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Black Coffee

April 21, 2014 //
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When I was wee I thought coffee was simply the most horrible thing grown ups had come up with for self-torture. Adulthood had to be fraught with peril for that foul black brew to be anything but deserved for some great wrong-doing, possibly to children. It was bitter. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It just wasn’t good. That’s where I left coffee until I joined the Army.

On a humid, hot, Alabama morning, dizzy with fatigue, and dehydration, I slouched over my breakfast tray in the mess hall – first Army breakfast, first morning of basic training; I just wanted a cool shower and to go back to bed. I was very certain that the whole ‘join the Army’ decision was a huge mistake. While I sat there staring at my uneaten breakfast, toying with the scrambled eggs while I toyed with questions about my judgement as an adult, a drill sergeant’s shadow fell over me, and a white ceramic mug entered my view. The burly man-voice in my ear followed the too-loud-for-this-to-be-real clack of ceramic mug to table with a hearty “drink this, soldier, you’re going to need it!”  Hesitant to do anything to rouse the ire of a drill sergeant, I put the mug to my lips and took a taste. I know what I expected, I know what I got.

For years after that, I drank coffee – with sugar and half n half – like my body was 60% coffee, rather than water. lol I’ve quit once or twice, when my consumption got so ludicrous it had the potential to affect my health. I’ve spent months at a time on decaf, and always gone back to the real thing, eventually.  Years ago I found my way to really good coffee: exceptional beans, from verified sources, well-roasted by local craftspeople, really fresh, ground-to-purpose just prior to use; really exceptional coffee is a very different experience from the Yuban and Folgers my Mom drank when I was a child.  More time passed, and I eventually found my way to buying my own espresso machine; everyone in the house favored really good coffee, espresso beverages, and it was both a better value, and more consistent quality to have our own machine and learn to pull really good shots. Lattes every morning have been the thing, for a long time.

This morning I drink my coffee black.

This morning I drink my coffee black.

In this all adult household, more than one of us is off dairy, either temporarily, or for the long haul.  It’s a recent thing. For me it is likely temporary, but this morning, I am drinking black coffee. It’s been a while since that has been my early morning practice. The taste of coffee is so different without the smooth ease and luxury of a little cream, the sweetness of a bit of sugar.  On top of the simple change to unadorned blackness in my morning cup, we had also run out of our preferred morning beans (if you’re curious, that’s Ristretto Roaster’s ‘Beaumont Blend’ these days).  A quick walk over to the local grocer, and our weekend coffee was assured, but they don’t carry Ristretto Roaster. I got a couple other roaster’s beans for the weekend, and the beans of Saturday and Sunday were by far more pleasant than the beans of this morning, which are strangely reminiscent of Army coffee in the 80s.

So…I write about coffee, this morning. The taste of it, the memories, the importance of the experience… It’ll be black coffee for a while, at least a week, maybe longer.

There are other exciting bits and pieces. My visit to The Grotto on Saturday was lovely, and I got some amazing pictures. It was mildly disappointing, too, because although it is a garden for meditation, contemplation, and even advertised that way, it was quite crowded with large-ish extended families visiting (probably due to the Easter weekend) and they were more boisterous, and louder, than I expected or found pleasant. Gangs of giggling high school girls taking selfies and sharing social network items vocally while they lagged their parents steps were distracting, and quarrelsome couples, or people with fussy children, took the potential for real stillness right out of the experience. It was still worth doing. I got some great pictures, and enjoyed exploring the features on my new camera phone.

Symbols, and messages, in the forest.

Symbols, and messages, in the forest.

It poured down rain the entire time I walked the paths and explored The Grotto. The Stations of the Cross are not my symbols, but the powerful arrangement and beautiful statuary were moving, even so.

There were also flowers that hinted at love...

There were also flowers that hinted at love…

And the soft light filtered through rain and clouds made some blossoms seem luminous.

And the soft light filtered through rain and clouds made some blossoms seem luminous.

Colors stood out from the lush greenery, seeming magical and more exotic than 'real life'.

Colors stood out from the lush greenery, seeming magical and more exotic than ‘real life’.

From a distance, even symbols that are not 'mine' might speak to me of things that matter.

From a distance, even symbols that are not ‘mine’ might speak to me of things that matter.

It was a lovely spring weekend. Flowers, fellowship, and love generally make for a fine weekend I think.

Simple flowers, a rainy day.

Simple flowers, a rainy day.

I took a lot of pictures. The lingering sensation for me is that the pictures somehow capture things I didn’t experience in-the-moment, that day. It is strange to look at them later, and feel those feelings that were missed in the din of chattering school girls, arguing in-laws, and assorted people who’d only come along ‘because it matters so much to her‘. I wonder for a moment, if the ‘her’ I heard referenced so often is a mother, a grandmother, an in-law, or… the woman for whom The Grotto exists, in the first place? She is of many faiths, many religions, many followers; she is woman, herself.

A powerful symbol of life, of love, of family; a woman and child.

A powerful symbol of life, of love, of family; a woman and child.

Well, Spring, that was lovely. Let’s do it again, sometime. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Spring, women, Words

“Tell Me of Your Home World, Usul”

April 13, 2014 //
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We have language. It’s one of the interesting features of the creatures that we are, and of our experience. Words have extraordinary power; our understanding of the world, and of our lives and who we are, rest heavily on the words we choose to express that understanding.

We even understand how limiting that can be, and our understanding is portrayed in a simple bon mot, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  We love words, we use words, even knowing our words cannot tell the entire tale.

Atlas?

Atlas?

I probably use too many words. Even using so many, I sometimes find myself struggling for clarity, or to express myself accurately. Precision and poetry are two very different tools to tell a tale. I tend to be very frank, to the point of lacking common boundaries. I also tend to favor ‘pretty’ language, to the point of sacrificing clarity for something that ‘sounds better’ to me. My TBI has a thing or two to say about the way I use language and why, another tale for a different day. I bet it can be difficult for people to understand me, more often than I’m aware.

I’ve been more about questions than answers for a while now… how nice for me, I suppose, only… some questions function best immediately preceding an actual answer. lol I mean… “How do I get to the train station?” is likely to be most efficiently followed by actual directions, or a simple “I don’t know” than anything else.  I’m honestly not sure I’d do that well on it, if it were a test.  With me it might be something more like this:

Person “How do I get to the train station?”

Me “I rarely ride the train, these days, although I prefer it to flying. Well, unless you count the commuter trains…”

Person “How do I get there?”

Me “You’d have to get downtown. If you want Amtrak.  If you’re just using the light fail, you could grab it a lot of places. Where are you going?”

Person “To the train station. How do I get there?”

Me “To the train station? Or down town?”

Person “To the train station!”

Me “Oh, the same way as if you were going to go down town – you take the light rail.”

Person “Where do I catch the light rail to the train station?”

Me “Right here.”

Once upon a time at a train station...

Once upon a time at a train station…

Oh, yeah. So me. I do try to answer the questions I am asked as simply as possible, although it wasn’t something on my radar until a couple years ago. I often thought it was strange how jacked up people could get over ‘a simple conversation about a [train station]’.  Someone who loves me very much, enough to care that I be able to communication easily with other people, finally sat down with me and explained what he saw in our conversations – with actual sketches, diagramming of sentences, and propositional calculus; I got it.  Fixing it is an entirely different matter. Sometimes it is as basic as a preferred sentence structure, a syntactical detail, that confounds real understanding simply by being unexpected to the listener, or inexplicably uncommon in general speech. lol Sometimes ‘pretty’ gets in the way of conveying information. Pretty is distracting.

One of the bits of weirdness I am working on is a clear preference verbally for ‘phrasing things in the negative’. For example, if asked “How are you?”, I would be more likely to say “Not bad, thanks!” than “Good, thanks!”.  It’s pretty consistent with a variety of types/intentions of questions, too. I regularly reply to questions using negatively phrased replies, that seem to satisfy the question, mostly by way of dismissing it, rather than providing information. I don’t think I have a spare lifetime to study the phenomenon, instead I am simply working on changing how I reply to questions.

(Is it important whether the challenge I have with answering questions is a byproduct of a traumatic upbringing, or a brain injury? How many hours of my life have I wasted trying to source something solely because I wasn’t satisfied with it, instead of simply acknowledging my dissatisfaction and acting to change?)

The title? Oh, that – well, simply this: Dune would have been a very different movie, wouldn’t it, if, when Paul is asked “Tell me of your home world, Usul,”  he had replied “It’s not like here.”  I realized, upon considering it, that finding balance, contentment, satisfaction, and meaning is a different journey, and a different experience, when I am living what it is – rather than what it is not.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Words

Et Tu, Doc?

April 10, 2014 //
1

Appropriately, this one is all words. lol

I often ‘don’t feel heard’.  A gripe about me I’ve been hearing a long time, and a source frustration and suffering for me, has been that I ‘talk too much’ or too fast, or use too many words, or don’t pause to breathe, or give the other guy a chance… if you’ve met me, you’re likely among that good company of people frustrated trying to get a word in edgewise. I’m not bragging. I work on this – a lot – trying to train my brain to recognize and honor the subtle cues that someone I am talking to has something they would like to add to the conversation. I try to build the awareness to support the will to give someone else a chance to talk.  It’s not an area of strength for me, and is associated with the also incredibly poor social habit of interrupting people. There. I said it. I talk too much, for too long, and I interrupt people to do it.

It is interesting how rarely a woman will call me on it. They usually coast, conversationally, and use whatever white-space there is left when I do have to breathe, or finally finish a thought. The men in my life pretty reliably voice their frustration, irritation, or anger with my issue. It comes to me as feedback that I talk too much, or that I use too many words, or that I ‘never give someone else a chance to say something’, or that I deliver too many points without time for responses… it all comes down to – wait for it – they don’t feel heard, themselves, because I am ‘always’ talking.  I don’t feel heard = me talking = they don’t get to talk = they don’t feel heard.  This sucks for everyone.

Another point of interest along this particular scenic route is the behavior if I happen to be silent. Because I do stop talking, and that comes up with fair frequency. What happens when I am silent? Concern. Why am I not talking? What am I thinking? Am I okay? It’s rare for me to be able to sit quietly, unprompted for words, even by people who express a nearly desperate desire for me to stop talking.  I find that bit very frustrating, myself. It doesn’t appear to be different for women or men. I apparently talk so nearly continuously that it is a cause for concern to others when I am not talking. (I am not actually aware of myself talking that much of the time.)

Yesterday, and unsurprisingly, but also unexpectedly, my therapist joined the phalanxes of men in my life who have found it necessary to communicate that I talk too much. He was also by far the most cautious and gentle about it, leading me to my own conclusions without hurting my feelings or resulting in my feeling that what I have to say lacks value. He used a metaphor. I love metaphors. His was that of dancers. His observation was that although he very much wanted to ‘dance with me’ he felt he was more audience to my dancing, some days.  It was a good metaphor and he got through to me that the shared experience of conversation is collaborative, and participatory.  He also got through to me that men are not having that experience with me, and do want it.

SO… it isn’t just that I need to be sure to take time to breathe, or stick to one thought, or keep my words brief, or any of a dozen other tiny details I’ve tried for so long to ‘fix’. I get it. It’s about inclusion, and sharing the experience. It is more than a little embarrassing to be so painfully aware that for all these years I wasn’t actually understanding what was being requested.

I’ve had this general experience before. Coached, or criticized, over some larger process/task to the point of chronic frustration, tears or anxiety, and still unsuccessful at ‘doing it right’ – and finding out much later than there is a key underlying principle that I didn’t understand, or hadn’t learned, that suddenly makes it so much simpler.

This morning I don’t start the day bitter than one more man has told me I talk too much. Instead, today I start my day with a better approach to conversation, and a better understanding of how to be considerate, and respectful of others, how to support people more comfortably in dialogue, and even feel I understand being compassionate, sharing, and connecting and building intimacy, better than I did yesterday.  🙂

Today is a good day to ask a clarify question and wait for the entire answer. Today is a good day to smile, and let the other guy talk for a few minutes. Today is a good day to listen with my entire attention on the person talking. Today is a good day to enjoy dancing.  Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, Words

Strange Quiet Morning

April 7, 2014 //
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I woke early, feeling rested and unconcerned. It’s a nice frame of mind to start off in. Still human, though, and within seconds self-doubt, hurt feelings, vague disappointments, and miscellaneous baggage dredged from my waking consciousness was launched at me as a barrage of discontented feelings. Seriously, Brain, was that at all necessary? First thing? Couldn’t wait until after meditation, yoga, a shower, a coffee? A bit less than two years ago, it would have been all that was required to kick-start a shitty morning, filled with misunderstandings, miscommunication, and moodiness. This morning wasn’t that.

Each attempt on my waking mind that my demons made was met, this morning, with the gentle observation “that’s not about me”. One by one the momentary feelings showed how momentary they are, by dissipating and leaving nothing behind as I reminded myself that first this bit of weirdness and suffering, then that one, were simply ‘not about me’. Turns out this is also a nice frame of mind with which to face the earliest bit of morning; taking care of me, comfortably.

The three biggest take-aways in my year+ of studying, so far, have been 1. Mindfulness, 2. Perspective, and now 3. Sufficiency.  Having all three tends to find me feeling contented, balanced, and enjoying my experience. Lacking any one of them and I find myself suffering, volatile, reactive, and often ‘unable to figure things out’.  It’s a pleasant change.  I’m grateful to have stayed around to experience it. 🙂

From this perspective it's all blue skies and spring time...

From this perspective it’s all blue skies and spring time…

It is, however, still a journey, and I still have a long one ahead of me. A lifetime, actually. As beautiful as my experience can be these days…

...looking beneath the surface is revealing.

…looking beneath the surface is revealing.

Even my generally-very-pleasant-mostly-pretty-balanced experience these days isn’t ‘everything there is’ to who I am. There’s more work to do. I am at long last perhaps well enough, whole enough, to face doing it. I am a trauma survivor. I am a domestic violence survivor. I am a rape survivor. I am a war veteran.  These are part of who I am. There was a time when enduring these experiences seemed an endless feature of my emotional landscape, continuously playing out again and again in my emotional background, coloring my here and now whether I was sleeping or awake. I suffered. I endured. I cried. I survived.

That’s an important detail. I’ll say it again. I survived.

So, I’m not without damage. I have some scars, both emotional and physical. Still, here I am. Life, generally, in my here and now is pleasant and comfortable. I find myself on the edge of wellness and faced with a decision… do I stand fast, in this pretty comfortable place – or do I continue to grow, develop, work on me, sort things out, and… do I follow through? That last isn’t so obvious and transparent.  It’s this – although crimes perpetrated against me in the past are likely beyond prosecution now, there’s the matter of military compensation. Do I submit paperwork on my military sexual trauma?  That’s the hard question. A yes answer means committing to telling the tale, on paper, with as much documentation as I can track down. It means being intimate with some very painful moments in my life and learning to be able to discuss them without tears, hysteria, or losing myself in the unpredictable outcome of real rage. I could just sooth myself and look away, couldn’t I? Enjoy where I am now, and let the past go… wherever the past goes. Couldn’t I?

Could I?

I often think the safer choice – emotionally safer – is to let it all go, let it somehow simply cease to be… but as soon as my body begins to relax into the awareness and comfort that I am safe here, now, I feel the awareness of those others, those younger versions of me, still crying in their sleep, still hurting, still so sad. Who takes up their cause? Who seeks redress for them? Who ‘makes it right’, if it can be made right at all, ever? There is no one to advocate for them, but me.  This, then, is ‘about me’, and more about telling the tale, respecting myself, and healing those hurt little girls still lurking in my ‘baggage claim area’, than the paperwork, itself, but it appears the paperwork may be how I get there.

I enjoy how far I have come. I know I have further to go. Today is a good day for a journey. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Spring, women, Words

OMG – It’s AWESOME!

April 6, 2014 //
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Did you see that house?? Wow – check out that car! Designer clothes…limited edition printings…specialized or customized decor…exotic rare flavors, places, experiences… What do you aspire to? More? Much more? Go big or go home! Dream big! Shoot for the moon! More…further…better…
A wow moment on an ordinary day.

A wow moment on an ordinary day.

No wonder I feel so pushed sometimes. It’s a very big world, and there are so many opportunities, so many wonders, and challenges, so many things to try or experience – I guess I’m not surprised that so many folks chase some dragon or another, looking to fulfill themselves, or achieve one goal or outdo some standard or expectation, hit a noteworthy benchmark, impress someone, or climb some mountain, ladder, or heap.
Soap bubbles are also 'real'.

Soap bubbles are also ‘real’.

I know a man with a spectacular home. He bought it for his own reasons, perhaps because his last home wasn’t ‘enough’. He shopped a long while before he found what he was looking for. I still don’t really understand his choice. He bought a mammoth home, worthy of being called ‘an estate’, well off the everyday beaten path, and far out of view of any sight of ‘economic distress’ in a place of exquisitely preserved nominally natural loveliness… it’s huge. Quite large. Well and good, of course, for his substantial family… wait… no, he lives alone, generally. He has just one child (living far away), and no likelihood of grandchildren, not even a dog by his side. Many rooms, much square footage, and more than much else, it boldly states ‘here lives a man who is economically successful’. It’s very fancy. His own tastes, as a man, seem quite simple. He has worked hard and as much as his understanding of the world permits, he is an ethical and good man. He seems mild of temperament, professionally competent, and decent. He tends to be modest and self-effacing when confronted directly, or in conversation, by ‘someone better’ than he sees himself; it is clear that the superiority in question is a matter of financial success. He treats a man with more money as likely to be simply smarter, wiser, more right more often, in a word – better.  If success is measured in dollars, square footage, rarity, or exclusivity, then perhaps a very grand house is an excellent value in communicating that success to the world.
This says something about who we are.

This says something about who we are.

What does that house mean? Oh – not to him, because how that house meets his needs, or what value it has for him, isn’t really relevant to me at all. Not my house. Not my family. Not my measure of success. It’s just an anecdote about a guy with a house.
The basics, walls, windows, a roof, a door.

The basics, walls, windows, a roof, a door.

When I was much younger, in my 20s, I loved shoes, and clothes, and traveling to destinations; most of my disposable income went to those opportunities. I aspired to all sorts of ‘greatness’ and hit the mark once in a while, and struggling and suffering when I didn’t. I pushed myself hard and continuously to ‘succeed’. I defined success based on a number of things that were economic in nature, and certainly each of us is free to define success in our own way… only… I wasn’t doing that, at all. I was defining success as I had been told to define it, based on someone else’s measure of success. (I think we all start there.) Many of us find our own way to re-defining success in our own terms. (I did, eventually.) The discovery that ‘clothes don’t matter’ was an important game-changer for me. I came home from war substantially changed of mind and heart, and on the scale of clothes and shoes it was obvious.  It took a while longer and a house to teach me why ‘clothes don’t matter’, and the nature of sufficiency. I’m still learning.
"Kuwait; Oil Fires" 26" x 48" oil on silk.

“Kuwait; Oil Fires” 26″ x 48″ oil on silk.

Funny thing, though… that house… You see, having a home, a place of my own, somewhere I could always come back to, however far I strayed, somewhere to count on… that has been a measure of success for me, for a very long time.  I get excited about fancy big homes with ‘tons of features’, so much so that I recently allowed myself to be entirely de-railed from a thoughtful, reasoned, careful house-hunting process by the dangled temptation of something bigger, better, fancier… more. More than I need, for sure. I noticed when it happened, but the pure addictive delight of the daydream in front of me was intoxicating, and fully distracting from something far far more important to me – ‘enough’. An important lesson in attending closely to my own needs, my own goals.
It's a trap!

It’s a trap!

Sufficiency. Contentment.

Sure, I suppose a million-dollar home in an exclusive gated community of like-minded individuals surrounded by landscaped scenery, safe behind efficient alarm systems, and deeply invested in society by way of a hefty mortgage would be one way to shout “I am a success!” to the world. Having a big house with plenty of room, and rooms, and features, and space, and customized to suit my taste for color and design would be very aesthetically pleasing, and potentially very comfortable and satisfying. It might satisfy some wants, fulfill some desires, even meet some needs. It would answer a very different question than “What is enough?”

For me, a grand house could not be described as ‘necessary’. It would not be about ‘meeting my needs’, and however often words about needs might be spoken by someone with the money to buy such a grand house, a house like that is not likely to be about needs. A house like that is about wants, and wanting, about craving, acquisition, and fighting discontent with possessions, and communicating status to the world. What need does one human being have for a house of many rooms, many bathrooms, many many square feet, broad expanses of lawn, yard, or acreage, neatly landscaped, arranged, and managed in accordance with the community covenants and homeowner’s association guidelines? I firmly assert again, it is not about needs, or meeting needs, at all.

I know what I need. I need enough. Sufficiency. Safe, secure, sheltered from inclement weather, adequate protection from the unknown intentions of those who might wish me ill, a place where I feel nurtured, at ease, content, and ‘at home’. I need a home, far more than I need a house. I’ve lived in reasonable comfort for months in a tent, in good company, well-provisioned, and feeling both safe and secure. I’m pretty sure ‘my real-estate’ in that circumstance measured something like 20 sq ft. The more-than-dozen of us sharing that tent had about 500 sq ft together. It seemed, at the time, rather generous. Most of the time it felt like ‘enough’. Clearly ‘enough’ isn’t about square footage, stone walls, expanses of lawn, HOA by-laws, elegant roof-lines, granite counters, upgrade appliances, or gated communities. What is ‘enough’? What is ‘home’?

One of the flavors of 'home'.

One of the flavors of ‘home’.

Home. Yeah. Home is high on my list of priorities. Getting there is just starting to peek over the horizon on my vast to-do list of personal growth, and desirable achievements…and I don’t even know yet everything I ‘need’ to measure my success there… other than ‘enough’.  Excess is a burden. Delighting in excess is a fast track to being a shitty human being. lol.
What's your pleasure?

What’s your pleasure?

I probably wouldn’t be a really first-rate minimalist. I’ll be honest about that. I like some luxuries, and my aesthetic preferences result in the possession of the occasional object or two without purpose beyond beauty, but there, too; I call the shots on my idea of success, and only I truly know what meets my needs, and what those needs are, and why. I recognize the possibility that some solitary person with vast wealth might truly ‘need’ a huge grand house of many rooms filled to the rafters with carefully placed exquisite objects that reflect their taste and experiences, reminders of other things and moments, and perhaps such vast wealth truly results in a life so well-lived that the accumulated possessions truly fill such a grand house in a predictable and commonplace way. It’s possible. I have books, paintings, paperweights… having space to display them might seem a necessity from some perspectives, and certainly practical objects like books lose value when they are boxed up, labeled, and put into storage. I would be less satisfied to be without books, and the wee library space I have put together in my current house satisfied my heart when I finished that project. If I had more books, I’d ‘need’ more space. It’s not quite the sort of ‘need’ I’m really on about, though… and the small library I have is just bookshelves along a wall in a mostly unused corner. It meets my needs. It is enough.

I’m spending some time reconsidering my discontent in all manner of things, and the questions I am asking myself are ‘What do I really need?’ and ‘What is enough?’ I have never found contentment – or happiness – in ‘more’, ‘bigger’, ‘better’, or ‘further’. I have found it in sufficiency, in appreciation, in gratitude. I may want ‘more’, I only need ‘enough’.

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Categories Anxiety, Art, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Uncategorized, Words
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