In a "Best of Eugene" readers poll conducted by Eugene Weekly, and published in their first "Annual Manual," Talking Leaves won first place in the Best Local 'Zine category, honoring the best locally-produced, independent magazine. Other winners included "The environment" (Best Local Cause), Oregon Country Fair (Best Local Celebration), Saturday Market (Best Place to Meet People), Olympic silver medalist Lance Deal (Best Athlete), "It's a secret" and "I'm not telling" (Best Fishing Hole and Best Place to Pick Mushrooms, respectively), and "I live here" (Best Proof Eugene is the Center of the Universe)--so we consider ourselves in good company.
At a gala awards ceremony on October 12 at the Downtown Athletic Club ballroom, winners were honored with framed certificates, copious applause, and finger food. It was a thrill. Thank you to all of you who voted for us!
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
I asked Bill Graham Presents for press tickets to the July 19 Indigo Girls concert at Eugene's Cuthbert Amphitheatre, and was gratified to find two tickets awaiting me at Will Call. The outdoor venue, nestled amongst the fields, woods, and waterways of Alton Baker Park, is probably Eugene's best. I experienced most of the concert from the dance floor, perhaps thirty feet from Amy Ray, Emily Saliers, and their band.
I enjoyed much of the music--some early well-known songs stood out--but the more recent, alienated rock numbers left me unenthused. Most of all, I realized how much I like the music and musicians I do like, and that fame or commercial success are not necessarily directly correlated with talent or freshness of material. Discussing the concert afterwards, a friend and I agreed that two folk musicians who made their names here in Eugene are, in our estimation, more talented than the Indigo Girls, and yet likely will never be as well-known. (Playing alone, together, and with the band Babes With Axes, Laura Kemp--still local--and Katie Henry--who now visits periodically from her new home in Vermont--have been leaving marks on Eugene's musical scene for nearly a decade. They will likely never command a $28 ticket price, but I'd choose their music over the Indigo Girls' any day.)
It was a good concert, a good time, a great crowd, with groups of young women supplying a taste of the Indigo Girls' equivalent to Beatlemania by swooning and screaming every time Amy Ray smiled.
How can I possibly twist a review of an Indigo Girls concert into an article about relationship? Why would I want to? To satisfy some feeling of obligation because I suggested I might do such a thing in my fax requesting the free press tickets from Bill Graham? Does Bill Graham even remember, all these months later? Will he even read this magazine when I send it to him?* Do I sometimes ask too many questions, or digress too much?
The terrible truth is that I did not like the Indigo Girls concert as much as I liked the Bob Dylan concert that led to "An Ecological Future: How Does It Feel," a loosely-woven stream-of-consciousness article in the Winter 1999 issue which, despite its un-Mr. Jones-like nature, received lots of positive reader feedback and was partly responsible for my getting into a romantic relationship with a reader. But I digress again--or do I? The question immediately occurs to me--as it might to anyone reading this--was there an unfair power dynamic at play between me and that reader, simply because I was able to present myself in a certain way through this medium? What is the relationship between a writer and a reader? How is it similar to or different from that between performer and audience--between Amy Ray and her young female fans? Did it make a difference that in this case the reader was also a writer in her own right...or in her own write? Speaking of which, can anyone who has ever read it forget John Lennon in His Own Write, a classic which should be on every bookshelf? But even John Lennon tired of fame, of trying to meet his deep-seated personal needs through some public acting-out, of being cute and clever to get attention from others to fill that hole left by childhood traumas, including the absence and then death of his mother, killed by an automobile as she crossed the street when he was just seven (yet another reason to "divorce your car"). Plastic Ono Band, John's "primal masterpiece" recorded twenty years after that event, was inevitable.
This time I will get it right.
My first real exposure to the Indigo Girls came nine years ago, as I traveled to the Bread and Puppet Domestic Resurrection Circus in northeast Vermont with two of the very few alternatively-minded people I had met in several months of living in New Hampshire. To all outward appearances, they were the perfect couple. Together, they ran a solar energy business, homesteaded, raised a family, organized the local progressive, "organic" community.
Behind the scenes, I quickly discovered, they were at each other's throats constantly. As he drove their remodeled schoolbus--with her, their two children, and me as passengers--I began to witness their relationship in all its dysfunctional glory.
They seemed to argue every time they talked to each other. When I was alone with either of them, each would try to win me to his or her side. I learned from him that she refused to sleep with him; I learned from her that he was impossible to be with and work with.
She loved the Indigo Girls, and put one of their albums into the tape deck as we approached the Circus. Her musical selection was evidently for her pleasure and my benefit, not his. She seemed to take an unusual interest in me--was certainly a lot nicer to me than she was to him. In fact, she seemed to be infuriating him with her flirtatiousness--which, however, he never objected to directly, and which at the time I felt powerless to stop. Instead, he stewed, and came forward with occasional angry outbursts directed at her.
Seeking to fit into the expectations of the "exclusive relationship" model, their marriage floundered and failed--ending, I heard later, in a difficult separation and finally in divorce.
"You are my everything, and I am yours; we're all either of us needs" had become "Why aren't you my everything? You have failed me in all of these ways...you are causing me all of this pain...and here it is back at you..."
Perhaps those lyrics coming from the tape deck were pointing a direction they each needed to take. "The less I seek my source in some definitive, the closer I am to fine."
Those two people were not fine, and they blamed each other for it. In the supermarket of happiness, they were looking for "refunds" on their defective spouse. What they didn't understand was that an all-purpose consumer item, although advertised as doing just about everything imaginable, is usually not very good at a large number of those tasks. "It drills, but it doesn't mix the bread dough." Instead of a "refund" on each other, they seemed to deserve a refund on the idea that their all-purpose marriage could ever meet the giddy expectations that society had placed on it.
Back then, I too occasionally had the idea that perhaps someone out there could be my "all." But I was already getting the sense, which developed more clearly over the years, that we are each rightfully married more strongly to life itself, to the land we live on, to the communities we are part of, to our place in the entire fabric, to our own unique selves and to our participation in the whole, than to any one individual. It takes a village to raise not only a child, but an adult, a parent, a partner, a fulfilled human being.
Now, nine years later, as I saw those same Indigo Girls for the first time in person, I couldn't help but reflect on my circumstances. I had given my other free concert pass to a friend, and helped another to get in for cheap. I actually loved a lot of people in my life, including these two friends, and many more--and was very thankful not to feel entirely beholden to a "spouse." My memory of that New Hampshire couple reminded me of the direction I'm glad my life didn't take. Instead, valuing community and a network of friends, I had been able to do what I wanted with my life. I had been able to put attention on my relationship with the land--which had in fact been primary, determining many of my choices over the years. When I seemed to be looking for "someone to make it all better," I had learned that I mostly needed to get back into connection with the web of creation--I didn't necessarily need someone to go crying to. A walk in the woods or a morning in the garden could cheer me up more than any one person could. Looking inside, and writing a letter or article, or acting on any inspiration I felt flowing through me, could bring me a sense of wholeness I could never find outside of myself if I didn't have it within. And without an attachment to finding one person with whom to share my life completely, I had been able to form many connections with many people, whom I loved much more fully than I can imagine loving anyone if I'd had to trade in all my other friends for them.
Bill Graham, are you there?* Next time, I have some suggestions: don't allow the Indigo Girls to change their instruments between every song. It didn't improve the music: it just seemed to make the statement, "We are superstars," faded jeans notwithstanding. And those security people looked a little too intent on keeping the enthusiastic crowd at bay. Those men didn't even move to the music.
And to the Indigo Girls: I like that "hammer and a nail" song. Write more like that one! (if you're inspired to)...
And thanks for the tickets!
I promise this is my last attempt.
I can sum up my Cuthbert experience by saying: the Indigo Girls are inspiring performers, with some really good songs. If they come to your town, certainly make an effort to see them. But, based on other recent concerts I've attended, be sure to see Michelle Shocked, Rebecca Riots, or Babes With Axes. And check out any book by John Lennon. Or better yet, start a garden or go for a walk in the woods. However, I digress.
Chris Roth edits Talking Leaves, a task which, along with gardening, living in community, and enjoying the outdoors and indoors, keeps him constantly aware of the webs of relationship that seem to connect everyone and everything. This leads him to frequent digression.
*Ed. note: I was informed at press time that Bill Graham is deceased, and has been for a while. No disrespect is intended. Even so, there's more than one answer to these questions.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
"He said he's divorcing all of us. He gets out of jail in four days and he's going to serve me with divorce papers. He says he loves us but he can't forgive what we've done to him."
I was used to my mother relaying the latest drama of my family to me. The pattern was for me to listen and then relay the story as I heard it to my friends. It was only a year ago that I realized how much energy I had tied up in my parents' "stories." How I used them to label and define who I was in the world: Victim, Savior, etc.... My first reaction to this story was to smile incredulously and sarcastically respond, "Uh-huh."
A week before I had received a gift of $10,000 from my father to help me pay for college. He had his bookkeeper type up a short note which was attached to the check that read, "Accept this money with all my love, Your Father." I was elated when I read it. Not because I had $10,000, but because my father loved me. The amount he was willing to bestow symbolized his great love for me and nothing anyone said could make me believe any different. Even now, as I listened to my mother tell me his decision to stay in jail for another six months rather than go into a residential drug and alcohol treatment center for six months, I felt his love, not his blame. It felt like power and like being invincible.
He wrote in the four page letter that he knew he would find ways to drink while in the treatment center and he'd get kicked out again, just like the last time, and the time before. He'd never get out of the system that way, so he decided to do jail time and get it over with. The letter was full of blame toward my mother, my brother, and me, emphasizing that we were lounging in the comforts of home while he was in "JAIL!"
To me these were just words from a tired man who was in the struggle of his life. My father started drinking at age thirteen while growing up in the projects of San Francisco. As it was, his current jail time of six weeks, while waiting to be re-sentenced, was the longest he had ever been sober since then. At this point he had been in and out of rehabs for over a year, starting when my mother had him arrested for trying to throw her off the second story balcony. To him that meant a year away from his business, not from his family. His business had always been his first child, and his second priority after drinking.
I had seen many faces of my father throughout my life. The one I wanted to believe was the truest had sent me that note with $10,000. That was the one who told me he could never lie to me because I always looked him straight in the eyes--the one who held me and cried, "I thought you were dead," when I came home one morning after two days missing. Because I believed I knew my father's heart, I couldn't take his letter seriously. Until my mother read me the end. "He says he regrets he will not see you and Anthony live your lives and that he will never see his grandchildren."
"That's awfully melodramatic," I said, more to convince myself.
"Yeah, it's hard to take the letter seriously, but I know he's going to divorce me. I guess I never thought he'd do it. Maybe it's good. It will allow me to really get on with my life. He asked me to stop writing him cards too."
I could tell she was holding in her grief. I am certainly my mother's daughter in that regard. We talked a bit longer, rattling off theories of why he said what he did, before hanging up. I walked with my thoughts to a friend who was nearby and relayed the story to him. He listened and I could tell he was wondering why I was so calm.
"You're taking this news really well, Maria. I guess nothing he does can surprise you anymore."
I shrugged my shoulders and chuckled off the comment, wanting to appear strong, grounded, and clear about who I was amidst it all. Yet inside I felt like I was running from something big. As long as it didn't catch me I wouldn't have to face it.
I couldn't sleep that night. I was frustrated because I hadn't had insomnia since grade school; why was it suddenly coming back? My insomnia in childhood was related to my fear of my father. I still remember being up at 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. at age eight, nine, ten...wishing sleep would take me, feeling completely alone in the darkness of our house. The tossing and turning would drive me to tears and I'd finally get out of bed and go to the kitchen to write or eat. This night my head was spinning with random scenes of past and future. Imagining bringing my baby to jail to see her grandfather and him refusing me visitation. Crying. Believing that if he just saw my baby, he would have the will to live again.
The second workshop began the following morning. As with the first workshop, I was helping to facilitate. I woke up angry, but didn't know I was angry until mid-morning at a meeting with the other assistants. I found I was nervous to speak to the point of butterflies in my stomach. When I opened my mouth the tears started and all I could say was, "I'm having a hard time with something that happened with my father. Could someone sit with me today at some point?" I had no idea until I spoke that I was in such pain around that four page letter. The pain felt old and new, like an old scar that had repeatedly been rewounded and scarred over. The letter was yet another cut into my protective scar tissue. This time I knew I couldn't cover it up again. I had to pull up all the scars and heal them properly.
For three days I worked with friends to understand the complexity of my anger and grief. I knew I had to surrender to the raging river of emotion I kept dammed up in my belly and throat. I had to let myself be caught. Each day I felt resistance and shame around going into it and each day I asked for help. It was a constant struggle against my patterns of isolation and disassociation that had been perfected over twenty-seven years of witnessing the physical and emotional abuse between my parents. I was a pro at not showing vulnerability or confrontation.
My journey took me into dark and painful memories, into places that I had never considered going. Confronting my mother about her drinking and addiction to pain pills. Knowing it would hurt her feelings. That being hurt, she would probably drink. And I would be faced with not blaming myself for the sequence of events. It wasn't my truth that made her drink, it was her disease. I realized that I had always focused my anger at my father because he was obvious: the dominating interrogator, controller, abuser. I saw that my whole life I had been protecting my mother from more abuse, thinking my truth would batter her. And doing this I had created a fear-based, distant relationship with her, with all the outward appearances of caring and love. I saw how my symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had been continuously getting worse, and by choosing to stuff my anger and grief, I was choosing illness over health.
For the last five years my PTSD has manifested in the form of a nervous system disorder: my head muscles spasm involuntarily, constantly. No one I've ever met has come close to a workable explanation for it. Not neurologists, chiropractors, cranial-sacral therapists, nor neuromuscular massage therapists. No one until Russ.
Sunday night, the third night of the workshop, I asked Russ for his help, knowing that he is skilled in one-on-one emotional counseling work with people. We met in a small room used for the assistants to take breaks in. Russ pulled the futon into the middle of the room and we sat down. I felt my resistance again. I didn't know how to validate my feelings of anger. It seemed weak to me to have to keep crying and screaming about the same issues over and over again.
The previous day during the workshop I experienced the physical sensation of choking, as if being strangled, during my emotional release, as I relived an experience of seeing my father beat my mother while I quietly watched on in terror. I also went into convulsions at the peak of my release and nearly vomited. I was embarrassed afterward, imagining I'd made a spectacle of myself. I'd never gone into convulsions in front of so many people before. I personally had experienced full body convulsions numerous times during orgasm. But this was the first time they'd been triggered straight from emotion.
Russ listened to my confusion. He sat across from me, straight faced, without blinking. We both knew I was talking so much because I was postponing getting into it.
"Breathe," he said. "Just start making noise."
I stared at him and took many deep breaths. In no time his face was making me shake in anger. I saw my father's face. I grit my teeth. My fists clenched. It was all I could do to keep my body from shaking.
"What are you protecting?," asked Russ.
My voice came out shrieking, "ALL I KNOW HOW TO DO IS PROTECT! IT'S ALL I EVER DO! MY WHOLE LIFE HAS BEEN PROTECTING MYSELF!!! I JUST WANT TO SLEEP!! I WANT TO SLEEP AND KNOW I'M SAFE!!" I fell forward sobbing into the pillow in front of me.
"Maria. Look at what you're doing. Your twitching and shaking is you turning your anger inward. See how you can't stop shaking your hands and knees? It's like you're pounding all that rage back into your body, compacting it into a tight little ball in your gut. That's what the convulsions are. Your anger not being allowed to come out, but being packed in, tighter and tighter. That's what it looks like. You've got to keep it moving out." Russ stood up and pulled me up. "Open your mouth. Make noise. Keep yelling from your diaphragm. Drop your jaw all the way open..."
"AAAHHHH... AAAHHHHHH....!" I sounded as loud as I could. Suddenly I had a surge of energy.
"Keep movin'," counseled Russ. "You gotta move it out. When you feel yourself start to shake, start hittin' something. Keep yellin'."
I started attacking the pillow that Russ held before him. He thrust it in my face and I attacked more, all the time yelling. It was like a miracle. My body was mine again. No shaking. No convulsing. I remember picturing my husband and me making love, me with my jaw dropped yelling the whole time. This made me laugh. The anger had transmuted into humor. Russ's face was Russ's face again and it was hilarious! It felt so good to laugh. My whole body was exhausted now and I felt a whole lot lighter. We called it a night.
Walking back to my room I felt like I'd been reborn--like God had given me a priceless piece of information and channeled it through Russ. I could never relate to my anger the same way again. It was like the sun emerging from an eclipse--I finally understood my head spasms, the knots in my stomach, my shallow breathing, my tonsillectomy when I was fourteen...everything seemed illuminated with a divine truth. "My anger turned inward..." I smiled to myself. "Wow...That's amazing!" All I had to do was move and make noise to heal myself. Sing and dance.
The fourth morning I was surprised when I woke angry again. This time I walked straight into the workshop courseroom with the other assistants and danced and made noise, then told some of them how I was feeling. And that's all it took. I was freed. I was light again.
When I think of my father's four page letter now, I still feel betrayed. I also feel overwhelming love and forgiveness. I used to tell people that I saw my father as the soul who sacrificed happiness this lifetime so that the rest of us could learn unconditional love, compassion, and forgiveness. Now I realize that he didn't sacrifice anything. His choice to suffer is a gift, not only to us but for his own evolution too...as I choose to create a nervous system dysfunction with all the pain and grief that accompanies it. Now I choose to surrender my shame and be witnessed in my truth. I was the one strangling myself. Though once, to survive, I needed to be invisible to violence, now I must realize that I am safe. I can let go. I can breathe. I can sleep.
I have been thinking of ways to integrate all that I learned during the second workshop at Lost Valley, which was Naka-Ima. I have decided to create a ritual to honor the me I'm leaving behind, like a snake shedding her skin, and then to celebrate the new me. I also want to bury something that symbolizes my parents, to help me let go of their stories. A piece of jewelry from my father, burying the idea that money equals his love... burying my desire for his unconditional love. I'm not sure what to bury of my mother's. I know it will symbolize "wanting her to be strong." Perhaps a pain pill. Through this ritual I hope to open space up to celebrate the truth of our courageous passage to where we are now.
Maria Owl is a full-time student at New College of California in Santa Rosa, focusing on Personal Growth to create Sustainable Community. She recently organized the first Naka-Ima in the San Francisco Bay Area and also offers her services of Clairvoyant Counseling and Expressive Arts and Ritual workshop facilitation to her local community.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
Needless to say, he is always there for me. A veritable sage, he is as lush in wisdom as he is in foliage. He is a dominant figure at the center of a small community of trees on an island of green in a human residential neighborhood. This oasis is shared by magnetic, open palms and a towering cluster of trees whose slender trunks come together at the base to form a basket for catching their fragrant fallen blossoms.
Because we live close by, I visit with this family of trees nearly every day. My intended's magnanimous trunk has grown in such a way as to provide comfortable seating for one person on each side. I prefer the side that allows me to nestle so closely against him that he can encompass both of my shoulders in his powerful embrace. Sometimes, late at night, after visiting with human companions, I drive by to see how fondly the moon dotes upon him, and to reinforce my own sense of deep-rooted connectedness.
A stalwart champion of my personal blossoming, my leafy lover offers solace, succor, and strength whenever I seek his counsel. His guidance never fails to offer new insights that inevitably raise my spirits. His reassurances--though seemingly far-fetched--have proven invariably correct. In short, he provides the very sort of compassion, brilliance, and unconditional support I had been raised to expect from a male of the animal kingdom and human species.
Of course, our passion for union must necessarily take place on the etheric plane. But I find this communion nonetheless fulfilling, for we are positively inspired by each other's every breath. So, no, I have not climbed naked into his branches, for we are naked in our souls together and nothing can stop us from knowing and loving each other completely. Which of his many rings shall I wear upon my heart to seal our vows? None but the golden ring of truth that drew me to him in the first place.
I did arrive once to discover another woman entwined in his limbs in the shadow of darkness. But I am assured of his steadfast loyalty to me--as she must also have been. I know I am not alone in loving him, yet I see no conflict in sharing his love--such is his vast capacity for responding to my needs.
How few people can claim the same of their human comrades at this critical moment in our evolutionary history. Are we not then to seek and nurture such love wherever we can find it? Are we so rigid as to believe that it must come only from our own kind, no matter how limited their current capacities? Given the problems of over-population, there is little to justify unions between ill-fitted, yet well-matched, couples of the same species.
I prefer to give my affections where I know they will absolutely enrich the structure of another being--and will be returned in kind. I refuse to be limited by the form in which a spirit chooses to clothe itself--whether as an untamed wind or a steadfast tree, a playful dolphin, majestic mountain, or a gallant steed. Because there are many of my sisters and brothers deeply committed to every form of wildlife--including stunning features of the Earth's geography and elements--I propose we consider recognizing alliances of any sort that can help to unite all life in the bonds of love.
This article is reprinted from Talking Leaves Vol. 6 No. 1, Summer Solstice 1994.
Laurel Airica is a writer and intuitive counselor who draws upon the Nature Kingdom for insights into human nature. She and her psychic houseplants can be reached for "essence readings" at (310) 395-7177.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
As we approached press time, we learned that the readers of Eugene Weekly (our local alternative newspaper) had voted Talking Leaves as "Best Local 'Zine" in the 2000 "Best of Eugene" poll. We're honored!
TL is not a typical magazine. We have far less advertising and far more actual editorial content than the average periodical. In fact, even though we publish just once every four months, readers often tell us it takes that entire time to absorb each issue fully. In terms of word count, each issue is closer to a modest-sized book than to an average magazine.
A Few FAQs
We are sometimes asked why we publish three instead of four issues per year. One consideration is eco- nomic: it is far less expensive to print fewer issues, and pack each with more material, than to spread that same amount of content over more frequent, slimmer issues. We still consider moving to quarterly production, but know that the cost of that move would be not just monetary, but in quality-of-life and possibly quality-of-content as well. At our current pace, each issue can coalesce organically, amidst the other activities that occupy our own and our readers' and writers' lives. We have breathing room between each issue, time for contemplation, time to pay attention to quality rather than worrying about constant deadlines.
As a result, each issue so far has been a labor of love--something we've really enjoyed doing--rather than a mere "product." It's with fresh energy that I watch each issue come together, and help it do so. For me, TL is about life...not the other way around. I believe that's why it speaks to so many the way it does--it embodies that life force. It's a forum for real people doing real things, putting ecological ideals into practice--not just philosophizing, analyzing, or being overwhelmed by what is wrong in the world.
Some readers wonder why we do not use glossy paper; and some distributors and newsstands refuse to carry us due to our newsprint insides. But because we are committed to ecological responsibility, we try to minimize the negative environmental impact of producing TL. Our tree-free, non-glossy cover stock, and the recycled newsprint on which the inside pages are printed, are the best, most economically-feasible choices we've found. We also try to make best use of each page: lots of extra white space and non-content-related graphic tricks might meet Madison Avenue's criteria, but they don't meet ours. We hope that in a world that is drowning in words and images of all types, enough people will be drawn to and benefit from the forum we are offering to balance the environmental debt that even our ecologically-conscious choices engender. So far, we believe that is happening. As evidenced by the enthusiastic response to our last subscription appeal, a substantial network of people is willing to help keep this magazine in print. The potential to develop TL and further expand its reach is vast. Meanwhile, every individual involved in any way--whether you're an $18/year subscriber, a supporting member, a sustainer, a benefactor, a contributor of ideas or material--makes a difference.
Our theme this issue is "Relationship." Perhaps I've fallen prey to end-of-the-editing-cycle delirium, but it seems to me that everything in the world (including the content of past and future issues of Talking Leaves, our network of readers, and the actual process of creating the magazine) is about relationship. And after visiting the old-growth trees a couple miles from Lost Valley, or spending a few hours in our abundant vegetable garden, or simply witnessing the beauty in other people, I'm easily convinced that everything in the world is also about love, and that relationship and love are essentially the same. Whatever your expectations of an issue about "Relationship," I hope you'll find that the many ways of looking at and expressing love in these pages convey something that transcends the individual ideas and stories themselves--something not easily put into words. Love, relationship, the Mystery, the Tao, and God/dess are among the names that attempt to describe the ineffable force that enlivens and connects us--but maybe it's just as elegantly expressed by the intertwined carrots caught naked in the accompanying photo [print edition]. Like this magazine and the stories and insights it shares, they're homegrown, unique, fresh from the earth--and good either as food or as compost.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
a sexual liaison between two people, usually of a duration longer than one night.
In its ideal form, a relationship became a long-term, committed partnership, or marriage, that lasted until death did the couple part. At its worst, a relationship was either a short-term, misguided disaster, or a long-term, dysfunctional, waking nightmare. Neither of these worst-case scenarios appealed to me. But for a long time, as a child, I wasn't thinking about that. What was I thinking about?
I was thinking about my mother. I was thinking about being a bird in the sky. I was thinking about my father, my grandma, my baby brother. I was playing in the sandbox. "I wish I were a bird," I would tell my mother. And then: "When I grow up, we'll get married, right?"
I had no idea what that meant, but I did know the feeling of relationship. It was what made me want to play. It was family, it was home, it was friends. It was exploring in the backyard, in the neighborhood, in the woods, at the lake. It was sledding in the snow and splashing in the water. It was looking at the moon and imagining going there, as those astronauts did. Eventually, it was tossing around a baseball, basketball, or frisbee, or kicking a big crabsoccer ball. It was learning magic tricks, drawing pictures, building an art-easel robot that squirted baby powder out of its belly button. It was walking to school, learning to ride a bike, swinging on the swingset during recess. It was avoiding the cootie mats just inside the school building entrances, and not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk that could also give you cooties. It was pollywogs, soap bubbles, a friend's cat, and dragonflies. It was everything.
I liked someone in my class especially well. I'll call her Anna. Anna and I were good friends in first grade. Once Anna asked me to marry her--but two other rival girls were asking the same thing at the same time. Feeling put upon, I said, "I'm not going to marry any of you"--but with Anna, I didn't mean it. I secretly believed that Anna and I were destined for each other--it was only a matter of time. We just couldn't be married yet, being barely seven years old.
Over time, Anna became my imaginary, platonic soul mate. (The two of us never talked after first grade--I was too intimidated by Anna's perfection, and just waiting for the right moment, probably when we were both grown up, to raise the question of marriage again). Starting in fourth grade and continuing through high school, my friends pursued other potential mates, but I was loyal to Anna--to that feeling I got when I thought about her. Funnily enough, that feeling was not unlike the feeling I had as a young child when everything was right with the world. It was an elevated state of aliveness. It made me feel good. It was all I ever wanted in a relationship. It connected me with everything.
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The tale of my romantic adventures over the succeeding years might bore the average reader to tears, so sparse would be the juicy bits (no, I never did hook up with Anna). I did develop a real, platonic relationship (this one involving extensive conversation, instead of none) before I left high school--but after my "new Anna" had several college-induced mental breakdowns and became less available as a friend, I learned that I needed to fend for myself again.
In retrospect, the most difficult ending of a relationship I ever experienced occurred when, propelled by my educational course, I had to leave my home and my family. No romantic disappointment ever compared to the distress--almost unidentifiable at the time, because I'd never experienced it before--of that separation from my familiar environment, from everyone and just about everything with which I'd developed relationship for my first eighteen years, and which I'd come to take for granted.
Difficult as it was, that divorce proved essential to my growth into adulthood. Rebuilding a sense of self adequately supported by my surroundings took years, and engaged me consciously in that process of developing relationships that had occurred only unconsciously before. But romantic relationships played a very small part in that rebuilding.
Far more important was just about everything else with which I might have a relationship.
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I never have married. I'm not sure how I feel about relationship, in the usual sense. But if asked what relationships have made my life richer, I have no trouble jotting down a long list of "significant others":
land
work
garden
plants
parents
grandparents
community
self
rocks
music
words
sun
rain
water
birds
perfection
imperfection
food
the living earth
solitude
crowds
insects
slugs
clothes
bicycles
books
density
time
the future
body
air
sky
...
---------------------------
If I have ever been married, it has been to my natural surroundings, the people in my life, my vocation, and a certain feeling of goodness and peace (both inner and outer) not easily captured on the evening news (at least I don't think it's found there--I haven't watched television in many years). I have a special fondness for communication, physical activity, and being outside for at least part of every day. "World, how do I love you?" In fact, there are many ways...
---------------------------
Having mated myself (for shorter or longer periods) to my place in the world, to a larger network of friends, and eventually to intentional community as a way of life, I have nevertheless felt the pull of intimate relationships more than once. But after traveling to the East Coast to return a visit from a romantic partner, I discovered that although the grass had momentarily appeared greener there, it wasn't actually. Here's what I wrote to my home community at Lost Valley, half-way into a three-week adventure that eventually led to my return to unfettered bachelorhood:
Hi everyone,
I'm writing this from an adult singing camp that Tina and I are attending.
I've thought of you all often. Being with Tina here is very different from being with her there. I am trying to be present and appreciate what each day brings here, but I miss being there. I write this as I gaze out over the Green Mountains from a grassy knoll--I should count my blessings, and I'm trying to. I'm enjoying getting to know a few participants in the singing camp a little, and I also like Tina's children and some other people I've met, but I feel the lack of my "family" (Eugene area and Lost Valley) very keenly. I do feel that an intimate relationship bears too heavy a burden when it is not part of a larger community in which intimacy takes many different forms, especially emotional.
Feelings that I would be able to clear up in a matter of minutes there can sometimes affect me for hours here, and there is a general sense of unease that I have sometimes had that I know would be taken away by getting my hands in the soil there with a group of people, or having a good personal conversation with someone other than Tina, or being able to get work accomplished more easily, or being in a well-being meeting. And yet, though there are times now when I feel very connected with Tina, and other times when I'm feeling distant, I know I will miss our connection when I am back there and she is not. So it looks as if I have some things to work through no matter where I am.
I'm sure I will look back and see this as a necessary step toward whatever comes next in my personal development. But Lost Valley and Oregon definitely seem like home, and this definitely seems like an adventure, one that is probably necessary, one that I am growing from, but one I need to return from as well. What the next stage will be, I don't know--when Tina and family visit next month, hopefully more will become clear. And we'll be talking about this all during the next week-and-a-half too.
So please keep me in your good thoughts, as you are in mine. There's a lot that I appreciate when I'm there, and almost take for granted--especially the constant availability of emotional support and feedback, as well as easy access to endless worthwhile work--that does not automatically exist elsewhere. People out here (read: the USA) can get locked in to inexpression and hardness pretty easily, and most spend more time in their cars than in their gardens or walking on the ground. Vermont is nice, but (like Oregon) it's a place where it still takes work to find community and connection to the land. Anyway, I'm having a good time, but it's not utopia or ecotopia, even on a small scale, out here--that would take a long time to establish.
I may see my brother in the coming week or so--am looking forward to that.
Well, take care, and I'll see you all in ten days or so,
Love, Chris
---------------------------
I am an incurable romantic, but I keep it under control. I know that things are not always what they seem, and that every sperm does not need a first name or even the chance of getting one. In the broadest sense, everything is sexual (something I learned, in part, through sex). But my closest connections have not been literally sexual.
My limited experience of physical sex has been best when it has led me to spiritual insights and true connection (as in my first experience, when I saw that everything in the beautiful landscape around me was expressing its sexual nature); otherwise, I've gotten bored. For me, having "sex" is not what is most important. Unless it connects me to the heart of the universe, it's definitely less desirable than a walk in the woods, a good conversation, a simple smile--any of which can connect me in that way.
I am in some senses an oddball, but I know it and like it. And I'm not absolutely closed to breaking my usual de facto celibacy (in case you were wondering--er, I mean, in case you, not you, were wondering). I prefer long life and delayed gratification to premature sexual exhaustion. If something is right, it will happen. But ultimately, "having sex" appeals to me only as part of a process, not as a goal.
There's no accounting for taste.
---------------------------
I have never written this letter, but I could have (with only minor variations) several times:
Dear Emily,
As you know, I have loved your music [writing, intelligence, way of being ...] ever since we first met. Thinking about you makes me glad to be alive. When you talk to me, when we interact in any way--even when you are just you, not even thinking about me at all--I am happy. You didn't volunteer to be a messenger from the Great Cosmic Mother, the Universe, or the Spirit which Moves in All Things. You are just being you. I like living in the same world as you. If you leave before I do, I will cry many tears.
I project onto you everything I love about life; I forgive your failings; I see and appreciate the things that you do not see or appreciate in yourself. I am the voice of your best self-image, your wholeness, crying out to be recognized. And, by a strange circular process, you are that for me, too. I put you on a pedestal because I need to love myself, but cannot bring myself to. I can wax poetic about you, but not about me; feel warm, loving, and awed by infinity and mystery when I contemplate you, but judge my own self with coldness, criticism, and jaded prejudice.
Deep down, I know it's my own wholeness you're invoking. I know that if you read this, you'll know that I know (that you know that I know) that this is not about you, and it's not about me...
...except for the fact that we're all infinite beings, enveloped in mystery and love, with certain flaws and limitations that can prevent us from seeing how amazing the world is--how amazing we each are, as part of it. We're not separate.
Relationship? That's what it all is. It takes as many different forms as there are moments in a day. It's all one, and it's always changing, but what doesn't change is the universal energy that holds us and expresses itself through you, me, and every being and thing we know and don't know.
By the way, please don't be freaked out by this letter. I'm not interested in romance unless it involves all of creation.
Love, Chris
---------------------------
Ultimately, no relationship really ends. Nothing, living or dead, is not in relationship. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about death, but when I do, death does not seem like an ending or a severance to me.
When I die, and become a composting contributor to the web of life, I want to be buried in soil, not in an impenetrable casket. Just a teaspoon of healthy soil contains 600 million to 1 billion beneficial bacteria. Especially on those slow, rainy days, they'll provide plenty of company as I rot. If I have any regrets about how celibate I was when alive, I expect they'll even nibble away at those too. If I usually don't need sex to make me feel not-separate in life, I certainly won't in death.
By the time I'm decomposed, I hope, our society will recognize "relationship" for what it truly is: something much more than a one-life stand.
Chris Roth edits Talking Leaves, coordinates the organic gardening program at Lost Valley Educational Center, enjoys contra-dancing, loves to run or bicycle in the woods, and is not interested in romance unless it involves all of creation (or at least one other person besides himself). He welcomes critical comments on this story, including alternative interpretations of what is really going on with its protagonist. Contact him at chris@talkingleaves.org
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
Honesty, or transparency, was the key element in the social system. Ideally, everybody knew who was attracted to whom. Casually, working together, we would talk about our sexual attractions; and more formally, everybody in the community had mentors with whom we were in almost daily communication about any aspect of our whole lives, including our sexuality. And there were required meetings practically each evening, separated by gender, where we talked a lot about sex and relationships. The women's meeting had an important biological as well as social function, because birth control was performed by visual examination of the woman's cervix with a gynecological speculum by a trained participant, and each woman kept her reproductive cycle charted. This way people could have sex without the corporate interference of latex or drugs.
In the evening meetings we talked about the whole range of subjects surrounding sexuality, like intention, jealousy, technique, or merely the directing of scheduled sexual traffic to the somewhat limited number of private spaces. We lived in very close quarters, many to a room, sometimes segregated by gender, and almost no intimate partners shared living spaces. There were no particular rules about what was and was not allowed, but the group determined what was and was not healthy with regard to any particular living arrangement, or really for any other aspect of an individual's life. The group was all, the individual a part of that group. Privacy was simply not valued. It was believed that only through completely open and honest communication, and highly facilitated group discussion, could reasonably healthy relationships, intimate or otherwise, evolve.
Monogamy was rare and always temporary, even between parents, although commitment was valued. It was thought that within traditionally monogamous relationships, "couples" hid out from the community, each other, and their lives, limiting their possibilities for a more "evolved" life. When you wanted to have a "date" with someone you were attracted to, you didn't just proposition them the next time you saw them, despite the importance of honesty. You consulted with your mentor and they consulted with your interest's mentor and them, or alternatively you just asked someone handy to ask the person you were attracted to if they were interested in getting together. This system sounds like junior high school, but the goal was to circumvent the cultural dishonesty that is so common when two people are trying to communicate about what they really might want from each other sexually. After a "date" more communication was, of course, in order. How did it go? What happened? How did it feel?
I know it all sounds programmatic and unromantic if not downright juvenile, but isn't the reality of our culture's sexual mores immature, dishonest, and dysfunctional? Drastic measures seemed in order for desperate people in our difficult world. And you really had to be desperate for a different way of life to go through all the group process surrounding every aspect of your life in this community. For me, there wasn't really any part of the community's internal social philosophy with which I disagreed. In fact, I and every other person in the group seemed to evolve sexually and intimately. I spent some of my happiest years in this community, cult or not. I saw so many beautiful people come out of their sexual shells of fear and shame and go for the pleasure and intimate connection they wanted and needed. Despite parents who were not even remotely monogamous, children seemed to grow up beautifully healthy and socially mature well beyond their years. I had the most honest, loving intimate relationship of my life there. It was a culture based on honesty and trust. Almost every day, I miss so many of the people who were a part of my years there.
It was the philosophy surrounding our relationship to the outside world that, ultimately, I just could not stomach. The world and all the people in it outside our community of fifty were viewed as the enemy "spoilers," killing themselves as well as the planet. The venom of this political philosophy and its hierarchical demands of loyalty had the effect of narrowing the world to a degree I found to be impossibly depressing. Although I loved how people within our group related to each other, I couldn't stand how the group related to the society at large.
When I went to town, I wanted to enjoy it for what it was, not feel compelled to consider it "enemy territory." Even if the mainstream culture seemed hopelessly mired in institutions and behavior patterns that were destroying the planet and our own lives, it didn't seem to me to help matters to insecurely bash every person or group who was not a part of our immediate extended cult family. It didn't serve even our own ends. People came and went with the seasons and, knowing the severity of the community's attitude towards outsiders, unless of course they were ready to move back, they were rarely heard from again. Even mentioning that you missed someone who had left was usually thought of as a form of disloyalty to the group. The heart which opened to an extraordinary degree within the community, hardened to the world outside the community.
I never could accept that attitude, although I tried so hard to reconcile what I felt with what my community thought was the "Truth." In the end, I couldn't live with what I didn't believe, no matter that I enjoyed so much about life there and that I loved so many of the people. I certainly tried, but I couldn't bring myself to sacrifice my relationship to the world in exchange for a very evolved set of communal relationships.
Lawrence Siskind was an apprentice in Lost Valley's Organic Gardening and Community program for most of 2000, and continues to work on the Talking Leaves editorial board.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox! This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."
--D.H. Lawrence [1]
We're all "bleeding at the roots" because we're all suffering from the effects of treating sex as a substance. In fact the biggest "substance abuse" of all is monogamy. One person will satisfy all your needs forever! You don't need anyone else or the earth or the sun or the stars! When put this clearly it's obvious nonsense, but this is precisely the real meaning of the concept of "romantic love" and its supposedly "correct" outcome of monogamy. The present fad of "serial monogamy," where one marries and then divorces and moves on to marry another etc., is just as bad, if not worse. All the energy is continually devoted to trying to make this particular monogamous marriage "work" and then the next one and then the next. No energy is fed back into the whole of either the culture or the place. Of course that's one of the reasons for the monogamous "ideal": it keeps the economy of the Industrial Growth Society going very well. There's no end to the "things" needed to keep it going: new hair styles, new make-up, new fashions, new appliances, new furniture, and new house, to begin the "new life" one more time!
Too often, modern "love" proves to be another form of "addiction." Instead of a relationship where two people help one another to grow, within an ever larger context, we find that many relationships are based on a need for the security of having someone always there; which means "spending as much time as possible with someone totally sensitized to one's needs...the individuals [are] hooked on someone whom they regard as an object; their need for the object, their 'love', was really a dependency," according to Peale and Brodsky, in their book, Love and Addiction. [2] Julien Puzey provides still another level, when she points out: "Anytime anything becomes an end in itself it becomes addiction. When the sexual act in itself becomes the 'end' you're in trouble, and, as with any addiction it intensifies, and the returns are less and less."
It is important to realize that dependency is not an "attribute of drugs," but rather an "attribute of people." [3] This dependency extends to addictive love. Phil Donahue states it very strongly and clearly in The Human Animal: "At a neurophysiological level, 'attachment is essentially an addictive phenomenon involving opoids'." [4] Scientific research has found that "falling in love" causes the brain to produce substances called opoids, which are indeed similar to opiates. But fortunately, "romantic love" and sex are two different things.
Sex is really the most natural thing in the world! In all species of animals, sex is used to produce young to continue the species. In the higher primates it began to be used for bonding within the group as well. We humans inherited ritualized sexual techniques for bonding from our ancestors, the chimps; naturally, we have elaborated on these techniques. In most primitive cultures such sexual rituals have become integral parts of the great festivals.
World Renewal Festivals always include human sexual rites: the renewal of life cannot occur without sexual contact. It is important to remember that the hoped for "abundance" coming out of the sexual rituals within the World Renewal Festivals is not limited to the human participants alone, but is extended to all of life in the place, that all life in that place may "blossom" to is fullest.
"Every form of life has the equal right to live and blossom" is one of the most important objectives of deep ecology, as stated by Arne Naess in 1972. [5] Fifty years earlier, D.H. Lawrence used the same wording when he wrote that all living beings must "move toward blossoming." [6] Of his contemporaries, only the perceptive Scandinavian novelist Sigrid Undset grasped the importance of Lawrence's work. She explained: "Lawrence symbolized his civilization at the moment when it reached a crisis...of population and an economic crisis." [7] Writing just before the second World War, she continued: "Much of what is happening in Europe today and yet more that will doubtless happen in the future are the brutal reactions of mass humanity to the problems which the exceptional man, the genius, D.H. Lawrence, perceived and faced and fought in his own way." Even today, in our Eurocentric world, few see as clearly as Lawrence did, the sexual roots of the problems facing the world.
In most traditional cultures human sexual activity was part of the on-going whole of all of life in that particular place. It had specific effects on the whole: positive when it contributed to the overall fertility of life as humans added their sexual activity to the ritual "increase ceremonies" of animal or plant life in the place, and negative when humans failed to keep the number of children within the limits of what that place could feed without damage. In the latter case, naturally, humans destroyed the basis of their own on-going life. Few traditional primitive cultures did this for very long. They either died out or moved elsewhere or learned the rituals to enable them to stay. This is the basis of "sacred sex," Thomas Wright tells us that: "Western culture is the only one which has no on-going concept of sacred sex." Primitive groups all over the world, as well as Taoists, had the concept of "sacred sex."
First of all, most of our sexual gestures can be traced back to care of the young as developed in birds and mammals. As Marge Midgley explains, "It provided an excellent repertory of gestures that could be used to soothe anger, to beg for help, and in every way to oil the wheels of society. Creatures that have to deal with helpless and demanding young must be capable of genuine kindness and tolerance. This makes it possible for fellow-adults to tap these resources if they behave in a childlike way." [8]
Courting birds approach each other with gaping beaks just as young birds in the nest gape for feeding. Kissing, according to Eibl-Eibesfeldt, developed out of the animal mother chewing up and passing food to the young. In his book, he has a modern ad for biscuits, showing a young man passing food to the young woman, lip to lip, which takes advantage of the sexual attributes of this action. Furthermore, flirting behavior patterns are nearly universal all over the world. Eibl-Eibesfeldt has photographed these patterns in cultures as different as Eskimo, African, and modern people. These behavior patterns are so nearly identical that he feels it is a biological pattern inherited from our animal ancestors. [9]
The higher primates made the break-through from the usual mammalian pattern in which all the females come into heat at the same time of the year, thereby creating intense rivalry among the males during this limited time. Usually the dominant male secures a harem of females thus leaving the other males to wander alone or rove in "bachelor" bands. Such activity effectively breaks off any continuity of relationship among all the members of the herd or band. In the higher primates all of this is changed. With females coming into heat throughout the year, at any one time some females are always available; copulation thus becomes an on-going activity. In fact, Schaller says that gorillas show no sexual jealousy whatsoever. Mating becomes a year round possibility; therefore sexual activity becomes a method of creating closer bonding rather than a temporary breaking-up of society as in most mammalian species.
"Understanding Chimpanzees," the first major international conference on chimpanzees to include biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, as well as primatologists, was held late in 1986 by the Chicago Academy of Science. From the point of view of how sexual encounters facilitate bonding between troops of chimpanzees, the discussion by Nancy Thompson Handler of Stonybrook was very useful. She worked with a troop of pygmy chimpanzees in Africa. On one occasion she was already at a certain spot in the forest when two different groups of pygmy chimps happened to encounter one another. They all climbed into a big fig tree and engaged in a mass copulation. She remarked: "If this is what a reunion is for pygmy chimpanzees I think chimps have a great way of saying hi." [10]
Among animals, styles of mating range from polyandry, through monogamy, to polygyny. Biologists are only recently beginning to understand the factors which favor one style over another for a particular species. Essentially it involves a complex interaction between basic genetic structures and the way that species gets its food and survives. For instance in birds, where the female carries the egg inside her body, it seems as if the male could just take off and go his own way to mate again if he wants. But in most species the male stays right there. The reason most bird species are monogamous--at least for one breeding season--is that the effort required to keep the eggs warm during the prolonged incubation time, as well as the constant feeding of the young birds in the nest, needs the cooperation of two adult birds.
For our primate ancestors, sex came to serve as a bonding mechanism within the troop. In early hominid society the females usually did the daily food gathering and the males did the occasional big hunt for meat. Since they carried over the primate use of sex as a bonding agent as well as for procreation, sexuality in general contributed to the bonding of the group. No one has explained the importance of this link between food-sharing and sexuality as well as Richard Leakey, son of the famous team of Mary and Louis Leakey who made the discoveries of early humans in Olduvai Gorge. He wrote: "Most probably, then, heightened human sexuality evolved as emotional cement...in the uniquely interdependent child-rearing bond of Homo sapiens. If our ancestors had not invented the food-sharing economy of gathering and hunting around three or so million years ago, we would be neither as intelligent as we are today, nor so interested in each other's sexuality." [11]
Now that I have "grounded" sex within its biological origins, I want to turn to a consideration of the two different strategies found necessary by different peoples as the earth became more populated.
First, it is necessary to briefly review the dynamics of this population expansion. Until quite recently, agriculture was considered to be an enormous step forward for the human race, one which vastly improved mankind's life; but, during the last few decades, new areas of research have made this idea seem very dubious indeed. Beginning with the 1967 conference on "Man the Hunter," [12] proliferating research has clearly shown the advantage of the hunting-gathering life over both the agricultural life and modern industrial culture. Until quite recently, modern hunting-gathering cultures in the most marginal land, such as the Kalahari desert, worked an average of two days a week to secure all their food, leaving vast amounts of leisure for the preferred human pursuits of dancing, music, flirting, conversation, and art. Recent research has proved that hunting and gathering provide both higher quality and more palatable food than agriculture; furthermore, crop failures cannot wipe out the entire food supply because that supply is so diverse. Only ten thousand years ago a few groups began agricultural practices, yet by two thousand years ago, the overwhelming majority of human beings lived by farming. What happened to cause this incredible shift to agriculture all over the earth in only eight thousand years? Although clues have been accumulating during the last half-century, not until 1977 did the answer become clear when Mark Cohen's book, The Food Crisis in Prehistory, was published. [13]
Drawing on more than 800 research studies, Cohen shows that human populations grew so large that hunters caused the extinction of great numbers of species of large mammals by the end of the Pleistocene, thus forcing large numbers of human beings to resort to agriculture. Some research points to the fact that climatic changes, during which living became more difficult for some animal species, also had a part in the extinction. Cohen points out that the only advantage that agriculture has over the hunting-gathering life is that it provides more calories per unit of land per unit of time and thus supports denser populations. [14] He explains that fifty species of large mammals were extinct by the mid-Pleistocene in Africa, [15] two hundred species in North and South America by the end of the Pleistocene, [16] and in Europe, the enormous herds of grazing animals were gone by about the same time. Mythologically, we can say that the hunters realized that the Mother of all Beasts no longer sent her animals among them for food.
To deal with this new situation, over a period of several thousand years, human beings developed several strategies--some of which led to "biosphere" cultures and others to "ecosystem" cultures.
One of these strategies, agriculture, required more work than hunting-gathering, thus encouraging larger families of children to provide more workers, which, in turn, meant more intensive agriculture and so on in an ever increasing spiral of scarcity, hard work, and destruction of soils. Eventually this led to enslaving other peoples as workers. These conquerors, the "biosphere" people, as Gary Snyder succinctly explains, "spread their economic system out far enough that they [could] afford to wreck one ecosystem, and keep moving on. Well, that's Rome, that's Babylon," [17] and every imperialistic culture since then, including the present Industrial Growth Society.
Biosphere cultures assumed that Nature was no longer the overflowing, abundant Mother, giving all that humans needed. She had withdrawn her plenty; the never-ending stream of animals was gone. Nature was not to be trusted anymore; therefore humans must take affairs into their own hands. Within the short time period of the last five-hundred years of the era encompassing the spread of agriculture, all the world's so-called "great ethical systems" arose, beginning with Confucius and Buddha (approximately 500 BC), through the Hebrew prophets and Plato and ending with Christianity, in the beginning of the present era (1 AD). What we really have here is the establishment of religious systems based on "ideas" out of the head of individual human beings--Buddha, Moses, Jesus, St. Paul, and others.
Turning now to "ecosystem" people, we find that instead of taking up agriculture these people moved off into marginal areas--high mountains, deserts, deep jungles, or isolated islands, and learned to pay attention--to watch carefully and to revere all of life, for it was their body, their life. They developed rituals which acknowledged the sacredness of their land, thus enabling them to remain aware of the sacred cycles of taking life to live but also of giving life back so that the whole of the land could flourish--not just one small segment of that whole, the human beings. Because their economic basis of support consisted of a limited natural region such as a watershed, within which they made their whole living, it took just a little careful attention to notice when a particular species of animal or plant became scarcer and harder to find. At such times they set up taboos limiting the kill. They began to understand that they could destroy all life in their environment by excess demands on it if there were too many human beings there; thus they came to understand that sex, too, was part of the sacred cycle. Misused it caused destruction not only within the human tribal group but on all life around them. Used with due reverence for its power it brought increased energy and unity with all other forms of life.
In the primitive cultures which developed out of the "ecosystem" way of life, based on "sacred land, sacred sex," much of the wisdom of the tribe was devoted to "walking in balance with the earth." Human population was never allowed to upset this equilibrium. Among tribal people, the birth of a child was not an "accident" left up to individual parents, but instead was regulated by ritual or contraception or abortion so that the particular child would not disturb the overall stability of the entire ecosystem--the tribe plus the rest of the community consisting of the soil, the animals, and the plants.
For "ecosystem" people it is not possible to speak of the human being as being related to the universe, but rather of a universal interrelatedness. Humanity is not the focus from which the relations flow. For instance, Dorothy Lee, in her study of the Tikopia natives, found that "an act of fondling or an embrace was not phrased as a 'demonstration' or an 'expression' of affection--that is, starting from the ego and defined in terms of the emotions of the ego, but instead as an act of sharing within a larger context." [18]
To show how this works in the deeper, sexual sense, I will give three detailed examples: in the Ute Bear Dance, sex was used to bond the widely scattered hunting bands into the tribe as a whole; in the Eskimo game of "doused lights," sex was used as an emotional cathartic; and in the final example, a modern Odawa Indian shows that the sharing of sex can contribute to the bonding of the tribe.
During most of the year, the Ute tribe was split up into small kinship groups hunting in widely separated parts of the high Rocky Mountains. Once a year the entire tribe met for the annual spring Bear Dance. They waited for the first thunder, which they felt awakened the hibernating bear in its winter den and awakened the spirit of the bear within the people. A great cave of branches, the avinkwep, was built with the opening facing the afternoon sun. At one end of the cave a round hole was dug to make an entrance into a small underground cave. Over this area a resounding basket was placed with the notched stick resting on top. When played this made a sound like thunder "spreading out over the awakening land and rumbling in the spring air." The singers closed in around this thunder and the dance began. Because the female bear chooses her mate, the woman chose which man she would dance with by plucking his sleeve. For three days the dance continued. The spirit of the bear filled the avinkwep. From time to time a couple would leave the dance and "take their blanket up into the brush of the hillside to let out the spirit of the bear and the thunder of spring that had grown too strong in them." [19] Many healings took place during this Bear Dance. At noon of the third day the Dance ended and gradually over a period of days the big camp broke up as the small hunting groups went out into the hills. A woman who plucked the sleeve of a man during the Bear Dance might visit the bushes with him for an hour, or for the entire night, or might stay with him for the entire year's hunting until the next Bear Dance, or even for "many moons." Here ritualized sex served the function of putting the individuals together again within the tribe as well as back in connection with their land through their totem animal, the Bear.
Peter Freuchen tells of an Eskimo game, "doused lights," where many people gathered together in an igloo. All the lights were extinguished so that there was total darkness. No one was allowed to say anything and all changed places continuously. At a certain signal each man grabbed the nearest woman. After a while, the lights were lit again and now innumerable jokes were made concerning the theme: "I knew all the time who you were because..." This game served a very practical purpose if bad weather kept the tribe confined for such a long time that the bleakness and loneliness of the Arctic became difficult to face. The possibility of serious emotional trouble is ever-present because such weather can mean little food or an uncertain fate, but after this ritualized sexual game is over, when the lamp is lit again, the whole group is joking and in high spirits. "A psychological explosion--with possible bloodshed--has been averted," Freuchen explains. [20]
Wilfred Pelletier is a modern Odawa Indian who left his island reserve in Canada and became a success in the white man's world, but he found it lacking so returned to his reserve. He says that his own introduction to sex was provided by a relative. "I still look on that as one of the greatest and happiest experiences of my life. From that time on, it seems to me that I screwed all the time, without letup. Not just my relatives, who were not always available, but anywhere I could find it, and it always seemed to be there...On the reservation people were honest about their feelings and their needs, and as all the resources of the community were available to those who need them, sex was not excluded. Sex was a recognized need, so nobody went without it. It was as simple as that." [21]
Finding our way back into "vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos... through ritual" [22] (as D.H. Lawrence called for in one of his final essays) is just beginning in our country; therefore it is important to emphasize two things here. Traditionally a "world renewal festival" always includes a joyous free mingling of the sexes; but, with our Eurocentric emphasis on sex as "substance"--something to be willed and limited--we are not yet in a position where we can expect a ritual use of sex to be either "free" or "joyous." So probably for at least the near future, the sexual energy (which, by nature, is always there) will be shared in the form of dances, maypoles, flirting, and teasing (traditional ways of primitive cultures to handle the potentially explosive sexual energy between people who for kinship reasons are not allowed to marry). Each of these activities do share the energy and renew it just as well as full genital sex if the sexual energy involved is glorified, fully acknowledged, and, equally important, laughed with and at. Anyone who has been to a seasonal ritual at one of the pueblos knows how important the "clowns" are during the dance. Often they have a huge, mock penis or are dressed in the most ridiculous female attire, and they often catch an unsuspecting tourist and mime intercourse, outrageously. This is what we, too, must begin allowing to happen in order to keep the important sexual energy flowing within the human group and between human and non-human in the great festivals.
It's also essential to recognize the importance of ritualized birth control. Seasonal rituals have to do with the "increase" of all beings in the place--human and non-human--in a manner that keeps the balance within the ecosystem. This obviously involves controlling human births. The Guajiro, who live in Venezuela at the present time, have made this control of human births an integral part of their female initiation rites.
As soon as a girl notices the first bleeding of menstruation she is rushed immediately to a small separate enclosure. She is given a "medicine" in the middle of her first night of seclusion. This medicine, called huawapi, "is designed to control and space pregnancies so that she will have three, or, at the most, four children during her lifetime." During the first month of her seclusion she will be given this medicine, which is a local herb, three times a day. "Later, as a married women, when she gives birth, she will take this medicine again, for three days after delivery, but no longer, for if she does she will become sterile." [23]
The great seasonal festivals, as done in traditional primitive cultures, also balance out the male and female in each person. This is very important for preventing the difficult anima and animus battles between the unconscious of men and women. As described by C.G. Jung, the animus is the male aspect inside a woman and the anima is the female aspect inside a man. In our culture these other aspects are seldom given a chance to develop fully so that when the person reaches middle age there is a real crisis. "When a man is possessed by the anima he is drawn into a dark mood, and tends to become sulky, overly sensitive, and withdrawn." In a woman, the animus (her male aspect) "typically expresses himself in judgments, generalizations, critical statements." [24] In a marriage, what eventually happens is that these two unconscious aspects of the husband and wife take over and thus vicious battles can begin over the most trivial statement while neither of the conscious persons can understand why it happens. Traditional seasonal festivals allow balancing of these energies by such actions as the men wearing women's clothes or women wearing men's clothes and both groups doing humorous burlesques of one another's actions.
In traditional cultures neither sex is as locked into a role structure as much as our Eurocentric cultures demand. In traditional cultures, when a woman is through bearing her children she automatically becomes an elder who is consulted by all the tribe because she "knows." Likewise, a man as he grows older very often takes an even greater part in the ritual of the tribe, and thus his anima or female intuitional aspect has a chance to grow. Thus the individual becomes a better person and the tribe gains from the greater understanding of the elders--both men and women.
If, instead of looking at sex as "substance," a thing done between two humans, we begin to look at it as relationship in the largest sense, then it grows and grows. Outside in nature, the sexual act may lose its limiting boundary of being "merely" between a man and a woman. It grows deeper until the power of the older "animal" brain is tapped and even the still older "reptile" brain. Out of this "extended identity" you feel your Self growing ever larger and ever deeper until the Self is "opened in the bloom of pure relationship to the sun, the entire living cosmos," [25] as D.H. Lawrence experienced on his sacred land on Lobo Mountain. In your own life, as well, the power of your sacred land can lead to sacred sex where you, too, will experience "rapture of the deep."
1 D.H. Lawrence, "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." In Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore, editors, Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and other prose works by D.H. Lawrence. New York: The Viking Press, 1968.
2 Stanton Peale and A. Brodsky, Love and Addiction. New York: New American Library, 1976, p. 10.
3 Ibid., p. 43.
4 Phil Donahue, quoting J. Panksepp, a scientist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. In Dohahue's book, The Human Animal. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985, p. 128.
5 Arne Naess, "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movements." Inquiry (1973).
6 D.H. Lawrence, "Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine." Philadelphia, 1925. Also in Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and other prose works by D.H. Lawrence, edited by Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore, New York: The Viking Press, 1968.
7 Sigrid Undset, Men, Women and Places. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939.
8 Marge Midgley, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978, p. 333.
9 Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1972, pp. 122-128 and p. 152.
10 Nancy Thompson Handler, as transcribed from a tape, ATC Series on National Public Radio, November 11, 1986, Segment #12, "Chimps I," available from NPR, Custom Tape Service, Audience Services, 2025 M. St., Washington, DC 20036.
11 Richard Leakey, People of the Lake: Mankind and its Beginnings. New York: Avon, 1978, p. 204.
12 Richard Lee and I. DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1968.
13 Mark Cohen, The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, p. 8.
14 Ibid., p. 15.
15 Ibid., p. 100.
16 Ibid., p. 181.
17 Gary Snyder, The Old Ways. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977, p. 21.
18 Dorothy Lee, Freedom and Culture. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1959.
19 Robert Emmitt, The Last War Trail. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954.
20 Peter Freuchen, Book of the Eskimos. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1961, p. 92.
21 Wilfred Pelletier, No Foreign Land, pp. 77-78.
22 D.H. Lawrence, "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover." London: Mandrake Press, 1930. (reprinted in Phoenix II, pp. 487-515)
23 Maria-Barbara Watson-Franke, "To Learn for Tomorrow: Enculturation of Girls and Its Social Importance among the Guajiro of Venezuela." In J. Wilbert, ed., Enculturation in Latin America: an Anthology. Lost Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publication, University of Los Angeles, 1976, pp. 191-211.
24 John Sanford, The Invisible Partners. Paulist Press, 1980, pp. 35, 36, 43, and 47.
25 D.H. Lawrence, "Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine."
Excerpted with permission from Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep--Concerning Deep Ecology--and Celebrating Life by Dolores LaChapelle. Copyright © 1988 Dolores LaChapelle. All rights reserved. To order call Kivaki Press, 1-800-578-5904, or write Kivaki Press, 585 East 31st St., Durango, CO 81301.
Dolores LaChapelle is an avid mountaineer, deep powder skier, T'ai Chi artist, leader of experiential ecology workshops, and director of Way of the Mountain Learning Center in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Her books include Earth Festivals (1976), Earth Wisdom (1978), Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: Rapture of the Deep (1988), and Deep Powder Snow (1993).
The Sacred as Relationship
The essence of "the sacred" is relationship. It has to do with conforming to the patterns (Chinese, Li) in nature because the patterns in nature are both within us (evolved through millennia) and without--in nature outside of us. In a good culture there is little dissonance between these two patterns. If such dissonance arises it is resolved through seasonal festivals. D.H. Lawrence, who spent his life exploring these relationships, says:
"The true God is created every time a pure relationship takes place...Blossoming means the establishing of a pure, new relationship with all the cosmos. This is the state of heaven. And it is the state of a flower, a cobra, a jenny-wren in spring, a man when he knows himself royal and crowned with the sun, with his feet gripping the core of the earth." (D.H. Lawrence, "The Crown," "Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine," in Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and other prose works by D.H. Lawrence, edited by Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore, New York: The Viking Press, 1968).
In the Chinese view of the world, all those individual things which in Western thought are named and thought of as separate are in no way so. From the Taoist point of view it is seen and recognized that each is a different manifestation of the whole and changing all the time as well. The Western world's concentrating on substance is similar to a person seeing a particular mountain peak from the main valley and studying each peak separately and accumulating massive amounts of data without ever having glimpsed the fact that each of these little peaks is part of the whole main mountain mass. The Chinese with their underlying concept of relationship were able to discern that it's all connected together and furthermore, that everything is always changing.
It's a well-known fact that the Eskimo have over twenty different words for snow. Less well-known is the fact that Polynesian peoples do not have one word for yam. They have instead, one word for a just-beginning-to-grow yam, one for a young yam, one for a green yam, one for a ripe yam, another for a yam used for one purpose, and still another when used for a different purpose. This is far from the word yam, as a substance, which is just yam. In the Polynesian languages each of the words for yam take into consideration the time of year, the length of the growing season, the time of harvest, the human uses of the yams and sometimes the needs of the yam itself. In other words, relationship. My colleague, Julien Puzey, in Salt Lake City, was trying to explain this to her class in deep ecology and getting nowhere; when suddenly an Indian in the back of the room, who had not said a word the entire quarter, spoke up and said: "The rain is on the yellow corn." And he said nothing more; he didn't have to. It was all there (for a tribal society): the season, the stage of growing of the corn (mature), the promise of food for the winter, and, or course, all the mythological connotations of corn and rain. Julien also has a new definition of genius: "Genius bypasses wasted motion and substance by directly perceiving necessary and sufficient relationship."
In a number of his works, D.H. Lawrence called for a new kind of relation between the sexes, even a new kind of marriage. In Women in Love, he has Birkin criticize stuffy--what we call "addictive"--love, and marriage: "the world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests, and stewing in its own little privacy." Again, much later he wrote this about current marriage: "What a feeble lot of compromises! It's no good talking about it: marriage...will last while our social system lasts, because it's the thing that holds our system together. But our system will collapse, and then marriage will be different--probably more tribal...as in the old pueblo system..." (Women in Love. New York: Viking Press, 1960.)
Concerning sex itself Lawrence wrote: "It is no good being sexual. That is only a form of the same static consciousness. Sex is not living till it is unconscious: and it never becomes unconscious by attending to sex. One has to face the whole of one's conscious self, and smash that." Way back in 1908 when Lawrence was trying to work his way toward his "phallic vision," he wrote that most people marry "with their soul vibrating to the note of sexual love...but love is much finer, I think, when not only the sex group of chords is attuned, but the great harmonies, and the little harmonies, of what we call religious feeling (read it widely) and ordinary sympathetic feeling." (In Harry Moore, ed., The Collected Letters, v. 1, p. 374 and p. 23.)
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
My love history began when I was quite young. It all started with the (oh, so serious) crush I had on Sarah Madland in 2nd grade. God she was cute...and smart and kind. I loved the sense of strength and purpose with which she carried herself...the lilt in her voice when she spoke...and the way I felt whenever I got within a few feet of her. I wasn't sure what I wanted with her but I knew that it had something to do with love.
I was Sarah's secret admirer for a brief yet sweet time. I had butterflies in my stomach every time I saw her. I loved that I couldn't stop thinking about her and that my thoughts about her always seemed to be such good ones. Yet it wasn't enough just to feel my feelings. I needed to take action. To this end I lovingly carved her name in a 3 x 7-inch piece of lumber upon which I painted a blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and a beautiful seven-colored rainbow. I wrapped it in Navy blue popcorn wrapping paper (without a note) and then slyly slipped it into her desk when no one was looking. (Fortunately the Gods had placed me in the desk immediately behind hers.)
I remember the moment she opened her desk and found this romantic and lovingly hand-crafted package. It involved some shock on her part, very rapid heartbeats and deep breathing on my part, and the giggling laughter and fixated interest of every other student in the classroom who had by then gathered around her desk. I don't think Sarah was used to this particular variety of attention at this stage in her short life. The rather tragic end to this romantic short story is that my "best friend" told her who put the gift in her desk! This was bad juju for sure. Sarah was embarrassed and I think a little angry about the whole incident. Now she knew whom to blame. Not to mention the fact that I was betrayed by the only person I confided in regarding the source of the mysterious gift. There was nothing "secret" about my admiration for her any more. My internal love affair with Sarah came to an abrupt end, and to this day I don't know if she liked me then or not. I do know that her passion was certainly not equal to mine. I suppose that could have been the time when I began desiring the company of older women. I concluded then that women my age just weren't ready for what I seemed ready for. I've always been ahead of my time. I also think it was then that I resolved to take a more direct approach in the future.
I'm still in love with love. But in my many experiences I have come to realize that love and relationship are indeed separate things.
"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself."
It was 1984; I was in 8th grade on the way to a movie with my best friend Kelly. Before he would agree to drive us to the mall, her father insisted that we memorize those words. Printed on a cheap plaque with sailboats and rainbows, the words meant nothing to us other than a way to get out of the house. I figured the guy was crazy or drunk, and as I look back on it, he may have been both. But now, sixteen years later, I realize that the mantra has stuck. I misinterpreted or completely ignored it pretty often, however, since I first heard it. The years following the bathroom dŽcor incident were filled with ways I gave up my inner truth in order to fit in, be popular, be liked by boys, develop relationships, and the like. I often ignored the voices in my head screaming "NO!," and pushed through, thinking a "yes" would get me what I desired. I'm not even sure I knew what it was I wanted. I think at first it took the form of a husky boyfriend in a hockey jacket, then a longhaired hippie with a van, and many other incarnations depending on the circumstances and surroundings of my life. I thought it was a relationship I was looking for, and for years I never understood why I couldn't have what I wanted or ever be satisfied by the love I received.
Somehow my idea of a relationship has been intrinsically connected with my self worth. If I'm involved, I am worthy. Someone (aside from my dear family and friends) loves me. Therefore I have been recognized and some grand scorekeeper has given me a check for each time I have been loved by a member of the opposite sex. It seems so foolish to write this. I am a beautiful, self-aware, and confident woman. I can barely believe that I am still trapped by the silly ideas perpetuated by mainstream media and culture. And yet, I also see how this view has kept me confined through many years and painful experiences.
Luckily, at some point a few years ago I started waking up about my sexuality and intimate relationships and cleared the way for a fabulous man to walk into my life. David and I have been together for over a year and a half, and the love that we share has kept my internal scorekeeper busy with enough work for the rest of my life. But aside from placating my self-worth barometer for a time, this relationship has caused me to look very honestly at my motivation for primary intimate relationships. In turn, my relationship to the words on that bathroom plaque is continuously evolving.
I experience some of the most exquisite sweetness I've ever known with Abigail. I've never felt so loved, cherished, and supported by a woman that I was with. I know that I've never loved, cherished, and supported this fully before. It is a fantastic thing to love this deeply--I've never enjoyed spending so much time with someone before. I love the surprise of our relationship. We seem so different in some fundamental ways. Yet there is something so deep and (yes, there's that word again) sweet that draws us together over and over again. The love I feel in my heart for Abigail snuck up on me. It wasn't my ego that found this woman. I felt then and feel now that it was my Spirit that led me here.
I've struggled with one issue in relationship ever since I can remember. How do I maintain intimacy with another and not lose myself? I'm sure I'm not alone in tackling this question, although at times it feels that way.
I had big plans before David and I got together. I was about to quit my job, go traveling in South America, and then come back to start grad school in the fall. But I knew Love like this didn't come knocking every day. Deciding between traveling by myself in a foreign country or being at home snuggled in the arms of my loved one was a tough choice, but my heart had no problem making the decision.
That has been one of the biggest gifts that I have gained from this relationship: a deeper understanding of what it means to listen to my heart. But listening to my heart to the effect of giving up my exciting plans was definitely not what I or my feminist friends and coworkers had in mind. I had vowed to myself not to compromise for relationship anymore. The choices I made about my life path at that time were exactly the opposite of what I would have advised any friend in a similar situation ("Don't change your plans for a man"; "Make sure you do what furthers your future, not only the future of a possibly fleeting relationship"...). And yet, looking back, I know that this time I made the perfect choice. Not because the relationship has lasted thus far, but because I gave myself to an experience that I knew I had a deep desire to explore.
And that is what it comes down to, doesn't it? Recognizing your own heart's desire and acting upon it. This is the place where David and I are slowly but surely learning how to be true partners, walking side by side and supporting each other's choices. It can be really scary when we face an obstacle that seems as if it could tear us apart. I've witnessed our tendency to condemn the other for threatening the safety of our relationship. And in those moments it seems as if the entire world might end if either of us were to make the "wrong" choice. Yet in my heart and soul I know the power that we each hold individually. I am continuously learning to trust that regardless of our relationship status, our own essence and power will not be compromised.
I've had the idea for a long time that one function of intimate partners is to balance the extremes of the other. With Abigail and me, that meant balancing my more ethereal, spiritually-oriented qualities with her more Earthly, pragmatic qualities. I've spent most of our relationship working on becoming more pragmatic and ambitious. In turn, I've had my own agenda to assist Abigail in taking on the spiritually and metaphysically inclined aspects of my nature.
This has been an old pattern of mine. I've had a strong tendency to become energetically and emotionally one with the person I'm with. The problem with this is that I have a tendency to overdo it. I merge away my distinctness, my sovereignty, and my power. Here lies the paradox of a healthy relationship. The desire to merge with the beloved is kindred with our desire to merge with the divine. Yet our desire for individuation, sovereignty, and freedom is one of the most basic expressions of what it is to be human. Both of these drives are innate. I suppose we're touching on one of the core conundrums of all humanity here. My mind seems to handle all of it without a hitch. My body and emotions on a daily basis are another matter.
I'm now coming to the conclusion that Abigail isn't supposed to become more like me, take on my traits, or incorporate more of my perspectives. Nor am I supposed to do the same in regards to her. Instead, each of our jobs is to invest in our own uniqueness.
That investing in our own uniqueness thing can sure get a bit tricky though. For example, I find it hard not to judge (since of course, my way is the right way; sometimes it just takes David a little longer to see it). But I believe it is our desire to develop and nurture our own individuality that makes our relationship work and keeps our love flowing. It's the times when I forget that David is not just an extension of myself that I forget the magic of our union.
On some days, when I guess I have nothing better to do, it seems to be my job to plan his life while also structuring and figuring out my own. However, he doesn't necessarily appreciate my desire to have "it all figured out," especially not his own affairs. I find it tricky balancing my knack for navigating in the material realms with my somewhat neurotic desires to control my surroundings (my partner included). It doesn't help either, when we let our past experiences with others (parents, lovers, friends) color our interactions with each other. That is where it gets the trickiest, learning to distinguish when we are relating to each other and when we are reacting to a similar situation from our past. Often it takes some time and a little reflection to see ourselves clearly.
It is in those moments of reflection, when I step back and see his beauty apart from my own, that I am truly thankful for the gifts that David brings to me and to the world. It comes down to simply recognizing and remembering. Recognizing that he is not here to fix me, to entertain me, or to make me whole. Remembering that I am whole unto myself and that at least for now, I have found a beautiful friend to journey with.
For the first several months Abigail and I were together the experience we had bordered on the idyllic. Idyllic in the sense that we couldn't get enough of each other, never seemed to get into any fights, and had more fun together than either of us had with anyone else. We existed in a state where our relationship was our primary source of nourishment. But it became apparent that this way of being was fragile and inevitably unsustainable. The re-assertion of each of our own individuality forced us into a position where our relationship would either have to change radically or end as we knew it.
In a way, both those things have happened.
Throughout our relationship we have been able to rely on various tools of spiritual and emotional growth. Some of these tools we each brought with us to the relationship and some we developed and learned together through participating in the Naka-Ima workshops at Lost Valley. The principle teachings of Naka-Ima are based on honest communication and letting go of attachments--those things from our past that keep us stuck in old and unpleasant patterns. These two aspects, as well as the community of friends and support that we have developed through the workshops, have become key elements to the health of our relationship and our individual selves. While we practice honest communication and the art of letting go throughout our daily lives, each time we assist at one of the courses or participate in a related workshop, we are called to a deeper level of understanding and utilizing these concepts. Each time we travel to Lost Valley, we expose and explore our relationship and ourselves in deeper and more honest ways. The layers of the onion keep peeling away as we get closer and closer to our core.
Most recently we spent time at Lost Valley co-creating and participating in the Naka-Ima Summer Arts Camp--a weekend filled with heartfelt interactions, creativity, play, honesty, and community. Since David and I had been experiencing an especially sweet and playful time together during the first few days of our stay, I was struck when I felt his energies pulling away from me one evening. I knew something must have come up in the afternoon workshop he had just participated in. When he said we had to talk, I knew what was coming and yet still felt a sinking feeling in my belly...that feeling like I was going to get the "breakup" talk and he had just changed his mind--I really wasn't that lovable after all.
Well, it wasn't exactly that, but he really was making a shift in the way he was relating to me. In fact, something came up so strongly for him that he was considering the idea of "opening up" our relationship to other people--an idea that I do not think would be a healthy way for me to be in relationship. While this wasn't the first time this subject had come up, this time we obviously had very different ideas about what was going to work for us.
Initially I was devastated. I felt betrayed, abandoned, disrespected, unlovable, ugly, and ashamed. Ashamed because I was unwilling to try something that seems to work for some self-aware, sexually liberated people, and also ashamed because I believed that his desires were a direct reflection of my worth as a lover and partner.
While we were talking this through, the Arts Camp talent show had started. Actually, it would be inaccurate to call it a talent show. It was more a get-on-stage-show-us-yourself-through-some-form-of-artistic-expression-and-we-will-love-and-appreciate-you-and-reflect-back-what-we-see sort of show. Anyway, despite my emotional state, I really didn't want to miss the show. So David and I hugged and cried together, and then I walked in tears into the "theater." It was a magical evening. Each person who shared did so with such honest warmth and beauty, and I cried loud and hard throughout the whole performance. That's what's incredible about Naka-Ima: it is fine to be exactly how you are! Feeling your feelings as they come up and recognizing that it really is ok to let yourself be seen--your pain as well (and certainly not to the exclusion of) your joy. I was given lots of love and support in that room. Not the doting or panicked "are you ok? What's wrong" sort of support, but a warm glance, a solid and loving hand on my back. I knew that I could grab any one of the forty people in the room and they would be a supportive friend. It felt incredible and I began to feel less and less ashamed.
Later that evening, I came to a powerful realization. Something shifted in me and it suddenly didn't matter what David did or didn't do. This wasn't about him dumping me and me needing to protect myself and pick up the pieces of my broken heart. In fact, this wasn't about him at all. This was about me consciously creating my life. This was a perfect opportunity for me to look at all of the ways in which I was making decisions based on maintaining this "amazing relationship," ways in which I had sacrificed things that I wanted to do for fear of what might happen to "us." This was an opportunity to be clear about my needs and recognize that I didn't need anyone else to fill them.
Telling the truth can be terrifying. It scares me because I have no idea what that act may lead to.
During the first days of the Arts Camp I was filled with a sense of wholeness I hadn't felt in a long time. What was so frightening was that the wholeness I felt came from acknowledging a truth that had the potential to end the most beautiful relationship I've ever been a part of.
The truth was I wanted to open up the relationship and explore emotional and sexual intimacy with other people. This desire had been one that Abigail and I had discussed for a long time. It had become clear by this point that she had no interest in opening up the relationship and that our relationship would be threatened if I wanted to explore intimacy with others.
It was very difficult for me to face this. I didn't want us to break up. Contrary to what it seemed natural for her to conclude (based on my desire for intimacy with others in addition to her), I had never felt more excited about the deepening love between us.
The process we went through was intense. I felt so transparent, raw, scared, and yet charged by the energy that was flowing through me as I continued to uncover the truth within me. This was so different from anything I'd gone through before. The support we received from our close friends touched me deeply. I could not imagine a more vulnerable time in which to come to my community. For a while it seemed that our desires were completely at odds. Then this magical thing happened....
I realized something for the very first time.
Relationship to me has always been associated with suppressing my full self. When all of my past romantic relationships have ended I've thrived in the weeks and months that followed. Huge bursts of creative and spiritual energy flowed through me and my essence shined forth, as if finally emerging after months behind a cloud. I always felt strange and somewhat guilty about this. Shouldn't I be grieving? But it was impossible for me to start grieving fully in the weeks that followed a break-up. I was too busy feeling elated and free. In each case, time passed and then I would begin to grieve the loss in full.
I always thought it had to do with the woman I was with. I never understood that the source of this experience was me.
Through this process with Abigail I saw that I could end the cycle once and for all. I saw that I could own my own power, my path, and my truth without ending our relationship. It was time to reclaim all that creative juice I'd abandoned and let it flow right here, right now.
The whole context of my desire for intimacy with others changed when I made this choice. I can't say exactly how. I know that I'm not feeling compelled to explore multiple relationships right now. I also know that I feel more alive, free, and myself than I ever have before. I used to view every single one of my choices through the lens of my relationship before any other consideration. Now it's the consideration of my truth, my spiritual connection, and my creativity that comes first. I've reclaimed something precious. For me, now is a time of deepening into this new experience.
It's still wonderful to become one with my beloved. But now I know that coming back to my self fully is just as blissful. Now, in each place, I have much more to give.
Abigail Leeder and David Margoliash are new residents exploring membership at Lost Valley Educational Center.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Winter 2001
Volume 10, Number 3
Relationship
I was just out of Paramedic school, working in Daytona Beach, Florida and was getting ready to transport my latest patient to a local funeral home. At that time (1974) my role as medic often involved transporting the dead body of the patient I had just "lost" to their final switching station before burial. For me, it was bad enough to fail, let alone have to face the embarrassment of having to say to the funeral director, "Yup, here's some more business for you. Did this one myself!"
This had been a particularly wrenching call that led me, on a beautiful sunset of a Floridian evening, to pace back and forth in a hospital parking lot, fist raised to the heavens, yelling at the top of my lungs and ranting and raging at the God who put me in the position of killing one of my patients.
Just a scant hour before, I was approaching the fifth-story hotel room of a German couple who had come to tour Florida and had happened to end up in my "call area." My rookie EMT partner and I had been dispatched to a "woman down" call. I cautioned him at the door to just stand still and be silent for a moment before knocking on it. "Listen. First listen. Let's you know if there's a fight or a dog or something not very fun to contend with."
When we did enter, we were greeted by a man in his mid-fifties sitting in his underwear on a couch in a small sitting room, nursing a drink. He casually pointed to the bathroom. "She's been in there a while," he said. "How long?" I asked as I quickly moved towards it. "Oh, maybe a half hour."
I was moving with a tempered urgency. My gut said there wasn't anything serious going on, but my logic said, given the circumstances so far, anything could still be up. In the bathroom, I found a middle-aged woman hugging the toilet bowl. There was quite a bit of frothy, non-bloodied matter in the bowl. I wondered about alcohol, so I put my head close to the bowl to smell. I have a very poor sense of smell from a childhood accident (my older brother smashed me on the nose with the edge of a tennis racket!), and often found myself over-extending myself and giving pause to witnesses in the process.
Alcohol. I was sure. The woman was covered in clammy sweat, weak, but could talk. I asked her if she had been drinking. She said "Just a little with dinner," with a slur and her husband called out shakily in a thick German accent, "Yah, she don't drink much." "Right," I said to myself. I asked about pain and she said her jaw was aching and I thought to myself if I puked that much, mine'd be too.
Her pulse was weak and thready, and she had a fairly snug blouse on that seemed to account for an almost indecipherable blood pressure. Had it been a very busy night, I might very well have advised the couple to do what I had found myself doing after a long night with too much rum and an intimate encounter with the Porcelain God, "Just let her sleep it off...she'll be fine." Still, there was something not too comfortable to me about the whole mess, and I didn't feel terribly secure about leaving her in her husband's care. I had my partner help me get her onto the gurney.
On the way to the hospital, the woman looking fairly asleep, I decided to hook her up to my cardiac monitor. I hadn't used it at the hotel room because the space immediately around the patient in the bathroom was quite compact and I didn't see the sense of going through the gyrations necessary to hook her up after I figured out what was going on. Still I thought to myself it wouldn't hurt to check. Sure enough, the image that greeted me on the monitor was an extremely slow rhythm with a number of wide, dangerous, extra beats interposed between the weak normal pulses--a highly critical configuration that placed the woman on death's doorstep.
Suddenly springing to action, I yelled out to my partner, who was driving, "Step up to Code Three! I've got an arrest cooking here!" I ripped off her blouse and took another blood pressure...of course it was indecipherable in the moving ambulance, yet I knew in my heart that functionally, there was none. I juggled oxygen, managed to start an intravenous line and administer intravenous adrenaline to boost the heart rate and called in to the hospital to "set up for impending cardiac arrest!"
By the time we arrived at the hospital, I was in full gear and torturing myself over missing the call, diagnosing the woman as a simple drunk rather than recognizing all of the earmarks of a myocardial infarction. I was uncharacteristically jittery and shaking, yet feeling better because her heartbeat had speeded up since I administered the adrenaline and I was SURE I heard a bit of a blood pressure, and the woman was conscious--barely but noticeably.
There was hope, at any rate, and then, to my surprise, we were met at the door by a gaggle of men and a woman in doctor's garb. They all surrounded the gurney as we wheeled the woman in, and I breathed a sigh of relief. In the "Cardiac Room" of the Emergency ward, the woman was transferred onto the hospital stretcher and I stood off in the corner as I saw the "team" take over at about the same time as my patient lost consciousness.
It took me perhaps two whole minutes to figure out what was going on. What I had initially interpreted as concerted action by professionals was, in fact, a bunch of interns being "led" by a physician who hadn't spent more than maybe two shifts in an emergency room, all working off of panicked textbook knowledge to save this "what a great case to get practice on." Boy! were they screwing everything up.
Logistically, I had given up my place right by the patient, so now, I had to find a way to maneuver myself closer and assert myself more fully. In the brief period of time that I realized everything was amiss until the moment I got into a position to do something, the "gang" administered two wrong drugs that threw the woman into cardiac arrest, neglected to intubate her to protect her airway before she vomited and stopped breathing, and defibrillated her twice in rapid succession, both times with the paddles placed in the wrong position on her chest so that the electrical current moved in the opposite direction necessary to revive her heart.
My head reverberated with, "OhMiGod, they're giving her atropine and her heart's slowing even more, her B.P.'s dropping fast, the paddles are being charged to 200 Joules and she needs 400 and they're, Oh, Shit, they're blowing apart her heart and it's my fault!!"
And then it was all over and there was nothing I could have done except change the past, and that wasn't an option. The woman was dead.
Oh, how I worked to absolve myself! After all, hadn't I caught my mistake and got that line in, and didn't she actually have a blood pressure by the time we got her in? but then again, I missed it and cost her the most crucial seconds of her life, and then, I stood aside and basically relinquished my responsibility to a bunch of dolts. I was on a roller-coaster ride of guilt.
And in that time, I had to comfort myself with knowing the woman's time was up. I was just an impersonal part of a string of impersonal fuck-ups that followed through to the woman's demise. Nothing personal. In this time of the Universe, it was her time to leave. Period. I happened to be an impersonal agent of that death, just like each of us is inextricably linked with the death of everything that ever was or ever will be. It wasn't personal at all.
Yet, at the same time, I was being used (Goddammit!) as a tool that was clearly an instrument that would cause serious ripples to course through the life of every person that the poor woman's life had touched. Some Higher Power Somewhere knew damn well of my specific weaknesses and arrogance and bad nose and used it all to full advantage to bring one more soul back home. How very Perfect! It had to have been all about me because any other team of Medics in the City that night would have saved her. It was personal.
Regardless, an unnecessary loss was heaped on others and I was the key factor. I had to live with this for a long time. These moments affected every call I had since. From that day forward--for the remaining nine years of my career as a paramedic--I never made another mistake like it again. I would not make any move with my patients until I was sure I was as thorough as the situation would allow. My two-hour relationship with that woman who was alive when I met her and dead when I left her was instrumental in assuring that dozens of people lived. Dozens? Maybe hundreds, I never counted. That couldn't have been by design. Could it?
Today, I have no doubt in my heart that my relationship with God is impersonal, yet, I go out of my way to pay attention to what I am personally being told.
Russ Reina was on the first wave of paramedics in the country. He stayed in the field for twelve years during a time when the average "burn-out" period was three-and-a-half years. H