Arlington Dancing with the Stars

This is old news, but finally figured out the direct post options, so here I am! I'm dancing with Ingrid Morroy who is the Arlington Commissioner of Revenue. This is a charity event in a knock off of the real "Dancing with the Stars" show. We're dancing an East Coast Swing - earlier in the evening IH and I danced a Waltz, although I don't have video of that.

The Bowl

 

XSFJ

Sitting outside of group - wish i could write more interesting things. Feeling nervous about going in because i haven't told them about the engagement being off. And i'm realizing that when i think about being present it's usually about where i am with the relationship. And what i really want to know is where i am with myself. Where is my emotion at this moment... I keep hoping that if i do some external activity or trip or thing that i'll be present. That if i keep moving i'll find it... Maybe that's the wrong way to go about it for me.

1/8/08 Dream II

AL an i are going to go canoeing - she's going to meet me at the launch point, which is an hour drive south down the potomac. I get there first, later in the day on saturday and do the paperwork for the rental. At first the guy rents me a single seater, but i remind him i have someone joining me. It's now two hours before the place closes (7pm) and AL still hasn't shown up yet. I call her, and she says that she's on her way. Even though she dosen't say it, i realize that she rented her own canoe at the put in place up river, an hour drive away, and she's trying to canoe down to meet me. There is no way she will make it in time, and also she's going to end up in the wilderness after dark by herself with no provisions on the river. I try calling her back, but she has either turned her phone off or is out of cell reception. It is clear that she won't be here in time to use our reservation for tonight, so i cancel with the guy to the deak. Even though i just made the rental, the cancelation fee is $119 (out of the $200 original rental). This sucks, but has to be done. I keep calling and caling and finally ge through and ask her what she's doing? She says that she was going to paddle the entire way down, in fact was going to paddle the entire length of the potomac. I tell her that it took me an hour to drive here, so there's no way she's canoeing here by tonight. She didn't realize that.

PART II

Now AL and i are driving somewhere, but she needs to ship some stuff, so we stop at a UPS store and she goes in but i wait in the car. It takes her forever it seems, and traffic is getting worse and worse. Finally i drive off, just to get some movement because i'm tired of sitting and waiting. I drive down the road a bit, and traffic is pretty bad, but i manage to cut across and go into a residential neighborhood. I drive though there and come to a pedestrian bridge that goes back to the downtown place where the UPS store is. I get on a bike and ride back to the store, and call her on my cell on the way. When i arrive she comes out and is clearly distraught. The clerk comes out and explains that while she had said the cost from the store would be $5.50, there is an 80 pound box that she wants to ship, which costs $4.40 per pound, which ment the total cost was very expensive, and AL either didn't have the money for that or didn't want to spend that much. I ask what's in the box - it'ss audition videos and head shots to send to hollywood for her dream of acting. I realize that she can't stop her dream just because of this - i say, what if i pay for the shipping, even though i don't know if i can afford the cost either.

on being present

i'm sooo not ready for marriage - i have this completely skewed picture of what i expect marriage to be like. somehow my mind is using marriage as a place to just stop working at being present - expecting the marriage relationship to externallly cause being present to happen to me or for me. like after i get maried i can just let go and not have to work at that part. and, believe it or not, being present is _alot_ of work for me. i think i slip away very easily and that it's hard for me and the people around me to tell when i'm mentally and emotionally left the building.

i have this mental image of marriage as a bubble over me - when i slip away, it's like i'm vaporizing into a mist, and the bubble of marriage contains me in one place at least. and i think maybe what i've been looking for is a "perfect enough" marriage that is tight enough that this bubble is small enough that even though i've still atomized, the bubble is holding me tight rnough that it at least appears that i'm still there. that's the image of the marriage taking over being present that i have. and cheryl and i did an exercise where ahe got her face right up infront of my face to simulate being in that tight bubble. i mean, she was inches away. and it was great for maybe 30 seconds - i couldn't help but be present - it was impossible to disconnect. but it was impossible to see anything else either - it was complete tunnel vision. and it felt awful after 30 seconds. just miserable - because i completely lost myself f there was no mental or emotional room to move.

so - this is where my mind is about what marriage is. and i'm sooooo not ready to be married in that place. until i can have a better image of what marriage is - or rather, until i can keep doing the work myself, i'm not ready to be married.

1/18/08 Dream

At an informal restaurant and there is a woman my age sitting with me. She has tanned skin so her eyes stand out on her face with their brightnress - they're really quite striking and stunning - she's really quite georgous. And i'm talking to her and she says that because her eyesa are so stand out, it makes it even harder to tell people that she has a problem where her contacts pop out all the time because her eyes are a little oblong, which makes it hard for contacts to stay attached. Because people see her eyes as so striking, it's hard to tell them that many times she can't see because the contacts have come out and they're expensive to keep replacing. I'm thinking - well, can't you just tell people that you have this difficulty? And she's saying - for example - they just fell out now.

Winter Color

 

Next steps

Time to check in - IH and I called off the engagement so that we can step back and make sure the roots of the relationship are good and to make another stab at being present and true to ourselves while in an intimate relationship. I also have closure work to finish left over from A & K that I thought was done, but isn't.

1/9/08 Dream

It's winter and i'm visiting my old boy scout camp, which it at the top of a mountain. there is snow on the ground, and the path up the mountain is pretty rough from the winter. there is a park ranger type person driving up the path in an old WWII jeep, and he's trucking through the ruts and pot holes. i get to the top of the mountain and there is a developed area at the top - there's a gift shop and a trail outfitters (lands end actually) up here, and a very nice view of the lakes off in the distance.

And then I'm watching some sort of commercial for condoms, except that it's pretty explicit in showing how they work. and then there is a follow up commercial showing what happens if you don't use condoms - it's a sped up process showing the woman getting pregnant, then giving birth, and then it's my child i'm watching being born, and then he's a toddler, and i'm giving him some of my water from my water bottle, and then he's a preteen all of a sudden, and i say - hey - when did you get so big? and he just looks at me and says, "i don't know", and then he walks away.

Dark night of the soul

There is a woman that i love - her name is IH. I love her perhaps more than i have truly loved another woman. I am compatible with her in many ways and on many levels. I love to do things with her, from movies to dancing to running to watching tv to visiting with family to being with animals. We have deep difficult conversations. And i am afraid that i am trapped in the past, unable to move forward because of this link i have to these two past women to whom i had made an unbreakable commitment, and was then left by myself inside of this now empty covenant. How dare they just walk away and leave me to figure it all out?

I feel more viscerally alone tonight than i have ever felt before.

1/8/08 Dream

I'm in the backyard of a house that i believe is my own. i have the key to the house in my hand - it's an odd looking key, not like a normal key. my sister is with me as is Baxter, and we go for a walk through the neighborhood. I look up the hill and see a new housing development just over the ridge - they're huge houses - bigger than mega mansions. one of them is being maneuvered into place - i guess they're built off site and trucked in. but the person driving this new one into place is not very good at his job, because he keeps lurching forward, with the house all swaying about on the truck.

so my sister and baxter and i wander off down the neighborhood. we walk through all sorts of streets, and eventually make our way up the hill to the new development of houses. i see the one house that was lurching along, still in the middle of the street. most of these houses are unfinished, and the one that has people living in it doesn't really look complete. there are people in there, but they're all hanging out in a room right by the front door - they haven't really gone inside. it's like they're living outside of their house - and i can see that the inside is cavernous. the unfinished houses all have these massive four car garages right in the middle of the house - most of the houses don't have their shell on, so i can see the framing and into the core of the house. and these garages take up so much space, leaving this huge empty cavern inside. i have to really scramble and crawl up an embankment to get up to this place, and am eventually driven off by a construction worker who says that i don't belong here.

my sister and baxter and i keep walking, and eventually come to an upscale hotel - we walk through it, and it's all modern and fashionable and very quiet. we get to the workout room and go inside. there are a few people here working out. my sister finds one of the machines and tries it out, but i see that there are windows here with shades on them, and pull the shades aside to see if i can see where i am. i've let go of baxter and have set my backpack down and unpacked it a bit. i don't really settle down into a workout though. finally the manager returns to the room and says that we can't stay here if we're not guests, and that we have to leave.

because i had started to unpack, i'm awkwardly carrying my stuff now. my sister and baxter and i are trying to find our way back home, but i just can't find our way - i have they key to the house, but i don't know where i live! i'm sure that when i see my house i'll know i'm home, but i don't even really know what it looks like. i have the feeling that i'm one or two streets over from where i want to be, but these neighborhoods are confusing and the streets don't seem to go where i think they should.

i eventually come to a really tight neighborhood and realize that as i walk further into the street, it's turning into a house. and as i wander through i'm finally in someones house. there is an older mother type figure in the house - she's pretty quiet. we get to talking and she says that she used to break dance. i ask her if she still knows how to do this, and she says yes. i'm excited - i say, well, could you teach me? and she says yes. i'm not holding onto baxter at this point, and i'm not sure where my sister has gone. baxter gets into one of the closets and is rooting around and i have to go pull him out. it's time to go but i'm still in the kitchen for a moment, and someone from the woman's family walks through, and i make a comment about her teaching me to break dance, and the woman give me a look like i wasn't supposed to tell anyone else about her past history of dancing, because it's her secret and she hasn't told anyone.

Struggle

I put enormous weight on wedding vows - when I make a vow, it's forever. I make that vow in front of my family and friends - the elements that make up my core. Being divorced has put me in a place where I'm struggling to reconcile my unbreakable vow with a situation where those vows are impossible to fulfill. How can I walk away from an unbreakable vow and still maintain my integrity?

Warm days / the good, the bad, and the ugly

Perhaps the way to get started again is to just get started again.


This will be a year of transitions, and I'm afraid I'm not starting it very well.

and now my mind works very hard to shut this conversation down.
all the other things in the world that are much more pressing or interesting push their way forward
isn't there paying work to do?
the floors are clean. can't do that again.
and the laundry's in the wash, so that's done
perhaps i'll look out the window for a while?
maybe my eyes will just glaze over and i'll get stuck

so much has happened, so much is happening - lots good, some bad, some sad.
My grandmother passed away before thanksgiving after struggling for a short time with lung/bone cancer. That's the bad.

oh boy, let's shut down then! that would be fun
don't let the eyes focus!
look - is that dust and hair on the desk? must brush it off then! that's what we'll do!

fuck off brain.

maybe i should put the shower curtain in the wash?

fuck off brain.

the dance studio i worked for fired me for not coming back to teach a 2 hour dance while i was in maine helping to take care of my grandmother. That's the ugly.

pick at my hands, stare out the window

yeah. ok.
i got engaged :) That's the good :)

That's all i can do for now.

Maine sunset

What I see

One of the reasons I want to have children is to experience the world for the first time through their eyes. Every experience is new at some point, and there is much to be learned from remembering that.

Yesterday I discovered the corollary. My grandmother is dying - her body is riddled with cancer and she's in pain most of the time now. I'm up in Maine as I write this to be with family as this final chapter in her life is written. My sister was here through yesterday, when she has to return to Washington statet to go back to her internships, completing vet school. And as she stood over grandma's bed, looking down into her eyes, saying goodbye, and as grandma looked back up at her with a smile on her face, I had this image that this may be the last time that either one of them sees eachother again.

I've been searching for the gift that grandma has to offer me in this time. What final life leason can she offer me as she completes her life journey? And I've come to this: just as there is value in experiencing the world in the morning sun for the first time, there is value in see the world in the light of the setting sun, for the last time. In order to learn how to say hello, we must learn how to say goodbye. That is her gift to me.

I've been struggling with writing a post for several weeks now. I've started and stopped, pondered, and fretted. When I get my head around a topic, or sharing where I am emotionally, I find that I hit a wall and shut down. I'm struggling very hard right now not to shut down.

Right now I am working through topics surrounding death and life transitions. Growing up I had a neighbor, named Marie, who I had viewed as the matriarch of the neighborhood. She had an especially close tie to my family - a family friend for sure. I never really got to know her, despite commands from my mother for my sister and I to take over a plate of Christmas cookies and talk with her every year.

Three weeks ago I learned that she was in a rehab center with terminal, end stage lung cancer. This shook my to my core. Marie does not really have family in the area - she has a cousin, but no immediate family or children. Most of the people from the old neighborhood who really knew her have died or moved on. I had this image in my mind of her dying alone, and could just not bear the thought.

That evening in group I just lost it - the idea of dying alone _terrified_ me beyond description. Much more than I ever realized.

After group I went to visit Marie for real. I sat with her for two hours that night, and the following two nights, just getting to know her and her story. I'm sorry I didn't get to know her earlier in life - she was quite a character. The next week IH and I went out of town on vacation for seven days. Marie passed away the morning that we returned home. She was a strong woman, and will be missed.

While I was in New Hampshire on vacation I learned that my grandmother (on my mother's side) has been diagnosed with lung cancer with mets to her bones - specifically her pelvis, ribs, shoulder, and back of the head. I had a chance to visit briefly with her in the hopital, and hopefully will be able to get back up there in early October - hopefully before she passes. When I think of grandmothers, I mostly think of her, as she was the predominent grandmother figure in my life. While I knew that she was getting older, she seemed to always keep on trucking without any major health issues. Or that was always my perception.

I've never really, as an adult, had the ability to know someone close to me that was dying in the near future. It is an odd thing - death always seemed like a sudden entering into conciousness, not something that was introduced and lives with you until it's time to go. This has certainly been a reflective time.

I have been hoping that by getting all of that out there that I'd remove some of the mental block that is in my head, keeping me from being present. But that is not the case.

There is something still in this struggle to be present that is missing. I haven't really seen my friends for entirely too long. I have lost them, and that makes me more sad than I realize. I have fallen out of communication through this writing, and that makes me more sad than I realize. Somehow I keep forgetting the things that I need to keep me present, to stay emotionally true.

I'm just a guy who is really having a time of it. I'm really no good at remembering the things that are really important, and really good at doing the things that aren't so important.

I'm struggling. And you know what? I keep forgetting that I'm struggling.

So there it is. My post - the core of it. I miss you guys. I'm really sorry that i'm no good at staying in touch. Even when I stay in touch a lot of the time I don't know how to really be there. But you mean the world to me, and I'm really afraid of losing what little connection I'm able to get.

Holding on with both hands

Had a very productive individual session just now, and found some clarity on the work I have in store for this core that i'm finding again.

Challenge - how to hold on to two places at once... Like being in my anxiety about work and the conference next weekend, but still being present with IH and myself and friends and such. How to keep that connection, instead of just "forgetting" about the anxiety when i'm not at work, or forgetting about myself and others when I am.

Cheryl made a very interesting observation after we were talking about how I lose myself when i'm with others that I have a connection with. Her comment was that it may seem like I don't care about other people, friends, family, and the like, but it's really that I really want a connection with people in my life, and when I get it, I lose myself. And that scares me, and is overwhelming - to lose myself.

The work to be done is so simple - hold on to more than one place at a time within myself. Hold onto myself and others when i'm with friends and family. The work is simple, and requires nothing less than everything to do it.

Old houses, new movement

I live in an old house - it was born in 1904 in a vastly different time. The things this house must have seen. The things it is seeing now - me finally getting around to renovating the front room. This room began life as a screened porch, and much later in life was closed in to a front room. However, the lady who did the enclosing decided to put up this _nasty_ flower trim all over the room. Just unbelievable. And she didn't quite finish out the room, so gaps and cracks between the windows and walls, around the window frame, etc were never quite finished out. I spent last Sunday ripping down the nasty nasty molding and caulking all the cracks and gaps in the room. And then this past Tuesday I stayed up until midnight priming the entire room for painting. Painting should finish up over the weekend - IH has offered to recover the wicker furniture, at which point i'll have a fantastic new room, simplified and finished.

On a side note, I got LOOK toe clips for my bike on Wednesday, and learned, after much cursing and banging, that bike pedals are screwed in differently, depending on which side of the bike the pedal is on... Makes a big difference to unscrew the pedal in the correct direction instead of tightening it. And then I spent the evening leaning against the wall practicing getting into and out of the pedals. Not quite as easy as it seemed. But everything is adjusted now - I took a test ride yesterday evening... Four things were different which made such a huge difference: 1) the pedals - i'm connected to the bike now - it's like an extension of my body now, which is pretty cool. 2) I got real bike shorts - the spandex w/ padding type. I had mountain bike shorts before - still had the padding and spandex, but had a regular baggy outer on them. The new shorts make a huge difference in comfort and slidding into and out of the seat. 3) I adjusted seat up about an inch - it's finally the correct height. And 4) I got a tire gauge and finally inflated my tires to the correct 100 psi, which is much higher than i'm used to. All together a much more enjoyable biking experience. I'm looking forward to taking a longer ride this SUnday. Details to come.

Rock hopping

Was in my individual session just now, and the question in response to not knowing how to move was 'how would chris move?' chris in this case is my emotionally self. The answer brought me back to being a child and going down to the creek and playing in the stream. Hopping on rocks in the park by myself - one place where I could really be myself - this gentle, introspective, quiet kid. And it became clear - how chris would move is to rock hop in the stream. So we scattered pillows on the floor and I recreated the experience right there - jumping from rock to rock, feeling the slippery ones, the ones that rock a little, and finding my feet, my whole body working together, seeing with my feet. And the question was asked, how is chris feeling? And the best I could come up with was "good". Which is when I realized that the emotionally present, alive side of myself is this little 8 year old kid. And he doesn't have the language to express himself or to stand up for himself. And the side of me that has been studying for the past two and a half years - that side that has the language, knows how to see, can stand up for himself - he's an adult, but doesn't know how to be present. And I'm stuck in the middle, between this emotionally present child who does not know how to talk, and this emotionally stunted adult who can talk.

And that was when I remember the most important thing about rock hopping, being a kid at the park, playing in the stream. When all else fails, when you don't know what to do - build a dam and sit. Slow the water down and think.

The journey took on a little more clarity today - at least this leg of the journey. Bring the child and the adult together. Become one again.

Wednesday's fresh thoughts

Hi there. I'm happy to be back in the realm of the connected, the world of the clear, the here and now. I had a really connected group session yesterday, a great evening, and now I wake up to a fresh morning - got a chance to see my neighbor's renovations and ooh and ahh at how great it's looking. Today is a day of connection and presence to contrast to yesterday's day of disconnect.