July 30th, 2007
it just isn’t happening. SO I think I should leave you with my favorite youtube video of the moment. I want a hurdy gurdy, I tell you. Except that the video of one being played badly (not this one, you’ll have to look for it yourself), oh, downright scary.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DwUqKbqIA4]
July 30th, 2007
At fourteen I thought Douglas Adams’ lesson on flying, to throw yourself at the ground and miss, was about the cleverest thing ever. Now, when I have a day when a grocery list seems like a tremendous creative stretch, I find myself trying to figure out what it is I am so actively not writing about as I jump up to re-fill my coffee cup, wipe the spattered bathroom mirror, start another load of laundry. But that writing should come about by just putting down whatever it is that I am not writing about seems as slick a trick as flying by missing the ground.
There’s this feeling of something missing, and I try to imagine what it is I most want to read. Were I to click on a blog of erised, which shows you what you most want to see, what wisdom would be waiting for me, what brilliance, what wit? Would it be something where I could recognize myself, because ultimately, what I really, truly want is reassurance, comfort, and, dammit, a little bit of flattery? Would it be some simple truth, some insight into a happy life, getting along with others, producing stuff you’re proud of, staying connected, sleeping well? A story of facing a challenge and coming through well which reads like validation of all the challenges you’re struggling against? The sort of dark humor about how insane all of this is?
What you learn about yourself when you force the long hand writing of three pages every day, is that sometimes you have to take it pen stroke by pen stroke, sometimes you get to take it idea by idea, they come in this big knot that you can hardly sort out. You learn how dreadfully you overuse some words (this is also evident when your three year old likes saying “actually”), and what things never stop bugging you. You learn about the relativity of time. You learn that you can carry the sting of no one wanting to sit next to you in the cafeteria in middle school for more than twenty years, so that when grown women carry on with the some sort of excluding behavior there is no comfort — even when they aren’t people you even like. You learn to write lots of letters to yourself, dear self, take a breath, it is all going to be ok, even if you can’t see it right now. You learn that you are a person who doesn’t procrastinate well because when there is something unpleasant to be done, it’s all you can think about. You learn how fabulous it is to have a friend who understands and explains you can tell your brain it’s in time-out whenever it starts endless cycling on that unpleasantness.
So maybe it’s not exactly blockage, it’s just that good days are sometimes followed by difficult days, and sometimes difficult days are followed by even more difficult days. And some days there are a lot of things which aren’t blogging that require a lot of energy.
July 29th, 2007
I am still thinking about non-materialistic acquisitiveness, the little pieces of identity we take pride in and clutch. In a phone conversation with my best friend about what magazines we are each subscribed to (currently, only Brain, Child which I love with an evangelicizing passion, though I happily will pick up the Believer and Bitch when I feel like a treat while shopping in the local upscale, organic markets, and wouldn’t complain about a subscription to the New Yorker). But there was a time in my life I loved fashion magazines, and then weaned myself off them with Real Simple and Oprah magazines, with their cheery message of self-improvement. They all, though, whisper to me “you are not enough,” and out from their thrall I am so much happier.
Now, if I were to convey this message to the self I was ten years ago, picking up Marie Claires at Czech newsstands, bodies and worlds away from my post-partum self, I’d have heard the simple statement “I am happier without glossy magazines” defensively, it would have sounded judgemental. I’d have heard “these are for the weak-minded” or “there is no value in these” and I am so glad my friend didn’t hear me as saying that, but rather “I am too susceptible to the way advertising trades on my sense of not being enough.” Even those magazines not bearing images of skinny models sell self-improvement, which has a back-story of ‘you need improving.’ Which I won’t buy.
I don’t want to sound smug, it startles me to realize how my consumption of overt advertising has been reduced, preferring NPR and podcasts to the radio, tivoing the television I do watch so the commercials don’t get played, not reading magazines… and I won’t pretend that the messages aren’t there in other subtler forms. But you get away from it a little and realize how insidious it is: after years of not listening to commercial radio, being in a dentist’s office where it was piped in I found myself unable to ignore the radio commercials, they were so compelling, so interesting.
But I don’t take a lot of pride in the diminished place of advertising in my life, either, some of it is time and energy being reserved for things I care most about, some of it is life in Portland where individual expression and independent media seem really strong, and I don’t suspect that most of the people I encounter are all that into the latest trends and looks. So it isn’t an acquisition I can brandish — and I worry that if I write about being happier without it, it starts becoming this self-improvement narrative of its own. Which isn’t what I meant at all. No, I just wish I could flood the world with anti-advertising. You are enough. Your life is pretty good. You are lovable (and loved) just as you are. Resist the compulsion, the training you’ve gotten, to buy, to eat, to numb life however you can, because as uncomfortable as it is, there are others struggling nearby too. I don’t know — I can’t think of a catchy slogan.
July 26th, 2007
Leaving behind, for the moment, the proposition that forgiveness does more to comfort the forgiver than the forgiven, there is nothing like the eye-rolling “sor-reee!” of a six year old to make you think about the neccessary and sufficient conditions of apology. There came a point when I had to lay out for a child, given to unrepentant and insincere sounding apologies, the things I needed to hear in order feel apologized to… I realize that one has to spend only a short time on any playground to hear mothers and other caregivers demanding that their charges “say you’re sorry!” but I want my kids to get the art of the apology:
1) It helps to express concern for the person you’re apologizing too — an “are you ok?” (scratch this if the answer is obvious: blood, broken bones, and destruction of irreplaceable heirlooms are, more or less by definition, not ok. If the answer is obvious, you acknowledge what the other person is feeling and express the hope that they feel better soon.)
2) Express remorse. While elementary school metaphysics is a lot concerned with the intention (but I didn’t mean to do it! It was an accident! I shouldn’t have to apologize!) you can express remorse for carelessness, or for losing your temper, for not seeing your friend’s nose by your elbow, for being seized by jealousy. You must understand the difference between taking responsibility for your failure and excusing it — I was overcome by covetousness the sight of your shiny new bauble and seized it, and I was wrong… you don’t get to blame covetousness, the sun in your eyes, haste, anxiety or low blood sugar, even if they were contributing factors in your wrongness. You neeed to acknowledge that you were wrong, and too much explanation of why you were wrong pretty much dilutes the apology to meaninglessness.
3) You need to let the other person what you’re going to do to make it right, if it’s possible, saving your allowance until you can afford a new Ming vase or wiping up the mud you tracked onto the floor your mother just mopped.
4) It never hurts to express the measures you will go to to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, to promise to ask before borrowing, to take off your shoes in the hall when it’s muddy, to remember not to run in the house…
I know that number two is the hardest one for me; I have ancient memories of an apology not accepted because it was all about me. I really don’t like being wrong, and have urges to hide it or explain it away, when sometimes it’s simple wrongness. One of the things that has always impressed me about my husband is how he can cheerfully admit to being wrong, to making a mistake, without it seeming to crush his self-image… he has no expectations of being perfect, and his willingness to admit to mistakes is one of those paradoxical secure-people-are-so-surprisingly-humble-about-it things — it makes it impossible not to forgive him, and I try to learn from it, hope the kids inherit it.
July 25th, 2007
In Western theories, the hope is always that emptiness can be healed, that if the character is developed or the trauma resolved that the background feelings will diminish. If we can make the ego stronger, the expectation is that emptiness will go away. In Buddhism, the approach is reversed. Focus on the emptiness, the dissatisfaction, and the feelings of imperfection, and character will get stronger. Learn how to tolerate nothing and your mind will be at rest.
— Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling ApartThe house does feel really empty after the kids are in bed, and I am not finding easy comforts, too late for phone calls to anyone east of here, I am really not hungry, nor interested in television nor reading nor… in any easy numbing of the edge. I think, since my parents’ visit, I’ve been aware that as tough as this year has been for feeling isolated, not having my best friend eight minutes away, nor the casual, easy contact of the same group of mothers whose children started kindergarten when mine did, standing and chatting every day at pick-up time, of just not having the ease with familiarity of old friends. I have to keep working at building our life here, extending myself in small ways, going to parties I might blow off for not knowing enough people, showing up and talking to new people, remembering to smile and make eye contact (but hopefully not in a creepy way, right?) to keep trying new things when my natural inclination is to hide in a book, in a corner. There have been a handful of small victories, and even the most awkward evening out came with compassion for others more socially awkward than me, but the resultant ups and downs are not totally real, and it’s odd tonight o be sort of savoring the emptiness a little, that it’s — safe? I can turn and confront it here. No one is going to save me, after all, this is not about anyone else.
Somehow being alone is precious, and I have been holding it at bay for so long with superficial comforts! and still I will be glad for the company of my husband when he comes home and the way we can be side-by-side doing rather separate things and still be companionable, sharing the things that are interesting to us, but also being completely ok not talking. I think about my father’s state at the airport waiting for my mother’s flight to arrive after they’d been apart five days, how anxious he was to see her. I touch my grandmother’s wedding ring and think of how she never spent a night alone in her own home until the night my grandfather died.
The Epstein book has me thinking about non-materialistic acquisitiveness. I suspect it’s creeping back into the music lessons, my hopes for the kids’ educations, generally, the trying to read more books at a time than is reasonable, even the craving for connection and the good writing experiences where words just pour out, showing relationships between ideas, and the epiphanies are tangible. I suspect that acquisitiveness corrupts or perverts even these things that are good in themselves, and I have to face their absence to let my life be whole. Tonight’s emptiness is a gentle one, in a small enough dose not to be accompanied by vertigo or nausea, using a dental mirror on my imperfections rather than dressing room full-length mirrors under fluorescent lighting. And with that, I am going to go to bed, and wake up well rested so I can be patient with the little darlings.
July 24th, 2007
… we’re just keeping up a habit of blogging, if not daily, than more frequently than waiting for the perfect subject to hold forth upon and the time to edit and shape it and get bogged down in perfectionism. I endure the pain of seeing typos, homonyms that slip past the internal spell checker, though I correct them later when I find them. I remind myself that this IS hard, the singing loudly enough to drown out the internal censors, who natter away about how this really is not interesting to ANYONE and whom do I think I am fooling, exactly, that I OUGHT to be embarrassed to be putting this sort of practice writing out there for anyone to read, that everybody will read it, that nobody will read it, that this is but one more step to dying one day alone but for my twenty-four cats. That someday I’ll apply for a job and this will come back to haunt me: the particle physics theory of blog exposure, if I reveal my location, I must not reveal my velocity, and vice versa. I only decided after some internal debate I did want my name here, did want to be findable, don’t have deep dark secrets I’m not writing about, just a modicum of discretion, respecting the privacy of others in my life, that the only thing worse than being read was not being read. I think of the scathing attacks on on-line columnists like Anne Lamott or Ayelet Waldman for not having enough barriers up to protect their families from their writing, and wonder if the sort of disclsure involved in personal writing brings up a feminist question.
Anyway, it was one more successful day of the house not burning down, exceeding my low-bar expectations of the kids all getting enough to eat in the day, wearing clean clothes, and going to bed with clean faces — after we got home from a violin lesson and had dinner, we made fudge, and I read a chapter of HP7 aloud with Raven listening in on speakerphone. There’s a fine line with doing voices, it’s almost hard to avoid where she writes in dialect, but I’ve been caught off-guard, reading a line of dialogue in a hearty voice only to get to “the old man wheezed in an unexpectedly high voice.” I love reading aloud, love being read to, love that the boys have developed good reading voices, love that this is the seventh book my husband, older sons and I have enjoyed so together, all honor-bound not to race ahead. I am sad at the prospect of that ending.
July 23rd, 2007
And my husband is off to New York again, a red-eye, leaving in about half an hour. I have been trying not to fall into the pattern where the day before he leaves I am tense, grouchy, and not even conscious of why until I realize I am wondering whether I will be able to hold it together while he’s gone, that I will be completely netless.
Among the hardest things to leave in Dallas was the network of people whom I could comfortably easily ask for help, people whose kids I had watched at night when there was a trip to the emergency room for back pain, the child whose father was undergoing treatment for lymphoma and I could happily offer to take over her mother’s mornings working in the co-op preschool when she needed it, the economy of favors that wasn’t about expecting anything back but more, realizing that if I were in need, I had people ready and willing, lined up to help, the friend who watched the older boys when Rainer was born, the neighbor across the street who would bring her three year old over to feed the fish when we were out of town… When you register your kids for school, you have to fill out an emergency contact number, someone who will be responsible for your kids if they cannot get hold of you, and, while we’ve met some great people in Portland, had some lovely evenings out, the odd playdate here and there (which is harder to manage when you get to four kids spread out between 2 and 10) I feel funny asking, um, would you be our emergency contact?
Anyway, when I have the bed to myself, it’s hard to fall asleep, and I don’t want to be grumpy and tired in the morning. I have to get son #2 off to drama camp early tomorrow. With the self-discipline of the sister who wants her ice cream cone to last the longest, we are reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows aloud, as a family, clapping hands over ears so as to avoid any and all spoilers, and will suspend the reading until Raven is back, so I am going to shut the laptop, and try and race through a bit of re-reading of the Half-Blood Prince. I’ve forgotten a scandalous number of details, I think in the initial read there was such a rush to find out what happens that I could disregard numerous references to Ollivander the wandmaker going missing, and other such stuff that wasn’t tying in to the main plot. But spending an hour reading HP7 out loud to the boys and then retreating to read HP6 silently for myself is a bit confusing. Have to find something short and fun to read out loud for the next three nights to the boys while their dad is gone.
July 21st, 2007
Ok, y’all, bear with me as I launch into what I hope is as close to a rant as I get on what is really important to me…
At dinner last night we were in a restaurant crowded with families and so we ended up in a back banquet room where another family was already eating, and so we sat, relatively quiet trying not to listen to them, a dilemma of not wanting to invade their privacy, but not wanting to talk because we realized how little privacy there was, and their conversation was… invasive. Except it wasn’t even a conversation, it was a mother holding forth to a captive audience. I know the ages of the kids in the family because the buffet charged by the age of the guest, so there was a 10 year old son, an 11 year old daughter, and another older son who wouldn’t qualify for a kid’s meal. It’s weird overharing the conversation, and since you have no choice in the matter, just plain eavesdropping, and getting, with terrible clarity, from this single conversation, empathy for every point of view in the family. In the car afterwards, my husband expressed a real aversion to this woman, because she was so controlling. She was making some point to her daughter about what she should and shouldn’t eat, dutifully passing on the message women give their daughters about their bodies and food, and yet, I was sitting there and couldn’t help observing this girl was skinny and her younger brother had the physique of those kids you see in video game stores…
What was worse, was when the 10 year old went to the hall right outside this room, leading to the lavatories, and started a video game on one of the arcade machines parked there, only she dragged him back into the room and looks over at our table, to tell my kids there’s a ‘free’ game out there, that they should hurry and go play it. The she lays into him about the ‘little kids’ at the other table getting to play his game he spent his money on and how tomorrow, when he’s at Disneyland, he’s going to be drinking water when everyone else is drinking soda because he spent his money on a video game. Between these two incidents she held forth on nutrition and energy in food in what I am guessing came from the Omnivore’s Dilemma, the way she kept citing the book she was reading, but I don’t think I heard her husband’s voice at all. I thought the girl was sweet, finding me to hand me a small toy my youngest had dropped, and I got the feeling she was embarrassed by her mother.
The thing is, I am not unsympathetic to this woman. I know how polarizing it gets, feeling like you have sole responsibility for nutritional consciousness, fiscal lessons, long-term thinking. I know what it is to try whatever tactics you can to persuade your offspring to do what you need them to — that she wouldn’t have heard the belittling, controlling message that was being served with it. She had this sense of humor with a sharp blade buried in it, like the Halloween apple of urban legend, but this probably was more comfortable than outright authority. Sometimes I have these Carol Gilligan moments of believing I have been socialized to ask for things only indirectly, to always bury the lead under frills and ruffles of nicety and others-pleasing pathology, and it is a huge impediment to the sort of communication that is essential to marriage.
The silent dad reminds me of the formula in the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stories Soren can’t get enough of right now: sweet child displays a bewildering new awful behavior, mother turns to father frantic with worry, he raises a sharp eyebrow and retreats with his pipe behind a newspaper, mother helplessy calls all her friends who declaim the behavior, their own child is SO well-behaved! But Mrs. Blank did have that problem with little Timmy, and she called Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. That is definitely what you should do, call Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!
The polarization of parenting roles depresses me, and I get all sensitive and it seems to be close to universal, the story of husbands as big children that practically need raising themselves — and if this story creeps into your marriage/relationship it is used to excuse/absolve with a shrug or a sigh, “Men!” followed by increasing shrewishness under the growing weight of being the worrier, the long-term thinker, the responsible ‘Angel in the House’ (the Victioran representation of women as the moral heart of the home who must be protected from the external world and its pressures and realities). And I don’t know of a magic cure for it.
I have as much sympathy for the father, who gets told over and over again that the way he is pareting is wrong, until he abdicates. There is a terrible bind of neither having the model of previous generations of fathers being more than breadwinners and disciplinarians, stoics with deeply buried inner lives, nor of getting the intensive early time as primary caregiver, sink or swim, when you have to learn for yourself by trial and error what works and what doesn’t.
As the mom, with what feels like a God-given responsibility to protect and guide my kids, it is one of the most difficult things in the world to stand back and allow the other relationships in their lives to happen without interfering, whether it’s the musci teacher on a grouchy day, or the father who wants to splurge on candy at the movies, when I have histories and reasons that this is a Bad Idea. (It occurs to me I should be grateful not to have anyone watching over my shoulder on the bad days when I make my multitude of mistakes too). Yet, again, and again, I must confront that this relinquishing of control, trusting my raising of them is what I must do. I have already had a chance to drill in the messages I want them to have: that they are fine people, that life is an act of balancing discipline and enjoyment of pleasures, that stuff is not what makes you happy, that respect, courtesy, and consideration are all very important in interacting with each other and the world.
Sometimes, the compromises, the video games they’re allowed to play, the delight in boyish things I just don’t GET, projectiles and sticks, shiny warrior avatars — feels unbearable, like an abdication of my pacifistic values and maternal responsibility, especially because I know sometimes the compromise is about the learning experience they’ll get and the balance they need between discipline and fun, and sometimes it’s about my being exhausted and wanting time in my own head and it’s easier.
I have spasms of envy of people bringing up theeir kids without television, or the idealistic new parents who resist any toys made of plastic, or my cousin’s wife, whose baby shower was all children’s books. But maybe in the end I do believe that the little indulgences haven’t created children who are hopelessly spoiled, but children with some information to make better decisions: that the toy they pined for for three months turned out to be made of rather flimsy plastic and fell apart after only a couple weeks, that it offered less joy than a family bike ride or the feeling of being service.
I hope to never see the look of terror in my families eyes as I lecture them as a captive audience in some restaurant (that’s why I have a blog!) and I think part of the key to not hitting that point is to not simplify the polarizing roles my husband and I get into, but to keep reminding myself of how we’re complementary, we balance each other. I have the discipline to get my kids practicing their stringed instruments (nearly) every day, he has translated his strengths in technology and communication into a career he enjoys that supports me staying at home with my kids. I can remember to be grateful for that.
July 21st, 2007
I love and hate the structurelessness of these summer days, because I like seeing the patterns that emerge when they’re not imposed from outside. There are things that I am not exactly rigid about, but that are pretty much essential components of a complete day: writing in the morning, practicing with each of the three music students, time on the elliptical listening to my favorite podcasts, reading out loud to them before they go to bed…
In my determination to make blogging a habit I find it works to set aside time after I get the kids in bed, though it is easy to spend way too much time playing onFacebook, reading other blogs, looking for a perfect sleeper sofa to go in my studio (in gleeful anticipation of October’s visit from my goddaughter and her amazing mother). But maybe it’s the longer northern summer days, endless daylight, my children go to bed at a shameful hour, even when we’re not at Harry Potter pre-release parties, I stay up later to get non-childed time for reading and writing, and, undersleeping, I function less efficiently morning, dragging out the morning pages for hours around the interruptions of another cup of coffee and wiping up spilled cereal, negotiating peace or at least dulling the roar, and the other thousand urgent things that punctuate thought around here. I suspect I could achieve more efficiency by really being with the kids when I am with them, really applying myself single-mindedly to other things when I am not, but that is not likely to happen, and I am so much happier when I relax about all of the shoulds creeping back into my thinking.
Rather than relying on previous schemes of setting strict limits on the kids’ screen time of whatever sort I informed them at the beginning of the summer I wasn’t interested in being the screen police, and that they could watch tv or use the computer or play video games so long as I didn’t start perceiving it as a problem. That is, I expected not to have to hear fighting about any of those things, not to worry that they are becoming unbalanced and forgetting to play in other ways, to read, to help out around the house. And, surprisingly, it’s worked, though I suspect the older boys sort of nudge the younger ones, we’d better go do something else for a while so mom doesn’t take this away.
I am overjoyed to trust a babysitter, to have her coming over tomorrow night for the third time in two weeks — this time, so we can go to a fundraiser hosted by my husband’s tea-shop owning friend for a non-profit promoting the teaching of ecology and environmental science in elementary schools. It feels so healthy to practice being an out-without-kids grown-up, as much as I have always believed in having lives that included and involved them.
Anyway, not a lot of deep reflection today… stayed up writing past 1:30 last night, and got up at 7:30 so I could write two pages before taking a child to a 9:30 violin lesson, but, as a result was rather gentle in my expectations of myself today. Though we went to a Harry Potter party, the older boys and I, it was mostly to let them relish the experience of dressing up and going out late at night and being among other diehard fans, we have not yet bought a copy, though I expect they should be plentiful tomorrow with no line-standing… we will read it aloud, a chapter or two, or maybe three, a night, until it is done, doing our best not to read anything about it elsewhere. Funny, knowing how many families will buy more than one copy so that it can be read by several people simultaneously… I like the pacing of reading out loud, the hearing my kids get excited and speculate, their anticipation and enjoyment improving the experience tremendously, and in a sign of unprecedented maturity, suspect that wanting to know what happens is outweighed by the not wanting it to be over.
July 19th, 2007
I listened yesterday happily to a Fresh Air interview with Natasha Tretheway, Pulitzer-winning poet whose experience was biracial and losing her mother at 18 when her stepfather murdered her, and the questions and answers were both so unflinching, the questions we want to ask but fear are not polite… a good interview. But uncomfortable, in the sort of slamming up against the frailty of our mortal boundaries, that happens with violent death. How thin is the bone protecting our defenseless brains! the integrity of the tubes of blood coursing through our bodies, the tireless pumping of the muscle that is heart: it all seems so improbable and terrifyiing to rely upon. Even the hardened atheist materialists among us breathe faith that all of the complicated chemistry of metabolism should happen without us worrying about it or even understanding it, that the cells in our body should get the message to be fruitful and multiply, and then stop multiplying at the tight time. That the atoms supporting our weight should cohere, so we don’t go plummeting through the center of the planet, catapulted out the other side. It is only by faith that we not hear the crunch of realizing a mistake too late, falling, disjointed, until impact, the sudden anticipated and surprising stop, the spreading warmth and looseness in the joints of adrenalin alerting us we’ve crossed a line we cannot cross back. Mortality scares me, and I challenge myself to stand unflinching and face it, that my whole universe is knit on the successful electrical impulse through a handful of nervous systems telling diaphragms to keep sucking air, hearts to keep the blood coursing. And sometimes faith is willed blindness, too. An artistic license granted the illusion of seamlessness, this breath and the next, a sigh , an unpleasant smell of decay coming in my bedroom window behind the scent of a tree blossoming.
Oh, dear unreliable, impermanence is not just for loversl I hold myself back from writing more in the comments of your blog and less in my own about the way life feels like a kaleidoscope and just when all of the colors and bits seem to be arrayed in a most pleasing design, someone has to go and shake it, and how bitterly I regret not being able to make the world grind to halt so we could all mourn time gone by. We should use Memorial day not to honor just fallen soldiers, but the teacher you had a crush on and mutely fumbled, never adequately expressing the gratitude you felt. The senior person at your first real non-retail/non fast food job who took a mentorly interest, explaining things and being kind even when pressed of time, who would have been uncomfortable, no, mortified, by an attempt to express your appreciation. All those friends from summer camp, the chemistry that existed during one bright moment and could never exist the same way again. Your youth. Gone, gone, gone. Somehow we do keep recognizing when a time has come and it is right to move on, that staying in one place does not stave off loneliness, that of all the joys of the cherished mentor, there is the bittersweet realization that you have outgrown that relationship, that need, and must go hurtling meteorically away from it. Or sometimes with a lot less drama, a quiet lunch or a Kit Kat bar.
Faith is that real connections do not just go away, that six states away your best friend can call and you can talk for hours about nothing in particular, faith is that your new situation is going to surprise you and you are going to surprise yourself. Faith is that if you stop pretending you can staunch impermanence or mortality, steel yourself and confront it, there will be relief and you will be able embrace the thing that is permanent, carried deep within yourself.
