Please check out my piece published today on The Kennedy Beacon.
https://thekennedybeacon.substack.com/p/kennedy-will-halt-the-world-health
WHO’s Massive Power Grab on The Kennedy Beacon
4
Crazy in Love
“Let me walk you to the gate.”
I look over at the gate that leads to a set of escalators that will take me to the BART train. It’s all of 20 feet away, but I nod my assent and the young man who reeks of reefer and induces a drop of fear in me, walks alongside.
When we reach the gate I turn to thank him. I’ve already told him, honestly, that I don’t have any cash on me. I pull up short when I see a large scar on his face that runs from the corner of his mouth up into his cheek and stops just an inch short of his ear.
“How’d you get the scar?”
“My wife cut me.”
“Huh?” This was not what I’d expected him to say. I’d expected him to say he’d got in a fight on the street, that someone had tried to steal something from him, maybe his running shoes (the ones he wore had seen better days, but they were new once), but not that, not “my wife cut me.”
“My wife cut me,” he said again with emphasis signifying that it was true, that he wasn’t making a bad joke. “I was dancing with another woman at our wedding.”
“What?”
His story, already hard to believe, had just ramped up to a level that required I repeat what he’d said, appending it with an obvious question mark, “At your wedding?”
He nodded, one corner of his mouth turned up slightly, as he turned his hands outwards, as if to say, I got nothing else here but the truth.
I thought about it for a beat and responded, “So she was the jealous type.”
This was more statement than question, which is why I didn’t put a question mark at the end of that sentence, but a shadow of a question hung there among my words.
“She hit me on the head with a bottle.” He held his hand up and made a swinging motion. “She had a box cutter…” he paused, realizing he’d left out an important detail. “Everyone said she was crazy.”
Crazy in love.
He ran his index finger along the scar. “50 stitches…and 25 more inside. She cut me with a box cutter after hitting me on the head with a beer bottle.”
Towel to my face as I fall to the floor.
“All because I danced with another woman at our wedding.”
I didn’t tell him how my ex-husband didn’t dance with anyone at our wedding, including me.
“Why’d you marry her?”
“My friends all said the same – ‘she’s crazy. Why you marrying her?'” He shrugged. “I was blind. I was lonely. I was lonely blind.” He paused to think for a moment, looked at his right hand, the fingers splayed out at weird angles. “I was a little crazy too.”
Another train pulled up, sending a blast of dusty grease-laden air up the escalator and into our faces. He seemed to sense I needed to get going.
“God bless you,” he said, perhaps a note of sadness in his voice, or maybe I imagined that. He turned to begin the walk back to the main station entrance where he’d approached me and asked for some cash to fill his train ticket. The walls, the ceiling, the floor were grey, but the light that streamed in behind him was colored blue by the streetlights.
I put my ticket in the slot and pushed through the gate.
Behind me I heard him call, “If you’re single then the men your life are crazy too. God bless you.”
How to Be Happy
Hey there, it’s been a while. And I don’t know about you, but the last two plus years have been pretty damned depressing. Yes, even for a woman living in “relative” freedom on the beach in Baja, Mexico. What it comes down to is I feel like I’m wasting my life by not following what I believe to be my purpose. I have a strong calling to write, but the desire for financial security keeps getting in the way. The last time I felt this conflicted, I was still in Canada doing the marital should-I-stay-or-should-I-go mamba.
And then *THE PANDEMIC* raised it’s ugly, spike-protein encrusted head and made self-expression daunting. While people dealt with the loss of loved ones, isolation, anxiety and fear, lockdowns, loss of businesses and jobs, I reasoned they probably didn’t want to hear from some woman living on the beach in Mexico. And as I kept my head down, the world transformed into a meaner, more divided place than I ever imagined possible.
Fear is a poor motivator.
And the world is still fucked up. So, what brought me back here? Short answer – dengue fever. Long answer, the rest of this blog.
Dengue hit me last Wednesday night and made me slow way down. I unplugged for a change, let texts and emails go unanswered. I focused on taking care of myself – staying hydrated, close to the bathroom, and sleeping. I listened to some podcasts. I rested because I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t, I knew I would get sicker. I surrendered.
And I think that act of surrender delivered dividends.
Last night, I felt surprisingly energetic and took the dog for a short walk on the beach for the first time in days. I watched in delight as the sky turned every shade of pink and lavender and hoped my feeling of wellness wasn’t some kind of dengue ninja trick.
Before bed, I decided to do a meditation on the “Insight Timer” app. Twenty three minutes later, I got up from where I’d lain beneath the stars and began to prepare for bed. It occurred to me that I felt even better, better than I have in months, and wondered if the meditation I’d chosen called “Deep Healing” hadn’t delivered in spades. Wow, I thought, I’m gonna do that meditation again.
But then I couldn’t fall sleep. I tossed and turned for hours. Curiously though, the experience was not unpleasant. My mind travelled to interesting places and pulled up ancient memories and images that shot through my brain with clarity.
It was a peculiar feeling.
This morning, I awoke feeling the effects of not getting enough sleep and was no longer convinced, as I had been the night before, that I’d be able to surf. I decided a repeat performance of the “Deep Healing” meditation was in order. Maybe I’d get another surge of energy. And it was good. Very good. But I still didn’t feel up to the demands of surfing. So I decided to revisit a metaphysical mashup version of Rich Roll’s podcast that I’d listened to on the way home on Wednesday. There was gold in the interviews with Tommy Rivers Puzey, and Raghunath Cappo that I wanted to write down.
Tommy, better known as Tommy Rivs, is “the poet of endurance and philosopher of the human spirit” according to Rich Roll. He is more specifically a highly credentialed ultramarathoner who in the summer of 2020, had a near-death experience while in a lung cancer-induced coma.
According to Tommy our experience in the afterlife will be all about how much love we share. AND, our happiness in this existence is proportional to our consciously choosing love when we are presented with a choice of actions.
From the horse’s mouth (note the bracketed parts are added by me for clarity):
“Heaven and hell exist, but they exist…in proportion to the amount of love we gave and the amount of love we were able to receive. Hell is the recollection and the understanding of all of the love we didn’t give and didn’t receive when we could have. …Heaven and hell exist simultaneously…and what we continue to feel [in the after-life]…is directly linked with the way we interact with people [in the here and now]. … Happiness is not in future, it’s right now. It’s all happening this very moment. Heaven and hell are all happening all of the time to all of us…whether or not we experience that joy, that happiness, is based on our ability to see it as it’s happening rather than in retrospect…to have joy…is 100% based on our capacity to see it as it’s happening.”
And WHAMMO, it was like I’d been hit over the head with a cosmic frying pan. By golly, the Beatles were right!
Love really is the answer.
How we choose to respond in every moment, with love or otherwise, determines the amount of joy we will experience in this life and the quality of our experience in the afterlife.
I imagine to some of you this is a mere platitude. We’ve all heard it a million, if not a kajillion times. But you know how sometimes you hear something as though for the first time and it registers in your brain like a big piece of life’s puzzle has slipped into place? Well, this was one of those times. Only, not only did Tommy Rivs give me a whopping piece of the puzzle, in the very next segment Swami Raghunatha handed me the last six pieces.
So, what does Swami Raghu say we need to do to live a life where the balance sheet is heavily in favor of love and thereby find happiness? Here’s a list of six steps, technically called the Six Pillars of Bhakti, to living a happy life.
Six Steps to a Happy Life
1. Stop criticizing other people. “The sound coming out of your mouth can be toxic.”
2. Be tolerant. “Stop blaming the world [i.e. everyone in it] for your unhappiness.”
3. Take no offence. “Nothing’s happening to me…it’s happening for me. There is a benevolent energy lifting us higher and higher and higher. And…everything is for my edification.”
4. See the good in others and let them know it. “Instead of finding what this person’s doing so wrong, what are they doing right?…otherwise we’re going to lock in and foster hate with “others” and we’re going to have no commonalities.” Then tell them what you appreciate about them.
5. Be quick to apologize. “If you think you may have hurt someone’s feelings…you apologize first.”
6. Maintain a gratitude practice. “[The alternative is] to have a “this-is-unfair practice”, or entitlement practice. It’s simple math, entitlement makes you sad, gratitude makes you happy.”
These are going on the fridge, in my phone, in my Big Book of Big Ideas, and anywhere else I can think of. I might get them tattoo’d on my forearms. Oh and, to get back to feeling conflicted about where I’m putting my energy – I’m pretty sure my money-chasing days are numbered.
PS You can hear the relevant Rich Roll podcast here
PPS Tommy Rivs knows he isn’t the first person who’s come back from the edge with this wisdom and shared his story incredibly humbly.
PPPS – The list above is actually called “The Six Pillars of Bhakti”
PPPS – I’ll get back to you here and let you know how this new approach to life unfolds.
PPPPS – Please do share your feelings about this post. The whole point of doing this is share with others in the hopes that you will join me on this cosmic ride towards a hopefully pleasant end to a meaningful and happy life. Also, in the absence of feedback or dialogue, the writing gig can feel an awful lot like yelling into a deserted canyon.
The Pandemic Choking Us All
Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of [connection], the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. -Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents 82-83 (1770) in: Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 1, p. 146 (Liberty Fund ed. 1999).
So far, 2020 has been a heavy year. I know that we all feel that collectively. CoVid-19 and the lockdown were just the beginning. On April 6th my mother had a stroke. With no way to fly home I said my last goodbye on April 18th by FaceTime. She died the next day while I sat alone thousands of miles away. Mourning your parent from afar is hard. Being isolated from friends and family as you try to process their passing is harder. But you know what’s been even more difficult? Witnessing the senseless murders of Ahmaud Aubrey and George Floyd. Add to these the killings of Breonna Taylor and Dave McAtee and these are the deaths that make me cry all the time because they were avoidable and unnecessary. My mother was 82 years old, suffering from dementia and a terrible case of osteoporosis. The last time I went home she didn’t know who I was more than 50% of the time. In reality, I mourned losing the woman who was my mother years ago. But these young lives with so much future before them were taken tragically and maddeningly too soon.
Something’s got to change.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing.”
You may recognize this version of Edmund Burke’s quote better than his full unedited 1770’s epistle in italics at the top. I read his original words today and was struck by their wisdom, words that speak to the need for each of us with a conscience to speak up when others commit acts or use words that are inherently violent because of the results they elicit. In today’s hashtag world, Burke would have been the one to write #silence=violence into his electronic device. I’m writing this today because it’s increasingly obvious that silence is no longer an option and, in the words of Burke, even “the most inconsiderable” person, by “adding their weight to the whole” adds value to a cause. In other words, my silence amid fears that I have nothing to add is equivalent to being complicit with the violence wrought upon Black people and other People of Color the world over. Every single one of us who recognizes that the systems that evolved from racist motivations like the American system of law enforcement/mass incarceration that grew out of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution need to be part of the movement to break them down so they can be rebuilt in a manner designed to elevate people rather than to control or destroy them. This is the path to freedom and peace for all.
No one is free until we are all free.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I’m not an American. I’m not Black. But racism has never been a uniquely American phenomenon nor will it be overcome if White people remain silent. I am heartened by the number of White people marching in the protests happening around the world. Perhaps it’s because we’re still in “CoVid Red” status in Baja California Sur, but there haven’t been any physical protests in this region yet. So I’m doing the only thing I know to do from my isolated location on Baja’s East Cape – I’m lending my voice to the cause from where I sit, brokenhearted by the pain I see all over the news, in the hopes that I might contribute in some small way to the extermination of the real pandemic the world has suffered from for far too long, the Racism Pandemic.
I hope that by sharing what is perhaps a bit of a ramble, I might inspire others to do the same, to share their views, to ask for help, to share their knowledge and compassion to those who read our words. And look, I’m the first one to admit, I don’t know much about this topic. I’m a white, blue-eyed and fair-haired Canadian woman who has benefited from white privilege my whole life. If I say something racist, call me out on it. I WANT to learn. I NEED to learn. The discrimination I’ve experienced in life pales by comparison to anything a Black, Brown, Asian, or First Nations Person experiences on a daily basis. When a cop pulls me over, I know that if I smile and talk sweetly or with humor, I can charm the officer into submission because in my experience it has almost always worked.
I grew up in eastern Canada in a village of 500 people and all of them were White. My first exposure to people with skin color unlike my own was almost certainly on television – shows like The Jeffersons, Fast Times, Chico and the Man. CBC’s The Beachcombers introduced me to our First Nations People long before I knew about the atrocities committed by the Residential School System or The Indian Act. The people portrayed in these shows could not have been more different from me, but I still recognized their humanity, the places where our needs and desires intersected. In my grade school, out of the 500 kids, two were Black. I remember wondering what it was like to stand out in such contrast against a vast sea of whiteness.
When I was about ten years old, an East Indian family moved into a house a few blocks away from my own. Their colorful saris stood in stark contrast to the jeans and t-shirts most commonly worn in my town. A few months after their arrival, I noticed they’d moved away.
I asked my father, as we walked by the house, “Why did they come for such a short time?”
His answer contained a rueful note, “I don’t think they felt very welcome here.”
In my memory the conversation halted there, steeping us in an awkward silence that left what is now obvious unsaid. I’ve often wondered if the racism they experienced was overt or the more subtle kind that takes the form of a lack of or too much attention in stores, looks both curious and aggressive, whispers passive-aggressively “intended” to be unheard.
While my family may have been progressive in their selection of TV shows, things weren’t quite so liberal when I fell for a handsome young Black man playing in a basketball tournament at my high school. He and a teammate stayed at our house for the weekend, so when I shared my excitement with my father that Dayan had asked me on a date, I thought he’d be happy such a nice young man was interested in his daughter. Instead he frowned and said, “I guess that’s okay. Dating is okay… just don’t get any ideas about marrying him.”
A sickening feeling I’d never felt before formed in my gut. When my father may a distinction between this young man and every other boy I’d ever fancied, I was shocked. It was the first time I was confronted by my father’s fallibility and the pedestal I’d placed him on shrank in size and stature. I knew what he’d said was wrong, at its core, steeped in ignorance and racism, but this version of my father didn’t compute with the man I knew him to be – kind, fair-minded, generous. His reaction left me confused and filled me with a teenaged indignation that fizzled along with our relationship. I can’t help but wonder – did it die because Montreal was a 45 minute drive away or on a subconscious level did we detect a moral distance too great for a couple of teenagers to traverse?
Despite this experience, the topic of racism and interracial marriage was never discussed in any meaningful way in my family, which is curious considering its make up. When I was ten, my parents took me on vacation to the Bahamas to meet, for the first time, my Great Aunt Queenie and her husband, Edmund. Great Uncle Edmund was a Black Bahamian. To this day I don’t know the story of how my Aunt Queenie, the daughter of Scottish-Irish Canadians met and married my Uncle Edmund. I have only a vague notion that they met when he was in the country as an Ambassador to Canada. Their story just wasn’t discussed and my attempts more recently to uncover it has generated nothing but silence. Maybe nobody knows. But regardless, what can one surmise from that? Why don’t they? Was it such a taboo subject that it was never discussed? For several years I’ve thought about how hard it must have been for my aunt and uncle – a biracial couple who met in the 1940s. It should come as no surprise that they didn’t stay in Canada. What’s surprising is that I didn’t know I had an Aunt Queenie or Uncle Edmund until we made that trip in 1978.
Does Silence = Violence?
It’s been nine days since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. Nine days of worldwide protests and riots, nine days of horrifying behavior by police and politicians, and, for me personally, it’s been nine days of deep grief for our humanity and contemplation about where I fit in the ensuing conversation. Sharing posts on social media that say what I cannot because the Black Experience is not my experience has been my only contribution until today when the message from Black leaders everywhere became increasingly clear that indeed SILENCE does equal VIOLENCE, that if we don’t speak up to say we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters, we’ll stay stuck where we are. The act of writing this blog is my contribution, my expression of a desire to be part of the solution, to say,
I see you,
I hear you,
I support you.
And perhaps most importantly,
How can I be of service to help you realize our goal?
And, finally I offer the prayer that every single person ever killed in racially-motivated hate, one day be able to rest in peace knowing that George Floyd’s death was the catalyst to true and lasting change.
Symbicort and COVID-19: A Dangerous Combination?
Here is the latest in the ongoing saga of health issues I’ve had this month. Thank you to Jennifer Margulis for providing a forum to share these stories so that they get wider dissemination than I could accomplish on my little blog here on WordPress.
Chasing the effects of Symbicort and COVID-19 as my illness moves into its third week
By Dawn Pier
Special to JenniferMargulis.net
Nineteen days ago, I got sick with what was probably COVID-19. You can read that story here. I’ve been quarantined, alone out in the countryside, living in a solar-powered beach house off-the-grid for twelve days now. I’ve also been taking Symbicort, which has created a combustible mix of other problems. Between Symbicort and COVID-19, I’m not sure what’s causing what.
Self-quarantine worked out reasonably well for me. I have internet, so I can keep working. Friends have dropped essentials off at the gate or outside the house, like green apples, bone broth, and vegetables, taking care not to come too close.
Four days ago I really felt like I was on the mend. The hacking cough I had when I first got sick was gone, which I attributed in part to the inhaler of Symbicort my doctor prescribed at double the dose (two puffs two times daily).
I did notice though that my tongue didn’t feel normal and my sense of taste was “off.”
Nothing tasted good, not even the homemade organic whole wheat bread I’d made or the red wine a friend gave me.
I poured myself a small glass as a treat to go with the bread. It tasted so bad that I was pretty sure it had gone off.
Symptoms of COVID-19 or something else?
Friends told me that loss of taste was another COVID-19 symptom.
I was having other symptoms: nerve twitches, cramps in my feet, and general muscle weakness and fatigue. I attributed all of this to the virus. I didn’t even consider Symbicort and COVID-19, or one and not the other could be at work within my system.
But as the days rolled by, I started to wonder when I was going to feel truly “well” again.
Continue reading here… https://jennifermargulis.net/symbicort-and-covid-19-mix/
I Am Baja’s First Covid-19 Case…or Am I?
Two weeks ago I got sick. Really sick. I explain my journey HERE in an article the science journalist Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D. asked me to write about my experience trying to get tested for the virus. Jennifer is an investigative journalist, author, and a Fulbright scholar. She’s also very humble and doesn’t mention on her bio that she comes by her investigative tenacity and brilliance honestly – her mother was Lynn Margulis, Ph.D., recipient of the National Medal of Science, among many other accolades and a true rebel among women scientists in her day. In her work, Jennifer advocates for safer medicine, in particular for children and families. She’s authored several books and writes for major publications. I’m honored to be included among the authors she’s invited to write for her website.
I’m on Day 5 of doctor-ordered quarantine, out in the country well away from San Jose del Cabo where I’ve been living since November (so I can do my work as a real estate advisor more effectively, plus the house on the East Cape is in escrow, so my days of living there are numbered). I’m getting work done and trying to rest (I’m not very good at that it turns out) and also taking advantage of this alone time to work on my memoir. Yes, it’s still in progress, slow though that may be. Perhaps this is the opportunity I need to get a chunk of it DONE!!
Stay well everyone. Keep practicing that social distancing thing and know that if you are young and relatively healthy, you have nothing to fear, but let’s be vigilant in avoiding transmission for those who are immune-compromised or elderly. I’ll be back here again soon with more updates.
Peace out.
Here’s the link to my article on Jennifer’s website, in case you missed it up top. https://jennifermargulis.net/bajas-first-covid-19-case/
Time and Distance
40 50
The distance between 40 and 50 is more than a decade more than the number 10, more than
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
It’s more than 5+5 or 5×2. It’s more than 3650 days.
It’s the distance between having a healthy father and having no father at all. It’s the distance between sharing life with a loving partner and being single. It’s the unimportant stuff like more grey hair and deeper wrinkles, hair growing places it isn’t supposed to and skin that’s starting to look like crepe.
It’s giving a shit about this upcoming birthday, when 40 came and went like it was no big deal.
40 was a cake walk, so I didn’t think I’d experience this existential stuff as I look down the barrel of the “Big 5-0.” I’ve always told myself, “Age is just a number. What matters is how you feel inside.” Well, that’s the difference between 40 and 50 too – this time I do feel different. Maybe it’s because I’m half an orphan now or maybe it’s something else. It feels kinda like it’s a genetic thing – that a switch has flipped and my genes have decided that I’m supposed to start feeling my age now. My mortality is more tangible in a very unsettling and heavy way that I’ve never felt before.
As dictated by the law of attraction, every time I turn around there’s another reference to death, dying, and grief. The other day I turned on CBC Radio and learned about a smartphone application called “WeCroak.” The developer of the app was inspired by the Bhutanese belief that “contemplating death five times a day brings happiness.” I downloaded it before the show was half over. The first friend I told about it looked at me like I was crazy. “That’s morbid,” he said, a tinge of disgust and mild curiosity in his voice.
WeCroak pings me randomly, five times a day with the message, “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.“ If you click on the reminder, a quote comes up related to death and dying.
Here’s the one I got just a few minutes ago:
But every moment of life is the last;
every poem is a death poem.
Why then should I write one at this time.
In my last hours, I have no poem.
Matsuo Basho
Some of the quotes, like the one above, strike me as rather fatalistic – they are more of a downer than inspiring. Yet others are effective in lighting a fire under me and give me the desire to get things done before it’s too late. It’s too early to say whether these five daily reminders will actually make me happier, but I’m willing to give it a try.
30 50
30 and 50? Well yeah, they’re even further apart.
20
years that led me to divorce, Costa Rica and the end of a scientific career so I could move to Mexico…almost 20 years following my dream to learn to surf.
It’s
33
The age of my friend and colleague who was killed in an avalanche in April 1998. His death shook me hard out of a deep sleep of complacency because I mistakenly believed I had all the time in the world to do the things that I dreamed of doing. I realized that it was NOW or NEVER or life would pass me by, or worse get cut short before I had the chance to take those trips to see the world, be in a loving supportive relationship…with myself (and maybe one day with a man).
I’m not sure why, but I used to regard the “Bucket List” phenomenon with some disdain. Contemplating turning 50 has given rise to some serious contemplation about what I have and haven’t accomplished yet in this life. I mean, I still haven’t been to France, Italy or Spain! Seriously? I shake my head and consider why that is. Life, I suppose…life getting in the way of living. I never seem to have the money or freedom to make those big trips. That’s going to change. It must change.
Perhaps that’s what these big decadal birthdays are for – to induce the kind of consideration about where we are at in life in comparison with where we want to be. I wonder what I’ll write about in the coming 10 years. Will I finally get my book done? Will it be published? Will I ride a bigger wave? Rent a little house in the country in France where I’ll write poetry and edit my book? Maybe I’ll finally learn the secret to happiness…five contemplations of death at a time.
The Legacy of Childhood Trauma
This morning I read a piece in “The New Yorker” by Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz called “The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma” and found that his words, his experiences, resonated eerily with my own regarding relationships. This came as somewhat of a shock considering that the trauma he describes was his repeated rape, at the age of eight, by a grown man whom he trusted.
Now before you click on the link and read what he wrote, which you pretty much have to do in order to appreciate the rest of this blog, let me be clear about the differences between his and my experiences: I was not raped as a child (note the caveat: “as a child”) and I have never tried to take my own life (unless driving recklessly, drinking enough tequila to induce a five-day hangover at the age of 16, or any number of reckless behaviors count). In other words, I’ve never consciously, in the overdosing, gun-to-head, or standing-on-a-cliff-considering-jumping kind of way tried to end my own life. I’ve never tried and I’ve never thought about it. Nevertheless, there were things about Diaz’s piece that spoke to me and that therefore gave me pause to think, “Was there enough “trauma” in my childhood to create the behaviors that he describes that I am also guilty of?”
I know. You want me to tell you in detail what those behaviors were. I’ve alluded to at least one above – the drinking. Yes, there is a lot of excessive consumption of alcohol in my past. And a lot of morally questionable behaviors wrought of that drinking. Another trait we share(d)[1] is the inability to stay in a relationship past a certain point, usually the point where it looked like it might actually go somewhere good, and especially if the man exhibited behaviors that suggested he might actually be willing to remain in a monotonous, I mean, committed monogamous relationship.
Then there is his reference to cheating. Many would quickly label cheating as classic self-sabotage behavior. For me it was a bit more complex. My first bout of cheating gave me the confidence to leave a not-so-healthy marriage (I discovered that I was, contrary to my insecure belief at the time, desirable to other men) and subsequently over a decade later cheating gave me the excuse to end the next and only other long term relationship I’ve had. At the time I rationalized, “I clearly don’t love him enough if I can sleep with another man.” Next I did the morally righteous thing – I called him up, told him we had a problem and very soon thereafter left him. Because leaving was penance for bad behavior and, I rationalized, released me from moving forward in life as a liar and a cheat to the person who’s opinion mattered most to me.
Diaz’s references to drinking, to bouts of depression, to not being able to look at himself in a mirror, the deep-seated self-hatred are all things I saw reflections of in my own experience.
Given the relatively mild nature of the traumas I experienced as a child, when I finished the essay, I wide-eye wondered how many of us walk around with these wounds, oblivious to how much they shape who we are and what we do.
When I would get into my navel-gazing, self-examination mode, the man I had my second and last long-term relationship with – seven-years to be precise – and whom I still refer to as my second husband despite our never having married[2] used to assert, “You had a roof over your head, food in your stomach. You were not abused!” He was a lot older than me – twenty-six years – with attitudes borne of a time when those were the only measures of abuse, when “spare the rod, spoil the child” was an oft-used phrase. And yet, with the exception of one particularly memorable spanking that employed a plastic brush,[3] my parents didn’t hit us and we did have three squares a day. Was the fact that my mother repeatedly sent me to school with tomato sandwiches that by lunch hour had morphed into a disgusting mess of soggy pink bread enough to call her abusive? Abusive, no. Uninspired-where-school-lunches-were-concerned, yes.
The abuses that many of us suffered as children I would suggest were often much more subtle than those experienced by the Junot Diaz’s of the World.[3] So subtle as to make them unutterable for completely different reasons than those that made Diaz silent, so non-violent that by sharing them we feel embarrassment or guilt knowing that others have experienced so much worse. But that’s what I am most struck by, what made me sit up and take notice – it’s the recognition that even the mildest forms of abuse induce in children and the adults they become symptoms of full-blown trauma the likes of which Diaz experienced. I was struck hard in my consciousness by the reality that as children we are fragile, vulnerable, and sensitive beyond belief. We have a belief in a kind and loving world until we are proven wrong and whatever it is that teaches us that the world is a far more cruel place than we had ever imagined is what creates the pervasive psychological “hang ups” that dominate so many of our adult stories. The point I guess I’m trying to make is that I’m not convinced that enough of us recognize the degree to which even the “milder” forms of trauma[4] experienced in our childhoods are the source of our adult so-called “hang ups.” That in the absence of loving affirmation that we are okay, lovable, perfect even, just the way we are, too many of us try to hide what we perceive as short-comings, to dawn our masks of self-protection against the pain and suffering that is unfortunately a part of life, and thereby subsume the beautiful creature we are meant to be.
I dunno…I’m not a psychologist. I’m just thinking out loud and over-sharing, as I tend to do. But what do you think? I have to wonder, are the vast majority of us damaged and the only difference is a matter of degrees? And what are you doing to undo the damage? See below for one technique.
Lisa Nichols with a way to GET OUT of the pain of trauma that we all carry within us.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The jury’s out on whether this is in the past or not.
[2] I liked to say that he was a better “husband” than the man I actually married a decade earlier.
[3] Don’t get me wrong. I acknowledge and am humbled and saddened by how many children experience abuse on a par with or greater than what Diaz described in his essay.
[4] Emotional trauma comes first to mind.
Emily’s story needs to be written
Effin Artist is a project that I’m involved with and it was through that organization that I met Mike Green, Emily’s husband. We hope you’ll read her story as it unfolds and get involved by contributing to her or another cancer patient’s care and needs.
Effin Artist exists for a single reason: To elevate great stories that inspire change.
Emily Green has such a story. And we’re committed to helping her tell it for a simple reason: Her unique approach to surviving cancer represents a serious shift in healthy recovery. Her story represents a sea change in treatment paths chosen by the millions stricken with this disease. This is inspired change at the root, right where it can do the most good for the most people.
Emily is the mother of three, ages 16, 5, and 4. She is the hearbeat of a family that has endured its share of challenges and trials over the years before she learned that she had late-stage breast cancer. Her story may sound too familiar in an age when cancer plagues so many of us, but it is utterly unique in its message of hope for those afflicted.
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Wonders of Baja Weather
Rainbow over Bahia de Los Angeles thanks to crazy storm system. Photo credit: Octavio Pinto
It’s 5pm. I pause from writing this, reach up and cup the tip of my nose between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand. It’s cold and my fingers warm it slightly before I return to the task before me.
I know I’ve been away a long time. I had some personal things going on, health and whatnot, and haven’t been writing much in general as a result and when I do write I’ve focused on getting my book written because I want to, no I need to get it done. It’s been too long coming. But that’s another story.
What’s got me writing today is the weather. It’s funny that I should write about the weather after being absent from this blog for so long. It’s a source of mild amusement that “How’s your weather?” is the question I can always count on my mother to ask during our increasingly brief telephone exchanges.
Well Mom, it’s been another cold day today. Yeah, not cold by eastern Canada standards, but darn cold for here in Baja. Cold and windy. Yesterday we had what I consider to be the strangest weather I’ve witnessed in my fourteen years living in Baja. At the end of a winter season during which temperatures remained well above normal, a system blasted the peninsula with a cold air that made temperatures plummet twenty degrees and brought with it all manner of precipitation.
I rose just before dawn and took a look outside. The waves were uncharacteristically large and feathered by strong offshore winds. I went outside to investigate more closely and greeted my neighbor as he stood watering some new fan palm trees near the wall separating our properties.
He asked me in a somewhat bewildered tone, “Is this what it’s like in summer? Are the waves often like this? What’s up with this wind?”
I looked around and wondered if the pending solar eclipse had anything to do with the strange weather. I’ve also been seriously “under the weather” of late thanks to one of Baja’s many “side-benefits” – a parasitic infection – that’s made surfing a challenge due to desperately low energy levels. It pained me to look at the waves and not be able to partake. To lessen the sting, I turned my back to sea and returned to the house to get some work done. (Unfortunately, under the influence of these parasites I’ve been living in a near perpetual brain fog. My productivity has suffered almost as much as my intestinal tract.)
By 8:30 the winds switched to the North, then East, then South and East again. I looked out the west-facing kitchen window and I didn’t quite believe my eyes. The sky had been clear blue only an hour earlier, but now ominous black clouds loomed, expanding high to reach into the sky. I went outside to investigate and discovered the wind had turned downright chilly. It was right then that big COLD raindrops began to fall. I double-timed it up to the guest house to close the windows. On my return to the main house the rain drops fell quicker, inducing me to run or get wet enough to require a wardrobe change. The wind seemed to be coming from several directions all at the same time. It swirled and switched back and forth, came in wild gusts up to twenty-odd miles an hour. Once I had the windows in the main house closed, I returned to the garage where one of the doors is wide open during the day and watched as the pavers on the driveway got soaked and water began to drip from the downspouts. Yeah, it wasn’t a heavy rain by tropical storm standards, but it was rain in March in the Baja desert. Sit up and take notice kinda weather.
Back inside I noticed my feet were cold. What the heck? I normally have to wear Uggs here in the winter, but this year’s winter has been so warm I’ve only put them on a few times at night.
I scratched my head and did a few searches on Google about the current weather. Nada. Later I would learn that the winds turned offshore again around 1PM. Surf in San Jose was unreal.
“Like Hawaii” one friend said, “and barreling. But I had to put on my full wetsuit! I froze! I’m in Uggs, longjohns, and my ski jacket now.”
“Damn! I missed it again,” I lamented. “Frickin’ parasites!”
I called my friend Mario, the Huichol shaman, and he reported he’d had to run home early from the gallery where he sells indigenous art to deal with an emergency. The wind, gusting up to 45 miles an hour in Cabo San Lucas, had toppled the large Tamarind tree in his yard, which landed on his bedroom, destroying the roof and two walls.
“Was anyone hurt?” I asked, picturing the kids and his sister-in-law Rosa scrambling to avoid the falling tree.
“No. Gracias a Dios.”
The solar eclipse occurred at 4:30 our time. We were not in the window to see it, but it was total and visible further west from Hawaii to Indonesia. I continued to wonder if it wasn’t the cause of the weird weather.
At sunset I walked the dogs on the beach like I do most nights and froze. I didn’t consider I might need a scarf and a beanie. And the sweater I had on was too thin. The sand stung, icy cold on my feet. I looked warily at the low hanging black and grey clouds recognizing them as typical of lightning producers. I’m not a big fan of lightning, having had it pass through my body when I became a ground for an Airstream trailer. I picked up my pace.
By the end of the walk, large cold rain drops began to fall and land squarely on my head and shoulders, threatening to make me colder still. Back in the house I had to blast my feet with hot water to dispel the cold before I wrapped them in heavy wool socks and Uggs. Later, as I lay in bed I could see from behind my eyelids the intermittent flashing of lightning to the east.
Today I woke and didn’t want to get out of bed it was so cold in my bedroom. I snuggled in and felt a small lump next to me. The cat, ensconced under the duvet, did his best to ignore me as I pulled the covers up under my chin and looked out at a sea made tumultuous by the still raging wind.
Later, when the sun was up and the bedroom felt a little less frigid, I rose and searched for information on yesterday’s weather. On the Baja Facebook page I found photos of the desert floor just north of here in the village of El Centenario covered in hail. On the Weather Underground website it showed that in the wee hours of the morning, the mercury at the San Jose del Cabo airport had dropped to 48 degrees Farenheit (9 deg Celcius), ten degrees colder than the previous night’s low.
The greater surprise was when I found these photos on the Facebook group Talk Baja taken in El Centenario just North of here.
Photos courtesy of Jay Curtis
Hail in Baja!
The only thing missing is the locusts.
Crazy Weather Update: I just saw on Facebook that it SNOWED in Guadalajara yesterday! According to @SkyAlertStorm the last time they saw snow there was in 1997.
The Messenger
And here’s another one that is a personal favorite. I still tear up when I think about Zee and reading this was bitter sweet. She was such a good dog.
Our dog Zee is going blind. The vet informed me that she has glaucoma and an auto-immune disease that’s making her body attack itself. Yes, not one, but two diseases affecting her eyes. One at a time, her eyes swelled up into big, bulbous, blood shot orbs with milky irises at their centers. The first to swell then shrank to a fraction of its size, sank back into its orbit, where it now sits wrinkled like a raisin and useless as the tit on a boar. Then the left eye followed suit and blew up to twice its normal size. We’d already taken her to the vet for the right eye, so when the left started expanding I squeezed in the same drops and shuttled her off to the vet with great trepidation – I knew that the news would not be good. He kept her for observation for three…View original post 990 more words
Fowl Play
I hope that in the absence of new material, you’ll enjoy this post I wrote back in 2010.
Our caretaker Felipe bought a rooster a while back. I first saw the animal tied by one leg to Felipe’s outdoor table. I asked him what he intended to do with it and he replied that he was going to make a caldo (Spanish for soup). The next day, I found Felipe sitting on the stoop outside his house, the rooster cradled gently in his arms. He was stroking it. I asked him when he was going to make his soup and in reply he said something about someone named “Enrique.” Felipe is shy and mumbles a lot. Even my Mexican friends have trouble understanding his garbled speech. So I asked, “Enrique? Enrique who?” He looked at me like I was daft. “The rooster!” he shot back, holding the bird out with both hands in emphasis. I shook my head and pronounced, “I doubt you’ll eat him now that you’ve…
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Who knew three minutes took so long?
Here is the man with the vision that gave birth to Effin Artist, Scot Bolsinger’s view on the day that three minutes took so effin long.
Several years ago, Effin Artist started with a little voice in my head that I’d say to myself time and again. I’d do something creative that would make me feel good.
I’d say to myself, “I’m an Effin Artist, man!”
Then it became a newsletter to family, which then grew into a lark of a website I built only to learn how to build websites. Then it became a blog and a real website that I called my writer’s platform.
It turns out the Great Divine had much more in mind. Effin Artist continues its evolution into something I couldn’t have dreamed up had I wanted to, which is saying something because I do some serious dreaming when I get on a roll.
What is it? That’s coming soon. But with that next evolutionary phase in mind, we gathered to capture the essence of Effin Artist in a three-minute video.
I…
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Litquake and Video Takes
San Francisco has long been known for its ability to draw and inspire writers, from Mark Twain and Jack London to the Beats like Ginsberg and Kerouac, to contemporary authors Isabelle Allende and Dave Eggers. I love this city – it’s beauty, its proximity to the ocean, but mostly because it’s effing vibrant, pregnant with possibility, overflowing with the kind of creative energy that always inspires me to write. Every time I come here it’s a shot in the arm with a creative juice potent enough to rival Red Bull. This past weekend was no exception.
It’s only natural that “The Literary City” should give birth to Litquake’s Litcrawl, the literary equivalent bastard spawn of Woodstock and a pub crawl held annually in the city’s Mission district. It’s 82 sessions crammed into three hours in venues as diverse as laundry mats, hair salons, galleries, restaurants, co-op work spaces, cafes, dark alleyways, and bars. It’s anything and everything that you can dream up related to writing.
My buddy and fellow writer Scot Bolsinger and his long time friend Paul, joined me this past Saturday night to check it out. We met at the Mission Laundromat where an older Latina woman struggled to maintain dominion over the counter where she folded clothes while a crowd amassed and women in pretty dresses read poetry, Twitter-based flash fiction, and non-fiction short stories as part of “Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose presents Sex, Lies, and Lost Socks.” We headed next to a salon where a large crowd had gathered to witness a literary relay race sponsored by the Castro’s Literary Cooperative. What is a literary relay race? I cannot say for sure, but it appeared to involve the cooperative creation of an original story written by ten writers solely for and during the hour-long session. 
The vibe in Fellow Barber, where the event was held, was upbeat and filled with the buzz of excited chatter. The authors, each wearing a big number taped to the front of their shirts, had gathered at the center of the salon where they slapped one another on the back and bore faces filled with the kind of calm that comes after the storm of a live performance.
We checked in to hear kids reading their stories at 826 Valencia, Dave Egger’s non-profit organization dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and teachers inspire their students to write. At The Chapel we discovered a contest was about to begin. We high-tailed it outta there fast lest the other, far more qualified and willing participants discover we were literary trivia posers and beat us to death with their notebooks and pens. On our way out we were intrigued by this sign and stopped to check it out.
Turns out the sign advertised the Hook-Up Truck, a “modern dating solution for safe sexual adventuring” that can be dispatched immediately to any location in the city. Private, secure, and temperature controlled, rental of the room includes complimentary birth control and STD preventatives and optional use of the installed camera. Seeing as Scot is a happily married man and Paul’s a gay pastor, our discovery of the Hook-Up Truck signaled it was time for this lady to head on home. Scot and I had to be up early the next morning.
5AM Sunday morning came too soon. By the time I got my shit together and drove to the Embarcadero (getting lost along the way) it was almost 6:30 and the sky was growing bright with the impending dawn. Scot and a production crew of five were gathered on the roof of Scot’s apartment building when I arrived, Scot lit up like a billboard, balanced atop a bar stool with the Bay Bridge for a backdrop. He smiled with relief when I appeared. Focused and with his back to me, Dave Moutray of Crux Jinx Productions directed one of the crew to repoint the lights. I might have felt a wave of nervousness flood through my gut, but I was too damned tired.
Bruno, the sound man, wired me up, instructing me to run the mic wire he connected to my scarf down through my sweater, same as the actors playing anchormen and politicians I’d seen on TV. I took a seat and watched as they shot. Soon the sun rose, prompting the parrots of Telegraph Hill to leave their overnight perches to fly in wide circles chattering and generally making a lot of noise along the way. The parrots overwhelmed the sound every time they flew nearby slowing progress. I noticed Dave getting antsy and before long he announced the sun was too high. The crew relocated to the shaded deck off Scot’s apartment and I continued to wait my turn in the adjacent living room.
I drank a couple of lattes, read a few emails in an attempt to distract myself from thinking about what was to come, and then it was my turn.
Dave turned the bright lights, two cameras, and his full attention on me where I sat on the soft black leather couch willing it to swallow me. Tired or not, I felt my head begin to buzz, my stomach clamp down on itself, and my blood pressure rise. In an attempt to channel that awful feeling, I rung my hands until my fingers hurt. I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have skipped one or both of the lattes.
As he had done with Scot before me, Dave began, “So Dawn, why don’t we start with you telling me, what is Effin Artist?”
I did my best to answer the “what” and “why” of Effin Artist so Dave and crew could pull together the necessary sound bites to create a three minute video that will reflect the vision that Scot first shared with me last June. But in describing what is now our shared vision, the challenge we are faced with is that the what of Effin Artist is still a moving target. It’s like trying to determine the sex of a one-month fetus – it’s just too early – the naughty bits have yet to emerge. And we’re a little like expectant parents, reticent to share too much before things have developed sufficiently and the idea demonstrates clearly it’s got ten fingers and ten toes.
I’ve never felt like such a complete and utter amateur. Trying to come up with the right words was intense and the sense that “this really matters so I have to get it right” threatened to overwhelm me. By the time we broke for lunch I felt weak and a little nauseous.
For the last shot, Dave sat Scot and I tight up next to one another on that same mushy couch and prompted us to deliver the our call to action – what people will need to do to help make Effin Artist a reality. Sitting on that couch alone under the bright lights was hot enough, now there was a big burly Italian American sitting and sweating alongside me. I felt my pits and the back of my legs getting damp with sweat and hoped that my deodorant was working.
“Sit up straight,” Dave reminded us every time the couch sucked us back down to slouching.
I was so tired I couldn’t get my lines right. I’d managed to pull off the “why” without too many takes, but this was demanding more from me. Finally I nailed it and sank back into the couch in relief.
Then Bruno the Sound Man, so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was there, spoke up, “Someone was tapping.”
Everyone followed his gaze, which rose from his sound monitor and landed on me, “I think you were tapping the couch or your leg with your hand.”
I felt beads of sweat break out on my forehead as my blood pressure rose to make my cheeks flush and my ears burn. I did not want to have to try to get those same words out again. I think I might have yelled at myself. I felt like an idiot. The crew had been shooting for over eight hours and my nervous tapping meant they had to keep working. Nevertheless their mood was surprisingly upbeat. They joked and encouraged, cajoled and did everything in their power to extract the right words with the right tone and feeling of purpose from our mouths.
I felt a little better when Scot blew his part on our next try.
Take Seven was the charm. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty effing good. Good enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and a couple of writers doing their effing best to get their message across. I can’t wait to share the results, the what and the why of Effin Artist and my exciting role within it.
Long odds pay off with release of ‘Fixed’
Doug Piotter is a writer I respect and work with in a writers group. I encourage you to pick up a copy of Doug’s book, edited by another great writer/editor and friend A. Scot Bolsinger, founder of our writers group. Doug’s book is funny and honest, just like him!
Doug Piotter beat long odds in life. He continues to do so, as the release of his comedic memoir attests. A guy who lived the life that my friend Doug has, shouldn’t be breathing, let alone publishing books. But here he is, as of today, a published author.
I’m honored to introduce to you, Fixed: Dope sacks, dye packs, and the long welcome back, by Doug Piotter.
Doug’s story is compelling. The Seattle native’s unique perspective and gratitude for the life he has helps also make it funny. Very funny, which comes through in his quirky writing style.
It’s staggering to think Doug came out the other side of harsh addiction, a bottom-feeding, crime-riddled youth and a decade in prison. It’s literally miraculous that he came out the person he is, enthusiastic, positive, driven, successful and still, after more than a 22 years of sobriety, giving back in service…
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Dawn Revealed 