Truth in Numbers

I have another post sitting in draft mode on the concept of satya in yoga–truthfulness, or rather not lying. But I'm struggling with it the way I think we often struggle with truth. How much is too much? How much is necessary? How much is kind? Does the truth I need to tell match the truth you're ready to hear from me? And what is truth anyway? That post will sit a little longer while I puzzle it out.

But thinking about truth got me thinking about reality, and thinking about reality always makes me think of number lines. I exchanged rings with my life partner, finally, after our 15th year, and on the inside of mine I have engraved a number line. People who have looked carefully at it always ask what the numbers are for–maybe the number of years together? A measurement of my finger size? When I tell them it's a number line they're blank. "Oh I see," they say, not really seeing at all.

When I was 15 years old I fell in love with a number line. I was in bed, it was summer in Texas, and I was thinking about numbers and how they fit together. Suddenly, a thought came to me, the way these thoughts will, fully formed and thrilling, flinging me out of bed and to a pencil and piece of paper. I drew a number line and numbered it 0 to 10. Yes, it was really true, this thought I had! And I needed to share it: "Mother! Mother, look at this... How many points are there between 0 and 10? An infinite number. And how many points are between 0 and 1? An infinite number. And between .5 and .55? An infinite number! In fact, there are infinite numbers of infinities!" She didn't care. And neither did anyone else that summer. But I was in love! I drew my number line for anyone who came within 3 feet of me. I couldn't sleep at night thinking about it. All I wanted to do all summer was moon over my number line.

When I got back to school in the fall, the first thing I did was run to my geometry teacher, who has featured in my blog before. He was the first person I talked to who understood my crush and pointed me to various books on the subject. (As a side note, later as an adult it was great fun to come across the problem of multiple infinities listed in a book about the 7 greatest unsolved mathematical problems.)

Fast forward to 3 years ago, when my partner and I decided to exchange rings. We had discussed it many times in the years we had been together, but I always balked at the idea of anything that smacked of marriage in any form for all kinds of reasons. I didn't want people to look at a ring and make any kind of assumption that they understood my situation. It was really the concept of the number line that changed my mind. We all think we understand number lines: they're so dull we let small children use them for basic math, adding and subtracting. In fact, don't tell the children but number lines are subversive. We don't really understand them at all. Not only do they hold every number imaginable (and even the imaginary ones!) but they also are not really lines at all. They are home to infinities nesting inside one another, a stranger reality than we can possibly imagine, but a truer reality than we are able to see.

We humans need this, I guess. A construct that allows us to look reality in the face without seeing it. So someone may see my ring and assume they know me or my situation, but I know the ring is a construct, a representation of what I believe, what I value, what I desire, and the truth of my relationship can't be seen in the ring. The number line is to remind me of that if I start to feel constrained. But the ring, the construct, can maybe give a glimpse occasionally of how much bigger we really are than we think we are, how much more of the infinite we already contain and share with one another. And it can remind us to at least try, every now and then, to look behind look within look beneath look through the construct of self, of mind, of body. What nests inside? What looks back at you? What are we really?

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles

Wandering Alone in the Woods

I had the odd experience not too long ago of watching myself walk into a room. The off-centered feel of it reminded me a little of an exhibit that's up at our local museum. At this exhibit, you walk up stairs and there, on one landing to either side of you, is what looks like a random collection of tall wooden slats standing propped in cement holders and painted with colors and vague tree-ish shapes. You could walk right through it and continue up the stairs. You could wander through the slats looking at them more closely. Or maybe something could catch your eye, a movement a flicker of something up to the left there. When you look to see what's caught your attention, you see yourself wandering through a forest. Through a clever placement of cameras, the artist has created the illusion that you are off having an adventure you don't know anything about in some forest primeval. It takes you by surprise, when you see it, if you see it.

That feeling of stepping through the looking glass is very much how I felt at this cocktail party, chatting and laughing with family and strangers, looking up to see 2 young women walking towards us, and one of them was me. Only of course she wasn't; she was (and is) a close relative, more than 20 years younger than me and taller when I looked more closely. I hadn't seen her for years, and the last time she was still a child. We could all see the obvious similarities back then (red curly hair is hard to miss) but she was too much younger for us to see that she was actually going to become me.

My first feeling was envy, a strong stab of it, looking at this beautiful vibrant young woman striding confidently towards us, smiling. Almost as though she was me, but the improved version, what I wish I could have been then. Self-pity was bitter in my throat; why couldn't I have been strong and confident and happy when I was 18?

Over the course of the next several days my feelings went through a transformation. First, I realized that in many ways I was strong and confident and happy then; it's just that I was also a lot of other things, too: scared, insecure, exhausted, a perfectionist and therefore hard on myself, uncertain what the future might hold. And I was really really good at hiding all of those things from the people around me and projecting only strength and confidence. Maybe, I thought in a flash of insight, maybe she isn't as strong and confident as she looks either. Maybe she doesn't know how beautiful she is. And that might mean I was beautiful then, too, and just didn't know it.

I worked hard then at letting her know what a shining star she is. I can't send a message in a bottle back to myself in time, but I thought at least I can give her something to carry with her into her future. Probably what it means to her now is that she has some kooky relatives. But that doesn't really matter.

What matters is something I discovered in my thirties returning to ballet after many years away. I loved the dance as a child and it was home to me, until I began looking in the mirror and seeing something that only existed in comparison with something else. It became not the joy of barriers melted away, but a slamming up against lots of walls built up out of nowhere, an isolation, so I left it. When I went back, I found the joy of it again, the connection, and realized that I had built my own walls. Instead of looking in the mirror and at the women around me and seeing myself reflected, and the strength and beauty of all of us together, I saw only what I was up against. Any strength and beauty I saw automatically became not mine, separate from me, only desired. But I wasn't seeing truth.

And when I first looked at my young relative, the irony is that I saw myself, but a self that was not mine, a self that I didn't believe in, a self I couldn't live up to, a self that I wanted to have for my own and I had to protect myself against it. When I was able to soften and let that self back in, I could give her an offer of love and acceptance for who she is. Somehow I think that the message in a bottle may have made it back there after all. Maybe now it will get a little easier to glance up at a stranger, and see myself looking back, not a trick of a camera or of genetics, but truth.

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles

Crossing the Line

Have you felt that line before? That line where nothing has changed, the exact same things are going on, but suddenly everything is different because it matters to you?

Backing up...I didn't intend to write this today. I have a whole long list of things to do and writing in my blog isn't on it. But I've been thinking so hard on this I just have to spit it out of my brain and onto paper, a piece of half-chewed gum, to get it out of my way for something else. Because I felt that line last week and now it's tripping me up. Something I thought I could step over, designating the difference between point a and point b somehow got bigger and bulkier and three-dimensional on me, not, apparently, a line at all.

You've felt it too, haven't you? There you are with someone or a group of someones, or maybe just by yourself, and you're doing something, or maybe you're not, and if you had a little soundtrack in your brain it would go something like this, "This is nice, I like this, I'm happy, this feels good." Then it's like something sits up and listens in, ears perked, "Ohhhh, you know what? I DO like this! This IS nice! Wow, I AM happy! And oh gosh this DOES feel really good. REALLY good..." And does that something then snuggle in all content and pleased with life? No it does not. It panics. "I want this to continue. What if it stops? What if it doesn't stop? What does this mean, that I like this? Is this okay that I feel like this? Hey, who gets to decide that anyway? Why wouldn't it be okay? But what does it mean? And what if it never happens again? It has to happen again. But what if I get hurt? And what if I get what I want? And what do I want? What does it mean that I want something I didn't know I wanted? What will this change? I don't want change."

This has been my soundtrack all weekend. I'm a little tired. The inner witness has been chiming in periodically as well, "Isn't that interesting that now that you care, now that it matters, you've become attached to outcome? I wonder if there would be a way to care deeply, to have it matter terribly, and still release attachment? Can you desire this and be clear about your desire, and truly feel just fine no matter how things turn out?" All of this internal conversation reminded me of a book I had read a couple of years ago called Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life by Mark Epstein. He says in the beginning of chapter 3, "...desire forces us into a place where our usual modes of relating are upended, where success can only be found when...we risk making fools of ourselves. This seems to be one of desire's primary functions: to keep us off balance, in between, on the verge, or just out of reach." I want I want I want seems to go hand in hand with I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared.

It would be nice don't you think to let go of them both? Desire and fear right out the window; then we can all just be placid and satisfied. Unfortunately, it seems that I want I want I want and I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared also have a couple of important friends: I love I love I love and I live I live I live.

So I guess I'm just going to sit here on this line between point a and point b, off balance, in between, on the verge, and rest here a little. Because I DO love and I DO live and I DO want. And I AM scared. From Mark Epstein-"Touching desire, meeting and gratifying another's desire, lets us know God." God and me, we're just going to sit here a little. Get to know each other.

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles

Joy and Pleasure

Somehow in trying to figure out what to write next I was thinking about stuff that makes me happy. I was reading over old morning pages for the last several months and was amazed again to see how emotions just flow over and through everything and are so powerful but change so quickly. It's like that old joke about the weather-don't like it? Just wait a minute. But often the things that really tweak my mental state into joy are little and silly. Here's a little list:

Wind

The hand dryer in the bathroom at our local grocery store. I swear I always go to the bathroom there only because I adore this dryer. When you put your hands under it, it blows mach force air at you so your skin does that funny rubbery thing and they dry fast!! Whoo.

Homemade chocolate chip cookies. There are some in the kitchen right now. Often they make me happy, then they make me a little ill.

Frogs

The memory of skinny dipping in Walden Pond after a Grateful Dead concert with my roommate and 3 strangers who were giving us a ride home to Boston.

A card I bought myself that sings "I've got the power..." when I open it.

Doing something well and being admired for it.

Odd bits of sensory memory of good sex that float up out of nowhere to take my breath away at the oddest times.

The cold plunge at the women's spa. It's freezing, it has a waterfall, I always feel exuberant and full of life after it. Plus I love watching the faces of the women in the hot tub as I stand for many minutes at a time letting the frigid water beat on my head and shoulders in complete bliss.

Flannel sheets on naked skin on those first cold nights of fall.

My little sandals that are yellow and orange and red with a big flower on the top.

The commercial that's out right now for the lottery with penguins and chickens hang gliding.

Friends who send emails just to say hi.

A big fat new book, much looked forward to, a cup of tea and a morning to myself.

Yummy life. Eat it up.

Just Us Chickens

I've been thinking a lot lately about what to write next, coming up with themes and letting them go, and just not really being struck by anything in particular. The irony of beginning a blog with the theme of getting lost and then promptly NOT getting lost very much at all has not been lost on me. It has made me think about it though, this piece of me that has been very much a part of my identity for so long that I had forgotten to question it, to see if, really, it still fit me. Oh, I still have no sense of direction; take me in a building, run me around a little and let me back out, I'll have no idea where I am. We have so many natural landmarks here that I'm pretty full of myself, throwing around north and south with the best of them. But I've still gotten lost to the point of tears when someone's given me directions to "just take that exit past the chevron station..." and it just hasn't been that simple.

What I have noticed though is that I've just been here for so long that I know this place, in a way I've never known any other place in my life. I never realized that when you're 18 years old 5 years spent in a single place seems quite long; when you're over 40 and just now noticing that you've lived that same 18 years rooted in one city, you start to think that maybe it was only reasonable to get lost so often when you never stayed put.

And I think when it comes to feeling rooted and learning my way around, I'm a slow learner. My brain was wired for other kinds of knowing, but feeling a sense of belonging, a sense of place comes slow to me. With that comes an almost endless searching for community, an obsessive need to "find" it and make it mine somehow, always questioning what it actually consists of. But today I was doing the dishes and looking out at the chickens and got a little glimmer of something.

Yes, we have chickens in the city. We used to have three, but Nancy died, leaving Bess and George behind. We got them when they were tiny chicks, picked out for their beauty and their egg laying abilities and they grew up with each other and with us. It's been interesting to us to watch their little community develop and realize that they have a whole complicated social structure all their own. They have different voices and different calls they use for different purposes. One call is a warning call for a predator, specifically a cat. When they're out in the yard and we hear that call, we know to go running to the defense of the flock.

Yesterday we had them back in the coop and were out working on the side of the house when we had a little visitor. Specifically, a little orange striped visitor, a local cat who is adorable and sweet and friendly....and whom we've had to chase out of the backyard when he's gone after the chickens. But the chickens were safe and the gate was closed so we were playing with and petting the cat. The chickens were going nuts, calling and flaring their neck feathers, spreading their wings, making themselves bigger. We couldn't figure it out; we'd call to them, we went out to the yard to try and calm them, but they were having none of it. We finally figured it out when we saw one chicken seeming to watch the cat's movement and realized she could see him through a hole in the gate. (The visual cortex of a bird, you have to remember, is much more powerful than our own.) Even then though, they were safe in the coop and they know that; we've seen that they understand the difference between being out and vulnerable, as opposed to inside and safe. A little more thinking and detective work on our part and we got it–we are part of their flock! They were warning us and trying to protect us. We're kind of stupid sometimes but eventually we figure it out.

It's a cute story, and we were touched by their concern, but is there really any deeper meaning there? Honestly, I don't really know. But I do know that I like the fact that I live here in this place with the companions who occupy the space around me, and I know that when push comes to shove I've got my flock behind me. They've got my back and sometimes that's enough.

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles

Magic Carpet Ride

Well, that's the first thing that came to mind anyway when thinking about this particular topic. I have a feeling this post might be a little brief and free-wheeling...

So I was thinking about life. Now that's a shocker. But really, I was, and what I was thinking was that in some ways it's like taking a yoga class. No, no...stay with me here. What I was thinking is that you come to class and step on your mat and class begins and you really can't leave. I mean, well, obviously, you can, unless someone has locked you in, but the thing is, mostly people don't leave. There you are, on your mat and whatever happens, whatever comes, you just stay. And maybe you do all the poses as illustrated by the instructor, or maybe you make adaptations, or maybe you just say, "Not today, thanks!" and hang out in child's pose to wait out whatever's going on. Often the class will contain poses that are challenging in some way, either physically or emotionally (being bored counts as a challenge!), and there will be poses you don't like much, and poses you like a lot, and maybe there will be your very favorite pose ever and you're so happy to be able to do it! The point is you're there for all of it; you have your reactions, whatever they are, but you're still there on your mat.

And it seems to me that we're born, and then we're just here, and a bunch of stuff happens and we react to it, and we adapt to it, sometimes we flow with it, sometimes we fight it, and sometimes we sit it out, but we're still there in the room on the mat. All of that other stuff is just stuff happening-inside, outside, all around-but our presence in the room is unchanging, until the class is over. We are responsible for whatever we do on the mat, but we can let go of everything else. The mat, the floor, the earth beneath us, the air in the room or in the outdoors, the breath of the other people there with us, it all contains us and supports us so we don't have to do that part. And we have no control over what poses the teacher will teach, or what the other students may do, so we don't have to worry about that either. And we've shown up already by being born, so really we just have to ride, and leave when it's over.

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles

Hey, whose path is this anyway?

It occurred to me to wonder, as I wander on and off this path I'm on, getting lost and finding my way back, whose path is this really? And is it marked, or am I wandering around in a featureless space with little animator goggles on that are creating some kind of reality for me? Kind of like the 21st century version of Plato's cave?

What brought this up for me was a question from a yoga student: She felt that there's some kind of ideal out there for each pose, and isn't that what we're trying to reach? She has a dance background, like me, and comes from that concept of trying to get to that one exact perfectly correct and beautiful placement. I have a couple of issues with that: One is, it was exactly that kind of noble goal that brought me to an entirely unhealthy way of being in my body, treating it like a prisoner of war that was holding out on me, and two is, I think of yoga practice as kind of a special science experiment where objective curiosity and observation is crucial, and having too much goal in there skews the results.

So I was thinking about all this later, and thinking about how often we easily slip into wanting someone else's ideal life. Kind of like that ideal map of a pose, there's also an ideal map of a life out there somewhere and that's the one we want for ourselves. I remember talking with my neuroscience professor once either close to or right after graduation and feeling almost sick with envy. Her life just seemed so damn easy in so many ways because she had a very singular focus, and because of that focus her career path was laid out in a nicely marked straight line for her. She had never strayed from it and she was entirely happy. I, on the other hand, felt like I was scattered all over everything and every step I took was taking me down some kind of Dr. Seussian trail, in no particular direction at all.

Now, twenty years later I look back and there's still no straight line back there behind me, but I've had a really fun life. I love my life and I love my body–the way they are. They still both take me by surprise sometimes and I like that. Don't get me wrong–I still sometimes yearn for something more, something clear, something easy, something perfect. I do think there's probably an ideal out there for everything, something we're striving for, but I think it's unique to us individually. So there is no perfect essence of Triangle Pose; how could essence of Triangle ever take into consideration my own beauty, my own unique quality? There is only the perfect Triangle Pose for me today, right now, this second and it's the very pose I'm doing. And my path is uniquely my own, correct only for me, and I fill it the best way I can.

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles