To Incarnate As A Woman

 

My ‘big sister’ cousin in Bangkok made this avatar for me. She chose the photo. The one that reminded her of my father. The one I posted to show the butch side of myself. The male persona that telegraphed itself from a previous life into my rebirth as a woman in this life. For clearly my karma as a man in that previous life needed a new perspective. I may have been a womanizer, a man of power. An abuser of such power as a man with many wives as one (American) psychic channeled it. I was a young feminist angry at male privilege when I received this news. It struck me as a cosmic comeuppance. It gave me more compassion for men, but made me no less of a feminist.

The cosmic joke of reincarnation is that we are all "born in the wrong body". Over and over again for the sake of experiencing separateness and a different perspective with each rebirth. For that is the human condition. To compress the entire gloriousness of the soul into this animal existence of biological human form. It is the seat of our existence to experience this dissatisfaction and if we do not see it at first we will in sickness, old age and death.

To incarnate as a woman is to be gifted a relationship so closely tied to the body that it feels like an assault. An assault of messiness, drippiness, blood red so visible we must learn to hide it as part of our suffering, our coming of age. And what about birth that ultimate messiness? Or as my American teacher of womanhood told me “The woman is the one whose body is turned inside out in pregnancy and birth. The woman is the one who faces her own death. And she breast-feeds. She feeds the baby out of her own body. She feeds the baby her own blood turned into milk. It is the woman who is forever changed in that physical metamorphosis. And it is so utterly completely and totally difficult.”

I am gifted in this life to love women as a woman. To serve and empathize with women. To luxuriate in their bodies, their carnal sacredness and beauty. To receive their love in my earthly body of female knowledge. I am gifted in this life to bridge two cultures (three if you're counting) so that I may better see all that an incarnation has to offer in human society. I rejoice in being reincarnated yet again. To once more arrive in a new body in an unfamiliar life so that I may be reborn into new knowledge as I spend this incarnation getting to know it so very intimately as my own life experience. 

I offer you this message of incarnation in a familiar form from American culture.

"Goddess grant me the serenity to accept the biology of my sex, the color of my skin, the circumstances of my birth. The courage to be proud of who I am, who I have become and can become. And the wisdom to know it is all a journey. A karmic ride."

Happy Pride Y’all.

Normally I Woudn't Be Here

In which I question call out culture, extremist activism, LGBTQ splintering and perspectives in an opinion centered culture vs a non-confrontational collectivist one.

I would normally right now be overseas in Thailand enjoying being pampered by my cook and traveling to my farm with Clasina. Or alternately traveling to my other home of origin the UK. My devising to be overseas every six months began in earnest during the Trump era. This has proven to be an excellent strategy for saving my mental health. 

Thai culture being a collectivist culture doesn't burden the individual with the need to move daily through a barrage of opinions. I once joked to a Thai friend that for every American who believes they can change the world this instant by delivering an opinion there needs to be at least a hundred Thais in agreement just to begin a discussion on a topic. This expressed equally our frustration with both Thai and American culture.

While in Thailand any actual requirement of me to express myself is so reduced that my stress level comes down to a soothing slowness that gives me a sense of timelessness and spaciousness. It also gave me the clarity of mind to look back at American culture through Facebook and sharply see the biases at play there. 

When people ask me how I stay so thin I tell them it is because my brain uses up so much fuel just trying to deconstruct my life given all I have to process making sense of it as an American of multiple perspectives.

Lockdown Retreat

Luckily I had the best of all possible lockdowns mostly alone which gave me a lot of space in isolation in my tiny house with lots to do putting in a garden and adding new dimensions to my off grid life. I kept expecting long tracts of boredom which never appeared. I was kept so busy reading the news. And I had two classes to attend on Zoom for which I installed a hanging chair. One class is called The Fool’s Journey, a year long exploration into the Western mystery school tradition using the Tarot deck designed by my teacher Pamela Eakins. I spent a lot of my shamanic journeys for the class hugging my two spirit guides and holding hands with them to fill the void left by all the social distancing. This  felt so real to me I could feel my heart opening to receive their love.

The second class was also taught by Pamela and that was a women’s writing class. We had been meeting for several years at her comfortable home on the coast and now on Zoom in the strange prison of our individual cells we spent that first meeting voicing our fears and wondering if anything we had been writing had any relevancy at all. Pamela with her usual stroke of inspiration had us sit down and write whatever we had to say about the pandemic. The pieces were so full of energy she decided we were to do a book and invited more women writers on her list to contribute. The poems and essays came in so fast that Pamela was soon able to produce our finished book. Called  Pandemic Carona: Poems of Shock, Fear, Realization and Metamorphis by the Sisters of the Holy Pen which you can now order on Amazon.

This project saved our sanity and gave us purpose. And most important it kept us writing and I was able to regain my sense of relevance. The book itself is a diverse collection of voices some intentionally ordinary and full of love, some brilliant at times profound. It is a capture of the arc of this pandemic and its impact on us collectively. We did a book reading this week on zoom for 29 of the writers hosted by Bookwoman an independent bookstore in Austin Texas attended by some 70 people. The reading a performance that was part ceremonial, part intimate revelation. It was recorded so you can soon enjoy it at your leisure. 

Nevertheless as we approached June I had been alone so long I started to feel the edges of the abyss, the sense that if I didn’t work at holding it altogether I would unravel into some sort of crazy fractured despair. I was no longer as captivated by the discoveries of the evolving virus and the shenanigans of the current administration threatening to collapse our country. I kept in mind an astrological interpretation of 2020 which described a year of turmoil as long held assumptions and structures were challenged, but clarity would come sometime in December it promised. As I wondered how this turmoil would manifest George Floyd was killed and society broke open with rallies led by Black Lives Matter. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. If this was the turmoil we needed to process (yet again) we could do this. Race was something every American had to address in some fashion and had a handle on though likely not the same handle, but at least a perspective from which to begin. In short order just about all the books on the New York Times bestseller list was about race. I was touched by the interest my white women colleagues showed in rolling up their sleeves to get a grip on white fragility and structural racism so that a solution might be found and applied. I also came to understand through Black activist contacts that white women were far from considered trustworthy (largely because of their role in lynching history and now as Karens) and had to work super hard to offset this distrust. I came to the conclusion that only with a Black woman in leadership would we regain any sort of feminist credibility. (Go Kamala Harris.)

I listened to podcast discussions of American History including the 1619 project and a much more comprehensive series of podcasts called “Seeing White” and “The Land That Never Has Been Yet”. This last title a quote from Langston Hughes. 

Seeing American history through the eyes of slavery and the cruel brand of capitalism that evolved from it along with the associated societal disdain for the poor was a perspective that actually made me feel better about the current administration. When Trump was first elected I felt that the GOP had pulled off a coup which was an alarming concept even for a Thai. But from this historical perspective I saw that the U.S. had all along contained this element of bias for wealthy white men and Darwinistic cruelty for those who couldn’t cut it in this supposed land of opportunity. This made me feel that the core of this country was still stable in nature; it had just been backsliding rather terrifyingly.

It allowed me to see that those who managed to succeed at all in such a country were heroic. This was a helpful concept. It reminded me of the Buddhist teaching that all life is suffering. So we were doing well if we managed not to suffer. 

Out Onto The Streets

I attended the Black Lives Matter rally in Redwood City which happened early on while we were still in quarantine and was well attended. I was pleased to see the large presence of white people and subsequent rallies through the largely white towns of Woodside, Half Moon Bay, Palo Alto and Menlo Park. In Menlo Park I attended the LGBTQ+Black Lives Matter rally held on the anniversary of Stonewall. I pulled out my vintage “Queer N’Asian” t-shirt and made myself a little Black Lives Matter sign. The t-shirt gave me claim to being a part of queer history. I hadn’t felt such a sense of belonging in a long time especially as a woman of color and now as an elder asking the young women if I could photograph them.

Having given my time to Black Lives Matter I reserved a little space to present my own cause by presenting myself as a butch lesbian in a post on Facebook. Most Americans don’t read me as butch because I am Asian and have kept my hair long. And Asian women are so highly fetishized as sexual creatures that they are seen as a dish for men (and thus assumed to be straight and femme). So in order to counter act these assumptions I posted a picture of myself wearing my Fruit of the Loom tighty whities. This classic garment being the only male garment not appropriated by women so could still truly be said to be cross dressing. I paired it with a wife beater tank top and photographed myself from overhead while lounging on my bed in classic pseudo pin-up fashion. It got my point across. See it here. 

I wouldn’t have to do this in Thailand where I am read as a Tom the slang term for masculine presenting women. Tom is short for tomboy and also means lesbian. I was assured of this presentation by my housekeeper when I mentioned to her that I was going to lunch with my Tom friend. 

“Are you a Tom too,” she asked.

 “A little bit,” I said. 

“More than a little bit,” she responded. I smiled broadly pleased at this reading. That was another perk ofbeing in Thailand. I am seen for who I am. And the visibility of other butch lesbians in Bangkok is prevalent. 

I was making myself visible to my Western audience in order to maintain this aspect of lesbian culture especially in these times of makeover by the transgender movement. 

Thai people already understand what a transgender person is. There is the term katoey used to identify those (mostly men) who are cross dressing and presenting as women. They do not hold the same status as women, but they have a place in society that goes back through history. Most Asian societies have this category in their lexicon. Similar to Native American society under the name Two Spirit.

It was because of the term katoey that I knew I would have a place in Thai society. The explanation for this transgender presentation is explained as most things in Thailand are by the concept of karma and reincarnation. I was told that I still carried the spirit of a boy implying that I had been a man in my last life. The idea that transgender people are persons who are trapped in the wrong body would seem beside the point to a Thai. The whole point of incarnating is to work through your stuff where you now find yourself which is as a man or a woman. Though Thailand being the sex change capital of the world is eager to accommodate those who wish sex reassignment surgery. Because if you can have it why not? The Thais are as much about acquisition as any consumer society.

Given this reincarnation karma story you would likely call this a religious ideology and I’m fine with that. But by the same token I can also claim that the idea of a person being trapped in the wrong body is an ideology. One that is being enabled by the “new” science of gender. Such science has proven that those who are transgender have the brain of the sex they identify with. Society needs science to prove such things because of the logic of American civil rights. For in order to legislate protection for those who face prejudice from others who would enact violence or bias against us it is best that such characteristics be determined to be immutable. 

In other words it’s not a choice or a psychological aberration. Because after all we are a self flagellating moral society and if it were a choice or a psychological aberration we would be obliged to fix it to conform to societal mores. And if science says you were born in the wrong body then by all means let us alleviate the stress of this suffering preferably wth medical intervention as we do every other condition in this over-medicalized society so we can make some money off it and contribute to the GNP.

The ideology of karma makes for better stories about past lives which includes historical circumstances and some artistic nuances in the telling. A psychic is the professional you would call to help you see into this past. But mostly we just shrug and leave it to the mystery of not knowing. Remember mystery? That element of awe and how to live with what you cannot know with a hope for the poetic justice of karma in the end.

Cancel Me This

An opinion in Thailand does not require a response. To object to it would be to seek conflict which would cause suffering and that would just not be a good practice of Buddhism—to intentionally cause more suffering. But here in the West we have elevated an opinion to such a point that people are publicly reviled, lose their jobs and their reputations while attempts are made to prevent them from speaking further. 

I read a few analysis to understand this phenomena. Call-out culture I learned was largely due to Twitter empowering those who usually don’t have a podium. From the perspective of the status quo it was mob rule. And this technology had empowered young people, African Americans and Trans Activists one article stated. I remember being young and gay recklessly making declarations and refusing to trust anyone over 30. The second category wasn’t surprising given the history of this country. But this final category; how did this tiny .01% minority become so virulent?

The best way to explain this last category is through the shallow lens of American pop culture. You will no doubt remember that five years ago Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner in a manner so public it put the whole trans story into the public eye and explained the idea of a man trapped in a women’s body. And because Jenner had access to not only the finest plastic surgery that money can buy but the glamour arm of Hollywood the results were absolutely spectacular. Americans love a story of transformation and glamour and ate it up. The story might have ended there, but for the political aspects of the trans movement and the ongoing violence enacted on transgender people. This violence targeted at any gender nonconforming, cross dressing individual, but because of the popularity of the transgender story it became mainly about transgender individuals. And how to protect those individuals.

Both the United States and the UK took steps to protect transgender people basically by inserting the word gender into all the discrimination clauses where the word sex had originally been inserted to legislate equality between the sexes i.e. men and women. This change had an impact on the protected class of women. But before we could even get a grip on what this might mean cancel culture determined that anything that was not pro trans was bad whether it had an impact on natal born women or not. And that’s how J.K. Rowling became the poster child of transphobia. And by trouncing the writer of this most popular children’s book series of all times every liberal straight person could now virtue signal their support for the T in the LGBTQ alphabet without even fully understanding what any of it meant. And trans activist could use the headlines trouncing the author for being a transphobe to further present all the pro trans ideology as established fact (to fill the vacuum of this absence of understanding). 

When I read these articles I was struck by the calm matter of fact language used to establish an authority that was not to be denied with links thrown in liberally to “prove” that these facts were not to be contested. And when I followed the links  I found more of the same style of language interpreting science based research that basically came down to opinions rooted in an authority that was backed up by nothing more than the lived experience of a trans woman. 

This illusion of authority was so complete that it took me a few minutes to realize that we were allowing a person who transitioned as an adult and had no actual lived experience as a girl to comment on both the lives of young girls and how their social lives operated. And that I in fact had more authority having come out much earlier than my peers in the context of an all girls school. A school that came to be known in the psychiatric community as the hotbed of eating disorders and other self harming practices due largely to the incredibly high expectations placed on girls being groomed to leadership as stated by the school mantra or at the very least the trophy wives of the rich given the demographic.

It is in the arena of high school that trans ideology is having its biggest impact and had come to the attention of research scientists given that the number of teenage girls seeking sex reassignment surgery had shot up by 4,400%. Seventy times what it had been before which was so negligible that it couldn’t even really be counted. Before 2016 the number of gender dysphoric kids had been predominantly pre-school age boys. 

The moment the first research study was published it was debunked and cancel cultured into disgrace by trans activists. But the researcher prevailed, apologized for any offense taken and successfully republished the paper with just a few clarifications on methodology. But further research has been stymied and gone underground. Nobody wants death threats just for doing their job. But a brave journalist did publish a book on the phenomena of this trans contagion among girls which I have duly read and reviewed here. It’s a compelling read of sociological significance.

Meanwhile almost no girls seemed to be identifying as lesbians anymore. Lots of lesbians in my age group wanted to be boys as children including me (and we are all glad we remained women). So what was going on during an era that is supposedly so gay positive. Or was it?

Gay Liberation No More

When I came into the movement post Stonewall it was determined that to be accepted by the public we needed to present ourselves as ordinary people. Ordinary in the sense of being just like anybody else, wanting to live quietly with our chosen partners, get married and have a family. This line of thinking required the right optics i.e. that we also look and act like straight people and basically keep our fabulousness off the streets and safely cordoned off to the night club act and movies as entertainment for y’all. In the process of this assimilationist strategy we threw all the gender non-conforming and poly pansexuals and what all under the bus. And that naked man with the boa constrictor who appeared in all the San Francisco Pride parades at the time.

Liberals embraced gay marriage as their virtue signaling token issue and haters targeted gay youth and gender non-conforming individuals. To assuage this wrong and the accompanying guilt of the assimilationist strategy the movement now feels that the time has come for the T in LGBTQ to be the focus of the times. And that California schools are to be apprised of all the various flavors of our rainbow down to our many sexual preferences and gender non-confirming presentations including the whole brain in wrong body thing to prevent further bullying of our people. As a result or maybe as a clever workaround to the ordinary vanilla male and female stereotypes being described in the process the number of those identifying as non-binary entering college has shot up along with the incidences of transitioning. While the number of out gay youth seem to be disappearing per the observations of my peers. Homophobia was clearly still at large.

Last year to get a feel for this transgender era I took myself to the Trans March the weekend of Pride. I immediately noticed all the Toms—the Asian girls presenting as butch, arm in arm with their femme counterparts. And I was delighted to see Latina Toms too. I also photographed the proud shirtless transman showing off his bare flat chests for us. There were what I used to think of as drag queens—gay men with more style than could be contained in one gender to paraphrase a drag queen movie of the ‘90s. One in a wonder woman outfit. And lots with a more vintage slightly dowdy style I used to recognize as transvestites—straight men who like to dress as women (and were observed by gender scientists to be sexually aroused by this, but this autogynephelia is now considered a transphobic concept). There were also young children identifying as trans accompanied by their entire family. And a dour androgynous woman holding a flag I didn’t recognize striped in olive white and violet. It was the “gender queer” flag I was told upon inquiry with some annoyance. My favorite flag was a transgender flag with the words Trans Queer Witches Against Fascism scribed across it with a drawn glyph of pagan and gender symbols. Standing next to the flag was what I used to recognize as a lesbian with the fade haircut now popular with butch lesbians. On their shirt a button proclaiming the pronoun “he”. My photographs organized for you here. 

The takeaway of my foray into this brave new queer world was that it was so splintered into factions that nobody would look anyone in the eye let alone smile. So much depended now on defending one’s identity. Because apparently it wouldn’t be apparent otherwise. The chalked messages on the sidewalk gave me a clue of the underlying pain. “I Am Trans Enough” and “Let People Be Themselves”. I realized that this movement both included me as an Asian Tom and rejected me as an American lesbian. It also empowered me to defend myself.

The very definition of lesbian being oriented around being a woman and being attracted to women seems to defy the very existence of trans women whose vocal activists have mounted such an aggressive public attack on women who don’t want to sleep with persons who have penises that they sound exactly like men who tell lesbians they haven’t met the right man yet. (Not all trans people have genital surgery so they are stuck with the equipment they were born with as it shrinks or enlarges in response to the hormones they are taking.) No comparable attack seems to be aimed at straight women. Maybe their appetite for penises is too intimidating. heh. Plenty divorced their husbands who wanted them to be lesbians to support their late blooming transgender lives.

Meanwhile online lesbian-only space has been completely excommunicated from social media platforms. Even the ever tolerant kink community can no longer allow their members to express their particular preferences if it involves only natal born women. I have though found an online group that regularly shows me photos of cross dressing lesbians hosted by a clothing company offering clothes for women affecting masculine style. This fashion group called Butch Fashion, Style & Care was the perfect cover for natal born women only. Fashion serving as a cover for a persecuted minority. I was able to post my lesbian stories and photos there and occasionally others would discuss the pros and cons of taking T (male hormones) or the best brand of binders to compress their chests into a male appearance. All closely moderated to stop any fights.

The trans identity has benefited the community greatly to be sure; it created a political category for gender non-conforming people and thanks to recent Supreme Court ruling this category is now to be protected from job discrimination. This was huge in my mind because it finally allowed all cross dressing persons to have a place in American society. 

I do not however think it a good thing that people are being punished and prevented from simply stating a preference for natal born women. Being able to state our sexual preferences was the main point of the gay movement. Not to allow this is homophobic. But now the bigger activist epithet is that I am being transphobic. Well have at it then. I’ve devoted my entire life to being free to express myself without fear of reprisal either from losing my job or by besmirching my reputation only now to have my voice canceled by my own tribe. 

A society that cancels what people can say so punishingly is practicing a self imposed totalitarianism. It is a mob rule that is stoked for revolution, but has no skill set for the long slow work of diplomacy and coalition building. It is adolescent and punch drunk from unaccustomed power. Reminding me of revolutions that having thrown over a society devolve into corrupt governments with little vision.

I have a long memory going back to a time that strived for freedom of expression and a live and let live openness to differences. One that allowed a certain curiosity to ask questions and a diplomacy in answering those questions. My values didn’t change; the world around me changed and my language dates me. I now regard anyone under 35 with suspicion. I feel like an old crank spouting insults.

American culture as many have pointed out denigrates and mothballs their elders. Another perk of going to Thailand was that my status as an elder gave me a reverence that was palpable in the sky train station as I pulled out my senior card. It made me feel seen and respected.

Now I am trapped here in this ridiculously shallow, polarized society that has so politicized everything that even wearing a mask in a health crisis is a political statement. But with little to lose I realized that I could afford to speak for the unfavorable positions as I saw them.

I have long been of crone age, but maybe curmudgeon would be a better fit. heh.

Dead Like Me

I wrote my obituary recently and it was strangely empowering to take by the horns my own death. It was part of an assignment for the Death Cafe I had joined, a salon where people meet to discuss death. This emerging social franchise was an idea that a Swiss sociologist started as a way to normalize discussion of death by talking about it. It was then adopted in Paris followed by London before making its way to Columbus, Ohio in 2012. Tea and cake is served and the conversation begins usually with a question. Such as how did you first come to understand death? Or what questions would you ask a dead person? Our chaplain friend Don in Portland told us about it. And in October of 2013 Catherine and I went to one at the Zen Center. That was where I met Barbara, a New York transplant who would invite me to join the cafe she would host with her husband at their lovely home in San Francisco. I invited my friend Stacy to come along too. You can find a death cafe at www.deathcafe.com.

I was drawn to the topic of death because I had come to realize that in America people see death differently from how I was raised. Since the topic doesn't come up very often it took me twenty years or so to see this. In my 30's I had a job videotaping a group of women with metastatic breast cancer and that was when I first noticed that Americans did not take death lying down as it were. They took death on as though it was an enormous responsibility they personally had to fight to keep from happening. And when I remarked upon it someone asked me why I found this odd. Was it because life was considered cheap in Asia? How that comment infuriated me. Didn't they get the memo? That we will all die? So why be so distraught about it I was asking. But it just made me sound callous. 

Once I got talking at Barbara's house I was surprised at how much I had to say on the subject, surprised at what was coming out of my mouth in terms of beliefs and attitudes. The premise allowed me to have a different kind of conversation. Life from the point of view of death was made interesting in ways I had not thought of before. I felt curious, joyful even. So when we gave ourselves the assignment of writing our own eulogy or obituary I saw it as an opportunity to foresee my life by working backward from its end.

And to get to the heart of the matter I visualized the actual death itself:

"Having decided she was too feeble to continue teaching her geriatric exercise classes and cultivating her permaculture backyard farm, Amanda Kovattana 87 went home to embark on her final journey and demise through starvation assisted by her young wife Anastasia 67. During her final hours a gathering of shamanic friends came to assist in drumming to induce the theta state necessary for shamanic journeying. Thus she passed peacefully and happily before becoming a burden to her community as was her wish."

No one in my Death Salon objected to me taking my death into my own hands. They thought it gutsy that I actually gave myself an age at which I would go. (On the other hand no one commented on what a young wife I'd picked for myself. This was after all my first attempt at fiction.) But my mother did object to the idea of this end of life suicide which led to quite a lively conversation. All the spiritual works we had been reading counseled that suicide was a wrong choice and would badly mess up your karma. I argued that it was not suicide. On the contrary what medical intervention could dish out was every bit as unnatural and prolonged the inability to let go. And letting go was the natural cycle of life (as I am constantly reminding my hoarding clients).

Having control of my own death handed me back the reigns of my life. I needed to get a grip on at least some part of it. This year my life was unraveling at such a clip that I no longer had a confident relationship with my own narrative. And thus I could no longer write about my own life unfolding as I had done with near complete transparency and trust in the world for ten years as I shared my adventures with a public audience. 

I had grown to believe that I could control my life with my words and direct it like a movie. But that turned out to be a hubris that blocked me from seeing what was coming. I had a leg up on accepting death owing to my Thai culture, but it did not prepare me for loss.

Death of a Relationship

Nearly a year ago Catherine and I broke up. We were in a negative dynamic that kept us stuck unable to grow either together or as individuals. Catherine realized it first while I was unbelieving that this could happen after 20 years. She did not ask me to leave the home we had created together so it was a slow motion sort of break-up with the goal of transitioning into a friendship. We undertook the process with as much love and compassion as we could muster beginning with the help of our therapist just to make sure we had left no stone unturned in the solving of our relationship dynamic, but in the end there was no turning back. There was too much to overcome.

Released of my reactionary stance of resistance to her ongoing leadership, I was able to sort out what it was I truly valued in our living together. I continued to cook for us to be sure we both ate well. And the more I cooked the more I cleaned. I was claiming how I belonged in this house that did not belong to me. It was a study in impermanence as the Buddhists would say. How to embrace the existence of life while acknowledging that the details I was grasping at were completely temporary and made more so now that we had no future together. Or in the lexicon of Kubler Ross and her five stages of death — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, I was spending a lot of time in the bargaining stage. If only I could keep this part of our life together, or this I bargained as each piece of our life that we normally did together came up for reassessment.

Catherine was at the same time leaving her job. She didn't intend to go down that path, but it became clear that in that relationship too she was unable to grow or be acknowledged for her leadership. She had felt beholden to the job because she needed it to pay the mortgage. Her brother Steven and I help to pay it too, but she paid three quarters of it and that was a big enough obligation to feel the job was crucial. And thus selling the house became a possible solution to throw into the mix as she crafted her future. I persuaded her that the house was also a resource that could shelter all of us for whatever comings and goings she wanted to include in her new life. So she refinanced it to make it more manageable. We also sold the rental house I had managed in San Bernardino which ended our property management project that had so stressed us out with countless bad tenant issues and hefty plumbing bills. I was relieved that we got back what we put into it. With that money back she could further build her future. 

It is at this part of our story that people want to know how my financial future will shake out. In the language of divorce did I not contribute to our relationship in so many intangible ways that by law I had a right to sue for half the value of the house? I knew I had this power, but I couldn't morally bring myself to do this. It had never been my intention to take Catherine's wealth away from her unless she died and left it to me (or parts thereof). If I did demand what the law was able to give me under our domestic partnership I knew it would destroy our friendship. We would never speak again, let alone live together. American style divorce was basically a garbage disposal for failed relationships, shredding them up and flushing whatever was left down the drain. Catherine was a valuable person in my life and I did not believe in throwing people away like that. I had my own wealth just not right now and my mother would also help me out. I would not take this destructive road. This decision halted the wounding.

Which is not to say that it didn't hurt that she was redesigning her life without me. It hurt a lot, but just as death shows us what we are grateful for in life so did this break-up show me what I valued in our living together. Once we could agree that we had both contributed to our failed relationship and that it wasn't just my fault for being unable to be intimate or her fault for being so harsh in her judgements of me, we were able to enter a common narrative again. Getting to this point had been the most painful, but I knew that if I just embraced the pain as much as I could the healing process would begin.

Shortly after this I intuitively adopted a gratitude practice. If death was a way to appreciate life then it made sense that gratitude was a way to alleviate suffering. 

So I walked into her room one morning and said "I want to be in gratitude so I want to thank you today for introducing me to the shamanic path." She smiled, surprised and said "It seemed obvious." Catherine had given me a book on shamanism and told me that I needed to study a spiritual path so we would have something to talk about and having not had any luck interesting me in Buddhist studies she realized that I was more a shaman than anything else. I devoured the book and it launched me. I chose that particular gratitude that day because I was going to lunch with a friend I'd met through a shamanic circle. 

The next day of my gratitude practice I told her that I wanted to thank her for the trip to Italy which I had resisted because it was going to be expensive, but she had made all the arrangements and in the end paid for the accommodations. And it was fabulous. Who wouldn't want Rome and Florence in their memories. Such iconic places.

She did not return my ritual of gratitude in kind, but each time she lit up and gave me a hug. It sweetened the day and fortified me for anything we encountered that might cause us grief by the end of the day. Sometimes there would be something that stung, but it stung less. 

The day I left for a conference in Nashville I thanked her for her support when I started my business; how she had believed in me and gone to my first out-of-state conference with me in DC and sat through awards night with me when I hardly knew anybody. 

When I came home from Nashville I thanked her for insisting that we get dogs because now they are the one's who make a fuss when I come home. And in this state of gratitude the positive memories flowed and I could reframe the sticky parts of resistance and troublesome passages we navigated. 

When we sold the rental property and went to deposit the check I thanked her for having put up the money to buy it sight unseen; it had been my idea and she had trusted me to look it over and make the decision. "See I did love you," she said in response, "I bought you a house."  (Two houses on a single plot actually.)

The gratitudes allowed me to pay off a debt; the debt of my resistance to her ongoing vision. I did not want to look back on our memories and think of the disagreements we had mixed in with the good time we had anyway. I didn't want to remember that I never thanked her for those times. Bringing the past forward in these acts of gratitude repaired something of our relationship and allowed me to embrace my grief and move through it into the present. 

I had come to that final stage of the Kubler Ross paradigm—acceptance. Our friendship, I saw now, allowed us more emotional connection than our actual relationship had done. I was more frank with her because there was less at stake. I had already lost the relationship and the future that entailed so I could stop trying so hard. I could see now how different we were not just culturally, but inherently. We might have been able to overcome those differences (with difficulty given how stuck we were) but once released of me Catherine's growth accelerated so rapidly I could see how much we would have had to overcome as she explored the things I had held in check; this new lease on life revived her vitality. In turn I was now to plan my own life; something I had shied away from.

By negotiating through the death of our relationship I had regained my equilibrium. Like the martial artist I was I now had a firm footing. And while there was nothing about the future I could take for granted good footwork would help me face it head on.

Rebirth Of The Future

Given the impermanence of our living together especially as Catherine talked about and tried out her plans for her future I realized that I also had to have my own contingency plan. So I gave it some thought. All I really needed I thought to myself was a room of my own (to borrow Virginia Wolf's famous paradigm). Painted yellow just as my room was now. And I could build this room as a one room house on wheels (or buy one ready made). It was a long time dream of mine to own the craftsman style house on wheels known as a Tumbleweed and thus escape the whole real estate dilemma of housing in the Bay Area. I would just park my rig at my mother's or anywhere else I could negotiate. When I told Catherine this plan that I would embark on should she sell the house, she offered to finance it for me and that I felt was generous and fair. Meanwhile she had already given me the Prius which I had been driving since my car went to the junkyard post crash earlier this year. (For herself she leased a new Chevy Volt.)

And thus contained in this new future I could proceed with some peace of mind. I would manage the house we shared that Catherine no longer had time for, so busy was her schedule that she would soon spend much of it away from home as she pursued her spiritual practice, her relationships with new people and her course of studies that would train her to be a Buddhist chaplain. 

Having gone through her own brush with death during her year with cancer she now wanted to spend time talking to others and helping them to face their death. This I thought was a very beautiful and meaningful outcome of her illness; one I wanted to support. And in fact she was doing this chaplain work already with a friend she knew from work who had liver cancer and whose difficult dying process she would be involved with to the end. And so Gil our dharma teacher ordained her as a chaplain to show that he stood behind her. She also started her own Death Cafe at our meditation center and took her place in the teacher's chair. Her salon would have a different tone from the light hearted one I was involved in, but it suited those who came for it and helped me integrate my own grief with Catherine's path.

As for my own future I wrote that into my obituary as well in a leap of fiction using my essay writing for a peak oil site called the Energy Bulletin as a springboard. (It was on this site, now called Resilience, that my essays enjoyed the biggest and broadest readership.)

"As one of the forerunners of the farsighted peak oil writers, her book "The Girls Guide to Off Grid Living" was followed by a speaking career. Her contributions as a member of the community of teachers and guides who shepherded the global population through the transitional times of petroleum depletion were characterized by inventive costumes and performances. Her shoe designs were in much demand and offered extensive travel when few could afford it as she was hosted from town to town making shoes for high end clients competing for her services. She also taught courses for others wanting to make their own shoes so that everyone would be equally shod. And she gave Tarot readings as part of the evenings entertainment offering many insights that became a source of inspiration and practical solutions as the population struggled to establish a broader community model of problem solving using the deeper democracy of consensus practices we enjoy today. Her chronicles of her travels, hand printed on vintage letter presses and delivered by carrier pigeon during those crucial years, were one of the most popular written documentations of the era.

A commemorative e-book of her life will be available for downloading during the next available energy cycle."

In this somewhat apocalyptic foretelling of our collective future I was reminded once again that my life would not be directed in a vacuum, but would evolve as most artistic collaborations do, in community with others and with the geo-socio-political events of our time. And so it would be counter intuitive of me to fix for myself any given future beyond the minimal structures of housing and survival, but I await with baited breath for further input for I am after all still very much alive. And having broken open the too small love that Catherine and I needed to shed like an old skin, I was now ready to meet the world with a bigger love.

I read this piece to Catherine before posting it and she liked it, liked hearing my stories again and it occurred to me that these essays are in themselves an old skin that I shed periodically, in turn leaving something of myself and where I've been for others to find and wonder at.

And with each too small piece of my life that I shed I grow larger to embody ever more of the great Cosmic Love. So that I can then meet the world and everyone in it with love. And in that rebirth become love itself.

With all my love to all of you,

Amanda

Tassajara: Peace of Mindfulness

The New Orleans footage having catapulted domestic news to a new level of grim reality, it seems frivolous to discuss anything else. We are now having to watch our own piece of the Third World unravel right before our primetime eyes and ask the appropriate questions about our infrastructure and our government. I will not add to the fray. Instead I offer my report of a place of peace tucked into the mountains of Carmel, our own Shangri-La.

As a vacation spot the appeal of Tassajara is subtle. Nice, I thought when we first visited four years ago, but not compelling enough to return again and again. I'm one for novelty and seeking out new vistas. It's Catherine who yearns for Tassajara, she, who is tempted to leave everything and take up the monastic life. You can do that there. It is a year round residence for Zen practitioners. Part of the Zen Center in San Francisco.

Catherine loves the bells calling the practitioners to the temple. The tock, tock, tock of a wooden mallet on wood block, then the big bell rung. There is a ritual to it. Zen practitioners are fond of ritual and discipline. (We Vispassana students are not so strict.) They are roused at 5 a.m. at this monastery. Someone runs by ringing a hand bell. You can hear the beat, beat, beat of footsteps passing by.

In the summer months the monastery turns into a spa resort and interns come to help in exchange for room and board. (You cannot book with a credit card though. Something about not supporting debt in order for peolple to come here.) Classes and workshops are offered. Our meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal, gives one every year. It is to attend his workshop that we come. Usually a five-day meditation retreat, this year's topic is on the Buddhist practice of loving kindness.

Tucked into the Los Padres National Forest in the Carmel Valley, Tassajara is easy to get to until the last hour down the side of the mountain on a rutted dirt road. Secluded in this canyon there is no leaving to pop over to the mall if you forgot something. We park our car at the road's end and pull our bags on carts the last 500 yards or so into the monastery.

We know the routine. It is our fourth stay and we make our way to one of the familiar little one room cabins that served tourists in the 1890's when this was a getaway for city folk who came down the mountain in a horse drawn wagon, dragging a log to keep from tumbling down.

It was in the 60's that Suzuki Roshi, founder of the Zen Center, discovered Tassajara and realized it would be perfect for what he had in mind, a rural place of practice secluded from the outside world.

Ours is the last cabin, near the pool. It is one of the Japanese style cabins and has a lovely view of the river. The bed is on the floor on tatami mats. There is a toilet (super low flush) and sink in the adjoining bathroom. (Showers are at the communal bathhouse.) No electricity, just oil lamps. Only the communal buildings, the dining room, kitchen, workshop and meditation hall have electricity. Diesel powered generators and solar panels supply this off-the-grid village. Later we buy raffle tickets to help them raise money for more solar panels.

We are just in time for lunch. Outside the dining hall we look among the pile of red napkins for one labelled with our names. This would be our napkin for the week. It goes with the red tablecloths, All meals are vegetarian of such gourmet quality that eating is a major part of the Tassajara experience. Sitting down to onion soup and that famous bread, we meet other workshop participants. There will be 15 in all; several from our Sangha (meditation community) so already there are familiar faces.

Our meetings are at the other end of the camp in a large yurt where a circle of black mats and cushions are already laid out waiting for us. We sit together for the first time that evening, then meet again before breakfast. Already my mind is relaxed, distanced from the complex information I spend my time processing.

"This is too easy," I thought at our first morning meditation. My two most annoying irritants of everyday life - the car culture and the news media have been removed. How would I apply myself? I spent the first day listening to the other participants and saying little.

When I first came to Buddhist meditation practice with Americans, I expected people to be as laid back and easy going as the Thais I grew up with. I don't know why I thought the practice would instantly transform Americans from the bossy, controlling, opinionated people already populating my life. And here they were trying so hard to overcome these traits. I realized I was learning more about Americans than I was about Buddhism.

Buddha at the Bridge

American Buddhism is vital, drawing new people all the time. From the point of view of native Buddhists this was changing Buddhism culturally, but it could be the "lion's roar". The voice that takes the teachings forward. And how powerful this voice would be, I thought, given the innate teachings of democracy and social justice and the personal sense that individuals could actually make change here in America. Give this righteousness a grounded practice that offered equanimity and calm rather than anger and fear and I could see the voice persist for as long as it was needed. For myself I was still working on becoming righteous and acquiring the sense that I could have an impact on others, be influential.

The first book I read about meditation called Mindfulness in Plain English was not written by a Westerner. My aunt in Thailand gave it to us. It was indeed the clearest instruction of what we were to attempt to do through meditation. We started immediately at a serene resort on Koh Samui in our room by the sea. I chose for myself a mantra.

"One potato, two potato," I counted. I was so self-amused by this choice, it took my whole concentration not to burst out laughing. The pure entertainment value of the act kept me interested.

Back at home we sat every day, each on our own. As I studied my thoughts I was struck by the energy of a repeating dialogue. This conversation turned out to be devoted to defending myself from the assumptions of Western psychology, my mother's field. Well what a waste of time, I realized and gave it up. Thus freed from the internalized torture of Western thought I finished out the year of meditation and let my practice go except for the Sunday session at our insight meditation center. (Now I sit with Catherine as a way to start the day together.)

As I listened to my fellow workshop participants describing what was going on in their heads, I was reminded again of how hard Westerners are on themselves. The feelings of guilt and unworthiness and then beating themselves up for not meditating well enough. My heart went out to them while at the same time I wondered what I was doing. If left to my own devices I would spend my entire practice time writing in my head and telling jokes to myself.

I followed Gils guided meditations. He took us through the steps of the loving kindness practice. The practice starts with thinking the phrases for oneself. May I be happy, may I be safe, may I be healthy, may I be at ease.

This feels good I thought. I have no enemies. Next we did the same blessing to a benefactor. I felt very present finally. It was day three.

We had lots of free time to hike and read. It was hot, so best to stay cool draped in wet garments. In the evening we sat in the bathhouse, soaking in the hot springs, gazing at the night sky. So many stars there were. The sky had texture, depth and satellites drifting across it. The Milky Way so distinct like a field of scattered snow crystals. We shared details of our lives with each other. One of us mentioned that Tassajara had one imperfection - not enough lounge chairs. "Makes my slothfulness impermanent," I quipped. Everyone laughed. A Buddhist joke.

In the context of our loving kindness workshop was an elephant in the room. Soon we would be asked to address our enemies our difficult person. Gil would not be discussing the problem of the elephant; but we talked about it among ourselves. Who could stomach giving the loving kindness blessing to Bush and co.? One of us would take on the challenge, but not me.

Gil had said that this practice was not so much for the recipient of our blessings, but for ourselves and our well being in the world. Wishing Bush and company well would be meaningless to me. I didn't know them as people in my life. When they disturbed my equanimity I worked towards accepting the harm they were doing and set about educating others about the harm. I did not believe that sending them love would help. It reminded me too much of the days of the harmonic convergence and new agers hoping to change the world by exuding love to all those intent on robbing and pillaging. Was this not magical thinking? They are still robbing and pillaging. Eventually we must remove the wolf from the lambs.

It was not until day five that I began to see some point in the exercise. That was the day of expanding the practice to all beings everywhere. Gil had us extend our goodwill to the entire village of Tassajara, then out to Carmel valley, then out to the entire state of California. That meant people with guns and pick-up trucks in the outback and all, I realized. Could I extend the blessing to SUV drivers? Okay, maybe they wouldn't drive so much if they were happy. They would stay put and if they felt safe they wouldn't be out buying duct tape. In fact the world would be a better place if everyone just felt at ease. My goodwill extended up and out into the deep blueness of the sky, flowed over the mountains and hovered above the earth.


This was the beauty of Tassajara. It got under your skin. People were at ease here. They felt safe. There were no locks on the cabin doors, just a hook. There was no competition, no fashion imperatives unless you count the black Zen robes some of the monks wore which were pretty stylin'. But most just wore layers of loose comfortable wrappings.

And even though guests might stay only a few nights, there was continuity to their presence, a mindfulness of each other. This gentleness gave a sense of timelessness to the life here as if each visitor was just carrying on in the footsteps of another along with those who worked there.

With no CNN, no TV at all, one public phone and the occasional newspaper usually three days old, Tassajara was truly remote from the world down at the bottom of that canyon.

"Peace could break out and we wouldn't even know it," a guest commented wryly.

It was also a community in harmony with the earth. Signs were posted to conserve water, use biodegradable products, compost, re-use your lunch bag. Food was grown and flowers. This was living lightly on the earth. What more did we really needed as a people? Tassajara was showing us how we could live sustainably and be happier too.