Archives for January 2018

Last night I started reading May Sarton’s At Seventy, the journal she started on her seventieth birthday, and I’m in love with her. How did I go so long without reading her? It crosses my mind that her voice is so familiar to me that perhaps I have read her, but I don’t think so? She writes like someone I could know, and I refuse to think she’s dead, even though I know she was born in 1912. I’d love to look up her Wikipedia but then it will tell me when she died, and I can’t know. I do think that there’s another volume of journals after this one, and that means she didn’t head out with this book, which is delightful to know.

When talking to a coaching client yesterday, she expressed an idea I hadn’t thought about much before—the idea that older women do not, in fact, know everything. The wisdom of the crone still includes lots of confusion and apprehension and everyday humanity which makes sense! Of course it does! There’s something in my heart, though, that believes a woman of seventy or eighty must have it all dialed. She just gets it.

And in many ways, it already seems like May Sarton does, even though she says she doesn’t.

“I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward, but I look forward with joy to the years ahead and especially to the surprises that any day may bring.”

I love this. I always wonder when I’m going to start looking backward, and I haven’t come close to wanting to do so yet. I have a romantic image of sitting around with my journals and morning pages one afternoon (should this be a Replenish assignment?) and see where I’ve come from, but I haven’t. I think I’d be both too overwhelmed and also too bored to survive the experience. I know I caught some of the past Rachael in those pages, but how much? Will I recognize her? At least I should read the parts that I wrote in the treehouse hovel apartment, because obviously, I can’t get that place out of my mind. My sister said last night that maybe it’s a place of fertility for me, which struck a resounding chord. Yes, that might be it, but how do I claim that? Or do I need to? Is there a need for exorcism or is it just what it is—a place I’ll always dream of like tsunamis and Venice?

Last night with sisters at the Alley, talking about Mom and the way she was able to lose it on me, something neither of them remembered. (I deserved it. I was the bad kid and couldn’t stand my mother from 14-17). One sister wanted to know where she was all the time Mom and I were fighting, and she said, “Maybe I was at swim practice.” Yes, she probably was! She always succeeded, and I was the underachiever, though I didn’t know that at the time. I think I fought depression so much and didn’t know that, either.

I just knew I wasn’t good enough, never good enough, and of course, that was exacerbated by the fact that when I tried to write, the one thing I wanted to do, I couldn’t figure out how to break in.

Writing was a forest that was closed to me, walled off. I had to earn my way in by building a ladder to get over the wall, but I kept looking for a door, for a break in the stones. I spent years walking around the forest, searching for my way in. Much later I found out that the only way to build the ladder was out of words. I find myself wishing someone had told me this clearly, but I bet they did. I bet Anne Lamott says something like that in Bird by Bird.

I wasn’t ready to hear it, probably. I had talent, I thought, and talent had always opened doors in walls (to other things) for me. I thought if I had enough talent, I’d deserve to find the door.

I gave looking for a long time. Then I painstakingly built a ladder out of words. Now I live in the forest, and it’s such an amazing place to be.

This morning I got up from bed with one intention: to rent a house in the middle of Oakland, maybe Rockridge or Temescal. I was still in the middle of a dream, and I think it’s the closest to sleepwalking I’ve come since I was a kid.

I’d been having a dream in which Lala and I were living in the old hovel apartment that haunts my dreams. Again and again, I find myself there. Like the dreams of tsunamis and not being able to get into Venice, it’s one that recurs at least once every couple of months. In the dream, I was standing in the bathroom looking at the floor that was cracking and falling in by the toilet. I could see where Lala’s footprints were denting the filthy linoleum. I knew that the house was falling down the hill, but I also knew that since it was our house, we could get $2800 for rent for it (this came directly from a real Zillow email from yesterday). I thought, hey! We’ll rent this place out, and rent a smaller place for ourselves in the neighborhood where there are restaurants and shops and cafes.

I literally got out of bed, thinking that I’d like to pay maybe seven or eight–hundred dollars for a place. I was headed for my computer and Craigslist when I ran into the real Lala in the real living room of our real house. Startled, I thought, Hey! I love this place! I don’t want to move!

The funniest part is that I thought we could rent in Rockridge for $700. And I just looked – there’s only one place for rent there that would allow the animals, and it’s $4850. Of course.

And I love this house. I love this neighborhood, though there isn’t any place to walk except up the hill (which isn’t bad!). I guess yesterday I was thinking again that we could rent this out for our mortgage and move to New Zealand if we wanted to. It’s always in the back of my mind. Not like I have time to play much more with the idea right now – not sure we could afford to live in or near Wellington, where we’d want to be. But it’s still a thought.

I’ve become a good sleeper. Not always: I had terrible insomnia two nights this week. But sometimes, maybe most of the time, I SLEEP. After seventeen years of a job which prevented this, I’m still amazed that this is my life. I sleep. It’s wonderful.

I just did my first inversion! First handstand! Against a wall in the office, of course, and I climbed up into it rather than kicking upward to get there, but still.

I did the backing up and walking up the wall thing, seen here. It felt pretty amazing. I loved the strength of my arms and the way my body felt. My body was shocked! What are we doing here? Are we really upside down? Should we be here? Is this dangerous? Or is it fun? I can’t decide! 

I read someplace that the easiest thing to forget to do while inverted is breathe, and I found that instantly true. I was holding my breath, and when I eventually did breathe, I could feel my lungs startlingly higher in my chest than they usually are.

I felt strong, and I know my shoulders and pecs are strong from yoga, but I think the next step is to walk my hands while in that position closer to the door, which seemed completely impossible to even imagine. Now I understand why they say to save some strength to get back out of it. I could just unfold myself down today because my hands were still at least three feet away from the door, but had I been closer, I couldn’t have done that.

I’m going to try one inversion a day for a year, but it’s unofficial. Maybe I’ll record some, maybe I want. It’s just something I want to do. 2018: Year of Being Upside Down. The view is different. Okay, the view is just of my office door. You know what I mean.

But my vision felt fresh when I stood back up, and I have a happy gratitude for this body I’m living in.

Inward: I feel good. Delicious yoga this morning that made my body feel like one piece again. Joanna Penn and I talked on the show the other day how yoga brought us both into our bodies after somehow managing to live 40+ years being just a head in space. Three, maybe four years ago, I couldn’t isolate muscles in my body to relax them. If I noticed myself hunched up, I didn’t know what to do about it. I’d try to release the tension, but I didn’t know how to drive the vehicle I was in.

Now, I love living in this body.

And the yoga–eyes still happen. This morning when I was done, I went into the kitchen and was astonished at the beauty of the bright white clouds above the trees behind Juan’s house—they scudded inland, high and fast. The bare trees were dark below them, and they reminded me of that Magritte Empire of Light I love so much and always visit when I’m in Venice. I saw it because I was there, because my eyes were open in that post–yoga glow.

Then I took a shower, which I normally dislike. It’s not that I hate washing or the water or anything—it’s just such a BORE. I’d much prefer to take my nightly bath to get clean, but I needed to wash my hair, and I tell you what, being in the shower right after yoga is amazing. I could feel the water and instead of barreling through the steps to get done as fast as possible, I just let myself feel how good it was to be there, under the warmth. I do yoga most mornings, and it almost never fails to bring me into alignment with myself. Yesterday I skipped it because of time constraints, and I felt the lack all day.

When I do yoga, my bones fit inside my skin.