Tamarika

Tools of healing

Well yesterday was a trip to the dentist. Some of you may remember last year this time I paid a visit to him. This one yesterday was an emergency call. You know the kind when the tooth has been aching up into the bones of one's brain for a few days? It was becoming late in the afternoon. Len came in with Andrea and he smiled. He explained that I needed a root canal. And then he fell silent and just looked at me. I thought to myself, "Well okay. Root canal. I'll come back later - two years maybe?" But then I realized by the type of silence that he meant now - right now. I called out (or was it yelled out?) "You mean now?!" Yes indeed. He meant right then and there. I panicked. Looked at the door to see how far it was for me to run. At that point he sat down on a stool next to me and explained in the gentlest of tones exactly how it would work, what would happen and how root canals these days are really no big deal. Just boring because they take time. He said that I might even fall asleep as they were working and added, "Or there's the music to listen to. Remember how you like the music here?" (How did he remember that?) A weak smile started twitching from my lips. He said, "When it's over, you'll probably go home and blog about it." I beamed, "You remember that?" I said. He nodded smiling all the while. That did it. He remembered that I liked their music and more importantly - I am a blogger!

I settled back into the chair and watched as Andrea laid out all the instruments. When Len returned I said, trying to be funny, "Ah - instruments of torture." He became quite serious, passionate even. "No!" he exclaimed, "They're tools of healing. When it's all over your pain will be gone and your tooth will be healthy again. It's really quite a miracle really. And we take it all for granted." He went on a bit longer and I nodded in agreement. "Now, that is worth blogging about," I said to him.

Well, my friends, the rest is history. Let me just conclude by saying that I have never experienced anything quite like that root canal experience. The atmosphere was kind and gentle. Len explained every step of everything he was doing. Before long my body was relaxing and a couple of times I noticed my foot was tapping to the music. Was that George Harrison and "My Sweet Lord?" And at one stage I was laughing and gurgling all at the same time. "Hey!" He called out, "This is no laughing matter. Remember how you came in here? It was no laughing matter!" I nearly exploded with even more laughter almost spluttering all the equipment out of my mouth.

Tools of healing all right. And I don't mean the tooth in question. Len and Andrea healed my deepest, childhood fear that has haunted me all my life: my fear of dentists!

Jewels to discover and uncover

Sometimes I would sit in Bob's office without a single thing to say. Silence would fill the room as I sat facing him. He sat in a low black leather chair with his mug of iced water on the floor by his feet. I was poised, upright on the sofa where some days T would join me for a couple session. Bob would look at me with what seemed like a kind, accepting gaze, and I would sit there at times looking up at him and then urgently examining my shoes and the rug upon which they lay. Nothing to say.

Blank. Empty. Silent.

And he would wait.

We had already had the conversation about these 50 minutes together being mine to do with whatever I chose. I was allowed to sit there in silence for the full fifty minutes if I wanted. I knew that. And yet I would start to feel guilty, shifting in my seat, eyes wandering up from the floor, examining in detail all the pictures on the wall, ornaments on the shelf behind Bob and even his mug of water by his feet. After awhile a sentence would escape through my lips almost out of my control. It just slipped out into the open and there I was once again revealing thoughts, feelings, or stories of the week gone by. Before I knew it we would be engaged in dissecting, exploring and connecting events to past times, memories of childhood or different periods of life. Over and over again I would almost gasp with wonder as Bob like an artist at work, would chisel and shape my feelings and thoughts into what seemed like a sculpture of meaning and relevance to my developing understanding of who I am and how I came to be me.

In the end those interminably silent moments were loaded with wonderful inner jewels to discover and uncover.

This morning, I sit in front of my computer, coffee at my side, Ada curled up in Charlie's chair close by, plants beaming with energy after being watered and misted, some even flowering with purple and pink blossoms into the morning light. I sit in front of my computer staring at the Tamarika-blog screen with nothing to say.

Blank. Empty. Silent.

And I wait.

Feelings of gratitude and relief wash over me as I realize that my blog has served a wondrous purpose this past year, reconstructing my emotional life, and giving me the gift of companionship as others accompany me on my navel-gazing investigations. Blogger companions not only support, and accept me, or share their own stories and memories. Indeed, they bear witness as I process my inner life with myself including sometimes joyous or even painful revelations.

I realize that my blog has served a Bob-like purpose for me this past year helping me explore, dissect and connect events to past times, memories of childhood or different periods of life. After all I left Bob just as I was beginning to smash down the wall of illusions and realities that had helped me survive as a child. I was starting to understand - really understand - finally, deeply, how those old, worn-out survival skills and trusted paradigms were no longer necessary, relevant or even helpful for my maturing adult life. Words start to jump out from my silent mind, fly through my fingers up onto the screen. Back in December 2004, I was torn away from an important therapeutic milestone. Or, at least, that is what I realize now as I sit in silence this morning with nothing to say.

The many faces of me

Walking back from lunch with a colleague the other day talking about how young we feel inside even though the outward image ages. Thinking about my anxiety building up to enormous discomfort, as I gaze at my smiling face so front and center on my blog. Remembering a conversation with Danny a couple of years ago when he expressed his dismay at people who have photographs of themselves spread around their homes. The many faces of me are integrated within. They are all a part of who I am now. Some seem further away than ever and others feel close to my heart.

A snapshot of fleeting moments and yet long, intimate stories weave themselves through the fabric of the image bringing me face to face with who I am now.

It's all right

Quote of the day:

If you can come through the snow and the rain and the sleet, you know you can make it easily when the sun is out and everything is all right.  Malcolm X

Tagged

When Mike Golby calls ... here I come! Plus it's a meme for goodness sake ...

[I think I might have lost my "meme edge." I wish I could have done as fine a job as MG. As I wrote down the answers I felt a weariness come over me. I might have answered all of this in previous memes - or perhaps I've become boring. I feel a need to apologize to MG and my readers for the insipid replies that follow ... forgive me?]

Four jobs I've had:

1. Child care provider in the older infant house of Kibbutz Yizrael when I was 21.
2. Preschool/kindergarten teacher in the Tel Aviv area: I did this in different neighborhoods for eleven years. At age 37 took a year off thinking about what I wanted to be when I was big ... the result? Emigration to USA to do more of the same at a higher (?) level.
3. English Language Librarian at the British Council Library, Tel Aviv: Just for a year or so when I was 24 and 25
4. Director of a large Campus Child Care Center of a University in the North East USA: Eleven years. What a job! Interesting, challenging, exhausting, enormous and awesome responsibility - taking care of 170 children for all those families in the world's largest litigious society. Ah, but it was fun!

Four movies I can watch over and over (among the many others that I could have chosen!):

1. Two for the Road
2. Get Shorty
3. Shakespeare in Love
4. My Life as a House

Four TV shows I love to watch (but seldom do):

1. West Wing
2. Sex in the City
3. Seinfeld
4. Actor's Studio

Four places I've been on vacation:

Each one has such a long story. Enough for a blog post a-piece.

1. Paris
2. Cyprus
3. The Victoria Falls
4. Neah Bay

Four favorite dishes:

1. Sashimi
2. Peking Duck
3. Steak and eggs
4. Bouillabaisse

Four websites I visit daily:

Well there are just way more than four ...

Four places I would rather be (hm ... most seem to have warm climates ... and yet I thought that I love the snow ... ):

1. Greek Islands
2. Hawaii
3. Paris
4. Arizona

Four bloggers I'm tagging:

This is where it has to end ... but do feel tagged if you want.

The why and wherefore of linkalization

Quote of the day:

It is perhaps the most important friendship of my youth, because I learn from her what I most need to know: that troubled people who find life difficult are not for that less lovable. This Too

Borrowing from fp's delinkalization, I continue to wonder and ponder out loud about links on a blogroll and other such blog-related matters of the heart and mind.

And that's just it: matters of heart and mind. I think this calls for one of those Natalie Goldberg lists.

Some of the reasons I might choose to link to others:

their wit, kindness, poetry, literary-ness, intelligence, pictures, cartoons, self-reflections, openness, quiet withdrawal, beauty of mind, beauty of spirit, humor, understanding, teaching, parenting, diverse backgrounds, techno-knowledge, pod-matedness, commitment, wisdom, information, community, support, brilliance, light, truth-telling, weirdness, acceptance, anger, love, youth, age, art, spirituality, emotion, compassion, courage, willingness to share, need to hold back ... if they allow comments, dialog, debate, explanation ... if they take my breath away and when they give it back to me ... friendship, support ... sighing now ...

Oh, so many reasons. All of them complex, subtle, conscious, biased, emotional and, I suppose, related to who I am and what I think, feel and believe in some way.

And then there's politics ... but isn't life all about political ideology anyway? Aren't our emotions, ideas, beliefs, values, thoughts, mind and heart, heart and mind all connected to politics anyway? How do we separate them? I've certainly never been able to. We live and breathe our politics ... even by trying to ignore what's going on around us, for by our ignorance or denial we are making a political choice ... we live and breathe our politics even as we choose who to link to on our blogroll ... don't we?

Mercury Morning

Recently I wrote to a friend in Israel telling him all about the pain, dismay, and confusion I was feeling as I confronted my realities, climbing out of denial and into the truth of my life. He replied:

As I read this I had the image of you as a squaw, strong and wise, sitting like a little mountain looking deep within. Not to be disturbed.

A big smile stretched across my face and I felt warmly and immediately understood. How did he know that one of my favorite prints hanging in the living room is of just such a squaw? We wrote back and forth a bit more and then he said:

If you were a squaw, what name would you give yourself? (In English please - never know what to expect from you, you might suddenly start spouting in Sioux or in Cheyenne or in Blackfoot).

And so, I spent the next few days driving to and from work, even as I taught my classes, thinking about what name might describe me ... the essence that is me for me.

In fact, it was immediate. The name came to me immediately. However, I decided I had better think about it a bit more thoroughly. Thinking about it changed nothing. There it was, right there, in the middle of my forehead as I sat cross-legged each morning during pranayama.

[that's me on the right with Swami Ji in Tel Aviv from a newspaper article in 1978]

[Heidi would understand how it came to me ... the name I mean ... I think she would]

Mercury Morning

How healing it has been feeling the essence of me. No matter what transpires around me, outside of me, or what others do to themselves, I will sit there, strong and wise, like a little mountain looking deep within, not to be disturbed and sense Mercury Morning ... Mercury Morning ...

WELCOME new bloggers

One of the blogs that I always enjoy reading is Stepping Stone. His poignant, humorous, reflective and compassionate stories of teaching reach into my teacher soul.  Sometimes they make me gasp out loud as I remember my years of spending magical and frustrating moments in my own classroom with young children.

Well, now there are two new blogs out there. Classroom Reflecting Pool and Full Circle, Higher Ground.

Always excited when intelligent, compassionate, humorous people join the blogging community I hasten to share them with you and say a hearty welcome, welcome, welcome ...

One is a colleague. The other an old friend. I think I am going to enjoy them in similar ways ... you might too.

Breathing deeply

Life and work took my breath away and big-time personal stuff too.

Do you know this one?

... grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference

These words have been accompanying me this week, and tonight I think I have found my breath again.  Am breathing slowly, deeply and finding my way out of what seemed like a dead end.

I can't wait to get back to reading all of you again ... have missed you ... but it felt good to know you are there blogging away even while I have felt so far away.

So many blogger friends left supportive and encouraging comments.

Thank you.

Too much

Sometimes

There is too much to say

To say anything

At all