Sadness

This posting is about friendship. I lost two friends this week, one through death and the other through a choice made, although not mine.

I learned from my best friend today that a mutual friend of ours from college died of unknown causes. My friend learned of it through an e-mail sent to her at work; the father of the friend who died was a professional colleague. The funeral is this Sunday.

As for the other friend I lost, I feel an equal amount of grief because the reason the friendship ended makes no sense at all. The result is that I feel horribly misunderstood, and suspect she might feel the same way. At the heart of the conflict that led to the demise of the friendship is a personal decision I made, one that my ex-friend disagreed with. I did what I had to do and it makes no sense that someone who truly loves me and wants what is best in my life would object to that. But she did. She wrote me an e-mail saying her mental health was being affected by our friendship; in other words, being my friend was becoming a threat to her state of well being. Realizing that a person has to do what s/he has to do, I accepted her decision. But isn't it ironic that what killed the friendship (her decision) is the very thing she couldn't accept in me, the fact that I did what I had to do. It's all a matter of conscience. It is also ironic that what appears to be her weakness (something in me that brought out something unhealthy in her) is what is breaking up the friendship. She is one of the strongest people I know, and this is what attracted me to her in the first place: her strength. I still love her and wish her well; I also hope one day she comes to accept me for who I am and stand by me once more as a friend.

Opposites Attract Redemption

I am trying to figure out what that is, the meaning of the word redemption. When you lose stature in someone's eyes, someone who you care about, someone whose opinion matters to you, the need to be redeemed emerges. Somehow, you need to explain yourself (to the person, in particular, but also to the audience in general) in such a way that the person knows that you are who you are and not the projection of you shown on the screen of his or her consciousness.

I am peopled.
You're all inside of me;
one soul,
with many
companions.
Good company,
we're all in it.
Standing so close,
I see you're more
like me
than I had realized.
If you don't want me
so close,
make me go away.
Close your eyes,
or shoo me with
your hands.
Push.
Will my heart
away from yours;
and when it breaks
wide open
from loneliness,
we both can
fall in, together
or separate.
Don't be afraid.
I don't want to
hurt you.
I just want you
to understand
that I hurt
like you
do.
I do.
Pushing away
is only an
opposite.

If my vulnerability is unattractive (it is repulsive), this is only because you see yourself in it, too. You're not all pretty either; our shit stinks, if not equally at least equivalently.

"An artist who is not working is a miserable creature, and the best way to cure that misery is to work. We do not have to work a lot. We do not have to work a long time, but we do need to work. The itch to make something is an itch that only making something will scratch. It doesn't need to be a good something - although it often is - it just needs to be something: a paragraph of prose, a rough sketch for a later painting, a stanza of poetry, the first verse of a song. In order to work freely, we must be willing to work badly, and once we are, we are often able to do good work indeed."

Julia Cameron, from The Sound of Paper

I'm not finished with this yet but wanted to capture this work in progress, a watercolor painting I am working on!

Next Right Thing

William C. Moyers wrote: "I am honored that you mentioned my book in your blog. But more than that, your appreciation for the decisions I had to make relative to doing the next right thing for the sake of my own recovery, affirms that others also know how difficult and necessary such choices are for those of us trying to find our way on the journey. Regards,William"

That is so true! Difficult and necessary. This book will be a great help to many people in that it clearly demonstrates how healing occurs only when we are "strong at the broken places" (Ernest Hemingway).

I've been listening to my blissed out friend Alton again. He inspires me because he is Alton, and I love him. Alton has actually quite mysteriously become my "cyberdad." (How did that happen, I wonder.) I have also been in touch with my other blissed out friend Shayne, who always helps me cut through the considerable fog of life, straight to what matters. If either of you guys are reading this today, I tip my imaginary tiara to you, with a wink, of course.

Another person I've been thinking about and trying to summon is Joe.

Whoever you are reading this, I appreciate you being here and hope you find something of value in what I am about to say.

Here is what Alton sent today, "the four questions," asked by Katie Byron. First off, my radar ears of skepticism perk up here because by claiming only four questions she is dismissing many others and making assumptions that might not be true. Yet her questions concern truth.

Here they are:

1.) Is it true?
2.) Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3.) How do you react when you believe that thought?
4.) Who would you be without the thought?

My gut reaction to question #1 is:

How the hell do I know?

I do know, however, that truth arrives (at times) with clarity obscured.

I have lately been engrossed in a fascinating memoir, Broken, by William Cope Moyers. And by odd coincidence, he and I have a number of connecting points. One of them is that we were born the same year, less than two months apart, in the same city. Another is that his oldest son was born on my eighteen-year-old nephew's birthday, and was given the same name as my nephew's uncle. But the main connection I feel with the author of this book, however, is that I sense in him the same familiar deep-down longing I have always felt, which is to be understood, and to understand.

On one level, I tell myself: "You don't need to show anybody anything, nor do you need to explain yourself. True friends don't need your demonstrations of worthiness." Yet what a contradiction that is! Life is all about showing, and explaining, demonstrating, and the like.

And it's also about success and failure. Consider this: Could it be that failure to understand the true meaning of success, in an individual and a collective sense, is failure to grasp the meaning of life?

Back to the book I mentioned, in part of it the author describes how his boss at work responded to his news that he needed to leave his position in order to move on to something different. Although Moyers had received clear direction about the path he should take, the lack of support from significant people in his life (including his father) had an impact. He wanted his boss to say, "That's a courageous decision. I am proud of you." But instead, he received discouragement and disappointment. (Likewise, his father later confessed to him that he thought his son had gone nuts.) He knew on a deep soul level that his decision was the right one, though. It would have been nice to have the blessing of these significant people in his life, but he knew what he had to do, despite all objections.

There is no good reason to vilify people we care about. What purpose does it serve, except to bring shame?

"When we become aware of our needs, anger gives way to life-serving feelings." Those words were written by Marshall B. Rosenberg, in Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Time and again, I refer back to this book when facing difficult life issues.

I will admit I am angry, at certain friends and at myself.

Yet what it comes down to, according to Rosenberg, is that we come closer to getting our needs met when we empathize with those who have offended us and express our needs and feelings nakedly, even though we place ourselves in positions of intense vulnerability when we do so. (I think of what Moyers has shared in his memoir.) In other words, Rosenberg is suggesting authenticity.

If we create an atomosphere of hostility and mistrust, we can only expect negative responses. In other words, trust must be present in order for there to be understanding.

Rosenberg goes on to say: "It is a rare human being who can maintain focus on our needs when we are expressing them through images of their [other people's] wrongness." I am not that rare being. The only thing we win by telling people what is wrong with them is the "success" in using these judgments to intimidate them into doing what we want them to do, or what we think they should be doing instead of what they are actually doing. If a person changes his behavior because he feels frightened, guilty, or ashamed, that is not a gain (win) but a loss. In other words, my needs are not met when someone only wants to avoid my wrath.

Breathe deeply, Rosenberg advises. Do not blame. Do not punish. Identify the thoughts that are making you angry. (Injustice is often at the heart.) Harsh judgments are tragic expressions of unmet needs.

Some of these needs are for inclusion, equality, respect, connection. The idea, according to Rosenberg, is to transform anger into needs and need-connected feelings. Before one person can truly connect with another, however, s/he must be able to empathize with that person, authentically.

Back to the four questions, can you absolutely know that it's true? And how do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without the thought?

Candlelight

Tribute to Patience

Please join me in sending out good vibes and energy to Paul, my dear friend who has been dealing with the inevitable loss of his beloved kitty companion of fourteen years, Patience. (Click on her name to read Paul's tribute.)

I've been revisiting the details of the assault I described on January 25th , and have added a few amended thoughts about it, and will probably continue doing so throughout this process, which might be long. That situation is still unfolding and it is becoming clear that what should have been a simple investigation of a crime has turned into something completely different. Honest mistakes are one thing, but deliberately covering them up is something else. I hope with the time, trouble, and considerable expense going into correcting this situation, that in the end, sanity and justice will prevail.

Labyrinth

This is a photo of an outdoor labyrinth on the campus of one of the community colleges here. Walking a labyrinth is an experience that reminds me of how "in the moment" life needs to be, in order to be lived well. It always comes back around to that, every time.

"It started out as paradise. Then, as now, the garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe. It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food. It's a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses; it's about winning, about providing society with superior things, and about proving that you have taste and good values and you work hard. And what a wonderful relief every so often to know who the enemy is - because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph - and then everything dies anyway, right? But you just keep doing it. What a great metaphor! I love this so much!"

Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Anne Lamott, with Yours Truly (Rose)

Mark, whose blog I enjoy reading, commented on an image I posted a few days ago, of a watercolor painting in black and white. (Thank you, by the way.) It must be said here that art is my personal savior, and I really can't imagine what life would be like without it. (The word lackluster comes to mind.) Soon, when it is finished, I will post an image of what I am currently working on, a watercolor(ful) painting for my daughter. It was intended as a Valentine, but ... well, other things have prevented me from finishing it, but we're almost there. As I was saying, art saves me; and when I am creating art, unseen helpers guide the way of my hand, holding its paintbrush, its pen, its charcoal, or whatever it is holding.... Do you ever experience that? (Image above courtesy of Miriam's Milestones.)

Photo courtesy of Carol Worthey.
Love takes time....

More about David ...

I was just sitting here and thinking of how this person on the other side of the world has influenced my life. We might not ever meet in person, but this guy deserves a lot of credit. Out of the goodness of his heart, he volunteered to coordinate an art project I was involved in last year. He never received any financial compensation for the hours and hours of labor he put into this project, yet I wonder if he realizes the value of what he did. I hope so! David, you are an inspiration. Here is one of his paintings.

One of the people who I have met online, David, has reminded me of some good things I did in the past. (Never mind the bad stuff, which is better off forgotten anyway.) Here is an image of a watercolor painting I did several years ago, for my father's close friend, Walter. He never received it in his lifetime, although I painted it while he was still alive; but I got the chance to give it to his son Zane this past year. He told me he is going to frame the painting and hang it on his wall. Thanks, Walter, Joan, Zane, and Holly, for so many memories. I will always love you.

It is often said that if the end justifies the means, those "means" are pretty much irrelevant. But if the following sentence is true, then the separation of the two makes the point pretty much moot.

"As the means cannot be separated from the desired ends, nonviolence cannot be separated from peace, for it is the value system and dynamic that makes peace possible." (From an article, "If We Listen Well," by By Edward Guinan.)

And what is peace if not an absence of its opposite? I cannot help but think of what James Hillman writes about peace in his book, A Terrible Love of War.

"I will not march for peace, nor will I pray for it, because it falsifies all it touches. It is a cover-up, a curse. Peace is simply a bad word…. The dictionary’s definition, an exemplary of denial, fails the word, peace. Written by scholars in tranquility, the definition fixates and perpetuates the denial. If peace is merely an absence of, a freedom from, it is both an emptiness and a
repression. A psychologist must ask how is the emptiness filled, since nature abhors a vacuum; and how does the repressed return, since it must?"

Do we really want peace at any cost, as long as it's peace?

Gifts

I had another dream this morning.

Change

Today, I unfolded the three chairs and placed them in another room, in a different environment, under different circumstances. Thank you, Mark, for the inspiration to do this. Your most recent comment in my blog led me to want to share more, if you are interested. (We can talk about it in the group.)

Gregory Bateson once said,

"All changes can be understood as the effort to maintain some constancy and all constancy as maintained through change."
(From Steps to an Ecology of Mind, page 381)

Thanks to Mark and Andrew, for your comments a few days ago. Yes, we are taking care of it!

An event occurred two nights ago and I am wondering how it might be connected to the dream I had on Monday morning. Somehow, it helps me connect dots between the various confusing points of interest in what happened, which was this:

My husband was assaulted by two of our neighbors, apparently a father and his teenage son. I was in the house at the time and am still learning of the details, bit by bit. There were no witnesses other than family members of the attackers. A woman, presumably the man's wife (but this is still unknown), saw and participated in what happened. It was three against one.

What started the conflict was the woman speeding down our alley and swerving toward my husband, who was standing in our driveway, as she sped past. He has a high-powered flashlight and pointed it at her car, to get the license plate number so he could call and report her. Following her was another vehicle, a truck, driven by the man; he was also speeding and again, my husband shined the light on his vehicle, too.

When the man got to his driveway, two doors down from us, he got out of the vehicle and came walking toward our house. My husband meanwhile had begun walking toward the man's house. They faced each other in the alley between our houses. My husband had his cell phone in hand and was about to call the police to make the report. The man began cursing him for shining the flashlight on them. More words were exchanged and he came at my husband with his fist.

By that time, a teenage male had come out of the house and joined his father in the assault. My husband was hit at least three times, hard, in the face and on the side of the head. To stop him, my husband pulled his gun (carried legally), telling him to back off, which the man did. As he was lying there in the alley, still reeling from the beating, the woman attempted to steal his cell phone which had fallen onto the ground. My husband pointed his gun at her and ordered her to drop it, which she did. After that, he called the police and they came out.

Meanwhile, I was in the house preparing to settle in and do my schoolwork. The dogs were in the back yard. My husband walked in the front door, came into the room where I was sitting, and asked me to bring the dogs in. I looked at him and saw his face bleeding. It looked like he had been attacked by a dog, or hit by a car. I had no idea of what had just happened.

I went out the front door to the porch, where he was standing with our next-door neighbor. After going back in the house to put on something I could wear outside, I returned to find both my husband and the next-door neighbor (our friend) spread eagle against the back of one of our cars, being searched.

Since a gun was involved and details of what happened as yet unknown, the police were treating them like criminals. At one point, one of the policemen demanded to come into our house so they could search for the gun. I wouldn't let them, believing they were overstepping boundaries, not only of law but of decency, too. After all, we weren't criminals and didn't deserve that kind of treatment. After some time, they gained access to the house to get what they were looking for (they gave it back later); but the way they wanted to go about it at first was humiliating and unfair.

What the police didn't know then was that my husband had spared these people's lives! He would have been completely within his rights to shoot in self-defense. It is to his credit (and a mercy to all of us) that he didn't allow himself to pull the trigger in the heat of the moment of being severely beaten.

An ambulance arrived and paramedics got to work. Fortunately, the injuries weren't severe enough for him to have to go to the hospital; although he was urged to go, he chose not to. [01.31.07 Amendment: I wrote this before realizing his injuries were indeed more serious than we realized. He was disoriented that day and wasn't able to articulate that he had sustained a head injury; he should have been transported to the hospital right away for treatment.]

The story told by the other family is quite different from the story my husband told to the police, so it was determined that each party would be issued citations for disorderly conduct and let a judge determine the outcome in court.

Race is involved here, too. My husband is Arab American and the other family is African American. We sensed racism in the behavior of at least one of the policemen, too, who kept spitting on our property and acting very unprofessional and arrogant.

As it stands now, after consulting with some other people within the police department, my husband is planning to sue this family.

[02.21.07. Once again, I must amend this. The lawsuit is not against the family, as I first thought; it is against the city. The incident with the neighbor is a different issue from the investigation of the crime. But the prosecutor who has the authority to get the charge dropped is twisting things so that it looks like the issue is between neighbor and neighbor. That is not the issue. The police did not accurately depict what happened and my husband had to hire a lawyer simply to force the police to do their job in an orderly way rather than the way they did it, which resulted in an honest citizen accused of being "disorderly" now having to defend himself and to bring to justice those who have disrespected his civil rights. It will be heard by a judge next month.]

I now wonder how and if justice will actually be served. It would be good to work it out between us but the animosity is too great. I suspect the family is poor, and suing them might serve one purpose; but it also might plunge them deeper into poverty, thus making their situation worse.

Additionally, this family keeps three mean dogs chained up in the backyard. I mentioned this to one of the policemen and he urged us to call animal control. To me, the dogs represent a way of life for them and I wonder what has happened in these people's past to make them so hostile and aggressive, and to keep dogs like that, in that way.

I feel afraid now, like we have to watch our backs. Yet as upsetting as this whole ordeal has been, it also clarifies our roles not only in the family but in society as well. My husband was cooperative with the police, despite their harsh treatment of him, especially at first. (Once his side of the story started coming out, they behaved with more civility.)

I also think about how we co-create our lives with the Universe. Each person played a role in bringing the scene to reality. It confirms that what we focus upon becomes reality, it comes to pass.

Thanks for listening.