DYEING MY HAIR THEN AND NOW

I started turning grey and dyeing my hair while I was still in my thirties not because I really wanted to -- I thought the grey strands framing my face looked rather nice -- but because I let a friend of mine, Anjali, talk me into it. I was in between husbands, and subconsciously thought I would be more attractive if I showed no sign of grey. Who wanted a crone? And once I had begun, I couldn't stop, as all women who dye their hair know -- there is that interim period where one looks like a raccoon. I continued to put the poison in my hair every ten days, which is how long it took for the tell-tale roots to begin to show. I let myself grow grey again after Donald's death -- not with any particular intention -- but because I was grieving too much to think about it. Besides, I had thought I would probably never marry again. But life has its own agendas. Sometime before I met Payson I had started to dye my hair again -- perhaps as a subconscious acknowledgment of my emotional needs and an almost harrowing sense of loneliness. After Payson and I got together,  he read an article somewhere about how carcinogenic hair dye is, and wanted me to stop. I did, and it was a measure of my trust of Payson's ability to look beyond appearance that encouraged me. For over a year, perhaps even more, I was a happy raccoon.

To backtrack a bit: before I stopped dying my hair, every time I looked at myself in a mirror, I was very displeased. The words that repeated themselves through me were, who are you kidding? The black was altogether too harsh a color, and the brown didn't feel any better. I thought -- believe it or not! how stupid we humans are -- perhaps blonde would work? But though it was too wild an idea to implement it did tell me that I was looking for something lighter. After my grey had grown out -- I knew, this is it! So much camouflaging to let myself be natural!

Last night I had a dream that at a counter of a beauty shop the mother and daughter team threw some dark powder on my grey hair and turned it back to black. I was so pissed and angry that I shouted at them: I will sue you, bitches!

ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY

By Eugen Herrigel, is my all time favorite book. I have to read it once a year to get my head straight. It is not just about archery, but about life and living. As D.T. Suzuki says in his introduction to the book, the practice of archery is "meant to train the mind."
Some more quotes from Suzuki:
"Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he in not calculating and thinking. "Childlikeness has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, (Wo)man thinks yet (S)he does not think. (S)he thinks like the showers coming down from the sky; he thinks like the waves rolling in the ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens; he thinks like the green foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze. Indeed, he is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the foliage."

Archery here is a metaphor: we are all archers in that we have goals and targets we wish to achieve in our lives. How to do it in a way which teaches us, not so much to attain those goals, but how to be as one goes about attaining them, how to make the process instructional in the highest sense, is what this book is all about.

I recommend it highly

IN MY NEW WAY OF BEING

 In my new way of being – not pushing myself – ‘go by going where I have to go,’ I have not woven the story for several days, and I’m writing here to convince myself that it is okay. My failures have one good spin off, at least – that I don’t disturb my comfort in a push to achieve my goals. Comfort, physical, mental, psychic, is paramount now. The weather has changed, bright, melancholic autumn light edged with darkness, the first piercing of the bones with the cold to come, in which everything sparkles. A season to take care, stay warm in the deluding warmth, bring out the jackets and the hats, begin to knit.  

ME ME ME IN THE SNOW

WHEN TO AND WHEN NOT TO EXPRESS NEGATIVITY

The chaos is beginning to curdle into order again, owing, I think, to my allowing myself to rest. Allowing, even when the mind started to call me names like ‘vegetable,’ and ‘lazy.’ Gently told my mind to make room for my body and to let it be. Rested all day yesterday, combining rest with being with mom. Lay on dad’s side of the bed and dozed/rested as she talked. Every once in a while she would say, are you sleeping? Are you listening? And I would repeat her last line and she would carry on telling me stories she has told me many, many, many times before. She needs to talk, to know someone is listening and I need to be silent and listen, so it works well. In the afternoon she was being negative and I found myself getting irritated but then realized that she needs to be negative, that it is healthy for her to expel the noxious fumes inside her, that she was tired from not being able to nap in the afternoon, and after some time she settled down. I want to write about NEGATIVITY because expressing it and being okay with it is new to me. 

But I have laid down limits to my interaction with her. Yesterday when she started on the whole Blank Blank subject, I just looked her in the eye and said I don’t want to get into this, okay? I didn’t explain why – I have done so thousands of times before, and explanations do nothing for her; I didn’t get into it, and said very calmly and forcefully, I don’t want to go there. She got it, and just laid off the topic and then even said, I don’t want to go there, either.

LEAVING THE HOUSE IN THE BRAIN

There’s excitement and peace in my heart this morning, a thrilling at the sight of my messy study, waiting to be tidied up, the books put away. The colors return to my soul as it turns upon the axis of the earth, and the wet, soggy monsoon turns to warm, brilliant sunshine upon the trees and the water. I feel gloriously returned to matter, this, here, now, life in all its immanent materiality and presence. I have left the house in my brain and returned to my body and my senses. Yes, this feels right. Not ‘I think’ but ‘I feel.’ I feel therefore I am. And this is what my depression did: it expelled me from thinking about life into living it.

Only as much thought as is needed to survive. Not survive through thought but survive through the heart, the body, and all its pulses. 

PHOTOS IN THE SNOW IN IDYLWILD, CA, JAN 2013

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