Category Archives: individuation

by

the pale reflections of our bitter selves

they are neglected, you know, by most
the worse self, the worst self, the dark
the impulse to yank the moon from the sky
when she slides down the stair, to see who’s there

there are few poems written to the dark
impulses, the demons, the underside of our hopes
and dreams, the nastiness, the grief, the anger
we are kept in the dungeons below the basement

below the belt we band together huddle
in a pile of claws and unfeathered wings and teeth
wishing for a blanket, to be held, rocked
loved, wishing for the mothers who left us

the fathers who denied us, pushed us away
so that we knew and know what to hide
what to deny, what part of ourselves to kill
we try and try but few do

and then they are mourned, people say
they don’t understand but ask the demons below
and oh, they do, they do! maybe the next plane
will be kinder and love the demons

the bitter self, the dark self,
that longs so badly to be loved
that longs forever to be loved
that is not loved this round

this round

written 11/24/2023

by

Masks and selfs

I call a friend yesterday and sing, “Happy Day Before Your Birthday to You”. It sounds silly. She has just gotten Covid and this cheers her up.

She is telling me about her summer and about a class at a camp. Some for adults and some for children, but one where people really dropped their masks and just got to be themselves.

What identity is your deepest self? She is talking about her nine year old self. I think mine is more like four and rebellious and skeptical of adults, adulthood and all of their rules. I don’t think I am ever out of touch with this identity, though I don’t let it talk out loud in clinic. Mostly. A rebellious four year old informed by medical school and years of experience is a pretty frightening thought, isn’t it? Or the basis for a great cartoon.

That part of me is very observant and quite smart. It does not care what we are supposed to see or the cues people give. Growing up in an alcohol household, it looks for what people do not say. This can be terribly helpful in clinic and also a bit weird. It is body language and tone of voice and what questions a person shies away from answering and the puzzle pieces that do not fit.

Last week I see a small child with her parents for vomiting and coughing and fever. I am interviewing the child and asking if things hurt. “Do your ears hurt?” I ask. She shakes her head no. I point to my throat next and she nods. Yes, that part hurts. Her toes do not. I include toes or something silly to find out if the child is saying yes to all of it. I tell the parents that we will do a strep test, that mostly people don’t cough with strep except when they do. The strep is positive. My medical assistant grumbles, “They didn’t tell me that,” but I think the parents were more worried about the vomiting and she may not have complained about her throat.

Are the masks we wear always bad? I don’t think so. I think it is frustrating if we believe our mask or never ever get to drop it. There is some formality to my role in clinic and I tend to get more formal when I am worried about someone. That has been interpreted as anger or brusqueness, but it isn’t. I am wearing a real mask with all patients because we are seeing at least one person with Covid every week. The literal mask does not help me connect with people, but sometimes I can anyhow. I have to take it off for the 90 year olds because most of them are hard of hearing and lip reading helps.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: identity.

I hiked the Beaver Brook Trail this weekend with my daughter.

by

Feeling our way

It’s nice to handle emotions with fantasy. “No it’s not,” you shout, “that’s horrid! We should think nice thoughts and feel nice feels!”

I do not agree. I think that we feel what we feel. Emotions are a rainbow and a sunny day and a huge storm and a tornado. Let them all through. However, we do not have to share them or inflict them on others or act them out in person. We can satisfy that anger, that grief, that hurt, that wound, with fantasy. And let the hurt heal through fantasy by acknowledging it.

There is tons of stuff on the internets/books/magazines about how we have to think nice thoughts, we are what we think, and on and on and on. But now wait a minute. Our Creator thinks up some really really horrible things which play out, right? The world has the full range of emotions from really really dark to beautiful and kind. I am like the world, like the ocean, like the Creator. I have the full range too. It is not the feeling that is evil. It is the acting it out in the world. If it’s acted out in fantasy, does that truly harm others?

Perhaps if it’s PTSD, there is harm. But PTSD is not acting out a fantasy, it’s being unable to deal with something terrible, terrible events, horror, war and violence. Those feelings must be dealt with too and it is no shame to need help, to need a listener, to need a safe place. The same with depression and anxiety: sometimes feelings are overwhelming and we are afraid, afraid, afraid. There is help.

I think that Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī’s Guesthouse poem gives a path.

The Guesthouse

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

translation by Coleman Barks

_____________________________

I read this poem as being about our feelings. A meanness, a dark thought, malice. I think that there is a translation that says that we want each guest to take a good report back to the Beloved, so we must treat each with kindness and hospitality. When a friend dreams of a bear attacking his brother, I ask, “Did you invite the bear in?” “No,” he says, “It’s a bear! They are dangerous!” “But it’s a dream bear,” I say, “I would invite the bear in and listen to it.” “You don’t understand bears,” he says. “It is a dream bear, not a real bear. I always invite the dream monsters to talk to me.” Don’t you? There is a story about a dreamer who dreams about being chased by a monster, a horrible monster, over and over. He runs and runs. Finally he is sick of it and stops. “What do you want!” he shouts at the monster. “Oh, I am so glad you stopped. I was so scared and hoped that you would help me,” says the monster. And the man wakes up.

The giant fruit bat is part of the outdoor pollinator exhibit this holiday season at the US Botanical Gardens.

by

The women don’t see

A man I know is writing about retirement. He says that he has made excuses for years, that he has to travel for work, and not participated with family or entertaining activities.

That work is the only thing he is good at.

I don’t see the problem.

He has four people who have given him accolades for his write up. All men.

The women don’t see the problem.

In college I play soccer. I am not good, but adequate. None of us are really good. We have 12 people. Men and women. I ask a friend to join us.

“No.” he says.

“Why not?” I ask. “You’ve been saying you need exercise.”

“I am not good at it.”

“So what?”

“People expect men to be good at things. You don’t know what it’s like to have that expectation.”

I glare at him. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman and have people expect you to be bad at things.”

I knew a veteran. He complained to me about women. “I want a woman who is interested in cars and guns. That’s what I’m interested in.”

“Um,” I say. “Maybe you could develop some other interests? Join a club?”

“No.” he says. “Cars and guns. Why aren’t women interested?”

I am sure that some are. I am also sure that they are expected to know nothing about cars or guns and then are hazed and finally celebrated for being an amazing woman who is interested in cars and guns and has skills and knowledge. How amazing.

The women don’t see the problem with being good at work and not having developed anything else. We often are treated as if we are morons and have a man explain things to us. I have a skill that I have been developing and practicing for decades. Yet a man about 15 years younger than me who is in his first year of practicing, explains it all to me. I look at him and think, you are an idiot. Really. You KNOW I have years and years of experience. I offer to show him another way to do part of it and he soundly rejects and scolds me. “You’ll confuse me! I do it the way I was taught!” I clam up and just think, well, he’s over 30 and still stupid. Bummer. He talks about his amazing development and tells me what he has learned and advises me. Snort. I am ready to take a restroom break the next time he explains what I should be doing. The toilet is more fun than he is.

The women and the single fathers don’t see the problem. If you are raising the kids while working and keeping track of all the stuff: laundry, soccer practice, dentist appointments, helping your 8 year old pick a present for another kid, when is the party and where? Oh, the same day as the parent teacher conferences. Your child may want to do a sport that you know damn-all about or play an instrument that sounds like a rabbit is being strangled or join the young Rotary group. You are not a joiner and view this with an awed horror. But an involved parent will extend themselves into this new unknown alien arena and learn with the child.

And the people who do not have children but are trying to take care of an aging parent or disabled sibling or a long time friend. They too have to learn the systems and the medical one is a deteriorating nightmare labyrinth.

So to say one is good only at work and afraid of retirement: We don’t see it. What are you talking about? We are doing stuff we know nothing about initially as fast as the darn children grow. This month they want their own laptop and are installing linux and “Mom, we need faster wi-fi.” “I am making dinner.” “But mom, the game is timing out.” Huh. Ok, time to call the woman who we know who will explain wi-fi. “Figure out how much it costs, you’ll have to earn part of it if it’s more expensive.” “Mo-ommmm!”

Retirement: begin again. What have you wished to learn, to do, to explore? Be a beginner. Join us. We begin again daily.

by

Birth

I am born today anew. Why does birth feel like a rejection, like a spitting out from the shelter of a womb, a body, a mother, a community, a job? I gasp in the new unfamiliar air, unsure how to use my lungs in this place. This labor was not terrible, not as hard as ones in the past. The air and light are shocking, I open my eyes, what is this place? Too bright, I close them. Hands have me and then I am back with my mother. Not inside but against her skin. The lights are down and I open my eyes. It was dark, dark, dark in that womb, so I open my eyes wide, to take in all the new information. I am shocked and afraid, but my mother’s heartbeat reassures me. I hope I won’t be eaten. What is this place? And now I am hungry and I start to search, not sure how to do it, search for food.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: birthday.

by

Welcome dark

This morning I listened to this song and album.

https://thewinetree.bandcamp.com/album/kentucky

I bought the CD over a year ago at the nowhereelse festival in Ohio. I heard The Winetree live and thought it was gorgeous. I bought others for myself but this was for a friend. Today I realize that the entire album, every song, has sorrow and longing.

Which makes it an interesting choice for someone who said, “I am always happy.” The first time he said that, I thought, wow. That is not true. I don’t believe that, so who are you lying to? Himself first, right? Because it seemed so obviously not true.

I never gave him the album because he stopped talking to me.

When someone says an absolute, that is a red flag for me. I wonder if the CD was for the emotions that he is not in contact with and stuffs. I went through a time where I tried to unstuff all the old emotions that I hid in my complex and frightening household growing up. My biggest ones were grief, fear and humiliation. It was not safe to express those: they would be made into a story to entertain people. I started to deal with them two years after my mother died. My sister did too.

This poem, Butterfly Girl Comes to Visit, is about my sister and my unacceptable emotions. Another, Ride Forth, is about stuffing feelings and then bringing them up and letting them go. I’m not saying we are ever done. I don’t know if we are. I thought of it as going to the depths of the ocean. The trunk at the bottom is full of terrifying monsters, but I had to open it anyhow. And at the bottom or somewhere in the trunk, is Hope, just like Pandora’s box. It took a couple of years of work to get to hope. It was so hard in counseling that my days off were more difficult than clinic, and that is saying a lot, because clinic is hard work.

Our culture is so afraid of the dark and of emotions. By doing my difficult work, I could be present and tolerate patients’ often difficult emotions and say, “Well, I can understand why you would feel that way. It is a really difficult situation.”

I do not want to be happy all the time. I think that is silly. What I want is to feel my emotions, in real time, and be honest with myself about them. As Rumi says, grief may be sweeping your house clean for a new joy. How can we love without grieving?

Welcome to the rain and the winter and the dark, and welcome to resting and quiet, and the hope that the sun will return.

And on the other side: My mom loved me.

by

Fan

There aren’t two roads diverged before me
But a fan of roads and possibilities
Poetry and writing, music and medicine,
Art and quilting, paints and knitting,
Cats and travel, dance and friends.
I spread the fan with joy
as life opens like a flower.
Not two roads, neither one best
but the daily gift of the sunrise and a song.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: observe.

by

Guide

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is latibule: a place where you feel safe and cosy. I was going to say my house, but I wrote this poem near the end of my stay in Italy. My latibule is my mind. The poem is named Guide.

Guide

I want to write a travel guide
To the interior
No matter where I am
nor who I am with
nor what the circumstance
Ok, in a disaster or crisis I act
I don’t withdraw
But barring that
What does your space look like inside?

My interior is a garden
And an ocean
And the universe
Monsters, angels, demons, daemons
Friends
Many dead
People remembered and loved
Even if they don’t love me
Even if there is no reconciliation
Flowers birds insects science sex philosophy
A universe of stars and math
Tiny atoms, shy electrons circle protons
Whirl happily at the atomic level
Nebulae and black holes
Other worlds and beings
Of course there are other beings
In this wide universe

I am riding on a train in Italy
And traveling my vast interior
At the same time.

Written September 10, 2023. The photograph is from a friend’s doll house.

by

Diversity

This is the Trevi Fountain. We can curate the photographs so that we can’t see the crowd. Here is the crowd.

There are lots of changes from 43 years ago, 1980, when I traveled there. More people. We were traveling in January and February 1980, so that’s not a fair comparison. But the crowd is more diverse. At that time we ran into Australian travelers, the same people in hostels as we traveled. We were mostly Caucasian. Now the crowd is much more diverse and I also do not know what language a person will speak. Race is a messy construct anyhow, very unscientific, but I really like the diversity and not knowing what language a person will be fluent in until I hear them speak.

Here is the Vatican Museum. Also crowded and diverse.

Here is a park near the train station in Rome with some “Olympics” for both kids and adults.

We were staying in hostels and only did one formal tour. I wonder if the expensive hotels have the same diversity.

Let’s end with the fountain again.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt.

by

On a bus

I am in a bus. The driver is a man and quiet. It is night and I can’t see much besides road. I am standing by him.

“You have strong emotions.” he says.

“I am so glad that I can be myself with you and not hide them.” I lean my cheek against the back of his right shoulder. He doesn’t answer but what I feel is acceptance.

I wake up. It was a bus but I don’t know what or who else was on it. I don’t know where it is going. I am worried that I did not have a seatbelt on and I am just standing in the front of the bus. Unrestrained. Unrestrained emotion?

Once a woman says to me, “Your emotions are too strong.”

I think, “My emotions are too strong for YOU. They are normal for ME.” I avoided any discussion of emotion with that person for two years.

The people in dreams are aspects of ourselves. The quiet man is an aspect of myself and he is driving the bus. Emotion riots around but is not driving. Life is rather like that bus. We don’t always know where we are going or what is next.

I have had a very medical January, working to help three other people. I talk to another friend yesterday. She says, “You are being called back to medicine.”

I frown at the ceiling since I am on the cell phone. “I guess so. I am thinking about how I want to do it. I don’t know yet.”

She is off on a trip for three weeks. “You’ll figure it out.”

And where will the bus take me next?

I wish I had an ambulance that unfolds into a clinic.

___________________

I had rather a grand time pulling out action figures and dolls from the basement to set up scenarios with the Barbie Ambulance. Here the baby has a facial rash. Probably 5th disease, parvovirus. This baby’s rash resolves when you wash her face with cold water. I am pleased that Barbie Doctor has a mask.