Schizophrenia, 6 Trains and Dropping a Story Line Before You Get Caught
January 31, 2013 § Leave a Comment
I’ve been keeping a notebook of my life as an entrepreneur, beginning with the new year. Its red leather, with big white pages.
It’s my adaptation of a Robin Sharma assignment. The goal is to more productive by through consciousness – the choice to actively pinpoint the thinking and the actions that take you off course from the kind of life you’re looking to have.
I had just finished writing in it as I stepped off the train at 2:43 on Thursday afternoon.
That was when the scene started.
I heard her before I saw her. She was mad.
“Evitar que se! evitar que se!’
When I got off the escalator I saw her swinging blows. She was all caught up beating the shit out of someone nobody else could see.
She cried out again. This time, in pain.
People watching in Manhattan works well one of two ways.
You can do it while you’re on the hustle, taking in your surroundings while you get to where you’re going.
You catch a lot that way in New York.
Or, you can do it when the folks you’re watching are doing something god awful, and you can’t bear to look away.
That kind works well because they’re too caught up in god awful doing to notice you.
I did both, that day – hustling and rubber necking together at Lex and 53rd.
I felt a lump in my throat.
There are lots of invisible someones crowding up train stations in New York. But, damn. This one was causing an unusual stir. Punching, twirling, grabbing, grappling, groping – this woman had her hands around an invisible neck! Then it was around hers! Back again!
I’ve read that schizophrenia rests in confusion about consciousness. John Campbell calls it a brain signal read as a someone you never consciously ceded power to, but took over anyway.
The real trick is that you thought you made a choice to go along.
I’ve been noticing trends as I write in my notebook. There’s people, and there’s shenpa – the Tibetan word for “getting hooked.” That’s when the going along happens. It starts in with something that didn’t matter much at all – a conflict, exchange, a tension. When I let it grow, it gets bigger. It gets too big.
That’s the deal with shenpa. You’re stuck on a thing, like a woman throwing punches on Lex and 53rd, and never boarding a train.
I get all clogged up that way, and the hours go places I don’t want them to. They go to things like confrontation and defense, explanation and argument, frustration and gossip. They go to intense emotion.
That’s the thing about social entrepreneurship – you don’t get to just go along. You have to be mindful of your work, and you have to be mindful of your life. After all, social entrepreneurship is just that – mindfulness, put together with a life committed to work that creates social good.
And, I’ve learned you can’t create any kind of good without beginning with yourself.
I’ve learned that getting wrapped up in personal conflict, petty conflict – gossip, and other things like it, isn’t innovative. It’s not smart. And, I’ve learned you can’t be innovative or smart if you’re doing those things. If you’re living small, you’re working small. That’s what I’ve seen.
I’ve also seen that learning to let of things – situations that catch you, in particular, is both. It’s innovative. It’s smart. And, it changes both the way you life, and the way you work.
In meditation we call this “dropping a story line.”
Dropping a story line begins with catching yourself – recognizing that we, as people, create stories all day long: about people, about ourselves – about interactions and future plans. Dropping the story means to stop mulling, stop trying to figure it out. It’s the art of bringing oneself back to the present moment, and the task at hand.
I believe its the secret to productivity, innovation and expansion of the heart and mind.
I believe it’s the key to the beauty that consciousness affords us. We can teach ourselves to let things go once we know the difference between what is in front of us, and what we’re imagining might be there.
We can stop getting caught.
On Friday, I sat by a woman with a gold and leather shoulder bag on the train. We exchanged compliments before a student – a girl with a certain oddness about her – sat down.
“I heard this story today,” she opened. “You wouldn’t believe how great it was.”
There was no stopping the outpouring of Snow White, and my train friend didn’t try. She smiled at the girl instead, and moved closer to listen.
Watching them, I felt the colliding of two worlds – stories, and conscious reality.
It lasted for a single stop, when the woman with the bag smiled, and shifted her weight to stand.
“What a wonderful story!” she exclaimed. “But I have to get off here.”
She winked at me, and stepped off the train.
On That One Night I Got Dropped on my Head
July 26, 2012 § 3 Comments
“Your way begins at the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into colour. DO IT NOW.”
- Rumi
I got dropped on a Brooklyn dance floor, last Friday night. Right on the cement. Right on my head.
House music, smoke machine, dancing half baked bodies and me – laid out on the dark and dirty floor like a cup of beer that splashed hard after a drunk girl smacked it with her elbow.
I laid there for a millisecond, feeling the cool floor and the feeling of this guy’s knee still holding my left thigh off the ground.
When someone stepped over my head, I reached my arm up into the smoke and the dark room and guy grabbed it and lifted me back up right.
I was a puppet on a string, then – weightless. And, him – the puppeteer, this smiling dude with arm muscles so big I couldn’t fit my hands around them.
“Hey,” I snapped. “You dropped me.”
“I’m sorry, I know,” he shook his head. “You’re light – I’m just drunk.”
We stared at each other until I laughed. Then he laughed too. “You ready?”
“Yeah.”
That was how we had started – me, dancing with my pint of Ommegang, and him squaring off and eying me up to see if I was ready to go.
I was. I’m almost always.
I stashed my drink and off we went, dancing hard and fast and aggressive until he dropped me on my head. It wasn’t club dancing – not the kind of grinding, up against you kind of dirty moves my mom calls “sex with clothes on.” She scrunches her nose when she says it, and when some guy comes up behind me at a bar, that nose is all I can think about.
Man, my mom.
But, anyways, guy danced with me like my dad does – flinging me out and pulling me in and biting his lip while he moves to the music and laughing when I fuck up cause I’ve got messy feet.
There I was in Brooklyn with muscle shoulders guy, thinking about my Dad and the way he dances with me.
What’s that word? Wholesome. That was a wholesome moment for me.
Somebody asked what I needed, this weekend. I guess he meant it nicely – but I’m on my third month in NYC, and the city moves around me even when I’m sitting still. Every 3.5 minutes there’s another someone wanting something – girl where you from, where you going, can I buy you a drink, how old are you, what do you do, can I get you a refill, is he bothering you, I like your dress, where’d you get that lipstick, damn your shoes are fine, you work in finance? you wanna get out of here? got a light, got an extra cigarette, do you smoke, do you eat meat, can I take you to dinner. Two weeks ago, it rained like hell when I got off the subway, and some drunk tried to wipe my arms off with Starbucks napkins.
We all need room, in New York. That’s why we’ve got airplane mode turned on, and our music turned up and we’re standing halfway into the intersection at rush hour.
I told meant-it-nicely guy that I need myself.
That felt weird coming out of my mouth – like I was talking for someone else. This girl I just met.
“I need to make some room for myself,” I said. “I need some things from me.”
There it was – that wholesome feeling again. I was on fire.
I left muscle shoulders guy after he dropped me cause I wanted to dance with my girlfriend, and I asked meant it nicely guy to be my friend because I think the word I was looking for, when it comes to him, was “kind.” And, I like kind.
I went home and I turned my phone on airplane mode and I sat on my floor and I drew, for the first time in years – trees and calligraphy and windows and tapas and words about what I want inside.
Tuning into myself is the most powerful drug I’ve ever tried.
You know, after all the times I ignored what I was saying, God must want to wrap my body up in a big, silk bed, and tell my body to love what it loves and hate what it hates, without bounds. God must want to cradle my brain in a big, open space and tell it to think however it wants to.
All that room, and my self would start making music – my body the bass, my mind the soprano. They’d make harmony. They’d let go. And I’d be in tune once again.
Once I figured out what I thought God would probably do with me, I got to it.
Room, right? Room to listen to what my body and my brain have been trying to say all this time I’ve been shutting them down and shutting them out and living around instead of through them.
My body likes to get up early, likes quiet, likes sun, likes avocado, can’t handle wheat too well, and needs its own full french press each morning. My body doesn’t like it when you tell her that she should cut down on caffeine. My body likes clean rooms, and it hates overhead lights. My body likes it when you smell good. My body doesn’t want to be pushed. My body likes being pulled – in, down, over – my body likes getting caught up.
And me? I’ve been pushing it too long – into boxes, under labels – under shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if it were good or bad, normal, not normal. I’ve been telling it to love things it hates. I’ve been telling it to hate things it loves.
I told my body I was sorry.
I told it that it knew better than all those other voices I listened to.
I stretched out on my floor, and I told body it could get big, again.
It didn’t believe me, at first.
My bluegrass loving, avocado eating, coffee drinking size four body that likes to laugh so hard I have to stop walking and double over needed some solidarity before it could do that.
And my brain? My brain, when it got some room – told me it felt invaded…all this apologizing and excuse making and half truth giving. My brain needs some honesty, some congruity. My brain needs for me to stop apologizing about how it works – and to start feeding it instead.
So, I quit a part time writing job I don’t like, and I took on another I knew I would. I turned my phone off for a day. I stopped making excuses for avoiding old friends. I’m telling them how I’ve changed instead.
I stopped saying I was damaged, last weekend. I started saying I was healing.
I rediscovered bluegrass and I decided I’m not cutting down on caffeine, but I won’t eat wheat anymore.
On Saturday, I gave myself a good, long dose of quiet – all by myself, in this crazy city. Not in a subway, not with the music turned up – but, here, in my own room, all wrapped up in my bed with open space around me.
On Sunday, I took another dive headfirst – but, this time, I dove into the ocean. I had left my bikini at home, but my body needed some water. So, I took off running across the sand – orange shorts, tank top, sunglasses, bracelets – I dove into the water with them all on.
I swam and I swam until I could breathe again.
After that, I worked up some horrifically placed tan lines halfway up my thighs.
What can I say…
my body was asking for some sun.
photo via jsambrose.com
getting a bigger heart
August 18, 2010 § 3 Comments
August 19, 2010
I think it’s normal life that takes you most by surprise when you’re in Africa. The email from a friend about her ex boyfriend, the catty facebook exchange between roommates at home, the wrapping up of a relationship that you were holding onto the loose ends of.
I think that, if anything, this trip has wrung out the glamor of travel for me. I think I thought it would fix my problems – take me somewhere where I would forget about everything normal and become new. Instead, I’ve lied awake thinking about petty things, and realized how small minded I can be. This trip taken up all my wild dreams about changing the world and hung them out to dry. It’s exhausted me. I expected that. What I didn’t expect is that it would feel like a healthy thing, or make me love Africa in a more tangible way than I did when she was a glowing destination on the map in front of me on an Emirates flight.
It’s the people that make me realize that everything has it’s place, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. When I hear the stories of women that have fought for their food, their safety, their children’s education – their freedom to make choices – I find that there is a deeper strength in me than I expected. It’s that strength that meets the unexpected real life situations, and gives me a kind of cushion to work with when they come. Because even though so and so hurt me, I met Halima Namugambe, co wife to Elizabeth Nalongo, and I learned about their fight to survive after the death of their wealthy husband, and it wasn’t that my problem seemed smaller, per se, it just took it’s place in a long line of other realities and situations that are teaching me what life is about. Life, not just for me, but for women around the globe.
How could I stay the same after meeting Erina Naluwooza, living in a wheelchair, and taking care of her mentally insane son, who often turns violent, forcing her to lock herself in the ajoining room of their home until he calms himself? There is a fierceness in Erina’s eyes, and a quickness in her laugh, that makes me want to be a stronger person.
I guess that’s it. My desires are changing.
Tonight, I said to Millie that I think Africa has made my heart bigger.
Some people say you shouldn’t allow yourself to feel too much, or live to openly – but I find, in Africa, that the more I let into my heart, the quicker it heals. The better I know how to manage it, and keep it whole.
The better I know how to love from its deepest parts.
