And Then Again Begin...

Matthew Arnold wrote a poem once called "Dover Beach."  It too, is on my list of favorites.  The last stanza is:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.


The poem is stunningly beautiful in its lyricism.  The lines:

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin...
I suppose some would consider the poem as a whole rather depressing, and that could be true.  There is a sort of eternal hopelessness about the human condition, for which faithful love is the only remedy, as Matt points out.

Some people really can tap into that sense of the "ebb and flow of human misery."  Life itself is an ebb and flow of happiness and sadness and intimacy and remoteness and hurting and healing and breathing in and breathing out.

Still, I think it is true, in the sense that without Love, is there really any point to whatever our daily tasks are?

So, when I think about this poem, I think, what if Matt was talking to God?

I know I feel God's presence most acutely at night in my superdark back yard, counting stars and cuddling Roxy (who does not like curling up on rocks, go figure!) and there have been some particular times when I've sat on a rock in New Mexico somewhere along the Jemez Trail or on the shores of Lake Michigan (much like an ocean if you've never been there) or even just hanging out on the Newburgh Dam on the Ohio River where I grew up, watching the water and listening to the sounds the world makes when we stop to hear them, that I have had these wordless conversations, heart to heart, with the One who is faithful love itself.

...and we are here as on a darkling plain...  He is right here, with me -with US- in the confusion and fear and noisiness of the world in which we live.

Let us be true to one another.

To Be or Not to Be

As most everyone who has taken a high school course in English lit knows, the famous "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet is an extensive pondering of suicide.

"To be or not to be, that is the question..." Live or not live?

It has some of the most beautiful language, IMHO, in literature.

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action."  Most lovely way to say he chickened out of suicide.  (Personally, I do not see it as chickening out, but Hamlet did, and in this circumstance, we are allowed into a mind slowly going mad.  He dies at the end anyway, along with eveyone else, just about)

Sylvia Plath's Daddy is a stark descent into madness, mentioning a suicide attempt:

...I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said, I do, I do...

Lest you think I'm obsessing over suicide, really, I just entertain myself by memorizing poetry so I can think about it later.  It's also a fun party trick (well, at least at the parties I go to!) when someone says, "Oh, man, there's this poem, and I can't think of anything except, it's about carrying a heart" and I'm all, "YES!  ee cummings!" and launch into: 

I carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling) ..."


Honestly, I rarely pass by an opportunity to show off this skill.

Picking a favorite poem is like picking a favorite child, but this next one is speaking to me a bit today.  Waaaaaay back in days of yore, when I was in college, I had this guy friend who, during a dark period of my life, made it his mission to teach me how to lighten the hell up.  He taught me how to play quarters, that being late to class never killed anybody, and no matter how crazy life can seem, it is an uncontrollable beauty.

He slipped this to me in class one day:


My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before red apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

by JF. Nims

Two 75 Pound Dumb Bells

I had a whole blog written about caffeine withdrawal.  Then I wrote another one about women and weightlifting.  I'm saving those for another day.  My mind got blown.

Today was a lifting day, so I did my workout, and CRUSHED IT.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy benching 150 pounds.  I idly thought, wow, that's about how much weight I've lost.

Then, since I was wrapping up my workout, I decided to pick up two 75# dumb bells and just walk around the room with them.  You know, just to see what would happen.

I felt like I would die.

Soooooo HEAVY.

I mean, I didn't just pick them up and set them down.  I picked them up and walked (really, wobbled) around the room.  I'm sure the other folks were wondering a bit about what new workout I was attempting.

And I carried that much extra weight for YEARS.  YEARS!!  (Granted, it was more evenly distributed, but still...!)  I danced, hiked, walked, traveled and in general lived my life carrying another human being around on me.

Damn.  I'm more awesome than I thought!

I barely got the weights back on the rack, and stood there for a moment.

All the little things about losing weight came together in one moment.  Fitting better into plane seats, buying clothes almost anywhere I want to, getting crazy strong, hiking far and fast, joining in on 5K races -all of it condensed into two 75 pound dumb bells.

Wow.

Listening to Your Body

Part of this whole being healthier thing means listening to your body.  It can be hard to tell when to push through a wall, or know that, well, today, the best thing to do is rest.

Sometimes your body doesn't give you a choice.  Injuries, illness, scheduling and various other obstacles collude and then whatever choice you have is made for you.

I've been learning a lot about listening to my body this past year.  The asthma I struggle with won a few battles and now I know that I cannot power through an asthma attack.  My lungs WILL be respected!  When my back went out in a truly epic way over the holiday break, I learned that it, too, has limits that must be respected.  Now that I'm sporting an ulcer, I am learning that food choices are fairly easy to make when poor choices make themselves immediately known.

BTW, in case no one has ever mentioned it to you, Aleve is meant to be taken for a few days only.  Popping it regularly over a 3+ month period pretty much will guarantee you some stomach problems.  Fortunately, if you take care of them, ulcers heal.

I was pretty nauseated for much of the day yesterday, but managed to get back to Flag before I became truly ill.  By the time I crawled into bed, about 9PM, I was shaking and miserable.  I slept okay, but when the 5AM alarm sounded, I took a quick assessment and realized that working out would not be an option today.  It isn't that I couldn't power through.  I've powered through worse.  I just knew it wasn't the right thing.

I felt a flash of guilt.  I mean, I work out every single day. So today was my off day.  My body was screaming for more sleep, evidenced by the fact I fell asleep seconds after resetting the alarm to give me another hour and a half.

By the time I left for work, I was still not 100%, but infinitely better than I would have been if I had just powered through.

balance, balance, balance.

Bad Air/ Good Air, Just Show Up

Since we are being inundated with information and emotion about the Boston Marathon bombings, I'm skipping that topic for now.

As I walked out of my house today to dusty, smoky, 45 mph winds, I immediately felt frustration rise in my throat and my chest start to tighten.  I was on my way to the gym, and this air, combined with this altitude, promised me a morning of tears.

I almost went back inside, but plugged along to the gym, put my stuff in my locker and headed into the cardio-yoga-killmenow class, sucking on my inhaler, knowing it was going to be just like last week -5 minutes in and a full blown asthma attack.

SO, as I took a deep breath, I decided even if all I could do was sway back and forth rhythmically to the music, I was going to stick out the whole class.

The teacher was glad to see me and VERY glad to see I'd remembered my inhaler.  She said I'd already won by just showing up, and to do what I could.

So I felt all the tense muscles relax a bit, remembering that everyone else in the class is really nice and not particularly judgemental.

and I SLAMMED the class. Slammed it.  Okay, I wasn't doing level 3 movements (meaning putting air between you and the floor on the jumps) but I did way better than I assumed and did not once have an irrepressible urge to run out the door crying.  This is a big plus.

I showed up.  I did my best. My best, against all odds, turned out to be pretty good.

When Food Isn't Just Food

So, food.

I really did used to think that I would be a better person (read, skinnier!) if I just didn't have to eat. Insane, right? I wish I was the only person struggling with that particular insanity, but I'm not. Loads of us feel this way.

You know what? God created us to need food. This means, GOD wants us to eat! And God created food so that it isn't just for fuel, but has bonding properties, healing properties, and emotional and mental effects.

I sometimes think that God created food and the need for it to help us learn balance in a really concrete way. Eat too much, you become unhealthy. Eat too little, you become unhealthy. Eat all of one thing, you become unhealthy. Use food to solve not-food problems, you become unhealthy. Use something besides food to solve a food problem, you become unhealthy. Eat unreal food too much, you become unhealthy.

It is all about proper place and perspective. Being REAL. Paying attention.

So, upon discovering I have an ulcer, I received meds, instructions and an admonition to meditate and reduce stress. Awesome.  Foodwise, this means no caffeine, limit dairy, no alcohol and limit fried food.  Oh, and stop the daily intake of ibuprofen.  Well, I don't eat fried food often, so that is easy enough. I don't drink much, so that's the easiest thing on the list.  But I LOVE MY DAIRY PRODUCTS and NEED MY CAFFEINE.

Under normal circumstances, this probably would not have been any kind of a big deal.  But I had a super spectacularly stressful week last week, and by the time the weekend came, I really just wanted to curl up with a couple pints of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Peppermint Crunch and pretend I was in a coma.

I did do a bit of that.  My trainer politely reminded me that icecream will not help me achieve my goals.  I think I might have glared at him.  I don't remember.  I was thinking about icecream.

Because even though I KNEW eating icecream would make my stomach hurt, probably make me throw up, and certainly would not help me achieve the goals I myself chose and committed to... I still wanted it.

I did not want it because it is super healthy like a green shake.  I did not want it because my body was craving something calorically dense.  I wanted it because I was sad and tired and it tastes really good and makes me feel better in a comfort-food sort of sense.

I thought, hey, one spoonful isn't a big deal.  And it wouldn't have been, if I had stopped there.  Of course, I didn't.

For about a half hour, everything was fine.  Then my stomach reminded me that really, truly, icecream and an ulcer don't mix.  So I spent the rest of the day feeling rather green and irritated with myself.  I wasn't worried about an over-consumption of calories (throwing up every day, a couple times some days, more than took care of that worry!)  I just took a hard look at my food choices the past couple weeks and realized that for the most part, I really had been basing my choices more on my emotional state than what my body really needed, especially given the pretty low caloric intake.

I got off balance.

So, when a really demanding week -mentally, emotionally, physically demanding- required more of me, I was simply not able to give it.  My reserves were dry.  Instead of solving the mental and emotional challenges with what I REALLY needed (quiet space, praying, being with friends, deep breathing) I was leaning on food.  Instead of solving my physical issues with healthy food, I was leaning on sweets, hoping the damage wouldn't be too painful.  The resulting exhaustion meant a shorter temper, longer crying jags, and eventually that overwhelmed feeling when simply leaving the house seemed to be too much to face.

I'm not beating myself up over it.  It's not like I've engaged in selling drugs or human trafficking.  It is about being aware, being present to my own self.  It isn't even about weight.

It is about being real.  Being honest.

I normally track my food intake and exercise every single day.  I actually eat really healthy when I'm being my normal self.  I haven't tracked in a couple weeks, and when I am being painfully honest, I know it is because I did not want to see in writing the choices I was making... not the one-in-a-while treats that I write down almost gleefully, but the daily "this one won't hurt..." that become two or three or so.

So, it was with a bit of quiet resolve I pulled out that lovely owl-adorned notebook, and made my first notations in two weeks on it:  6AM, green shake.  8:30, string cheese, apple.  Wrote down the slammin workout from this morning.

Took a deep breath, smiled at myself and said, no worries. 

Real. Honest. Balanced.

Little Joyful Things

I feel that it is when you most feel like total "fertilizer" that you need to step back and think about your abundant blessings.

Well, I do anyway.

So, setting aside my foul mood, nausea, tiredness, pain and angst, I am praising GOD for the many, many blessings He pours on my head every single day!  A short list:

1. I can physically do everything I want to do on a daily basis.  I can walk, run, tie my shoelaces, sit at a computer, smile, do my own hair, talk to everyone and hear their responses.

2. I have access to first-world medical care for those times I struggle with #1.

3.  I can read.  THANK YOU GOD!

4.  I have choices of abundant food.  I have access to anything I desire to eat, wear or use. I lack for nothing.

5. I have beautiful, kind and loving friends and family who believe in me and support my life decisions.

6.  I have job I really enjoy that pays me well.

7.  My co-workers ROCK!

8.  I live in a part of the globe that people from all over the world travel to see and experience.

9.  I have a neurotic little dog who is one of my best friends.

10.  I am blessed by a loving and caring God who really does think of me as one of His favorites!  :-)  He is especially fond of me.

Recognizing my blessings doesn't take away my physical pain, or a whole lot of angst, but it DOES remind me that in my self-centered focus on problems, I forget to see all the things that make life joyful and worth the effort.

Because it is.