I'm Your Self

It's difficult to watch younger women tormenting themselves over love.  I try to help if there's an invitation, otherwise I don't have the patience to listen to their complaining for very long: the truth is, it's just too plain painful because I was once that woman.

I can't tell you how many times I had to put my life's work on hold while I went through a crisis over a man.  The drama is well documented in my journals.  I can go back through them now and see the pattern: I'd be making progress on my writing and then I'd fall in love and Frank or George or Ringo or whoever it was would suddenly announce that there was something about me focusing on him the way I did that made him nervous -- and he would start to pull away.  With the love taken away, I'd fall into a depression.  Every time.

At some point, as I began to mature, I realized that I couldn't go on like that.  I'd have to figure out how to love myself.

But how do you love when you don't know how?

Well there were a few tricks that worked, and one of them was this: 

One night, I was driving in the car, all alone, tears streaming down my face, I can't even remember why, and some insipid love song came on the radio and I thought, "How stupid is that!" and then suddenly it occurred to me:

"Wouldn't it be funny if said those things to myself!"  

What if I sang to my own self: "I wanna hold your hand" or "I saw her standing there" or "I need you"?  and just the thought made me laugh out loud.  For a long time after that, every time I heard a sappy love song I would sing it to me and laugh.  And so, little by little, as I learned to laugh and I practiced loving me, I began to feel better.

It's great fun!  Go on and try it!

Try this one, by Leonard Cohen, except that every time he says, "I'm your man" you say, "I'm your Self":

If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I'm your man

If you want a boxer
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor
I'll examine every inch of you
If you want a driver
Climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride
You know you can
I'm your man

Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
Ah but a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees
Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please
I'm your man

And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone
I'll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man

If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you

For my picture, I chose the photo we snapped one day of the Crapi Apartments across the street.  Sometimes you just have to look around yourself and laugh.

What's In A Button?

What’s in a button?

A button is an ordinary object, one you use every day and probably don't even notice. They are common. You’re probably wearing one right now and don’t even know it.  An ordinary object that you use all the time and don’t stop to think about.

And yet, from the first soft baby clothes that grandma sewed for you to the dressing gown of your twilight years, the button will be at hand to secure you, adorn you and tell the story of who you are and where you came from.  

Buttons are ancient.

The earliest known buttons were made in Egypt around 2000 B.C.  Crusaders brought them to Europe from the Middle East. In days of old, they were distinguishing points of bespoke tailoring, commissioned by kings and worn by great ladies to flaunt their positions and wealth.  But now buttons are hardly noticed, a result of ready-to-wear factory-style manufacturing.  A product of our times.  When was the last time you chose a garment for the buttons?  Or chose the buttons for a garment? They are entirely overlooked.

A button is round, simple, functional.  The more you look at one, the more beautiful it becomes.

The button is a perfect mandala, actually.  Like a mandala, it is round with a square inside and four gates.  Like a mandala, a button could be used, if one thought to look at it that way, as a portal.

In certain spiritual traditions, the Mandala is used to focus the attention of the seeker in order to establish a sacred space and help her to enter a meditative state in which to experience transcendent powers at work in the universe.

Sigmund Freud’s pupil Carl Jung painted mandalas as a “self-experiment” in order to come to terms with the contents of his unconscious mind.  The work sprang from his need, he said, to define the ways in which his outlook differed from that of his teacher.  He did not think of his paintings as art, only as a means to clarify certain material that had swamped him.  After completing his six-year experiment, Jung transcribed his experiences in a journal he called “The Red Book,” a richly illustrated folio bound in red leather.  

What Jung realized was that the fantastic figures he had encountered in his meditations could not be traced to any personal or biographical event.  Instead, he concluded, they were mythic, originating in an impersonal psychic realm that he called the "collective unconscious.” This discovery of an autonomous psychic realm populated by universal, inherited “shapes” of the human mind – or archetypes -- would form the basis of Jung’s psychology of the unconscious, the material for his lifetime’s work.

The button is just a metaphor.  It is a way of being in the world.  A way of approaching one's life, one's work.  Pay more attention to your clothes – but not in the way that others have decided for you.

For my picture, I snapped a picture of my mom’s green button (compare it to a Tibetan mandala painted in the 17th century).  Her collection of buttons was passed down to me, canisters of vibrant reds, greens, purples, blues, a whole bin of pearly whites.  A tin of blacks.  A tray of metal ones for uniforms.  It is an inheritance I am just beginning to understand and appreciate.

Opposite Inside You

The way to get at a difficult thing is to take on it’s opposite.  

Czech filmmaker Yaroslava Vosmikova (or Barbara as her friends in L.A. call her) gave me this advice when I started to write The Red Coat and found that it had pitched me from broad daylight down into the Aladdin caves of my psyche.  Rather than help me get clear on who I was and what I wanted, writing the book seemed to propel me further and further into darkness and doubt.  

“Go against what you are aiming for to get at it,” Barbara told me.  “Work in streams of consciousness. Throw out agitating, seemingly unrelated images to get at the deeper meaning,” and she gave as an example the bible quoting hitman from Pulp Fiction.

The Samuel L. Jackson character in that film who delivers a righteous sermon from Ezekiel even as he takes the life of another human being burned an image of irreconcilable opposites into our hearts and minds in the same way that 40 years earlier Robert Mitchum’s sinister preacher in Night of the Hunter would tattoo the words “Love” on his one hand and “Hate” on the other. 

Pitting two characters of comparable strength opposite each other creates a powerful drama, but placing those same opposites together inside a single character describes what it means to be human.  Nobody is all good or all bad, and it is the essence of consciousness to be able to look down into the deep wells inside yourself and see the dangerous Jinn as well as the jewels that abide there.

Interestingly, I think women tend to more readily identify with their negative character traits than acknowledge the positive ones, which remain weak or latent inside them. 

The main character of my book, Marla Piper, would be the one to show me how to exercise my latent but formidable powers, the “opposites” inside me that I dared not let loose.  Like the sister that saves Inanna from certain death in the underworld – her perfect complement – Marla would be my surrogate, the deputy that I would appoint to solve my daunting personal problems. Where I was shy and cautious, she would be bold. Where I was numb she would awaken to pain and to life, and where I was paralyzed in fear she would take action.  

My literary persona would help me become the whole, graceful and self-loving person that I needed. 

For my picture, I chose Joan of Arc, because at one time she was my antithesis.  Where I felt hopeless and was easily deterred, Joan believed in and followed her visions with all of her heart, regardless of the outcome.  Although I’ve gotten more sure, I know I still need to develop faith in myself and my ideas if I am going to succeed.  p.s. did you notice that Joan wears a suit of armor and carries a sword?

So tell me, what is the opposite inside you that has got to come out?

The Vital Behaviors

At our October mastermind this past weekend, we were all running a little behind and had to do our "check in" in Cindy's kitchen while she prepared the main dish for the dinner that we would all share when the meeting was over and our families arrived.  The theme for this month's potluck dinner was Dominican Republic cuisine.  (We've had so many meetings we've run out of standard ethnic cuisines like French and Mexican food!)  Cindy was at the stove cooking the sauce for what would prove to be a flavorful plantain, meatless ground beef, cheese casserole and the rest of us were helping out. 

While I washed dishes, I shared with the others that sinking feeling I had that I would not make my goal of finishing my book by the end of this year.  I was feeling insecure and asked the others what they thought of that.  My fellow masterminds are always helpful and encouraging and Linda offered that it was okay and Barbara said to just keep trying.  Cindy turned to me while aromas from the West Indies wafted from her stove and asked, "How does it make you feel?"  I smiled sheepishly over my pots and pans and said that over the years I'd set countless goals to finish The Red Coat (usually on my birthday or by the end of some important year) and I always failed.

I couldn't understand what my problem was...

Cindy, who knows me pretty well, said she thought making goals was important but how one goes about achieving them is the real question!  She recommended I read Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, a book about how to create the change we'd like to see in the world -- or in ourselves.

"Take weight loss," she said, citing an example from the book.  "How do you lose weight?"

We all offered our opinions: eat less, exercise more, basically burn more calories than you consume.  "'What you're talking about is an outcome, the goal," she said.  "The formula "burn more than you eat" describes how weight is lost, the goal, but it doesn't tell you precisely what you're supposed to do to get there, the little baby steps you have to take along the way to 'eat less or burn more'."

According to the book she mentioned, a person who wants to improve the situation should look for and identify those "vital behaviors" in herself or others that actually work.  "For example," Cindy said, "One behavior might be to quit buying snacks at the grocery store so they're not lying around the house to tempt you -- or to avoid walking by that candy shop on your lunch break."

In my case, the goal is to write faster but a vital behavior might be to refrain from doing other things in my writing sessions (like checking email) or to do a 10 minute timed "freewrite" about what I want to say when I feel I'm getting stuck.

Whether you are a visionary with a dream or just somebody with a big problem that won't go away, the book describes how focusing on vital behaviors (actions), as opposed to the results, can lead to profound change.  And what's great is that you can always test your results!  Just come up with a list of behaviors, implement them and see if they yield the results you want.

For my picture, I snapped a shot of my time pieces -- the alarm clock I set the night before my morning writing session and the egg timer I use for my 10 minute timed writings.  I want to change my relationship to time because I never seem to have enough.

What change do you want to make happen?

The House You Must Go Into

Fifteen years ago, when I started to write The Red Coat, I had a dream, which I wrote down in my journal:

"It is some kind of complex of buildings.  It is dark.  The streets are empty.  Something is going on at one end of it.  I set out toward it.  I find somebody.  I ask them about the complex.  I know I have to go straight for that building (the answer lies there) but why? Why? What is there?  Then I see Celeste, the serene woman at the pool who reminds me of the Mona Lisa, but instead of her usual self she is RAGING.  I hold her at a distance from me and we start to rotate in the air.  She is ranting and raging (about something).  She is mad.  She is yelling AT ME and I am so utterly terrified, so frightened, I throw her over the counter and she is knocked out by something she hits over there."

In the journal, I describe how I wake from the dream shaking with fear, unable to get enough air to breathe, shielding my head with my pillow.  Why am I so afraid? I wonder. Why Celeste? and why now raging?  I try to analyze the dream.  I remember someone saying that characters in a dream are different sides of your own personality and I realize that Celeste is the good girl, me, who is raging because of what I’ve done to her, repressed her, her true nature. 

What is her true nature? and what is the house I know I must go into?

I flip a few pages forward and find another entry, written around that same time, a period of unemployment: 

"I called my sister to gather some concrete reasons why, why, why plagued by the wish, constantly, the unhappy need to express myself for my whole adult life... and still, despite all my efforts, all my trying, am no further along than when I started, worse in fact: no work, no income, no food...while others more ? succeed…"

I had been laid off after I came back from my maternity leave and had lost my footing in the world, not to mention my income.  I finally had some time to write, but I was blocked, and terrified about money.  It was during that time, right after the birth of my son, that I began to withdraw from projects and people and associations I was taken up with and started on what would prove to be a long descent into and through the deep layers of my psyche to find, I now see in retrospect, answers to those questions.

The response my sister had to my call would provide a roadmap, whether or not at that time I could consciously and conscientiously adopt it:

"Marianne encouraged me to accept myself and all the shameful emotions that I possess and to write about these true things.  She encouraged me to accept myself, all of me, even the bad stuff and to be who I am...not looking for, not requiring other people's approval." 

Accept myself, all of me, and write about these true things.

That is why Inanna and her story resonate with me.  After reading my last post, Jack commented that those virtues of hers aren't all nice.  I agreed but said that the ability to take action in the world means that one must have the power to be both bad and good, to be repugnant as well as pleasing, to be cold as well as caring, to make war as well as peace.  Too often we women deny essential parts of ourselves -- we make nice, we hide, we avoid, we push our power down below and out of sight, we silence ourselves -- to be accepted and loved by others. 

But at what price? 

For my picture I chose a collage I made several years ago that I call Underwater 2.  It is the uncertain, sometimes abysmal place of the unconscious world, of fear and depth and murk, but also the place where lies the buried treasure.  For me it is that complex of buildings I had to go into in my dream.  It is the house of my writing.

What is the house in your dream?

Queen of Heaven and Earth

On my quest for an image of a woman that would serve as both mascot and role model on my journey to wholeness and self-loving, I considered the goddesses of ancient Greece.

There was one goddess who ruled over wisdom (Athena), another love (Aphrodite), another chastity (Artemis), and another the hearth and marriage (Hera) -- yet the choices felt unsatisfying to me.  Why were the goddesses (and gods) of ancient Greece so fragmented, so compartmentalized?  You know, one was good to have at your side in an argument, another when you went on a date (or were looking for one!), another when you took up housekeeping and another when you needed to retrieve your childlike divinity -- but not one of them was the picture of a complete woman!

Here I was in the golden age of our Western Civilization, and not one fully-formed deity!  (What was the significance of that, I wondered.)

And so I traveled father and farther back in time looking for "her" until I came to the cradle of civilization, the land of the ancient Sumerians.  Here, in the Fertile Crescent, I found an image carved in stone, of a woman holding a sheaf of grain in her hand and a quiver of arrows at her back who had long curling hair tumbling down her shoulders, a crown of horns upon her head, bright eyes -- and a smile on her face.

She made me laugh!  Who was this woman who had such a sweet smile but was ready to fight?

The image, from 2400 BC, was much older than the other stone carvings from the Bronze Age that caught my attention.  Nevertheless, I was immediately struck by it's freshness and accessibility, attributable no doubt to her amiable countenance.  She seemed like someone I could get to know and like.  I had to find out who she was!

I learned that she was Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth.  Unlike the goddesses in the Golden Age of Greece,  Inanna possessed all the virtues.  She was a whole person.  The ancient Sumerian tablets were translated and retold by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer in their book Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth.  In it, they tell how Inanna got all the virtues.  The story goes like this:

Inanna went to visit her father, Enki, who was a great god and knew all things, and after paying her respects he invited her to drink with him at the Table of Heaven.  Inanna accepted and she sat down and they began to drink beer together.  They drank more and more beer until, swaying with drink, Enki toasted Inanna:

In the name of my power! In the name of my holy shrine!
To my daughter Inanna I shall give the high priesthood!
Godship! The noble, enduring crown! The throne of kingship!
Inanna replied: I take them!

Through the driving mists of his drunken stupor, Enki gave Inanna all of his me (virtues) and each one she took: the virtue of war, of incantation, of truth, of dagger and sword, of the black garment, of the colorful garment, of fear, of lovemaking, of forthright speech, of slanderous speech, of song, of power, of lamentation, of the perceptive ear, of the power of attention, of treachery, of straightforwardness, of kindness, of deceit, and so on, until Enki had no virtue left and he fell fast asleep.  Inanna fell sleep too and when she woke she loaded up her boat with all of the virtues that now belonged to her and she sailed home.  When Enki woke, still reeling of drink, he asked: "Where are all my virtues?" and his assistant explained to him what had happened.  Enki sent wave upon wave of sea monsters after her but Inanna held her father to his word and with the help of her secretary she drove back the monsters and delivered the virtues to her people.

What virtues are yours?  Take them!

Crown of Doves and Bull's Horns

I studied political philosophy in college and never forgot Niccolo Machiavelli's advice in The Prince:

"Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation, even though they cannot entirely keep to the tracks of others or emulate the prowess of their models. So a prudent man should always follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been outstanding. If his own prowess fails to compare with theirs, at least it has an air of greatness about it."

My professor raved about this passage because it provided a roadmap for "ordinary" people like us to follow -- but it always bugged me.  Why not say imitate great -- people?  I mean, weren't there great women in history too?  The truth is, I didn't know about many of them.  All of the philosophers we read -- from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Kierkegaard, down to de Tocqueville and the Founding Fathers -- were men.

Like many women who feel invisible to men and struggle with feelings of low self worth and are unsure of themselves, I kept quiet about it.  But later on in life, on my journey to wholeness and self-loving, I began to ask myself, is there an excellence of women?  Are we so different, and, if so, what would it mean to be a great -- woman?  Since I am a visual learner, I began to look for images that inspired me.  How did I want to look and feel?  And who would be my role model?

Like most women, I turned to what was at hand: fashion magazines.  While the women were beautiful, I couldn't find any that inspired my imagination.  So I turned to art books, and found myself drawn to some of the earliest images, from the Palaeolithic era and Bronze Age, of the female figure in a "gesture" of epiphany.  Unlike the demure images of women that I found in magazines for modern women and much more recent art, this ancient gesture of the raised arms signifying a sudden, intuitive perception or insight into the reality or essence of a thing, really spoke to me.

What image speaks to you?

For my picture, I chose two images from Bronze Age Crete that I found in a book by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford called The Myth of The Goddess: Evolution of An Image.  The figure above is a Mycenaean seal with goddess and worshipers from 1500 BC.  The one below is a goddess with a crown of doves and bull's horns from 1400-1200 BC.