The mind and the screen

June 1, 2020

I don’t know why I am so happy that May is done. It’s just a new month but I ascribe to it new energies. May was so, so heavy and it feels good to leave that behind and wish for some lightness. 

I didn’t write yesterday. I wanted to and even took the laptop to bed at night. I wanted to explore how my karate has re-found some deep grounding within, through the lockdown. But I was too tired. The stomach flu really exhausted me. The cramps had begun Friday and by Saturday I was in gastric distress. Slow breaths and slowing the mind made them bearable. Then I had woken on Sunday and trained in a zoom session with our karatekas in Singy. All day I lay on the sofa and read – Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. I felt nostalgic for Bombay. I felt guilty that I wasn’t writing that blog post I had committed to.

I still want to explore karate and me through the covid lockdown, but new things buzzed in my head in the morning. An article one of the participants of an email group – in which we write about our covid experiences -- caught my attention. It was about Einstein, productivity and solitude. The one who shared said that this changed his thoughts on productivity. The article took me back to a memory of something my father’s spirit had said to me when I was in a very unproductive time and unhappy about it. ‘Don’t be afraid to waste your life,’ he had told me. I wanted to reexplore that as it is relevant to now.

But this morning I also had a conversation on imessage with a friend in NY about the protests around George Floyd. That felt more urgent to think/write about. I was reminded about how similar this was to things that happened during the period December through February when Dehli had witnessed all sorts of violence. What Amy Cooper did, what Politicians said, institutionalised racism, patriarchy, anti-semitism, Islamophobia came to mind. 

A friend on fb posted the video of Floyd being choked to death and another friend from India commented that it was shameful, and the man needed to be punished. The same friend had ignored a video of Indian policemen beating and kicking Muslim men while asking them to sing the national anthem. One of the men had died. The friend is a supporter of the ruling BJP – proud Islamophobes. I wondered how she didn’t see the parallels. Needless to say, those Indian policemen have not been booked or fired. 

I opened up a file of short jottings I had made in January about that violence and wanted to weave it into a set of connected stories. But now thoughts about us vultures, and prophets of doom, who keep harping on the migrants and their continued suffering also zipped in.

Sigh, the mind is vast as the Universe, thoughts whirl in it like galaxies, exploding supernovae, imploding black holes – but the page, the blank screen is finite and the process of writing, trying to capture the chaos of the mind, somewhat linear. Something I learn again and again and forget.

Prophet of Doom

May 29, 2020

I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good. I would fill a page with this sentence if I was writing in my paper journal. In the spirit of disclosure – the saboteur won again last night. I stayed up Netflix binging. Woke tired and crabby with a mind unable to focus. Not a good state to try to work in.

I don’t feel good. Sigh. Something inside feels itchy and angry. Like I want to claw out things – people’s eyes, their hearts – when I read FB posts of cheer. Also, stories of people doing good work on the migrant crisis in India. Ya, mostly that I think.

This week, the Supreme Court of India finally turned its gaze towards the migrant problems – after two months of suffering and chaos – after repeatedly dismissing petitions brought before it since March 29. The behavior of the Solicitor General has been particularly despicable. It seems so be without integrity, truth or morality. Besides calling people, drawing attention to the continuing plight of the migrants, Vultures and Prophets of Doom, he asked the Court to have the petitioners file affidavits on how they had helped this crisis before challenging the government. He called them armchair intellectuals. 

I have been called these names too. Not yet Vulture, but the rest and also anti-national. As are all of us who criticize the government. This government seems to need a whole lot of acknowledgement and praise simply to do its job – which it is doing incompetently right now. 

Arguments -- that descend into the verbal equivalent of a fist fight – I’ve had many with supporters of the government. But what is puzzling me right now is a mini conflict with a friend who I have worked extensively with against BJP agendas of hate, one who is definitely on the same side of the divide as me. 

Whenever she brings up stories of hope, stories where ordinary citizens are attempting to fill the gap the government has left, I feel myself bristling. I want to yell, ‘STOP IT. STOP IT. It is not enough. It is never enough. Stay with the fucking lack of hope. Stay with the fact that we are seeing this happening in the first place.’

And that is the crux of it. In the society we are living in these issues exist, they always existed and we have found ways to make our peace with them. During crisis the good hearts of so many are opened. They/We come out and help – but then once the crisis is done they/we go back to their/our lives. Why should we not – we too went through the stress of it and we too need to feel normal, rested, hopeful.

But there are those who will not feel normal, rested, hopeful even when this crisis is past.

How, oh how, can we change the way society is structured right now? At the very least hold the government – any government – constantly accountable to the needs of the poorest? How can we ourselves decide that no more – no more will we blind ourselves to the continued enslavement of the poorest? None of us want to live the day by day existence they do. 

Yes, I am the Voice of Doom in that sense. I find it hard to embrace the stories of hope. I tend to constantly peer into the shadows where the most suffering exists. Sometimes that is where some glimmers of change emerge. 

Saboteur in overdrive

May 29, 2020

Once I found my old blog I decided to write a post a day. I am in an inner dry state. Have been for a while. Cannot find thoughts, ideas, and the blank page has been scarier than ever -- bringing on palpitations and strong headaches when I sit with my laptop. Once when I was in a similar dry state, I wrote a post a day and it shifted things. It was a process that helped then, can it again? I don’t know. We can never enter the same river, walk the same path, twice. Or as a friend used to say, ‘eggs are broken but once.’

This is mainly a stream of reflections type of blog. I don’t write of ‘important’ things or make too much attempt to structure my work. I can do this, I thought. But two or three days have passed since and each time I have gone to the blog something metallic, tight and impenetrable descended on my head, squeezing and hurting and not allowing anything in or out. I have given up and proceeded to do something else, something less satisfying, something that I knew was a distraction from the ‘real work.’

There are times in life when the ‘real work’ is right there. Easy to know, easy to follow through on. Those are light and joyful states. When I am writing, and the words can’t stop flowing. When I am training, and the body can go on for ages. When I am reading, and I say just one more page until it is 4 am and the spouse opens a sleepy eye and says, ‘oye, go to sleep.’

This is not one of those times. Right now, my thoughts and days are scattered, discontinuous and alternating between feeling empty or filled with zooming nothings. Yesterday I had an Archimedes moment – Yikes, it’s the inner saboteur!

The saboteur archetype thrives on fear and low self-esteem. When in shadow it eggs one to self-destructive behaviour whispering – you don’t need to work today, chill, and do it tomorrow or why sleep now, stay up and watch the show you can sleep in, or whatever. 

Carolyn Myss has named the saboteur as one of the four survival archetypes. I thought hmm… ya, it would be active right now. It feels like a time when survival issues float within even when I feel safe and fed in my home. Lots of fears drift in and out of my body and mind. 

My saboteur is tall and slim, dressed slickly -- waistcoat and pocket watch. He is a man with a soothing voice whose face is always in darkness even when it is bright. He is barely visible but always present right now. His efforts to tear me town, label me useless, have been very successful these days. But last night though he purred in my ear, ‘watch another episode, it’s not that late.’ I turned off the tv and read a few pages of the e-book that I have barely read a line of all month. And here I am today and hope to will be tomorrow too. 

I am going to write everyday until... 

Two dreams and a beginning

May 25, 2020 

 Last night I had a dream… 

It was dark and I was outside a dilapidated building, it may have been a hotel at one time, in a seedy part of town. There were people in there that were being held – drugged and trafficked. I, along with two others, was trying to save them. We split up, they stuck together, and I was alone. We met up on a higher floor where the people were being held. The two, a woman and a man, had found them and were ushering them out. I stayed behind to stake out and distract anyone who came. Suddenly I was the only one on the floor and a man, the drugger/trafficker appeared. He cornered me into a room.

An old fear this one, of being held and sold as a sex slave. Brain numbed, body misused, no control over anything. Day after night after day. 

The previous night I had dreamed a similar dream…

An older friend was being held in a house. A very slick place with beautiful furniture. We had gone there for a party and she has gone upstairs – a place which I was too scared to go to – and then disappeared. I had run away but later gone back to find her. A big woman stopped me from going upstairs, but I yelled my friends name. A man grabbed me. I kept yelling saying I wanted to go upstairs. My friend staggered down. She had a nosebleed. She was obviously drugged. 

Rich dreams, many people, many parts, each one me – the drugged one, the rescuer, the abuser. Also the shabby hotel and the slick home. Closer and further from consciousness. I need a dialogue with each.

Much to explore here -- but the one thing that stood out was about being drugged. I have been feeling drugged for a while. There are moments when I suddenly feel alert but mostly -- since the covid stats and stories from different parts of the world began exploding daily -- I feel a part of me, my brain, my heart, have turned the intensity dial to low. It’s much too much at times. All too confusing. Feelings and impressions and sensations not always my own keep me submerged. 

It is a raw, exposed thing – this sharing of personal stuff on a public blog. It is an experiment. I don’t remember why I started writing that blog, I don’t remember why I stopped. I remember it was private at one time and then not. I haven’t written on this blog for five years. Strange to share dreams on my first post back, but they are one thing that wake me up. I think many of us are having strange dreams. 

One of my dreams shifted to another scene…

I was being driven along a dark road with low visibility. Suddenly it opened on the very edge of a cliff. It was dawn. I saw below a vast, alive ocean. There were huge steps cut into the cliff that people were clambering down.

It is a strange time and history will record the big picture. Our personal stories through this time are important. Our daily struggles, musings, hopes and fears. I will start writing here about mine. Would love to hear yours. 

And 2015 is here

I had forgotten I had a blog. Something reminded me and I hope to write about it in a later post, but I found this draft from 2015 on the blog and decided to press publish. I read the post I wrote at the end of 2015 -- the last one on this blog and this one is the beginning of 2015. It wasnt the year I thought it might be at all... Just like 2020, for all us.
Added today -- May 25th, 2020

Old draft

And 2015 is here. It slid in slowly and seamlessly without much that announced it's arrival within myself.  As usual there is a need to look back, make sense of the previous year, find patterns and even label it in some way. Yet, 2014 defied being pinned down in the usual ways i look back and describe years even though there are months that i can group together and say yes, this was the essence of those.

January to March the theme was bodily healing with the goal of getting through the annual Koh Samui gasshuku and getting my nidan.  2014 began with debilitating back aches and knee pain that lead to days when i dreaded getting out of bed. Visits to the physio, daily exercise for both and slow, ever so slow training characterised the days. I achieved both goals eventually but my biggest learning of this time was something so unexpected. 

It was saturday, the second last day of the gasshuku and we lined up to do our test at 5:00. Sweat threaded down my neck even though the sun and the heat were slowly setting Of course I was nervous but i also knew that the week had prepared me and all i had to do was be present now. I did the best i could do, even relaxing and having fun by the time we arrived at the bag work, the kicks and hiji's seemed easy now. We finished our hundred crunches, push ups and samui star jumps and lined up again, heart thudding i stood there, full of hope just wanting the tension to end. Pass or fail it needed to be done. 

But Sensei had other plans, he announced the results of the kyu grades but held back the dan grade results. I was gutted, i needed to know where three months of perseverance had got me and i spoilt the evening for myself. Tormented all night with all kinds of emotional devils - hopelessness, doubt, anger - i could barely smile in the morning. The training shifted my mood and eventually the tension ended but i hated myself for the places i had allowed my mind to roam during the night and exhaust me so that i could barely enjoy my achievement. Something flashed through my mind - i could have made the choice of just feeling satisfied that i had done what i had set out to and had a great evening. in the end really that was what really mattered. It would have been a different last evening. 

The next six months were for emotional healing. I dug deep, wrote and rewrote my memoir of therapeutic abuse. The focus just finding my story and i found a deadline for myself, vowed to enter it to a memoir competition. Months of reconnecting to people and parts of myself that i had cut off - either fully or partially, allowing myself to be vulnerable, apologising, forgiving and recognising when there was nothing to forgive. A time of really knowing who i was, who i had become and the values really important to me. When the date to send the memoir arrived, i knew that though i had got what i needed from it - it was still far from being ready for a competition. Yet i sent it off as a symbol of both being done with it and of acknowledging my achievement. 

The last quarter was the richest, bringing together elements from the past and launching me into the future. Karate camp in Jaipur tied up the karate thread of the year, i trained, i met friends, i could acknowledge that i had managed to keep the club going after Sensei left. I had been able to tap into the collective knowledge and people were still enjoying the training. I finally found an indoor space once i returned. 

But i also got a glimpse of the possible future of bringing together my creativity and my activism. Re-writing myths really began to look like it could begin to be a bigger movement. In Bombay i found the group i needed to go deeper into the work and after wider. Here i found a way to start getting people to think about myths and who they have unconsciously seeped into their psyches and defined who they are.

Rifal got new life. slow, uphill task this improving.

The warrior got a quest, the owl a deepening. 

And the year ends with a slow, slow looking back - not so much looking forward yet. Have a few hopes, a few dreams but mostly it is about believing in the moment and the connections between moments that will create the flow. I think it might be a very interesting year.