It Begins With a Call (Part 29): The Glass Half-Full

I recently suffered a long spell of feeling (and living) like a hermit. This is, of course, not inappropriate for winter, but it was not merely a time of turning inward.  I was not only not reaching out very much to friends, I wasn’t making plans that I knew I wanted to make.  Finally, one day I said to Barry, “I think I’m depressed, and I have been for quite a while.”  The words came out my mouth without a lot of forethought, and they surprised me.  I don’t think I had truly realized it until the words spilled out.  I often see my mood as largely dependent on my physical state, and I’ve had plenty of symptoms of various types I could blame in order to justify my mood.  But admitting depression seems to have opened up a space for something else to happen.

One day soon after, I took myself and my journal out for a walk and stopped in at the newest coffee bar in the neighborhood (the plethora of cafes on Piedmont Avenue is truly astounding).  Writing in cafes is an old practice of mine, and one I hadn’t done, hadn’t even thought about doing, in ages.  Out of that little foray, this poem came:

The Shift

Sitting at Blue Bottle Coffee,

journal on the communal

table, latte at hand,

I felt a distinct inner shift

occur, clear and strong,

though I did not quite

trust it.

Brain scientists claim

that it is possible to

carve new neural pathways

by changing the way

that you think.

Some time ago,

I wrote a poem asserting

that I wanted to change

not just my thoughts

but the way I think.

Desire alone could

not accomplish such

a shift, though.

But in that coffee bar,

In the middle of a

gaggle of young hipster

caffeine enthusiasts,

a click happened, and

a new groove opened up

in my brain.

Why then, why there?

A mystery, that.

Perhaps the mostly full cup

sitting by my right hand

provided the necessary image.

I have always been

a glass half-empty

kind of person, suspicious,

fear-based, looking and

waiting for the other shoe

to drop.

What if that shoe stayed

tightly laced onto my foot?

What if I could retrieve 

the already dropped shoe

and walk fully shod

and balanced?

Now that my longed-for

feeling of gratitude shows up at last,

when the needle jumps to the new groove,

the next cut on the album,

I’d be a fool not to sing

the new song.

The next day I called an old friend, and I reserved a house in Yosemite for my whole family to go in celebration of Barry’s and my upcoming 70th birthdays. I’d almost given up on the idea; finding a weekend we could all go was problematic to begin with, and I just couldn’t muster up the energy to try until my son said, “No, we need to do this!  Don’t give up on it.”

A few days after, I screwed up my courage and also signed up for the Writers’ Intensive with the teacher at the end of May.  Movement!  It’s a little terrifying, but I need to go and acknowledge the fact that I am a writer.

I avow that I am willing to work on this glass half-full neural pathway.

Some Days You Get the Elevator (and Some Days You Get the Shaft)

The hardest part about having a broken foot right now is that it restricts my activity, when being active is the best way I know to keep from sinking into depression.  I so miss swimming, my best mental and physical health strategy for the last 25 years. 

The house isn’t selling after 6 weeks on the market.  I guess it’s going to take someone out of the ordinary to really appreciate what we have created here.  We love our house and think it looks fantastic.  But it isn’t like the standard new house.  We don’t have a large master bedroom.  No garage.  We’re next to some (practically unused) freight tracks.  The Redwood City schools aren’t great.  What we DO have is a wonderful cottage, a very large family room with (gas-starter) fireplace that has housed many, many salons and rituals, an organic vegetable garden, a beautiful kitchen, lots of storage, a hot tub and nice deck.   The problem is we’re in Silicon Valley – and are looking to get out.  Silicon Valley types seem to want more conventional homes.  People who would like our house probably live in Berkeley or Santa Cruz.  There’s not a whole lot to love here any more, other than friends and the weather.

Some days I seem to be able to look more philosophically at my situation.  I’m 3 weeks into healing the foot, so hopefully about halfway through.  We don’t HAVE to move, and we have lots of reasons to be okay here (though living in a staged house is annoying at best).  I have Max’s wedding to look forward to.  And Ruby to cheer me up on our weekly visits.  Having this blog to work on has been helpful.  I know I have so much to be grateful for.  My problems are so small in the general scheme of things.  But guess what?  It doesn’t help when I’m feeling like this.

All my appreciation and philosophy seem to have taken a vacation today. 

This is NOT the kind of blog post I want to write.  All the others so far have had some content I could be happy to put out there.  But, honestly, I’m spending a lot of time, a lot of days or parts of days, in this place, and it feels a little dishonest to only post the stuff that I like or that makes me look thoughtful and on top of it.

I do have to say that I get more depressed when my other symptoms are up, and today’s one of those days.  I HAVE decided I need to stop saying either “I’m sick of this” or “I’m tired of this,” because I don’t think it helps me to not feel either sick, tired or both.  What I’m trying to remember to say is, “I’m ready for this to change.”  I am.  Really ready.  For all of this to change.

Maybe I can at least get a poem out of this.  I haven’t exactly been following Stafford’s poem-a-day method, but I have written quite a few during this period.  So, okay.  Here goes.

Philosophical

David Whyte has been visiting my dreams.

We walk and talk together.

When he spoke at Stanford last month,

he spoke a lot about his friendship with John O’Donohue,

and his grief over the passing.

John, he said, was a philosopher-poet.

He, David, a poet-philosopher.

It is a fine and wonderful distinction.

What am I? – I wonder.

Not a philosopher, really,

though sometimes philosophical.

A poet? 

It’s not my primary calling.

Perhaps I am a priestess-poet,

in a time when neither priestesses nor poets

have an affirmed place.

There are no temples

other than what we create

in our minds, yards, or trees.

Poets are mostly self-published and marginalized.

All I can do

is go out to the garden,

raise my arms to the heavens

as priestesses have always done.

Bow down to the earth to whisper

to the ancestors.

Leave a few lines of poetry

tucked into the flowers.

And acknowledge myself.

Well, it’s something, and it feels good to have written.  It’s funny putting out rough, unedited poems into the ethers.  Well, what have I got to lose?