Self Hate Crime

"SELF LOATHING" by Treforlutions TreVizionz is licensed under CC BY 2.0How to understand the oldest of crimes in a fresh way during a news week when we must argue about whether the killing of six Asian women is in fact a hate crime. This is a legal designation that interests me only in what it could help us acknowledge. 

The dude who did it claims that he was not targeting Asians but rather eliminating temptation. Not new. Men have been blaming female 'temptresses' for centuries. Does that make it misogyny? What about men who kill gay men? Misogyny is part of homophobia, I've argued for years, but so many elements intersect here that I feel dizzy trying to make sense of it. I am not really trying to understand this particular man--we hardly know a thing at this point. I am trying to understand, I am always trying to understand, how to heal from self hatred. 

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death poetry

A beloved teacher at the Village Zendo has died. Robert Kaku Gunn. Kaku means Song of Emptiness. I can hear his voice now, a beautiful tenor, always on pitch, leading our chants, shepherding us toward the sweet emptiness that is ever so much closer than we think. 

Looking at his picture here I smile with him. This morning hearing the news I cried. I hadn't seen him in a while so really nothing will change for me, except that I know his journey is over. All of us will eventually accomplish death. 

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Mommy!!!

"Primal Scream! :)" by Dplanet:: is licensed under CC BY 2.0In the apartment next door there is a toddler who is unceasingly protesting life itself. The screams rise up, swallow the universe, and persist, persist, persist. I am thinking of his mother, a professional, now alone at home with this seeming agony. Where is her mind? 

I saw her at the elevator and said, "It must be hard being quarantined with a toddler." She responded that I was the first to notice such a thing, admitted the truth of it but then prevaricated, saying it is easier now that he can talk. Maybe so. One of the axioms of my former profession is that we might feel what our clients cannot. Maybe this toddler is expressing what she cannot. 

Mothers are really not allowed to complain.

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Meander

 My day begins with a large dose of dally. Oh, how I've craved it all my life, resented the interruptions, the deadlines, the too much to do. Tyranny of To Do, is how I've seen it. If only, I've said to myself, if only I could just lie down and watch the clouds for hours. Thoughts are like clouds, they say. Watch them pass. So I do. Sometimes they pass; sometimes they gather. Formations come from mist, then disperse, then form again, according to the weather of my mind--the structures there, memories and tendencies, encountering new sensations. 

I put on Melanie DeBiasio as a warm up for breathing and then Glen Velez for the real Wim Hoff. Then comes Melanie again

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at least...

there is no good reason for this picture of me as a happy kid in flippers. still, here it is. at least you know what is going on... no I don't. This is supposedly a kind of ALS but no one knows the etiology, the mechanism or the cure for ALS. And Progressive Muscle Atrophy is even more rare, so even less studied. 

at least now you know you weren't crazy... I didn't think I was crazy. Did you?

at least now your symptoms make sense... yes, that's a little closer but, as David Byrne said, Stop Making Sense.

Diagnosis does not always confer coherence. In fact, in my experience it rarely does. It's an effort to put a boundary around things that always bleed into each other. But the intersectionality of the body does not succumb to a dose of diagnosis. 

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On the Move

At last the dreaded appointment with the rheumatologist. My heart races from the exertion of preparing to speak, dressing, calling a Lyft, stepping over the snow with my legs and walking sticks; it races as I sit in the cab and notice there is no plastic barrier. I screw up my courage and ask the driver to open the windows. He does, and I notice I've called him by a slightly wrong name. He forgives me and explains how "--deep" is part of many names in his country. I bite. Which country? India. 

I'm vaguely worried about talking in such close quarters but I can't resist. The driver is intelligent and articulate, explains Indian psychology and politics.

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Justice. And beauty.

Yesterday I got the vaccine. I qualified as a health care worker even though I am no longer working. I didn't qualify as a person with ALS who was hospitalized for respiratory failure. I was ecstatic, triumphant that I could wobble over there, talk when needed, follow the directions. My arm hurt. Later I listened to a smart Dharma talk by a friend who challenged the unfair distribution of vaccines; he cited Singer, who famously advocated killing disabled babies. How do we know what is just?

I'm breathing sandalwood,

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Closer

It's a toss up today, whether to rant about unhelpful things people say or share my process of coming closer. Aha, I see my title points to the latter, although I will mention that my love of complaining gave birth to a dynamite support group called Complaint Company. I highly recommend at least a lightning round of everything negative. Anyhoo...

Closer but a long way from where I think I should be. Closer but exactly in the only place I can be. Closer and closer to my goal as I define it. My thoracic spine has collapsed. My bones are severely osteoporotic and my lats and lower traps and intercostals are atrophied. So when I try to raise my arms or lift something or even breathe deeply, my spine bends to try to accomplish the task,

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Do something!

Doing gets a bad rap sometimes in Zen circles. It's all about being, being in the moment, being time, no goal, just be be be. But also, while we're being we're usually doing something. Yesterday a beloved teacher asked me what my days are like, and I felt my insides blossom. My life is what I do. Now I'm writing. Before I was stretching my lungs and breathing, looking for my lats, taking a cold shower, drinking coffee, planning my priorities, folding my laundry, making more coffee, mulling things over, reading the news... 

Is reading the news doing something? How about checking email? I say yes. These are my connections to the wider world. Tomorrow I'll be co-teaching an ongoing workshop: White Work on Racism. I like to call it WWOR because when you say it you can feel the fight in it.

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Death Porn

Yes, I'll be pole dancing with the pillar of death, stripping down to my soul, dangling my scraps of life as they fall away. And you can watch.

So I looked up Pillar of Death, because, what the f*ck am I talking about? and before long I stumbled on a video of a twin meeting his twin for the first time. I cried. yes indeed. I will never have that experience and yet I felt it as if it were mine. It has nothing to do with pillars (even though there is some kind of game that features pillars of death), but emo is emo. 

Recently I saw a wonderful flick called The Forty Year Old Version, about a brilliant and under-appreciated Black playwright.

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