What are you longing for?

This is the result of a writing workshop that was held at the Eat, Dance, Pray gathering in Royalston, Mass., on the weekend of July 27.

The exercise was to just write. There were words on a sheet of paper for all to see, and a question that came from a meditation between the dances that day.

“What am I longing for?”

Stream of consciousness. I’m longing for this & that & good health end to bad habits, clean living, honor to my self & help for my soul and I’m longing for the end to curiosity that only satisfies my curiosity I’m longing for what’s deeply held in my soul so I can forward to whatever’s next. I don’t long for any thing except hot sex w/M. and home and freedom from money worries, security, good health in my old age Longing for Balance in how I live on the world and how I could possibly be the divine spiritual being I’m told I am. I don’t want to long for much except fresh air & summer & end of worry times and places in the sun where I can ride my bike without tiring my knees, without getting hot, without traffic – with speed & beauty for all around me and freshness. I’m longing to live alone and with someone. I’m longing for solitude and an end to loneliness. I’m longing for peace & quiet and open arms. Laughter & music & quiet & peace

What else am I longing for – prayers from my heart that are mine alone and to share. I’m longing to dance like nobody’s watching with everybody watching. I’m longing for feast and famine. I’m longing for independence and commitment. I’m longing for outer space and a cozy place to hide I’m longing to be alive/awake & dead/gone. I’m longing for a freedom and responsibility. I’m longing to live with an angel and a devil I’m longing for nothing and for Riches. For connection and freefall. For Stars and sunshine. For ocean & desert. I’m longing for love & release. For sleep and dancing. For wisdom and innocence. Light & Dark. Sweet & Sour. One Thing and Every Thing.

Wondering About Prayer

Ellen, how do you pray?

Not often enough. I feel a bit guilty about that.

At night, before I sleep, I say the Lord’s Prayer, then “Thank you God for another beautiful day of life, love, and light on our planet.” “Our” means God’s and mine, and humanity’s.

Three Hs: “Thank you for my home, my health, and my ex-husband.” It used to be ‘husband.’
Three Fs: “Thank you for my friends, my family, my future.”
Then I go into details: “Thank you for Tom, and Lucy, and Max, and Zen, and all my coworkers,
and … “
I will thank God for my car, my income, my job, etc.
To change the subject, I say: “If it be thy will, in a perfect way through Christ, and for the good of everyone, please …” and I ask for healing light and/or grace for people who need it: Greg, Sal and Linda down the hall, Les, sick/lonely/neglected children, etc.
I ask the universe to bless Tom & Lucy, everyone they come in contact with, and everyone who watches over them.
I don’t know if this would count as prayer, but many times a day I say “Thank you God” for things like the water in my shower, finding my keys, my car starting, a particularly beautiful day or sky, paying bills, etc.
In the back of my mind I practice an ideal that might be a prayer, might not. I got the idea for it in this advice I read somewhere: Before you say something, ask yourself 3 questions: Is it helpful? Is it true? Is it kind? I’ve been working on integrating that into my conversation. I wonder if that would be considered prayer.
I don’t like to ask for things in prayer, except when it’s for other people.  If I were to ask God for strength, I would probably get a real challenge to test my strength.
Instead of asking, I expect, which I learned from Esther Hicks/Abraham. I expect that with help from the universe supplementing what I provide, I will have plenty of money to take care of my bills, taxes, and other physical needs. I expect protection. I expect guidance — and I’ve gotten it plenty of times without realizing it was guidance.  I expect everything will be all right, no matter what.
One more. I do like to say “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”

 

 

 

November 8, 1985

 

Kevin told me later he was sure something was terribly wrong with the baby. I suppose I should have been scared, but it never crossed my mind.

And never in my thirty-four-and-a-half weeks of pregnancy did it cross my mind that I’d have a premature baby. When my water broke, I figured it was just one more weird aspect of my baby-factory physique and that Tom/Emily would still appear close to Christmas. First babies were usually late, right? My mother’s and two older sisters’ babies had been.

That very morning I had heard a baby being born, in a room near the room where I was waiting for my obstetrician. While she, at last, was examining me with the stethoscope, she asked me several times if I was feeling contractions "yet." How odd that she should be so confused, I thought. My due date is nearly six weeks away. She let me loose, and I visited friends, did some errands, and by 6 p.m. I was walking from the A train into my apartment at Broadway and 190th Street. I had to pee, of course ...

It  was a Friday night, the eve of my second Lamaze class. We were to drive to Providence after it, to my baby shower at my sister Joyce’s. But there was all this water! Too much water! What do I do? “Joyce!” My sister, a pediatrician and pregnant herself, could advise me. “Hmm, looks like no baby shower for you this weekend! Call your doctor. Call Kevin!”

Kevin, at NYU, the opposite end of Manhattan, was working in a school recording studio on the Fairlight. “Oh, Ellen, I just got set up.” I tried reasoning with myself—labor takes a long time.  I’ll tell him he can finish up, then come take me to the hospital. “Come. Home. Now.” I gasped. “Call the doctor,” he said.

I felt a tightness in my back, as though my period was coming. (My period?) I had lent my my book on childbearing to my friend Cal, who was also pregnant with her first. “Cal! Tell me how to breathe!”

Her husband put me on a conference call with Cal’s sister—she was pregnant too and she’d know how to breathe. “Ellen! Call your doctor!” urged Cal.

My own doctor was not on call, an unfamiliar member of his group was. “Well, call me back when the contractions are six minutes apart,” he yawned. I was on my hands and knees huffing when Kevin arrived at about 7:15 p.m. 

 

 

Fordham Road, the Bronx. Not a pretty neighborhood, even without construction barriers that closed lanes and clogged traffic. On this temperate Friday evening the neighborhood was clogged with shoppers, teenagers, fast food, slow cabs—and scared Kevin.

“Hold my hand!” He reached for me between the two bucket seats of our Jetta. I was lying across the back seat while a giant rolling pin tried to flatten my doughy body into pie crust. “I ... can’t!” In that 40-minute trip to Albert Einstein Hospital there may have been 30 seconds when I wasn’t feeling a contraction.

I couldn’t see too well, but there was a wheelchair ready to lurch into. “When’s your due date?” asked the admitting nurse. “12/17,” I said, then wondered why I didn’t just say December like a normal person.

In the delivery room Kevin was surprised at me for just dropping my clothes on the bathroom floor when I changed. “I want to throw up,” I told him and the nurse. “You must be six centimeters dilated,” the nurse responded. Kevin went to change into scrubs. “Oh, Baby!” I shouted. “Give me something for the pain!”

“Too late,” they said, as I was hefted, groaning, onto a gurney. “Can I push now?” I was in the labor room; no one said No, don’t push, so—once, twice—“It’s a boy!” The boy cried. The boy peed. “Well, at least two things are working,” said Kevin, awestruck.

“Thomas Edward. That was so quick!” I repeated, dazed, relieved.

Someone was shouting, “You forgot to call me! You forgot to call me!” It was the sleepy obstetrician. A resident had delivered the baby; we ignored the intruder.

“He’s got the chin!” crowed Kevin. The Cosgrove family’s dimpled chin. “Thomas Edward,” I sighed. “That was so quick! I want my mother.”

Five pounds, one and a half ounces. “I have a Son,” breathed Kevin. A champion, a star. It was 9:41 p.m.

 

 

Here's a story.
Years ago when Virginia was wilderness, long before the War for Independence, a trapper decided he needed the companionship of a woman, so he played cards and won a young Indian girl. Together they lived in a cabin far from towns and far from her village. He'd go for weeks into the forest, hunting and trapping animals to trade. He was very good with a rifle, and he was strong, able to walk for miles, and he was always safe in the woods in spite of the dangers of bears, snakes, renegades, weather, and just plain bad luck.
He enjoyed his times with the young woman. Even though they were so different, they made each other very happy. She was always glad to see him return, and made their home comfortable and fed him well. Their intimate times satisfied them both. She bore him a daughter whom he treasured.
But one terrible time when he returned, he found them both dead. Marauders had found their remote cabin and killed the woman and her child.
The trapper's heart was broken. He kept to himself for the rest of his life, mourning the cruel loss of his family.

(That story was from a bit of inspirational writing on the question of What karma do a certain man and I have together?)

September 24

In the autumn I think of Dad.
When baked oak leaves turn brittle and brown.
Sweet maple trees in variegated colors flame a glistening blue sky.
Crispy, papery leaves crinkle around my ankles, sounding like taffeta petticoats.

"The bus is coming down Nahatan Street!" is the morning cry,
and I carry Daddy's love in a paper bag to school.

Nighttime comes early in winter, earlier than Dad.
I still smell the wood of the windowpane, see the steam of my breath on the glass,
and I smell Mamma's cooking when at last I hear
"Daddy's home!"
I come running. "Did you bring me anything?"

In the springtime, we'd drive to the Dover Dump down the bumpety road
and to Norwood for Saturday errands.
We'd drive to Dorchester to visit Gramma on Sundays.
We'd drive to the library on Tuesday nights.
The Bomber, the Lark, the Studebaker wagon, the Chevys.
I'd scramble in the back seat. The scents of the spices he sold were heavy in the cars.

In the lingering summertime dusk I think of Dad.
I hear the backyard crickets, spot fireflies, recite to the first evening star.
Tomatoes were planted that day,
or we all returned sunburned and sandy from Cohasset Beach.

My dad makes me laugh. My dad thinks I'm beautiful.
His love lives in me still, every day.

--Sept. 27, 1985

Occupy Death

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_saul_let_s_talk_about_dying.html

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

--Gloria Steinem

I am really looking forward to being dead. From what I've read I have an idea of what being "dead" is like, and it sounds a lot easier than being alive on Earth.

I'm not in a hurry for it. I feel it would be dishonorable to die deliberately. That is not my choice to make, either. When I've finished what I've decided I needed to do here, that will be the time to go--and I don't know what I'm supposed to finish.

I am afraid of dying. I'm afraid of prolonged, uncontrollable pain; reliance on medications and/or machines; seeing people I love in pain because I'm in pain. I can only hope that doesn't happen.

I saw the lecture above on ted.com, so I thought I might write about what I'd like to have happen if I can't speak for myself in a medical situation. The lecture recommends asking a dying person two questions:

If you had a health condition that prevented you from making decisions on your medical care, who would you like to have speak for you?
Have you discussed with this person what you would want done?

I'd have to answer "don't know" and "no." I'll have to take care of that in offscreen space.

But perhaps I can write a bit about what I'd like to have happen if I were to die. The last funeral I went to was Mum's. My siblings were/are wonderful. But perhaps because it took place in Massachusetts, far from my friends, I didn't get the amount or kind of comfort I needed. At the funeral home, someone made me look inside the casket, and that did not help me. Throughout the events, on top of being sad I was very uncomfortable. Thank God Tom was with me, especially in the church. (Little did we realize that he would return to his home to discover that his love's mother's mother had died, and so he went to a second grandmother funeral in a week.)

I would like my organs to go to science, unless my body's so old it's of no value. If that's the case, cremation, please, and scatter my ashes in a pine grove.
For a memorial, play "Harold and Maude." Play Cole Porter tunes on a piano--hire someone if you must, and hand out sheet music to everyone so they can sing. I want the smelliest flowers you can find in season--hyacinths, maybe, or lilies. Recite the W.H. Auden poem that was read in the funeral in the movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
Please, no Catholic church--a Unitarian Universalist church, or a Unity church. If people speak about me, there must be at least as much laughter as there are tears. Someone, please, speak a bit about Woodstock.

Other highlights of my life are the day Tom was born, 5.5 weeks early and in 3 hours, 15 minutes; the day I held Lucy for the first time and knew she was just what I wanted; life in San Francisco; selling 128 boxes of Girl Scout cookies; the fireworks at the Brooklyn Bridge Centennial; the seven weeks I studied film at USC and met Alfred Hitchcock; the five days I spent in Rutland VT and Tom's wedding; reuniting with Abeer in Paris under the Eiffel Tower; ice skating in the woods behind Karen Callahan's house; the Dance Camp in Claymont, WVA, when my tears washed me clean; the afternoon in my home when the trance medium Rita Chippy and someone else visited.

I know there are more. I'll be back.

February 29

He really seemed like an ordinary kid. He didn't look like he'd want to kill anyone. But he did, and that someone was me.
I rented him a room in my house. He seemed grateful. He was a communications student at Montgomery College. He tried living with his stepfather, but that didn't work out. He gave me a check for $750, $500 was December rent, $250 was half the deposit. He'd pay $750 again in January, and get February free, and move out because I planned to put the house on the market March 1.
He had to borrow the January payment because he lost his job when he took a day off to go to court in Towson. He told me a former roommate called the cops on him, thinking he stole his X box, but he really just borrowed it. He got another job selling beauty products. I didn't want any.
He also told me he was quitting smoking pot.
But in February I started noticing things missing from my room. Two gold chains, one that my mother gave me. I thought they'd turn up in a suitcase. Then $40 was gone from my bureau drawer. Did he take it? Did one of his friends? I was furious, but what could I do?
He didn't usually come home at night. He'd come home about 7 am, and sleep. Then he didn't. He called to tell me he'd move out mid-February and I could pay him back the security deposit. I said, no, I don't owe you the security deposit. That was February rent.
Next time he came home, at about 7 am, he knocked on my door, showed me the lease he had signed, and told me I could write him his check. We went back and forth about it for 20 minutes, me saying No, I don't owe you $500, and him saying, You'll write me my check now. I wondered how he could be so dumb. He said, Now you're making me angry. I was not intimidated.
He didn't come back except for one Saturday, when he went to his room for a short time, then left again.
On Feb. 29 he returned at 7 am. I was up getting ready for work. He wore a hoodie and a mask on his face. I asked him for the house key and he gave it to me. I asked if he was taking all his stuff, and he said he'd take only what he could carry. I turned and walked into my bedroom to shower.
I had no reason to be afraid.
I was nearly done with my shower. The light in the bathroom went off. Never had before. I stepped out, turned it back on. His hand reached in, turned it off, and he attacked me.
His hands went to my throat. I started yelling--vocalizing. I knew I had to wake up Ashley, a sound sleeper, in the next room.
My mind: This could be it, this could be my death, I wouldn't mind being dead.
I Have To Breathe.
I fought him. I called him a stupid fuck. So stupid! I felt his arm give my head a twist, about 90 degrees. It didn't even hurt. Was he trying to break my neck? Stupid fuck!
My mind: Alfred Hitchcock. Years of cinema studies paid off--"It's very difficult to kill someone with your bare hands." I knew he couldn't kill me.
I reached for his balls and felt empty denim. Kept reaching. He backed up. Was he surprised I'd know to do that? Was he surprised that a kind older woman like me would fight and call him a stupid fuck over and over again?
He moved his hands to shove his thumbs into my throat. I couldn't yell. I couldn't breathe. I pulled at his right thumb and got it out of my throat, but still couldn't breathe. I tried to tell him I'd give him money, but I couldn't talk at all. I pretended to lose consciousness, pretended to weaken, then kicked a shelf on the floor behind him, making noise.
I had heard Ashley on the phone to the police. Not her words, but hearing her voice was enough to let me know he couldn't kill me.
Ashley came into my bedroom. The door had been blocked by something he put there. He took off. I fell to the bathroom floor. I yelled, He tried to murder me! He tried to murder me!
I was furious. And mystified. How was attacking me a good idea?
It seemed the police arrived 20 seconds later. I was on the floor with a towel on me, crying. It couldn't have been that soon--they didn't catch him.
Before the attack he had been in my bedroom, in my wallet, and taken $40.
The cops took photos of my injuries. Later, the bruise on my right arm would be in the shape of an avenging angel. Archangel Michael, some of my friends said.
I haven't had nightmares because I fought back, my therapist told me. My son changed the locks on the front door, even though I had his key.
I wasn't a victim. I'm not a victim. I'm a warrior.
They haven't caught the bastard yet.