awwwwwwwwwww the computer just ate this whole blog entry I was working so hard on for the last hour. aaawwwwwwwwwwww.

ok. deep breath. starting over. I think I'm going to go type this in another program and paste it in when I'm done.

Take 2. It's a Friday morning. I'm doing really well. I'm sitting in the little purple and orange Icarus office in Manhattan, trying to catch up on some correspondence before Sarah and Sascha come in and I get swept up in all the things we have to talk about. I've been away from my blog for a few days while I rested my eyes, which had suddenly freaked out, started burning, turned red, and refused to stay open long enough to look at a computer, drive a car, sit in a sunny room, or do much of anything at all. It was very disconcerting. In the midst of panicking about the whole thing and being told by multiple people that I should go to the doctor and get medicine right away, I called up my shaman/therapist, who has the kind of common sense that is so reasonable it contradicts everything in our culture. As I was going on and on about how I couldn't do anything except lay on the couch with my eyes closed and how terrible this was because I had so many plans and things I wanted to do, she interrupted, very calmly, and said "then maybe you should take the day off and lay on the couch with your eyes closed. Maybe your body is trying to tell you something." I protested: "but, but, but... plans, computers, emails, work." She continued, "yes, but Ashley you can't keep your eyes open. Maybe you need to rest, eat some vegetables, put some cold compresses on, give your eyes a chance to heal." Oh. Huh. What an idea. So I took her advice, and the advice of another friend who suggested I bathe my eyes in camomile tea (highly recommended.) I laid around all day and took naps and closed my eyes and ate good food. The next day I was all better, no doctors or drugs required.

Yesterday I went for a walk in the enchanted frozen woods around my house, and then hopped on the train to come down to the city. Tried to work on a jangled and stubborn poem that would not come out right, then read some other people's poems. Here is the poem that caught me, as it did the first time I read it. It is called Perpetual Help, by Jennifer Murphy.

Perpetual Help

There's no way of explaining faith,
or the way it surfaces like a corpse
in your childhood river, changing
your perspective on the once fresh water
that soothed your burnt summer skin.

How you can you not believe?
You plant a Siberian elm to document
what was lost, and take from its absence the fondest
story, which you saved for a man
you never dreamed would arrive,
and you weep through the night in his arms
to feel you were not in danger
that faith saved its most severe hour
for you alone.

Faith is the other life you never
knew existed, the one that opens like a blanket
on the grassy hill, that bends like the young
maple, answers the faint knock at the door
where a despairing girl finds you
asleep in your lover's bed
as you so often are
during the hours of your sorrow.

It comes to the student at her desk.
It comes to the man emptying trash
with his hands, to the child
whose drunken father just stumbled home.
It comes to the infidel, to the cat eating
a box, to the dealer, to the shoplifter,
and to the dishwasher rinsing cups through the night.
It even comes to the dirt
in the endless fields of poppies
to rain falling on an abandoned barn,
to the body, tired of bearing its life.

(now see that poem was missing from my last attempt at this blog post. maybe that is why the computer ate it.)

after the train I ate at a tiny japanese café and went to the zen center in SoHo, which I have been meaning to investigate for months. It did not meet all my hopes and expectations - I had hoped to find people who felt like peers, and I found very kind sincere people, but why are so many buddhist sanghas primarily middle-aged and white, even in the middle of Manhattan? why? nonetheless, it was good to meditate for an hour and listen to a dharmatalk by an infections zen priest who reminded me about the relative and absolute nature of reality, and the way we are a different person when we are standing in the sun than when we are standing in the shadows, and many other things.

and then I went to stay with a friend, whose computer had died that night. She was upset and spaced out, and went to bed early. I received a gorgeously dizzy-making email from the woman in London over whom I am head over heels, and felt happy, and felt sad for all the people I know who are struggling so with psych drugs and the irritable way life gives us more shit to deal with even when we are trying really hard. Eventually I passed out on the couch and had a strange restless night. woke up in the morning with the words to the stubborn poem worked out in my mind.

This morning I went out into the early sunshine to catch an AA meeting. I am so grateful for these rooms of people recovering from our various addictions I don't even know how to talk about it. The fact that I can just show up anywhere in the world and find a free daily dose of other humans who are gathering to talk about living a sane life in an insane world is a miracle. It has been the most transformative thing in my life. I can't even believe that there is so much support in letting go of all the sick sad historical junk that I inherited from generations of my crazy family, crazy conditioning, and crazy culture. This morning we talked about all kinds of things - having compassion for people who drive you nuts, doing the inner work to get your life in order and open to the world as it is, letting go of anger, taking suggestions, resisting the urge to isolate, showing up for your life. All kinds of stuff. I talked a bit about the bedevilments - a set of circumstances that totally defined my life a year ago, when I had 2 days sober and was terrified of letting go of my way of doing things - and that feel quite far away right now. Here's a couple paragraphs on faith and the bedevilments from the big book. Even though this stuff was originally written to apply to alcoholism in particular, it's come to be used by folks who struggle with addictive patterns of all kinds, whether to substances, food, sex, money, relationships, control, self-will, gambling, etc. etc. (keep in mind that this was written in 1939, before anyone had landed on the moon.)

In most fields our generation has witnessed complete liberation in thinking. Show any longshoreman a Sunday supplement describing a proposal to explore the moon by means of a rocket and he will say, "I bet they do it maybe not so long either." Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does?

We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people -- was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight? Of course it was.

When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.

For me, this is not all necessarily about "God" in any traditional and especially Christian sense -- but it is definitely about relying on powers greater than myself - a community of folks in recovery, guides and healers, nature, creativity, spirit, grace, persistent practice... It's about being willing to surrender my old ideas, that did not work, and accept help in life.

Since I'm on a quoting trip today, I'm also going to quote the promises - what recovery promises, if you work at it:

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us"”sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition Big Book page 83 & 84

Most of these things are coming true in my life. Not that I am there, at all. Not that I have arrived at some place of being fixed and done. At all. But the bedevilments feel like a dark nightmare period in the past. They do not feel close at hand. Life today feels possible. I feel like I have tools to cope with what comes up. It is amazing, just amazing, to feel like I might just make it.

I send wishes for this out to everyone, everywhere.
blessings.
a