The Door

I recently found this poem, which my friend had read to me in college.

Prospective Immigrants Please Note
by Adrienne Rich

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.

We loved it then for the line, "The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door." We were feeling the weight of our future and the cost of change.

I still love this poem. I have lived between cultures. I have lived half of my life an American and then my formative adolescent years were spent in France and Cote d'Ivoire. I returned to the United States, seeing things "look at me doubly." Though I had no real choice in the matter. There was no way to cling to old traditions, only confusion about who I am and what the cultural shifts meant.

I have also experienced the door of choosing to leave Christian communities. I no longer believe many of the tenets that Christians use to define themselves. Yet I can never see the world without using the lens of my upbringing. Again, I feel that shifting identity, and a sense of something lost. But I'm not one who likes to "let much blind me." I press on, following my conscience, looking for other ways of knowing.

Health

This past week I was sick. The aching muscles, can't do anything but rock in pain, kind of sick. I missed my art class, I didn't leave the house for two days, and the mess piled up around me at home. I am slowly getting back to normal, still feeling just a little off.
I was reflecting this week on how I take a strong body and mind for granted. In an instant, I can go from strong, productive me to lump on the couch dreading her walk to get a glass of water. And I can indulge in pampering my aches and pains because I'm certain that in a day or two, I will return to full health and resume my normal activities.
And I am grateful that this is possible. I am grateful for my health and all of the ways that I can engage in the world around me.
My grandfather has dementia. This year he stopped remembering everyone except my grandma. He doesn't talk much these days, because he doesn't understand most of what people tell him, and he's used to people not understanding what he shares. He and my grandma celebrated 60 years of marriage on March 15th. When my Mom asked him if he knew how long he had been married, he guessed 5 years. It's an interesting answer. When he had been married 5 years, he didn't have any children. Perhaps that's why he's so surprised when people tell him he has children and grandchildren. I wonder if he's rewinding himself out of his life, slowly pulling in the memories and erasing his age. I wonder if there's a logic in the madness of his mental decline.

Makes me happy

Last night my ESL lesson went really well. It was a simple lesson. It only lasted 35 minutes and it had a very simple objective, but it went well. The goal was to get the students to speak with a partner and use English to communicate. I did a mind map. I put five words on the board and they interviewed me to learn what those five words have to do with my life. Then they worked in pairs to do the same activity with a partner, and then switched partners and told the second person about the person they interviewed. The students were thoroughly engaged in the lesson and really enjoyed sharing details about their lives.
I like that feeling of enabling a meaningful learning experience. I love it when my students get involved and enjoy the work. I've also been really proud of how I've started teaching vocabulary to two ESL kids I see. I made up a simple little game that they love. The second grade girl begs me to play. All I'm doing is "quizzing" them on the vocabulary we learn by letting them pick whether they want to act out the word, draw it, (then they explain how the picture represents the word) or write it in a sentence, but she loves it. I think she likes the freedom to draw, and I like the opportunity to check that she understands how the words is used rather than just memorizing the definition, which is what she does for class.
It's good for me to notice the pleasure that I get out of teaching. There's a real satisfaction in this helping career.
PS - In case you're interested, here are my five words:
California
MS203
malaria
French
May 2002

Speaking of Faith

Today I listened to an episode of Speaking of Faith while purging my wardrobe. I really like NPR's Speaking of Faith program, so I've decided to download every podcast that interests me. Today I heard Isabel Mukonyora interviewed about a religious movement of her Shona people, the Masowe Apostles. It's a tradition that mixes Christian tradition with other ancient African traditions. It's inspired by the idea of going into the wilderness, John the Baptist style. I will stop there, because even after the show, I don't think I could do justice to explaining the movement.
What I would like to talk about is my emotional response to listening to this articulate African woman talk about her faith. She went to a Catholic boarding school run by the missionaries. She also had a grandmother who refused to give up her African understanding of God when the colonialists came to Zimbabwe. And she grew up with a lot of questions about God. Questions I also ask.
-What is heaven?
-Why is God is impervious to human suffering?

These are more my own questions:
-Why the missionary god and not the grandmother's god?
-Why is suffering so key to Christianity? Why is it good to worship a God who demands the blood sacrifice of His own son? Why such violence?
-Why is the key to understanding the salvation message agreeing to see myself as fundamentally so putrid that eternal torture and damnation is the only thing I'm worthy of? And how does one not hate themselves if they accept this message? How does the message of Jesus's love your neighbor as you love yourself work in this system?

I have the Christian answers to these questions echoing around in my head. I was a star Evangelist at some point in my life after all. I've read C.S. Lewis. I've practiced defending the faith. I've lived with the missionaries. But today, listening to this woman's process of exploration and the freedom and richness she finds in the wilderness, I just wanted to have that same freedom. It's like those clothes that I have in my closest. They are faded, I haven't worn them in over a year, but I feel guilty for throwing them out. I don't have anything to replace them yet. I don't know what I want next. I don't know what I want to look like. I don't know what I want to tell the world about myself. I just know I don't want to put the old clothes back on.

Teacher

I'm in my third week of ESL Teacher Training. It's been a stressful week, but not because of the training. I'm actually finding the training to be easy -- for one obvious reason -- I have 2 1/2 years teaching experience. But it's precisely those years of experience that have me so mixed up about my feelings right now.
I left teaching burnt-out. Whatever that means. I use the phrase all the time and people seem to respond as if they understand, but I'm not sure I understand. Let me try to be more specific. I left teaching in utter depression. I couldn't stand another day of feeling so useless and frustrated. My heart would drop when my subway reached my station, and I dreaded the walk to the school. The end of each day felt like a miraculous relief, but by that time I was exhausted. I would spend hours in my room, grading, planning, calling parents, crying.
But when I left teaching, I felt like a total traitor. I left in the middle of the year. I did everything within my power to smooth the transition for my students. I waited until the grading period ended, completed my last report cards, passed my supplies on to the next teacher, gave her my phone number, and then stumbled out the door.
The next month was like a breath of fresh air. The responsibility of 60 middle school students had been lifted from my shoulders. I didn't have to feel like a failure each day. I wasn't being judged according to whether these students were reading and writing better than they had before entering my classroom. But after that initial relief wore off, I felt a little lost. I had spent three years devoting just about every ounce of strength and energy I had to try and be a teacher.
I find I want people to understand, and I think they do. I want to just gush about the experience. I want to convey to people just how impossible my situation was. And when they say they get it, I just want to keep telling nightmarish stories.
I had learned how to manage a room of 11 and 12 year olds in the South Bronx - something that with the exception of my one nightmarish class - I was able to do. I had read books, attended workshops, experimented in my classroom. I had applied for grants, begged my principal for money, spent my weekends and summers hunting down used books, spent my own money on library books, and eventually put together a classroom library that was the showcase of the school. And when a reading specialist visited my classroom to help me assess how to better put the Reading and Writing Workshop into practice, her comment was, "you don't have enough books. It's impossible to teach this method with so few books." And that seemed to sum up my experience at that Middle School. Enormous effort and exhaustion only to realize that it was still impossible.
Of course, I was making a difference. Something that I began to see more clearly when my exhaustion and depression wore off. And sometimes I beat myself up for that. For not being patient enough to make it through to the end of the year and see the progress that was happening.
So now I'm dipping my toe back into the teaching waters, and I have a lot of reason to be cautious. If nothing else, I need to develop some kinder habits in regards to judging myself. And I need to be more selective of the jobs that I take. No more working in failing environments.

Women's Day

Every Wednesday from 9am-2pm the Russian and Turkish Bath house in NYC is women only. One of the perks of not working a 9-5 job is that I can go to Women's Day at the baths. Most evenings, it's crowded and the men dominate in size and number. But on Wednesday mornings, the atmosphere changes completely. Women go naked without feeling peering eyes upon them. Old women come with natural remedies--a raw egg to mix with mud for the hair, salt scrubs for the skin, and kombucha to quench the thirst. Young women come, revealing their secret tattoos. It's quiet, the baritone voices are gone, and it's relaxing.
It's a place to be free in your body. Some women have tummies stretched out from childbirth. There is a delightful variety of body shapes. There are a couple of older women with skin stretched tightly over their aging bones. Some breast sag low, others are small and perky.
Yet for all of the delights of enjoying the sauna in this laid back environment, I think one of the best parts is knowing that men are not allowed. That for five hours, there is a space where women can be together and be completely at ease knowing that men aren't invited.
Sitting there last Wednesday reminded me of a class that I took my freshman year of college.
It was a history of Ancient Greece class, and one day in particular, we were looking at the lives of women in Ancient Greece. It was a small class - only 6-7 students. It was an upper division class, and there weren't many history majors at Westmont College. It was taught by a new professor that year (1995-6), Dr. Robins. We students came to the room with the predetermine idea that women in Ancient Greece were repressed and isolated. What else could one conclude from a society that kept its women so separate from its men? We saw them as so far removed from our own enlightened age of feminism. Dr. Robins went through the historical evidence, breaking it down and asked us to think about this in a new way. Women washed clothes -- did we think this was something that could easily be done alone? Had we ever washed sheets or robes by hand? What about women's festivals. And she went on, with examples that I no longer remember. But at the end of her lecture, we were all wondering if those Greek women didn't have something special that our society doesn't really offer -- a women's world. Specifically because the sexes were kept so separate, women's lives had an opportunity to take on a distinct identity.
When I have an opportunity to be in women only environments, such as women's day, I think about that idea. Feminine support, strength, and understanding that doesn't have to prove itself in a man's world. Women's Day.

Lessons from Drawing Class

A drawing is just lines on a page. That's what my art teacher tells me. And when I sit down to do the homework, I must remind myself of it often, because I can be lost and discouraged by the effort to see and represent those lines. She also says:
1. Drawing is a process of seeing and re-seeing.
2. No line is a mistake, it just represents your thought process. If you change your mind, put down a new line. Don't bother to erase your old lines unless they are getting in your way.
3. As humans, we can't resist the urge to make marks.
4. A line is the most abstract concept in art. Every line is a whole plane. The lines on your page represent where planes change direction.
5. Start with the broadest strokes and work into the details.
6. The beautiful thing about a drawing is the intimacy you feel with the artist. You can see the quality and character of the line they create. You can see their thought process.

I love this about my beginning drawing class. I love listening to my teacher talk about drawing. I enjoy the drawing, the way I enjoy doing anything that's difficult and takes a lot of effort. I like the reward of beginning to see something recognizable in my lines. I like setting aside time to look carefully at a subject and touch it with my eyes and the lead of my pencils against a blank page. But mostly, I love thinking about the truth in the lessons my teacher shares with us.
I want to write, but I fear it. And then I think about drawing, and how it takes the same kind of patience and dedication to seeing and re-seeing. How for a long time, it just feels like random lines on a page, and then all of a sudden, I look again, and I recognize something true in what I've put down. And when I fear that I can never tackle the subject before me, I like to remind myself that all I'm aiming for is one view, one representation. I can't capture it all. Just like when I draw, I sit in one particular position, and do the best I can to capture all of those planes changing direction.
Last week in class the teacher handed out a good article from the New Yorker, "Last of the Metrozoids" by Adam Gopnik. It's about the art historian Kirk Varnedoe and how he taught football to eight year olds and art to adults. His philosophy was "The hardest play you learn is just steps put together." He broke the difficult down so that he could put it back together in a way those before him could see and appreciate. I admire that dedication.
At another point in the article, Adam talks about how Kirk taught a boy to catch the football. "When he caught it, Kirk wasn't too encouraging; when he dropped one he wasn't too hard. He did not make him think it was easy. He did not make him think that he had done it when he hadn't. He made him think that he could do it if he chose."
And that's always the hard part--the choosing. But it's such a hopeful perspective on life. Difficult, exacting, but hopeful.

Schedules and Choices

One of the discoveries I'm making as someone living outside the confines of a 9 to 5 job is that there is no "right" way to organize one's time or energies. I have been waiting over the last three months for my private interests and work to organize itself to look like my "regular" schedule. And its slowly beginning to dawn on me that I never have to go back to that "regular" schedule if life allows it. I can allow myself to grow into a schedule that flows with my internal desires and impulses.
Today I made bread. It might be the one concrete accomplishment of the day. I will also tutor two children, a task I find immensely satisfying. I had hoped to combine my bread making with some writing, but a friend called and so I cleaned while talking with her instead. But I really liked the rhythm of making bread and think it could be a wonderful activity to combine with writing. The exercise of kneading is invigorating; there are set blocks of 1-2 hours where I can write; the tactile work of touching sticky dough is inherently satisfying; and I feel like I've accomplished something at the end of the day. Perhaps I will make this a Friday routine. Or perhaps I'll be in the mood for something very different next Friday.
The struggle between choosing to lock myself into routines (routines that will do me good I tell myself) versus allowing myself to follow my instincts has been a difficult one. Often the decision about what I need to do in a particular day overwhelms me, and I retreat to watching television. Television tells me exactly what to do--sit back and become involved in somebody else's life drama, watch them struggle with the questions. But as time goes on, and I feel less anxiety about my life not conforming to some outside definition of "productive" or "normal," I begin to have more energy to do work that I genuinely desire to do. And I begin to believe that if I listen hard enough, my heart and intuition will lead me to work that I am meant to do in the world.

Beginning

The name of this blog and my pen name were inspired by the work of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. Her myths and stories of the Wild Woman Archtype have been very helpful to me in the last couple of months.
Sometime last fall, I began to realize that I wasn't invested in my work, and I desperately wanted and needed my energy for another journey. I am so incredibly blessed to have a supportive husband and the financial means to quit that job. So in November, I took the courageous step of entering willingly into unemployment. I knew that I had to stop looking for work out of a panic that the bills wouldn't get paid and as a quest for external validation. And I deeply wanted to reconnect with my soul and live from that place of self.
And so I began. I began to search for my soul and to develop an ear for my voice. It has been three of the richest, most profound months of my life. A friend of mine thought that others might benefit from seeing some of my process. And I think I would benefit from trying to put my voice out into the world. So I begin this blog.