| Mini Progoff |
[28 Dec 2009|08:11pm] |
(Using the catagories from Intensive Journaling, as a way of looking both backwards and forwards in the final days of this year 2009.)
Persons - Generally good, except where not. The charmed inner circle of myself and Mr Sweetie remains, well, charmed! Old friends in the US have stayed in contact, or I've managed to re-kindle a few of those contacts, which is a real treat given the distance at which I live from them. "New" friends in aikido in our little town, who I mostly know four years now, have given me more confidence in my own abilities to make and maintain meatspace friendships. There's even a couple of special friends, who I get to abuse with some of the most wild of insults, all in good fun. (Of course, they tease me right back. Sometimes "black widow" when I've been especially clumsy, but recently "stress-kiekje" or "stress-chicken", or when one of the senior students was demonstrating in the place of our sensei, he called me a "lioness"... as in "I have tamed the Lioness." That sure farbled me for a bit.) Old friends in Dublin remain mostly available when I make a trip to see them, and last summer was a fabulous party at M's place, and visits with friends from my previous dojo. Relationships with my teachers and fellow students is sort of on a low flame, mostly because we're all just busy trying to get through the semester and then all at once, never see each other.
The "not" parts would mostly be family (really, zero interest in ever seeing most of them again, and the ones that might interest me would be under strictly controlled conditions and very far away from here.) But a few old relationships that, having travelled some distance from them, I can console myself as to their previous toxicity and the superior situation of no longer being in touch with such people. For the most vexing who do manage to get inside my guard, and for whatever reason I'm not ready to totally break things off, I try to remind myself not to rise to whatever bait they put out, but only to respond when there is something positive or affirming I can communicate. After all, if I'm connecting only via the Internet, I have the luxury of not obliging myself to respond.
Works - This used to be a section I really dreaded. I was stuck with "I wannabe/am a writer." For the moment, I'm "setting it free" to see if the muse will return, and focussing on things that are probably as demanding, just differently so. Studying Japanese is the hardest thing I've ever taken on; moreso as I know that while my discipline has improved, my brains have definitely declined from their best days of my mid-20's. (However, I also don't miss the hideousness that was suffering from depression and not really able to get help, because of - well, everything from lack of own courage, to pushing through others' misunderstandings in order to get help. But I'm getting ahead of myself, unless I decide that "self work" is also a work with which to dialogue.) Apart from aikido, for which I just passed my 2nd kyu exam (Yatta!!), and maintaining happy relations with Mr Sweetie, everything else is taking a firm second place. And I have my peace with that.
Body - This is the year I had to grasp the nettle, and bring into a public sphere something I'd rather have kept private: I arranged with my university to take a very reduced course load, on the basis of a "functional difficulty", namely depression. Damn, damn, DAMN but I hate having to put that out in even the limited way of the university's structures for handling such things. (And, despite that, I'm still rather cagey about mentioning it in my direct environs - the aikido people know somewhat more than the university people, and that's partly due to the warning from a departing advisor at the uni to not be too open about depression with the department...)
On the other hand, the medical side of the treatment is working very well, and continues to do so. The "insulin for diabetics" analogy very much works for me, after all the years I fruitlessly spent trying to "bootstrap", find my moral fiber, whatever. Fuck that shit, it did not work.
And, as the mentions of aikido will imply, my physical health is something I'm very happy about, for the most part. Bits of dings and pains that need a bit of looking after, but I can move and learn, and at this age I'm very happy that I even still have a waist! Even if I am somewhat wide abeam and with a wee bit of a tummy even when I contract the abdominal muscles. But I try to think good things about how well my body generally behaves, especially as I head into perimenopause.
Events, Situations and Circumstances - This would be a whole entry just by itself. (That's not quite fair - all of these catagories are: I'm being very superficial in my review, but for some odd reason this catagory is trying to privilege itself in my mind. Justifying myself to some external judge, maybe?) Our own personal circumstances are comfortable, after some years of sometimes deep nervousness of whether things are going to work out. It's a relief, but I struggle with a sense of selfishness, now. I can tithe my oregano and cumin, but I'm still very slow to embrace the bigger gifts, both the material ones I could give (even lovingly give) and the more intangible ones of time, talent, self-development for the sake of dreams and hoped-for accomplishment. There is the dark side of the urge to accomplish in the face of current events, best encapsulated by the moment Samwise Gamgee takes The One Ring, calling out how he will turn Mordor into a giant garden - realizing at that moment the seductiveness of the power the Ring seems to have offered him.
Dreams - there are the nocturnal maunderings, and the dreams of the awakened heart. I suppose I'm on okay terms with the first, and regard the second with considerably more caution. It used to be, I wouldn't allow myself to settle on a dream at all, because it wouldn't come true anyway, so why make myself vulnerable and inevitably hurt? These days, I try to listen with a gentler attitude - trying on dreams the way one might try on dresses: you can look, you don't have to buy, not until you're really, REALLY ready. And sometimes, dreams have a way of arriving in reality without my having understood they had even started the journey: this past year, I went to a party, one of these student-artist things. Spoke English, Dutch, Italian, some German and even a bit of Japanese, as differing conversation partners seemed to require. After I started on my way back home, I suddenly remembered, when I was a very small child, hearing about a woman who - said my family - could speak 5 different languages. Then they had the challenge of trying to explain to a very small American girl what exactly was a "language", when she was still quite hazy on the notion of her own being called "English". Whatever they said, or more to the point were unable to express, must have really caught my imagination, because there was always a part of me afterward that wanted to be that woman. And, at that party, I discovered that I had become her.
Society - Society, you suck. Big time. Especially in your treatment of women. I hate being afraid, and it's largely the fault of the people in aggregate who think treating women badly is actually okay. There are a lot of things I could go on about, but that's the primary one, for me.
On the other hand,... sigh, friends, internet, aikido, language learning... the list can go on and on. On a microlevel, and sometimes even on a macrolevel, something will work. My only sadness is when it comes at the price of another's happiness. I'm not yet big enough to renounce those things.
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