Dream Up an Innovative Response

Grabbed a tape I'd had for years yesterday to listen to riding in to my office: "The Wild Woman Archetype" from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves.

The tape is billed as "Myths and Stories about the Instinctual Nature of Women."

Now, I'm one who thinks that guys are pretty instinctual, too.

But it's also true that women historically have had much less freedom to exercise their/our instincts. The sexual double standard of my growing-up years, for one annoying example.

What stuck with me from what I listened to was about how to react in a crisis, or a situation where you're stuck with severe limits. What Estes advises is: don't be a martyr, be innovative. Stick with your dreams and plans and passion, and figure out ways to get where you're going, or as close as you can, even though you may be working with some tough conditions. Like financial pressure, burdensome obligations, illness, any of that stuff.

If we can't use it, we gotta figure how to work around it.

Get where we're going, anyway.




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Handling Fear of Whatever

Inspiring encouraging on-line play-anytime WebTalkRadio.Net interview on managing fear successfully:

Diane Brandon, formerly of Raleigh, now of Tennessee, on her show "Vibrant Living," talks with Jacqueline Wales, Scottish (faint but lovely accent) author of When the Crow Sings and the forthcoming Fearless Factor, as well as being the host of her own radio show, "Fearlessly Speaking."

This not-so-long conversation is a good thing to listen to in a time of dramatic economic crisis.

Wales talks about what she has been through--leaving home at 15, drugs, giving up her three-month old baby, and more-- then facing her fears to have a child many years later.

Both she and Brandon have a spiritual base to their thinking, both referring to a belief in an ultimately (though not instantly) benevolent universe, which can be a great cushion in dealing with fright.

A couple of other thoughts from Wales which I found memorable:

* "Love yourself and watch others love you more" because you're not seeking their approval and reassurance.

*"Fear is our passion dying to get out."

*Be kind to yourself when you're scared. No harsh self-talk.

And more.

What are your tactics for bold living in the current uneasiness?





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Forgetful?

I did something so breathtakingly empty-headed I can't even believe it.

(This has nothing to do with being bold at all. Just following up on my boating adventures.)

I lost my boat. My sweet little inflatable kayak, in which I have traveled as much as 8 miles in an afternoon.

I lost it by walking off and leaving it, forgetting to put it back in the trunk of my car. It always takes me two trips to get the boat and gear from water's edge back into the car. On this occasion 2 weeks ago, I simply forgot to make the second trip. Instead I got into the car and drove off.

There's some excuse in the fact that I was a little addled, because the boat had sprung a leak. I discovered about 50 feet from shore that the right side was deflating fast. It was not a convenient day for swimming because, in spite of the 80+ degree weather I was wearing knee high rubber boots because I had a cut on my leg that wasn't supposed to get wet. But I got to shore with no problem because I was close and the wind and water were strongly heading that way.

I hadn't realized that if one of the compartments of the boat were to go flat, it would no longer be a boat, it would be a sort of raft. So perhaps I was unconsciously feeling "let down" and annoyed and thus walked off.

Sure didn't mean to leave it there.

Now I've posted signs at the boat ramp, called four government agencies, felt like a crestfallen fool. Somewhat forgiven myself.

The other excuse in this matter (other than aging) is that I take a wee bit of medicine for obsessive compulsive disorder which is supposed to help a person not check locks and burners over and over. Well, it can also keep a person from checking once. I override this with extra care in anything that has to do with work or driving, making sure not to get Drano confused with a soft drink. But I didn't know I had to use extra care to remember to pack up my boat. Damn!

Well, now I'm alerted. Have stepped up the mindfulness meditation.

Here's a photo from a few weeks back of my little kayak. Do let me know if you see it.

I keep telling myself that a needy family with 18 children found it abandoned and patched it and is enjoying it so much that I wouldn't even want to reclaim it if I could see them.







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Relaxation Strategy: Letting Go a Little

The single boldest thing I could do (that would be useful) would be to get rid of my "Don't Tread On Me" reflex.

It would increase the back and forth between my inner and outer worlds, which is awfully good for a writer or a person.

But I've always liked my DTOM reflex, which makes it all the harder to let it diminish a bit. (I almost said "get a grip on it.")

However, I think I've made my point with that stuff now, and would do well to ease off.

The advantages would be:
*greater ease of mind
*less tension of neck, shoulders, and jaw muscles
*energy to spare
*maybe fewer book drafts, maybe more forceful writing
*no unpleasant incidents at the dentist's, or need for expensive nitrous
*maybe fewer allergies

The disadvantages:
*possible weight gain due to loss of tension
*possible need to eat less chocolate because of weight gain
*no excuse for drug trips while having my teeth cleaned
*I might get invited to more committees and parties and have to say "no" more
*loss of a familiar way of being

Irrational reasons I haven't done this already:
*someone might infiltrate their wrong opinions into my head
*if I'm not sufficiently separate, I might blur with other people and they'd get all the credit for anything good I do--or just not notice me enough
*I might lose my originality
*someone might drag me into stuff I'm not interested in or cause me to run late or make some dreadful error
Well,you get the idea... In writing this, I'm starting to get it too.

But getting the idea is different from actually relaxing my inner sentry system that I'm not even conscious of.

My strategy for getting rid of the Don't Tread On Me reflex:
*trusting that mere intent will help some
*meditation every day
*vigorous exercise (15 mins of jump rope a day)
*not letting too much build up unsaid
*noting how unappealing wariness is in others

I'll think of other things later, I expect. But that's enough to keep me busy for now.







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Clay Gay and Talking

No one has the moral obligation to announce his or her sexual orientation to People Magazine.

However, I think it's a cool thing--i.e., admirably bold--that singer and local Raleigh boy Clay Aiken has just done that. His reasoning: he just had a baby (in vitro fertilization with a friend), and he wants to set a good example. "I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things," he says in the new issue of the magazine.

Coming out these days might seem like a low-impact decision--if you're not gay, famous, and a born-again Christian. Aiken is all of these, and may lose some Clay-mates, as his fans are sometimes called.

"'We congratulate Clay for making this decision and for setting an example for others and his family,' said Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. 'As we're seeing, more and more gay people, including celebrities, are living openly and honestly, and this has tremendous impact in terms of creating awareness, understanding and acceptance.'"




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Nervous Campaigning: Part 2

So I set out with my clipboard yesterday to go door-to-door looking for Obama supporters who would like to volunteer. (Would you like to volunteer? If so, click here to get started.)

I was pretty uneasy about it. And it turned out to be both difficult and fine.

First, I had wrongly and embarrassingly assumed that I was assigned to a druggy street just because it was in a generally low income area of the city.

Wrong! I apologize! This was prejudice on my part! Prejudice I foolishly didn't think I had!

It was a quiet, pleasant, largely black neighborhood, with a pedestrian traffic of mothers and babies in strollers and college students from the nearby campus. There were no bars on any windows. And the only person on my list I could find was a fortyish man who was patient enough to answer my questions and tell me he supports Obama, though he was too busy to do any volunteering.

The difficult part of my job: most of my list turned out to be the college students. And the only address I had for them was the street number of an entire campus, the historically black Shaw University. No actual housing addresses. A girl on campus told me the best time to find students between classes and who to call on the staff for help. But it's a big school.

This would be an easy job if I'd been asked to find any twenty students, but I'm looking for a particular twenty.

I enjoyed my clipboard expedition. And I'm working on figuring out how to do this.

I do have one remaining hesitation: is a 59 year-old white woman the most inspiring person to rally these students to volunteer?




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My Nervous Effort to Campaign

You remember that list of doors to knock on I downloaded from the Obama website? I said I was all excited about getting out and doing this.

Well, I'm going out again for the second time in a few minutes and I'm not excited. My first foray was locked doors and no answer, except for a woman who answered a buzz over a speaker but didn't say anything I could understand. Not very fruitful. No big help to my cause.

My other addresses--19 of them--are all on one street and it's a bars-on-the-windows kind of street about six blocks from my office. If I had good sense, I'd get somebody to go with me, but that's a lot of trouble and I just want to get this list done, and go back to the comfort of campaigning by phone and blog.

The Bold thing would be to get set up to do this canvassing right, with a partner, going at the best time of day. Which is not how Bold is usually envisioned.

But at least I'm going to get it done.

Unless I change my mind.

I'll let you know tomorrow.




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Hockey Mamas for Obama

Report from Alaska:

"...In Anchorage , if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it's a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there ... we'll be doing good....

Never have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn't happen here.

... Passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered....

So, if you've been doing the math… Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin's rally that got all the national media coverage!"





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The Courage of a Real ER Doctor

It takes a bold man to be an ER doc. Paul Austin works rotating shifts in a Durham, NC, hospital emergency room. His book, Something for the Pain, just out from W.W. Norton, tells not the TV version, but the real grit of what that work is like. And what it's like to have that job and a family too: wife, three kids, one with Downs.

I confess to a bias because Paul has gotten some feedback from me over the years through my consulting services for writers. I've loved this book from way back.

And this writer-doctor is astonishingly bold. If he's not telling the whole truth, I can't imagine what he's holding back.

I just met his wife last night for the first time at his debut reading at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. I said to her, "I feel like I know you...." She said, "A lot of people feel like they know me now."

To mention details of his story, from idealism to hard-boiled callusness and back, would almost be reductive. You need to read this, see it all in the context of sleep deprivation, with death ever near, and on long shifts in which every second makes a difference. And some of the patients are angry, some are hoping to get drugs, some are violent, some have devastated families, one had no one (even his mother wouldn't come pick him up.)

Someone from the audience asked Paul how he managed worry over making mistakes. He said he used to worry when he worked at a pizza place that he might burn the pizza. Since he was going to stay keyed-up and tense anyway, he might as well go for broke, do something where the worrying made more sense, and all that effort and angst could go toward a better cause.

Helen Keller said much the same thing: essentially, it's all risky, so get on out there and do the interesting stuff.

And read this book: Something for the Pain by Paul Austin.




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The Palin-bin Laden Debate

Here's the promised argument I received by e-mail about why I shouldn't have posted an item two days ago which I titled "Osama bin Palin." (The idea was that both Palin and bin Laden want to force their world-view on others, though they use different means.)



"The problem with this pointed association of the ideology of Sarah Palin to Osama bin Laden is that - so far as we know - Sarah Palin has only threatened to squelch our liberties, but she hasn't actually committed genocide. There is probably no one who dislikes or despises George W. Bush more than I, but when I read the diatribes of well-meaning people of his favorable comparison to Hitler, I have to just accept that the thought the diatribe is intentional in its passion, it misses the opportunity for intellectual discourse with others that leads to problem-solving. It shuts a definitive soundbite door on the opportunity to use logic to evaluate the problem and determine a logical way to address it.

...It's the same sort of rhetoric Conservatives use to make their points - fill people with succinct opinions and do it all in just a few words ... the more dramatic, the better. I realize the title "Osama bin Palin" is yours and it is overtly funny. But the comments inherent in the title and the sentiments are sensational and unsubstantiated in a way that discredits the very smart and savvy nature of your blog (I respectfully submit)."


Now, I do favor good pithy soundbites. I want them to be true and memorable. They make a difference in campaigns.

However, I don't want to rant; it isn't effective.

Thoughts from you on what is decently bold in a campaign as important as this one?








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Campaign Anger

I got an email yesterday from a reader who wished I hadn't written such an aggressive post as the previous one titled "Osama bin Palen". Here's how I responded:

"You're right, of course. And I hesitated to post the piece, and then re-hesitated over my choice of inflammatory title. But I lately I've been getting exhausted by behaving judiciously in dreadfully galling circumstances.

I don't think the post did any good for the Obama cause; I don't think it did any harm either. I think it would only affect people's opinion of me, not of my candidates; and I decided I didn't mind that on this occasion. I took some pleasure in letting off steam.

Yes, it's resorting to some of the tackier tactics of opponents. No doubt about it. Guilty as charged. And for me, I do see it as an aberration -- a low-impact bit of bad behavior -- not a career strategy.

I also think that Jane was right in her specific comparison. Both Palin and bin Laden seem to want to push their own restrictive world-view on others. Their means are very different, of course.

How I wish reasoned discourse could affect this election in the next few weeks! (I like very much what Peder Zane had to say on that subject in the most recent Sunday News & Observer.) I don't think it will. I think getting out the vote is what will make the difference. And maybe Tina Fey's marvelous Saturday Night Live parody of Palin.

I do agree with you philosophically about the high road, even in matters of style. And I very much appreciate your writing. No need to hesitate at all. I expect most, if not all, reasonable people would on their best days agree with you on this. There was a notable absence of comments to that post.

(And a question: may I post your email on my site with this reply from me? I would love to continue this discussion there and perhaps get others involved Either way, thanks for pondering this and for your very thoughtful message.)

Peggy


If I do get permission, I'll post that email. And I invite and welcome continuation of this conversation here. I very much liked what Peder Zane had to say on this in Sunday's News & Observer. And I received a little while ago a piece from a psychologist arguing that Obama's idealism sets our dark side loose--our feelings of anger, resentment, etc.--leaves all that unattended. I think that's true. What we need to figure out is how to use that huge energy in a good way for a good cause. Doris Lessing has done some excellent writing on this in Prisons We Choose to Live Inside; she argues that public schools should address the fact that we all contain some angry and violent and intolerant impulses. She says we all contain some evil and need to be aware of it and educated in how to manage it nondestructively.





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Osama bin Palin

From my friend and former newspaper colleague Jane Albright:

"Sarah Palin believes that she is on God's side, so everyone else is
wrong. This puts her firmly in the same camp as Osama Bin Laden. She,
too, would like to impose her narrow world view on everyone, much as any
radical Muslim fundamentalist does.

This isn't the American Way...."

Nor is it a courageous way. No-guts living is to try to require everyone else to be and do just like me. If my way is good, it can stand comparison to other ways. It can coexist.

I like Gandhi's philosophy: "I do not want my house to be walled in on (all) sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."

I first saw this quote on a poster in the airport terminal in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, India, when I arrived there to begin my three-month stay to research my novel Sister India. It has stuck with me.

I know that I open myself here to the charge of wanting Sarah Palin to think like me. Not so. I want her to be as different from me as she wishes. I just don't want my way made illegal.

Please consider voting for American freedom.



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How to Use Your Anger

If you're feeling outraged: Use your anti-Palin pro-Obama energy to call 25 people or knock on 25 doors. I just got my list and I'm excited. Here's the info. They give you everything you need: maps, numbers, names, scripts, etc.

Taking action is good for the cause, of course; it also helps relieve the teeth-grinding discomfort of anger.


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Facing Serious Danger

The following piece is by Eve Ensler. It reached me through American history professor and author Peter Filene. I don't have permission to republish it, but I am convinced by the piece itself that Ensler wants it as widely distributed as possible.

Whatever you might think about Ensler, Filene, Palin, offshore drilling, or me, I hope you will read this. It is blunt, bold, and well thought out. I especially like this summary sentence: "I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover."


Here it is:


Drill, Drill, Drill
Eve Ensler

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a
member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned
and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for
Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact
that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or
touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.
Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against
them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin
choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this
choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to
Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the
earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening
our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous
choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates the
fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that
America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact
that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a
joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be
elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In
her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better
or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the
arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise
of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar
bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here
to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be
taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task
from God."


Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who
are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a
right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.


She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I
imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies
that makes.


Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has
tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people
who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity
and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next
president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse
populations on the earth.


Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She
has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of
wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But
when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared
in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the
end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America
has ever tried to be.


I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in
our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of
the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies
to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will
determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or
whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It
will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest
our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and
destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and
healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will
determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place
of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.


If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to
get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin
spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of
drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I
think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the
brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.


Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of
the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and
peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?




Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

TMI

This post is Too Much Information. So be forewarned.

Today, while reclining in a dental chair, I vomited with such force that my dentist (I later learned) dashed to the bathroom and shampooed her hair. I only half knew what was going on, because I was so doped on the nitrous that was supposed to relax my gag reflex.

Barely conscious, I'd felt only a little gurgle in my throat, then heard my doc say, "That was spectacular." What I knew was that I was damp and unhappy and people were dabbing at my clothes. I felt like a sick person being trundled through a carwash on a stretcher.

When I woke up, I learned how truly spectacular the event had been. I will spare you further details except to say that I borrowed a lab coat to wear and a plastic bag for my clothing. While I was in the bathroom "freshening up," staff had gathered in the front office to marvel at my capabilities and to see me off.

On the way back to my office, I stopped at a thrift shop to buy a top so I could change out of the medical outfit that, I then discovered, I had snapped up all wrong.


Now to wring meaning from this, which I like to do, especially with unpleasant experiences.

Here's what I've come to: a brief glimmer of the freedom of not being fully responsible.

I go around acting civilized and in charge about 98% of the time. This morning, by contrast, I felt undone, literally swamped, back to chaos and primordial slime. While still zonked, I had the thought: this is how it would feel to be sick and dying, too weak to do anything, but still aware. I felt how close and huge the universe-of-what-I-don't-control is all of the time. I felt amazed that it's ever possible to forget that. (See Ernest Becker's thrillingly profound Denial of Death for more about this sort of thing.)

So throwing up on my dentist simply brings me back to the old mortality thing, the business of being temporary. I've been here before very briefly. Most of the time I find a gut awareness of death to be Too Much Information.

For one thing, it's a bit insulting, since I go to so much trouble to keep my shoes lined up in my closet, and my email all answered.

I do see the potential, though, for the awareness to be liberating, not having to be in charge, but staying interested in the ride. All of which is much easier to think about in clean dry clothes.



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Necessary Courage

From Samuel Johnson (first found on a website I can't seem to get to identify itsef):

"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."

The part of that I'm focused on is that courage is basic and daily, not just for firefighters and paratroopers.

It's also crucial for life for the rest of us, at our desks, in meetings, in the car, in the kitchen, on the phone.



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Steinem on Palin

Gloria Steinem, mother of bold, speaks to Hillary Clinton supporters in an article in the L.A. Times.

"To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.'"

This comes from a woman who knows about protest, and what kind works, and what kind doesn't.


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Seeking Divine Intervention

Here's an item of a sort that I usually hesitate to speak of:

Last night I decided to ask God to help me take better care of myself, and to ask often. This change I'm after has to do with small daily practices like not having coconut popsicles (only) for dinner, skipping exercise, and generally runnng short on sleep.

The decision in itself relaxed me, which is large. That alone is a serious benefit.

I'm very curious to see how it goes from here.

I write about this, not because I think it's a bold move, but because I have to take a deep breath in order to say it aloud here. And maybe there's good reason for that. I'm not sure. But I thought I'd test the hesitation.

Making declarations of goals public usually helps to make them happen. We'll see.




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Cheating Is Chicken

An interesting correlation: college students who score highest on tests for courage are also least likely to cheat. I like that connection. The non-cheaters are the ones who are spunky enough to travel under their own steam.



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Getting Me to Do Right

Boldness is everything, at least on this blog. For me, all other virtues fall under this label.

I realized that when I decided what I wanted to write today: this weekend's big "bold" move. It was not going kayaking when thunder started rolling.

That might seem to be simply a reasonable decision (not to mention a reflexive one) rather than bold.

But I had my boat pumped up (as you see) and ready to go. I was pretty pumped up about getting out there myself. I was so tempted to go out for a few minutes anyway.




I'd heard one little rumble a while earlier, but decided it was an anomaly. Then I saw boats start coming off the lake just when I was starting to push in. One guy was wading ashore to get his car and trailer. "Did you hear thunder out there?" I asked him.

"I sure did," he said. "Some real slappers. My daughter said, 'Get me out of here.'"

So I pulled the plugs, deflating both kayak and would-be paddler.

This might seem like elementary wisdom, rather than boldness. But if I thought of it as wise or reasonable, I might not be persuaded, since wisdom can seem rather tedious to a late-middle-aged adolescent like me. If instead I think of the necessary, wise, and reasonable choice as bold, then it's easier.

Does that make sense? I'm simply making the right choice and coding it as "bold." This could work for a lot of things, I now realize. The technique definitely has possibilities: i.e., only the truly bold individual finishes returning all her phone calls today.

Parents use this sort of thinking with children: "only big girls get to...make up their own beds..."

Well, I'm starting to see the potential for using it on myself. For an artist, or anyone self-employed or working at home, skills of self-management, however seemingly silly, are crucial.





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