Episode Two and Karma

Episode 2 of Treme brought up an interesting point last night: the volunteer aspect of the equation.

It's easy, I suppose, to try and absorb the tragedy, to educate oneself and immerse oneself in the goings-on. But the narrative cannot be made wholly real because of one blatant, glaring point: You. Weren't. There.

It's not your story.

It's not your home.

It's not your city.

But no one would ever make the mistake of saying: It's not your fight.

"We really appreciate what you're doing for our city," people say. And they do. But of course, they're wary of outsiders coming in and trying to claim the disaster for their own. And there is certainly some degree of skepticism involved ("Oh, you get to take a week off from your regular life, come down here, clean up a little of the mess and go home to your stable home and job and family and feel like you are alleviated of some liberal, white guilt.")

But the point is, we wouldn't be watching Treme if we didn't feel involved in some way. If we hadn't, somehow, gotten sucked into these collective stories. And maybe we got involved, to whatever degree, because there is something so realistic and believable about it. New Orleans may not be our home, and Katrina may not have been our personal un-doing. But our homes are just as fragile, our lives just as transient as anyone elses. And we know, deep down, that we're not really all that safe from anything. A freak car accident, a mugging, a collection of random cells gone rogue and metastasizing. We dig our fingers into the dirt of New Orleans because we know that people would dig theirs right back in ours if something went terribly wrong.

Or, at least, we hope so. You put out into the world what you hope to get back. It's a radically simple karmic theory but, in my experience, It. Works.

It's not tit for tat. Make no rookie mistake on that.

But it's an energy, it's something you're buying into. A general way of being in the world. Opening your world view to encompass the losses of a few hundred thousand people in a city sixteen hundred miles away might mean you smile at strangers. It might mean you hand a homeless man a five dollar bill (and then have a panic attack for ten minutes worrying that he's headed straight to the liquor store, but whatever) or it might mean that you turn off the incessant inner-monologue you have going on to listen intently to a friend who desperately needs your ear. Not your advice, not your opinion, just your ear.

The changes I have seen in my life in the past year or so I directly attribute to this attitude I've developed. This moment of having a choice at every second of every day as to who you're going to be, and how you're going to act. You don't have to gut or rebuild houses to put something good out in the world. You could just hold a door open for a stranger, send a card to someone you love telling them that, or make eye contact at a crucial moment. You consistently choose to be the best person you can be, the most honest and aware and kind, on a moment-to-moment basis.

I digress.

Anyway...still in love with Treme. And the music....delicious.

Intuitive Thinking

Taking a break from talk of philanthropy and New Orleans, et al...

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-Carl Sagan

Intuitive thinking amazes me.

I have such incredible powers of intuition that, many times in the past, I've wondered if I should don a Jamaican accent and start reading people their life stories on late-night call-in television shows. But, the thing is, I'm certainly not unique. Most people I know are incredibly intuitive, and, unfortunately, most of our problems stem from our stubborn unwillingness to allow intuition to be right and lead the way because, unfortunately, often intuition is steering you away from something you think should be right, or you want to be right.

I've dealt with it so many times in the past. Jobs, living situations, relationships, things I've agreed to do that I knew, deep-down, I completely didn't want to do and shouldn't be doing. The dissonance I've felt between knowing that something wasn't right or didn't fit and barrelling on ahead with it anyway has been extreme.

But sometimes trusting my intuition leads me down paths I don't particularly wish to explore. The opening or closing of a door based on gut feeling alone can be a terrifying prospect. "But you can't possibly feel such certainty about this," I'll say to myself, "because you don't have all of the information!"

Still. Gut feelings led me to Florida where I spent three difficult but very fun years. Gut feelings, I've found (my own in particular- a point of which I'm quite proud) are ten times better than GPS. "This feels like the right direction," has gotten me safely out of unknown territory countless times, much to the annoyance of my more methodical family and friends who rely on things like "maps" and "asking for directions."

There's that moment. When you're coasting through, and your mental monologue is completely turned off; you're convincing yourself of nothing; and all of the lights are green, and you just go. You just go with some invisible thread that's pulling you forward, propelling you out of danger or towards a sticky situation that you're meant to work your way through. Sometimes intuition drags you through the depths of the forests for the very purpose of making you work for something. And sometimes it saves you a hell of a lot of trouble and anguish. Intuition is a tricky bitch.

I took an intuitive painting class last fall where the instructor had us stand, close our eyes, and put one hand on our diaphragms, spanning the warm solar plexus.

"Here," she said, "is the seat of your intuition. If this spot feels warm and open, you're doing the right thing. If it feels cramped, cluttered, or blocked...you're not."

I've never heard it so aptly described.

There are a lot of things that throw off my ability to listen to and understand my intuition. Ego, the biggest one. "Nope, there is no way I'm wrong about this," I'll decide. Or: "No way am I even going to consider taking that course of action." Intuition gets pissy, and we fight inwardly for days or weeks on end until everything erupts and, as always, she's right and I'm wrong.

That's not to say that my intuition is never wrong. Sometimes she's right, but only temporarily so. Sometimes she leads me to make decisions that feel right only to discover that there's some hidden catch that neither she nor I could possibly have anticipated. In those split-second moments, however, she immediately corrects, long before I have mentally caught up. I've found that my intuition has a basic long-term shelf life of about three months (beyond that, there seem to be too many undetermined factors for her to operate properly.) Every now and then, she stumbles across something that she knows is Fo Life. A friend, a confidant, a particular way of thinking. She latches on and says, "This thing right here? It's gonna be around for awhile. I don't know how, or why, or in what form, but it's gonna be here, somehow." My intuition has led me to create deep, long-lasting friendships with people flung all over the globe living vastly different lives. It's led me to the practice of writing, of intuitively understanding how to take care of myself when I'm in trouble, and (lately) to the understanding that my life is, in some way, going to be dedicated to helping others.

I think, sometimes, that the process of growing up isn't so much gaining all of this knowledge that helps you to make rational, well thought-out decisions. Sometimes it's going through so much trial and error that you discover, all along, your first inclination was correct. And learning how to listen for that inclination, to cultivate your own sense of inner balance and right and wrong. I spent the first half of my twenties not really knowing I had any intuition, and the second half recognizing and learning to trust this ability.

This has been on my mind a lot recently with these decisions I'm facing concerning my career, my 5-year plan, etc. There are no solidified, easy answers and very few clues. No one has taken my hand and led me down this path to say, "Try this." I have intuitively felt my way through a number of options and finally, finally settled upon something that feels more than right. True, I may change venues five hundred times in my lifetime, but the basic urge is there: help, in some way, to heal the world. My ultimate happiness lies in this.

If you had asked me a year ago where my ultimate happiness resided, I would have spouted off a list of destinations, lifestyles, and possibly dress codes. Things that are transient, temporal, and really having very little to do with the actual question. They're trappings- not the thing itself.

Listen to your intuition. It will guide you through picking out yogurt (an insane task these days- since when are there forty thousand different types of yogurt, and WHY is my local grocery store consistently OUT OF the ONE kind I always buy??) and finding love. It will allow you to let go of the constructs you've created that hold you back, and it will open you up to finding new alternative ways of being. Trust it. Cultivate that trust.

And if you find that an email invitation to spend a week in New Orleans rebuilding houses lands in your Inbox the same week you decide you want to give back to the world, then consider this: intuition opens doors and creates opportunity for you. If it's right, the universe will find a way to make it happen for you. Resources will be found, things will come together if you are determined and dedicated to your path. I have always found this to be true.

One Week

July 17, 2009
I am always so homesick for a place that doesn't exist.

Leaving for New Orleans next week, and found myself smack in the middle of a sleepless night last night.

I couldn't tell you exactly what set the thoughts to percolating and spinning around (Maybe the Oscars? Sorely disappointed in the Martin-Baldwin pairing. Had expected so much more.) but I found myself staring at a re-run of Big Love at three am and thinking about things that happened years ago and wondering what it is that has me so anxious about this trip.

I think, mostly, I've come to view my week in New Orleans as the parenthetical end to a distinct period of my life that's been characterized by a lot of uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety. It caps off my 3-year mark in Baltimore, and I think back to the girl who swept the sand off of the doormats and unpacked boxes of Cuban seasonings and a shared DVD collection after the two-day drive in a U-Haul from Florida and I find great disjoint.

Not that this is a bad thing.

The thing that has set this period of my life apart from any other is my ready acceptance of the mantra "all I know is that I know nothing." Because, mostly, I knew everything before. I knew exactly where I was going, one foot in front of the other, one box checked and on to the next. Diplomas in hand, wedding plans sketched out. I knew what I would be eating for dinner each night, and made plans six months in advance. I followed all of the stepping stones thinking they were laid out for me and not realizing that they were laid out for others, and that I was just following along without ever questioning if there were alternatives.

And then, one by one, I strayed from the stones. First it was the job, then it was the long-term relationship, then it was every idea of who I was and who I wanted to be. I pierced my nose, cultivated a new identity, dated interesting people, and tried on one persona after another. I cobbled together a haphazard existence of vampire hours, exotic foods, fascinating hobbies, and enviable day trips. I don't regret a thing.

But, as I threw all of these ideas against the wall, one by one they began to slide and nothing seems to stick. There is nothing of permanence in the life I built and this was in direct re-action to the seemingly permanent life I'd previously thought I had.

I wouldn't even buy fresh produce because my dinner plans were so likely to change, most of it went bad before I got around to cooking it.

But, as these things tend to do, my priorities have shifted again and I find that my incessant seeking of new and interesting stimuli has me looking further into the future. What sort of identity do I wish to eke out that can encompass all of my interests and yet still have some semblance of stability and permanence? How can I find a way to take everything I like about both worlds and create a new one that will leave me creatively fulfilled, a little less selfish, a little more aware, and with a larger world view?

"I think you need to not look at this trip as the be-all, end-all," Snap cautioned me during one of our phone conversations (our heart-to-hearts now limited to digital voice transmission since she's relocated to San Fran.) "Just go." She's right- I do have a tendency to assign more meaning to things then is necessary, but I can't help but intuitively feel that everything has been culminating for some time and that, somehow, this trip is going to be a catalyst of some kind for figuring some shit out. I don't know how I could spend a week helping other people, listening, being present, and leaving all of my petty shit behind me and not come out of it with some different ideas or opinions.

That's not to say this will happen overnight. I need time to process, of course.

I stopped blogging awhile ago because, contrary to the idea that I no longer had anything to say, I now have a lot to say, but I also have a great deal of respect and sensitivity for my thoughts and feelings and do not wish to share them so readily. To embark on this trip, and to commit to sharing it with you via this blog again, is an act of courage that is also daunting for me. I'm opening myself up again, however briefly, and so felt the need to share these thoughts publicly to set the stage for the next couple of weeks.

I'm not saying that anything brilliant will emerge. It could be a very long and boring account of what I ate on the job site or the weather or a bunch of dry statistical facts. Who knows. But I'll be here, and I hope you will too.

Every time I think that I am stagnating again, I think back to the last few years of my life and see the violent twists and turns, upheavals and revolutions, radical changes of thought and ways of being and doing, and I realize that I'm still on the journey. Still on the road, on board the train, in the car, headed somewhere. I know not yet where, but somewhere other than here.