Hide The Ball

I don’t know if you remember that old magician’s trick with the usually three upturned cups and the ball that seems to magically move from cup to cup, and the observer never quite knows where the ball is, or how it got there. In one of our Practitioner classes years ago, a dear friend said, “I play hide the ball with myself all the time, and it frustrates me!” When she said it, I realized I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate way to describe how we keep ourselves from knowing ‘stuff’ that we claim we want to know. Most of us do this, at least sometimes. This is not a criticism. I think it’s an aspect of being human.

I’ve been using this pandemic cloistering period to work on my writing practice in a world-wide community of writers. The way this program is set up, everyone has a page of their own as a place to show their work. It’s a little cumbersome until you get the hang of it (like most things are when they are new), but it’s really not hard to find your own page. I’m watching one of my writing friends do his darnedest to keep himself from writing, and letting himself acknowledge that he actually writes well and beautifully. He’s a smart guy. He’s got a successful day job. And he’s got this other side that’s creative, poetic, profound and astoundingly lyrical in its beauty and depth. 

This morning I noticed that he’d written an extraordinary piece of incredibly touching poetry on someone else’s ‘page’, and sheepishly admitted that he didn’t know how to find his own page. We’ve been in this writing program for fivemonths. Twice I’ve offered to zoom with him on his computer to show him how to find his own page. I know of two other people, moderators of the writing program, who have also offered to assist him. Someone even made him a ‘how to’ sheet of directions, and he persists in hiding the ball from himself. I just wanted to cry when I saw his commentary this morning.

If we, or someone else, don’t want to know something, there is nothing that can be done to force them or us to see, and know. It’s not like having a puppy and rubbing their noses in it when we catch them peeing in the house. We don’t learn that way. Once we finally do wake up to the game and see, and are willing to own our own ability, agency, autonomy, authority, responsibility and power, there’s nothing that stands in our way.  

Being part of a world-wide writing community is both exciting and terrifying. I was telling one of my artist friends about it, and she was horrified at the idea of showing her work to others as it was in process, specifically so that other people could comment on it. I told her it was really quite fabulous, because one of the rules of engagement in this group was that commenters were required to be constructive, and kind. Early on when I joined this online writers’ group, I noticed the moderators, quickly and decisively, removed two people who didn’t know how to be constructive and kind. 

It serves each of us to have a small group of supportive friends, who we trust and who actually have our best interests in mind and heart, and who will help us see our blind spots.  Without that, it’s easy to just keep playing ‘hide the ball’, and we don’t learn and grow.

The Writer's View, 3Dec19

For some reason that still puzzles me, I signed up for, and participated in, a book-writers' boot-camp this summer.  The two dudes who ran it promised that if you did the exercises and activities when, and as, they described them, you would end up with a true first draft of a book by the end of four 8-hour days of constant writing.  Apparently, I thought the nudge would be worth it, and so I sent in my (non-refundable) full tuition payment, made my airline, hotel and rental car reservations, and cleared my calendar.  

I didn't enjoy the process, because I hate feeling pushed, and that's exactly what they did. The entire program was delineated into 6-minute increments.  Six minutes to brainstorm possible titles. (There was a little bit of guidance on the types of titles that generally are picked up by bookstore buyers, and by consumers.)  Six minutes to describe everything you know about, even stuff you don't think matters.  Six minutes to define your target audience.  Six minutes to come up with five chapter headings. And so on, ad nauseum.  And it did, indeed, work. 

One of the things about the week that I enjoyed was getting an increased awareness of the breadth and depth of stories I have in my own personal history. We all do, if we're paying any attention to the moments and interactions of our days. One of the leaders talked about his own process of practicing his story-capturing skills by challenging himself to write a story every single day and publishing them all on a blog.  By the time he stopped his daily activity, he'd written and published (if writing on a blog is publishing, which it is, sort of) 646 days straight.  Granted, they aren't all riveting and mind-expanding, but they are stories of his daily life, and remembrances of childhood that could be used to illustrate a point.  

One of the questions 'up' for me right now is how to mentally think about individuals who, for no apparent reason, walk out of my life. When asked about their departure, there are no hard feelings, and nothing is amiss. It's just over. They feel like they've changed. The whole conundrum does leave me puzzled though. And it reminds me of a story.  

On the first night my taiji group was in Fiji, the locals welcomed us to the island with sweet-smelling Plumeria leis and a welcoming ceremony. The younger women danced a stylized, formal dance while the men played drums, and some of the older women prepared this milky white beverage that was served to us in coconut shells, family style.  All the tourists who wished to drink this beverage were encouraged to do so.  It tasted like I imagine dirty socks would.  Fortunately, it didn't smell like them.

Several days later, I was sitting on top of a picnic table at dusk, after a long day of strenuous taiji practice, enjoying the night sounds of the insects, the sights of the fruit bats flying low, and sounds and scents of the waves crashing on the rocky beach. A couple local men who served as security guards for the small resort stopped by the table to make small talk. We talked about the weather and the beauty of their island, both of which were glorious. I asked them about the welcoming ceremony. The older man replied that it wasn't made up for the tourists, that it was used by the locals to include the tourists in their extended family for the duration of their visit for their safety and protection, and then, after the tourists had gone home, the locals did a second ceremony to remove the tourists from their protection.  

I wonder what sort of disconnection ceremony I might do for this one who has walked out of my life, and I wonder what impact that might have?  I'll have to give that some thought. 

The Orange and The Green

A bunch of years ago, when I was on an extended job in the UK, I was asked to accompany a young woman that I worked with to a girls' prep school to talk about atypical careers for women, or some such. It happened to be St Patrick's Day, which is not a 'major holiday' in the States, unless you happen to be Irish or live in Boston or Chicago or something like that.  Mostly, it's an opportunity for many of the States to drunk too much (green beer or Irish Whiskey), sing bawdy songs, and eat corned beef and cabbage and belch.  (Apologies to any  for whom this is a major/serious/meaningful holiday.)

In any case, I was pretty clueless about the importance of the day and the importance of wearing the green, etc.  I had only the wardrobe I brought with me for this month-long stay, so I rummaged through my suitcase, and found my least-wrinkled, most-reputable outfit, and put it on.  It happened to be a silk-linen pantsuit that was orange-sherbet-colored. 

I felt like my reception at the girls' school was a little stiff and stilted, but just assumed it was because I was a 'yank' and obviously not of their social standing or class, and thought nothing much of it.  It wasn't until we were headed back to the office that the young woman who asked me to accompany her asked me if I had worn orange on purpose on St Patrick's Day.  My naive reply was, "no, why?" She then informed me of a little bit of the history (as she had understood it) of the holiday, and the long-standing dissention between the Northern Irish Catholics and the Northern Irish Protestants. 

In reading a little of the history of Ireland, it seems that Patrick went to Ireland well before there were Catholics or Protestants.  He went to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity.  And that's another story all together. 

There's so much that we don't know, even when we think we do, and so many ways we are unconsciously unaware.  It's not a bad thing.  It just is.  

Jimmy Buffett: "Its my Job to be worried half to death ... that's what people expect in me..." or not. 14Jul11

I'm learning some really interesting things about myself from this book study group on the Trance of Scarcity.   A continuum between stingy and lavish was introduced in chapter three; lavish is represented by wholeheartedness and gratefulness and stingy is represented by constricted, limited and tightly controlled.  I live, like everyone else, somewhere on this continuum; on different days, and on different topics, I slide along the scale between free, easy and open to closed, tight and hurried/worried. 

This was made incredibly clear to me when I went in for a massage.  My masseuse had to cancel because of a family emergency and I was desperate for someone to work on my tight back, so I called some new friends who had opened a wellness clinic in town.  Two of the three co-owners were certified in massage and I got in to see the woman that day.

There's a story I have told myself about tightness in my shoulders and upper back.   It's just the place that I store tension.  The masseuse said, as she was kneading my shoulders hard, "You know, you don't have to store tension in your shoulders."  And then it hit me.  I thought, "Hey, you are right.  I don't."  When I got in to see my regular masseuse the next time, she said, "Whatever you are doing, keep it up.  Your shoulders have never been that loose."

Nothing had changed in my life, except an awareness I had held.  What had kept my shoulders tight, holding tension, was an old story that I had to be hurting in some way in order to warrant having a massage.  You didn't just have them because you enjoyed them, because they felt good.  That was somehow indulgent, and I must have enough puritan in my history that indulgences are not OK.  Good people didn't get massages unless they absolutely needed them, they had to be for 'medical' reasons.

So my new story, that opens me up more toward lushness, and away from stinginess, is that massages are reasonable self care and that I don't need a physical/'medical' reason to need them; that I have no need to store tension in my body because nothing is wrong, or if something needs fixing, I handle it and don't let it build up and store in my body and that I allow myself to be aware of what I want and I take care of myself.  

Pretty darn cool.