak, my jealousy and pain, my "trust issues," and my own resentment, grief, sense of betrayal and abandonment. Hooray!

Sex is so awful, in a lot of ways. Like, both Ye Olde Definition, as in awe inspiring, and the new one, as in gut wrenching and terrifying. At that very moment, camping in a remote spot where I was looking for some peace, I was truly annoyed by being reminded of the whole squalid and lovely reality. The first thought I recall having was "Huh, I wonder who she is cheating on." Haha. Dude, really?

One obvious thing that presented itself is just how much suffering, guilt, hurt feelings, abandonment, betrayal and bad faith sex has brought into my life. I'd say that sex is the nexus of most of my own dishonesty, lack of integrity, duplicity and shame. In the Big Book, there's the famous reference to alcoholics leading a "double life," and I'd say that the most double of all of my lives have always been around sexual dishonesty and betrayal. The front that couples present to the world so often covers all sorts of sexual shenanigans. People who are capable of "just having sex" in order to "get their needs met" but without becoming emotionally attached amaze me, for example. I have never really been able to do that, even though I have tried. Ironically, I have also tried having utilitarian sex within a dead partnership, and I can't really meet that obligation very well, either. 

So I find myself celibate now in spite of a great many opportunities to connect sexually. The Catch-22 is: I cannot be emotionally available right now, but sex always pulls me into emotional connection, so, no sex. I have only recently identified how angry about this I am. I have at various times of my life been livid that I can't just fucking fuck someone and be done with it. Hit it and quit it. I have been so resentful at this plain fact that I have tried, and ended up punishing myself, and causing harm to others. The big lie for me is that I don't care, although of course the other big lie is that I *do* care, which makes it even more complicated. 

Meanwhile, people just go about their duplicitous, rationalized, manipulative, selfish, fake ass fucking as if there's no problem. And I suspect there really is no problem, for most. Compartmentalization, ephemera, existential fucks, weird little flings and temporary, superficial fake drama, tiny little pangs of guilt, but hey, that's the way it goes, move along folks, nothing to see here. Insufferably grotesque yet completely human and understandable. 

My last thoughts as the woman's cries subsided were, may all sentient beings be happy, well, peaceful and at ease, and full of loving kindness, and may these two lovers be happy and well, and may my own bilious, enraged, cynical and stone cold heart forget all of this fucking nonsense. 

Loneliness and Solitude

A simple distinction. Loneliness is a lack, and the feeling tone is an ache, pang, or longing. Solitude lacks nothing, and there's no longing or sense of pain. Uncomfortable alone or in the presence of those who don't get it? That's loneliness. Perfectly happy alone and enjoying one's solitary or unconnected self? That's solitude. To be perfectly happy with someone else might also be a form of solitude, like a solitude dyad paradox, but that remains an open question. 

I keep hoping REI and Subaru will sponsor my transition post Ph.D. So far, they have not returned my calls. You can't see the Yeti cooler that matches Sappho. They aren't returning my calls either.

I was encountering both on my sojourn in Baja and have been, for the past many, many years. There have been long stretches of time when I have had a busy relationship life of one kind of another, either within my family of origin or among friends, or with a lover or partner or spouse, when I have felt lonelier than when I have actually been solitary. I wish there were a specific word for this grinding, bitter, hollow feeling of being surrounded by people or being with one other person and feeling the same, or even an intensified, kind of absence, longing, gap, and the ache of loneliness. To be not gotten but not to know because there;'s no one around is easier in a lot of ways than to be with one's supposed connection and not gotten. 

It is a common refrain among recovering people that "we never fit in and always felt like people just didn't understand us." One of the acute stabbing or dull chronic pains of my life that alcohol and cocaine were a solution for. I distinctly recall feeling that booze in particular lifted that cloud of not fitting in and it seemed like the perfect social medicine for me. 

One of the existential processes that feels necessary for me is to "go through" loneliness to get to solitude. This has often been the case when I go on solo camping trips. There's no immediate experience of blissful, footloose and fancy free complete self sufficiency and enjoyment of my own company. I have to go through stages of longing, grief, some bewilderment and a sense of dis-ease, being alone. 

But once I provide enough space for solitude to start breathing, it becomes established. I sometimes "find myself" free, easy, unattached, not wishing for anyone or anything, simply enjoying what I am doing, on my own. These are extremely strengthening and valuable moments, providing proof especially in painful, lonely or abandoned moments that it is possible to be alone and to be happy. To be alone and to be happy is one of the ways to reconfigure the hardness of heart, bitterness, and mistrust that sometimes characterizes my rejection of the prospect of being connected to others, especially women. 

I have also been reflecting on the free flow of intense emotions that is the normal state of my heart, when I am not trying to dam, redirect, chain, deny or interrogate what I am feeling. I've been especially angry in a lot of ways the past several months, and I tend to try to manage anger in a wide variety of ways, but have really been enjoying just feeling angry, without expressing it to anyone but also without denying it to myself. One of my 2020 decisions has been to be real about my feelings, for myself. To stop being fake and pretending. I was cowed by this prospect at first because it seemed to present as involving tremendous risk of exposure to others. But then I realized I don't have to express what I am feeling, at all, to anyone. The resolution is to simply express it, find it, be with it, and let it be *for myself*. To honor my own feeling life *for myself* and fuck expressing it to anyone whatsoever unless they earn my trust. I have trusted the wrong people for the wrong reasons and have presented too much of my emotional life to people who can't show up for it, but I think this has often been a side effect of simply not showing up for it *myself*.  

I was talking with a friend of mine last night and said "I don't trust people enough to simply say to them, 'you hurt my feelings.'" She said, "well, I don't think it's mistrust for me so much as ego. It's humbling or even humiliating to allow oneself to be a fool in front of another person. And having allowed myself to get my feelings hurt in the first place, I judge myself harshly, and I say to myself 'shit, you are a fucking idiot, how could you have allowed yourself to be hurt?', and then I have to say or do something else to the person who has hurt me. Ghost them, attack them, blame them, manipulate them. It's not that I don't trust them, it's that I fucking hate myself." That gives me a lot to work with. 

In loneliness, there is also a lot of self hatred. If I had the company of someone or others, I wouldn't even have to confront the "problem" of myself. 

In solitude, the soft animal of my body gets to love what it loves (thanks Mary Oliver), I get to feel vulnerable, foolish, hurt, angry, whatever. None of my emotional life needs to be witnessed or validated, except by me. No one is responsible for my emotional life except me, myself, and I. I don't need to perform it, I don't need to share it, I don't need to "trust" any motherfucker whatsoever with any of it. Someone else being "unavailable" or "abandoning me" becomes irrelevant, if I myself am available and do not abandon or betray myself. 

"The most terrifying thing in this culture is to feel," said Cecil Taylor, and it takes courage, that is, heart, to show up for solitude, especially since the descent into loneliness seems like a constant prerequisite. But, really, if there's that solitary, enjoyable, comfortable, safe, autonomous, free ground always available if one is willing to pay the price, this seems like the best treasure. The "solution" to abandonment issues isn't, in this context, to find reliable people who will not abandon me, haha, what a fucking joke really—is there any such thing as a reliable human being? 

The "solution" is to not abandon myself. Such a simple idea but it has taken me decades to get it to form in my heart and guts.