Beyond

Occasionally when I am sitting zazen I burst into tears and the thought is always some variation on this: I want it all to stop hurting so much. What I have learned, however, is that it's nearly impossible to cry if you are in the proper zazen posture. And all of what I am about to write is aimed at facing the suffering of the past few weeks and getting myself back into a posture that allows me to live my life with the openness that I was beginning to cultivate a couple of weeks ago.

The most haunting, horrible thought of the past weeks is the idea that everything I had been trying to cultivate over the summer, all the healing that I'd achieved at no small cost, all of the effort, all of the progress I thought I was making--indeed, all of the suffering of the last several years--that all of this could be swept away by a stranger, swallowed by that dark part of my mind that has always been set against my general well-being, and that I am worse of than before for having a very hard-won hopefulness destroyed not two weeks out of the gate.

The day after the breakdown and bridgeburning (is it bridgeburning? Do I have a choice? Do I want the choice?) is always a difficult one, so I'm grateful for a Friday with no expectations of my presence in the city, no need to be at School or Not-NYU, no desire to go to West Village Coffeeshop--the original plan, since the beginning of the week, was to use this day to stay in and write the prospectus that is still not done. Of course the plans have changed a bit. It's almost 12:30 in the afternoon; I've been up for about two hours (got up at 7 because that's sort of what my body's set at these days, but I changed my mind); I still haven't sat zazen in part because I decided that I need to write first; but I clearly haven't done much of that either. I have, of course, checked my email several times and rented a car for my brother's wedding.

And looked at a bunch of zen websites, thinking that since there's no new Gossip Girl this Monday night, I may be better served by skipping out on the evening with the girls and finally going to the Village Zendo for beginner's instruction. There is something about this decision that terrifies me immeasurably and all of the sudden I want to cling even more tightly to my single cushion facing the unpainted wall near my door and dig in to the very personal, isolated practice I've built up over the past few months because I'm terrified that the people there will be all judge-y, that my posture will be wrong, that I'll get fidgety (as I often do at home but it's okay there) or that it will be weird to sit without my coffee or that they will try to make me join a bunch of stuff and that I will be so beaten down by whatever ends up happening this weekend that I might just give in. Or that they will find out who I learned zazen from and then that will get all complicated.

But I've made this decision and I am going to try to stick to it because I feel that I am reaching a certain limit in my personal practice, a limit I was trying to explain to The Poet last night, that I have been trying to think through here and in my paper journal, writing notes to myself that make me cry and sometimes it comes out and then I end up deleting the posts that are screaming into the void and replacing them with Rumi poems that are largely aspirational--suffice it to say that last night I didn't just welcome the sorrows in, I went out and did some hard core promotional work to seek them out and cram them all into this guesthouse so that when J. called there was no room for him and even if there was, should I have let him in? The Poet says no, that I shouldn't blame myself, that I should just ignore him and that was how I reacted when J. called, but what I realize now that I'm no longer drunk and exhausted from crying is that The Poet obviously has his own interests in play here, he wants to get me back, and part of me wants to go but then another part, the part that won't shut up, the part of me that scowls back from the mirror and says you stupid pathetic bitch--that's the part that tells me what I already know, which is that The Poet, though he is the kindest man I know and possibly the one who has loved me more than anyone else, can never be who I need him to be, can never go to the Greenmarket with me on a Saturday morning (I need, of course, to be less obsessed with this particular formulation because all it basically does is mean that my organic local produce now comes with a bonus side of the potential for excruciating psychic pain--which may be why I haven't been able to get much done on Saturdays), can never be the person I end up building a life with.

Tangential voices: you don't get to build a life with anyone, so just focus on your career and your friends and shut the hell up already. Alternatively: maybe you need to refocus what you mean by building a life and maybe you and The Poet are going to end up together in some way and that wouldn't be the worst thing in a lot of ways because he loves you and is willing to let you cry when the guy that you dumped him for isn't the person you need him to be.

To put it simply, the sorrows came, but the furniture is also still here.

The other thing I've done this morning was Google the Heart Sutra, which has been the subject of a number of the dharma talks I've been listening to lately. I copied it out for myself as well--the English translation, that is. Perhaps I should try to learn the Japanese, but I'd need someone to say it so that I can hear it. They tend to cut that part out of the San Francisco Zen Center podcasts--sometimes part of it is recited in the context of a dharma talk, but I need something like a language tape. Maybe that's part of what's covered at the Village Zendo. I thought that I had more to say about what's drawing me to the Heart Sutra right now--I mean, besides all of the foregoing here--it has something to do with my wanting to internalize the teachings of emptiness and void (which, yes, is a weird way to say that)...I don't know.

The thing about J. is that he always comes through right after I've given up hope and resolved not to care. Like the email I got on Tuesday right after I'd written him off here in a (now deleted) post. Or like last night when I get this text from him after The Poet left and told me I should just ignore him and I'd finally drunk enough white wine to stop crying and was kind of dozing off to Boston Legal and J. was all like "do you want to play tonight?" and I called him and for once he actually picked up the phone and I was just like "why are you making me so miserable?" and brought up the two weeks ago thing again which probably wasn't fair and then told him I was really drunk and tired and what I wanted to say but didn't was, "thanks, but I've already had sex tonight and no you can't hear about it," and he said he'd call me this weekend. But then when I hung up I got angry at myself again and wished that it had all been different, that I hadn't gone out with The Poet last night and had instead been out with people from School, so that when I got that text I would have been in a good mood and probably up for it and then this morning everything would have been okay. So like ten minutes after that I called him back and he didn't pick up this time so I left a message that said I'm not really crazy and I'm sorry I keep seeming like it and for some reason I always end up feeling like I'm throwing myself at you even when I'm not really and maybe this would all be easier if I knew what you want. Or, even knowing that you don't know what you want would be okay--but I didn't get to say that because his voicemail cut me off.

I don't know what to wish for, except for a return to that place I was in two and a half weeks ago where I.wasn't.crazy.

The Poet thinks that J. is a player because he works in bars and it's New York and whatever. But he didn't start out doing things that were player-like. At least I don't think. Fine, so I'm not the best person to judge my own sexual self-interest and of course the fact that I was even having this conversation with my old married ex-boyfriend lends an insurmountable sense of irony to the whole thing. But do you spend the day talking with a girl if you're a player? Do you tell her when you fall asleep that you don't want to destroy her because she is clearly worried about that?

The reason I keep going back to two weeks ago is that I still don't understand how we got from affectionate text messages and plans for dinner and a movie to "I can't hang out tonight after all because I have to work but why don't we fantasize about you having sex with another guy while I watch." And that's the rupture that keeps bothering me.

I could possibly just be the most naive person in the world. Thinking, for instance, that there would be any guy who was single, under the age of 45, not an idiot, ugly, or an enormous douchebag who would want to date me, right?

I know that my obsession with my own craziness is a feedback loop. The amount of written text that I've generated this week that is related neither to my dissertation prospectus nor to the abstract I'm writing on Coventry Patmore to avoid my prospectus is testament enough to that. This is the Medusa thing again. But I still think that the problem is mainly with me and my expectations and assumptions.

But I can see the loop starting again. And I was trying to break it here. My friend C. told me I should focus on the things I have accomplished, regardless of the personal life parts.

I've sat zazen every day since mid-July, even on days when I teach my 8:00 class. I've deepened friendships with several women in my program. I took care of the detail stuff for my brother's wedding and I'm trying on my bridesmaid's dress on Tuesday. I've made some fantastic dinners from the Greenmarket. I didn't write my prospectus, but I did do a lot of sustained thinking on it this week. I came up with an idea for a conference abstract in about an hour and it could turn into a dissertation chapter, too. Last week my adviser asked me if I wanted to be on his panel at a super-prestigious conference in the summer. I have a good haircut and great new boots.

Yesterday I saved a class that could have turned into a disaster, and I did it without anyone but the students involved having to know that I was floundering. A lot of that situation happened very late on Wednesday night--had this been even last semester, I think I would have agonized and gotten angry or stayed up all night doing alternate lesson plans--this time, I was humane with the students and deployed a few easy backup plans. It was actually incredibly gratifying and gave me a couple of hours (until--yep, you guessed it, a confusingly mediated conversation with J.) of thinking I was back on my game. Last week, I met a guy from the Urban Studies department in the Part Time Faculty room and we exchanged email addresses.

I survived having drinks with The Ex on Monday. I cleaned my apartment this week. When I had my crash on Tuesday night, I didn't drink so much that I passed out and even did a little bit more work. My student meetings went well. I am genuinely enjoying the perversity of "The Angel in the House." I am an academic success, if nothing else.

What next? Absolutely the next thing right now is to get on that cushion and try to go for a half hour or so. Then I finally take a shower, make my bed, tidy up and get back to work on the prospectus / abstract. Perhaps I'll make some more coffee. If I get stuck, I'll go back to reading Patmore. At some point, I will make an effort to find something to do tonight. I will send Facebook messages and possibly even make phone calls. I will not spend all night wondering about J. If he contacts me, I will do whatever I feel like doing about that and I will stick by it. I will smile when I leave the house. I will remind myself that it's hard to cry in zazen posture, and that is something that can be generalized.

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodi svaha!
(Loose translation: go, go, go beyond, go far beyond--awaken--hail!)

In short, I will try to lose myself today, to let go of some of the jagged edges that are most likely to rip, tear, and make things bleed.