Inside, outside, upside down

something I wrote a month ago and didn't post because I haven't acted on sharing this newsletter yet...

Discards from the high school book room. It’s okay to let these old notions go, right?

As summer winds its way down into fall, as the schoolyear settles and I find myself running in the dark with a weak headlamp and not enough traction on my sneakers to grip the slick hills of my Oregon neighborhood, I have, at my best, been productively preoccupied with recognizing and improving qualities of presence.

Some of that means standing being right here. Some of it means recalling lessons about getting out of my own way while drafting. With gently recognizing and accepting what emerges, to trust (not in thoughts, but presence) that what emerges is the root of something that can be followed, that will reward following and attention, and that attention doesn't always or even often (especially the kind we crave and need) show up as thoughts.

Witnessing happens in a whole being.

For instance: the four deer who stopped to graze in my yard while I made lunch in the kitchen. The first to see me looked only for an instant at my movement. The length of her shivered. Her brown coat had been darkened by the rain, was shot through with coarse black strands. She bounded up the hill. The doe below twitched next and followed the first. Then the fawns followed. I am not sure they noticed me at all. They had not yet learned to twitch. This summer, one stood and regarded me with still curiosity for what seemed a long time. Her mother had left, but she stood still, opening her ears, waiting for my creaturehood to reveal itself.

So many more layers on top of humans coming into relationship with one another, preventing us from being a kind, curious presence, from noting first: we have something in common. Look, we are both hungry.

I thought about the deer as I ate, how deep their pleasure must be when the grass or leaves are sweet, how disgusted if they get a bite full of chemicals or dog shit or something too hard or sharp that hurts their mouths.

I saw and held myself related. Belonging as the deer belong, as the house and the grass and the trees and the ferns and the recent rain and my hunger and distraction all belonged. They were. And I was keeping company with them.

I became aware yesterday of how profoundly--even after years of meditation and self-reflection--I have still not come into company with myself, really experiencing myself as a field of phenomena, just keeping company with that.

The internal layers we have between ourselves and neutral to kind, curious presence are much thicker than those between ourselves and deer, I think. More history there.

Here's what happened: I was showing my class an all-school video that featured the members of the English department. I was fatigued enough that I forgot--not only in my thoughts, but in any reaction or potential reaction to the thought, any emotion--I was in it. When I appeared on screen and started talking, I saw myself not as "me" but as another teacher, another member of the department--with a white forehead, long brown hair, pearl earrings and a swishing high voice. A little hesitation in part of what I said where I was deciding whether to say it or not. A little side-eye roll.

Now, I've seen recordings of myself before. I'm old enough that any flinch reaction is pretty-far buried. But seeing and experiencing myself as not myself for a moment allowed me to understand that the flinch reaction is still there, that I am still concerned as I ever was with not looking dumb or ugly or any of the standard fears I have around being unworthy, not belonging.

But in that moment I could see the alternative. I read myself as merely and valuably part of the group of people being presented, all a little awkward or imperfect in their ways. All opening themselves to mocking, laughter, criticism, most of us muscling our way through as a result of practice. I could see all that and got a glimpse of what it might mean for me to join myself in my own company--to join the phenomena that comprise me and to hang out, just be.

I thought I'd accepted myself pretty well before. I liked the version of me I'd constructed. But that self was constructed of images and ideas that allowed me to tell the story of myself as I wanted it to be told. I'd reached certain life accomplishments, had certain skills. I wasn't perfect. I could misunderstand or miss key information or get things wrong or forget. I have been okay with these imperfections.

But I haven't been settled with my high uncertain voice that can turn to mumbling when I am distracted or unsure of what I mean. I haven't been settled with the way I look, really, with my one eye bigger than the other, and tall expressive forehead and the way my face is still mobile and eye-rolling as those of the teenager's I teach when I'm irritated or annoyed or even just curious. How I am prissy. How a certain kind of defensive indignation that still arrives on my face when I'm bewildered and confused. How much I want answers, how quickly and imprecisely I can speak, how often I'm flitting away, unwilling to see how an uncertain social interaction might unfold.

How sensitive I remain to novel social interaction! How uncomfortable to admit how cheered I am by a neighbor's enthusiastic greeting, a chat about the history of electric trolley lines, off-hand acknowledgments of appreciation and care. Better to ignore these than to admit that foolishness. Lately, I own the foolishness, the error and irritation of my blatant and irredeemable sincerity, and cringe when I see evidence of how bad it's been. Sentimental. So airy fairy the message is meaningless.

How often I continue to avoid slowing down for relationship in the name of space and boundaries, and, as Barbara Kingsolver puts it in Demon Copperhead, "saving my juice."

But I suspect that I'm not saving anything. I'm still scared to join the club. I'm not original in constructing an identity around exceptionalism, around being different, a bit outside. In fact, this orientation to community seems to be approaching epidemic proportions in America.

I'm scared responding to others will take me further away from myself, and that if I speak, I'll have to respond, that the responses will be taxing and confusing and, all in all, not worth it.

And at this point, I have joined clubs and stayed, joined and liked them, joined and kept showing up. But my joinings have felt provisional. Just for now. Something I could take back.

This was the way I approached my imminent teaching career when I graduated from college. It was always "just for now". The future was always waiting. It's been almost twenty years. I've held a handful of other jobs. But there has never been a time when one of them wasn't teaching or tutoring.

I don't regret this, joining by default. But I still have to, had to, choose to be associated, choose to be identified with a group, to be identified as myself within it.

I haven't chosen this as a writer. I've chosen, watching and waiting and seeing, and trying in small groups and in private. I've chosen wading.

The medium available is part of it. I worry about relationships maintained via media that I know is distracting and not great for my quality of mind. I know I have a tendency to click open tens of tabs at once and go running after ideas and distractions and NOVELTY, oh, my goodness the novelty. And the ANSWERS. I can find so much advice in so many places.

And yet. I sense I'm making excuses, still afraid to reveal myself in all my awkward humanness. Still wondering, should I even be here?

But if I can stand on a high school football field and face the full stands with a dear student who picked me to appreciate and I can listen to an announcer repeat that this student said I teach with "a lot of emotion" and instead of feeling ashamed I can think, yeah, I do, and can recognize that role in the group, let it be without rushing after some other thing I could be...

...if I can stand to not sweep that back inside and pretend it never happened or didn't matter...

...if I can come out from hiding there

...if I can be a Colt, and a Eugene mom, and a teacher...

maybe I can be, not just in name, but in contact, in offering and risk, in response:

here.

One of my grad. school professors once asked me, in a moment of frustration during a tutorial meeting, if I could commit to anything.

I was flabbergasted. I was, like, the most committed person I knew. I was still holding onto the tail end of a relationship where my boyfriend had and was continuing to cheat on me!

But the professor knew exactly who I was. I refused to join, to stake a claim, even to myself. Maybe especially to myself.

(Incidentally, this man ushered me into one of the greatest formal commitments of my life when he officiated my wedding.)

I admit time plays a role here. Accepting the flinch and the cringe and engaging anyway.

Because it remains true that I began this newsletter project out of a specific kind of loneliness, and the internet has been an answer for me.

I'm here anyway, at least partially distracted by the mom-fluencing Sara Petersen writes about, looking for some reflection of someone I almost look like, someone I can dress like and do my hair like so I don't, at least, look like a sentimental idiot out in the world. So at least I look savvy.

But this is dissatisfying. And not reflective of my values. Not a space of, say, heart coherence as the kids say these days (or the forty-something moms).

But some of the internet does and has made my heart leap up:

The least I can do is say thank you. Participate in the wide wave. Be the drop in the ocean (know that book?).

Ready?

Set?

(how can I be ready if I haven't set whatever needs setting first? there's a good example of a phrase that's a phrase because sound, not rational, language-based, thought-based meaning. See me avoiding with a thought-based consideration, though?)

Here I go...

walking onto the field, wide open grass and sky, agoraphobic as I am.