I watched a series called The Stranger last night. Jean Mabry recommended it, or I thought she did. Apparently, it was a program of the same name. She assured me that her TV series had no violence in it. That sure didn’t apply to the show I was watching. So last night, I watched something else, so I didn’t have nightmares again. I watch a movie called Honey Boy about a child actor who suffered from PSTD due to his childhood and was leading a self-destructive life. The main character enters a rehabilitation program. A counselor approached a group of men and announced it was time for the hugging session. I was waiting to see all these men hug each other, but no, they hugged themselves. I tried it. It’s not the same as having Mike hug and kiss me, but it was comforting.
It was so cold last night that I wore my warmest sweatshirt to bed as well as two blankets. I usually sleep in the buff. Before I went to bed, I finished reading the Psychology Today article that my friend, John Zimmerman.
The article was about grief. It defined it not as much as losing a person or a thing but losing part of yourself, particularly your loving self. Your outlet for expressions of love is gone. Some people never have this in their lives. I know because my mother didn’t welcome affection. It broke my heart. I have no idea why I had that need. Fortunately, I met and married a man who had as much as a need and/or tolerance for it as I did.
After Bikram, I spoke to Heather about meeting regularly for my private. I proposed that we do one asana each time we meet. We would do it right after class for a few minutes. I like this schedule. This way, I’m not overloaded with information, and I have a week to put her suggestions into practice. We decided Saturday will be a good day for both of us.
This woman is amazing. I know from Yvette that she had a private with one very accomplished teacher who did nothing but repeat the dialogue and made no individual observations about her practice. Heather looks at every detail.
Today she caught a small head shift I did in the breathing on the exhale. When I resisted that head shift, I felt it in my lower back. She also corrected something I was doing in the half-moon posture. I have been thrusting out my ribs. She told me to create a smooth curve, saying I could actually injure myself with what I was doing. I have been using that rib thrust action for years, ever since I saw a yoga student in Ohio who was a member of the Dayton Ballet do it. When I watch students, I pick up what I think they are doing right or wrong. Apparently, my judgment is not always correct.
I went to Island Naturals to return one of the bottles of CBD oil. It may have been on sale, but the likelihood of my finishing off two bottles before the stuff expires is in doubt. I picked up some golden flaxseed for my morning smoothie and some pumpkin seeds. Sadly they only had the dried variety of pumpkin seeds. They are more expensive, and I don’t like them as much as the raw. Oh, well. This, too, will pass. If I miss the raw that much, I can dump these dried ones.
My next stop was Costco. I had my list, but I also cruised the sample tables. Hmm! Love these new tastes in small portions.
I looked for a lower-level book than I currently had been using with K. I had checked the book we were working on. I was on a G, H, or I level. That puts it at the end of 1st grade. Now, this is at a challenging instructional level for him. I don’t think he can read the whole thing on his own. I got a book by the same publisher at a lower level, Pete the Cat. I think it is about an F level.
I said he had to read five transcribed Carpenter stories, and then one of the six stories from the Pete the Cat book. I allowed him to choose which five Carpenter stories he wanted to read. He picked the first five. His reading is still labored, but he can read most of the words on his own.
He recognized the Pete the Cat book because his teachers read to the class from that book. Maybe this is a low functioning group. I hope so. Otherwise, that is a very low-level book for the teachers to use to read to the children. However, it did inspire K. to read one of the stories. His accuracy level was about the same at the lower level as it had been at the higher one in the Danny and the Dinosaur book.
Once he was gone, I got to work on my 28 table clothes. Some I had already designated for donation. I measured the rest to have some idea of what I wanted to keep and what I definitely didn’t need. Unfortunately, many of the table clothes are antiques that have been in my family for a while. I don’t know the actual source of any of them. Did my mother, grandmother, great-aunt embroider some of them, or were they store-bought? Even the hand-embroidered ones may be store-bought. They would have been expensive even back then, or even more so back then.
I called Dorothy to moan about my dilemma. What am I ever going to do with these table clothes? It’s unlikely that I will ever use them. If I just leave them in place to be dealt with at my death, Damon with just throw them out. Too painful to even think about. Dorothy moaned and groaned about the dilemma herself and agreed to take two of them, one with a gorgeous embroidered floral motif and a large white linen one with holes in it. She can cut that one up and use it for something else. She is very crafty.
I called for K. to come up again. I try to work with him twice a day while he is here for the weekend. I told him he had to read five transcribed stories of his choice. He could read the same five or some others. I am assuming that at some point, the first stories will be too easy for him. He complains about it all being hard. However, when I ask him if this story or that story was hard to read, he says no. He also says he enjoys reading. Go figure! He went that-away! He is of two minds. He read all five stories within six minutes. I think he was surprised about how fast it went. I put him into the Pete the Cat book. He selected a different story from the one he read in the morning. I told him before we started that he could stop after fifteen minutes. We were in the middle of a story at the fifteen-minute mark. He wanted to stop, and I said fine.
Judy, Paulette, and Donna stopped by on their way home from Costco to see the table clothes. They ohed and ahed appropriately. I gave one that was commercially made in China with the label still on it with Santa Clauses and other Christmas symbols. I had never seen it before in my life until I found it the other week.
I feel so alone. With Mike, the rough edges had been smoothed. I was completely comfortable with him, even when differences arose. Other relationships in my life are not at that level. I miss the comfort.
I cheated last night and just watched the final episode of The Stranger, a murder mystery. The resolution was on the bogus site, but at least I know how it turned out. The way the show was going, I was pretty sure that was how it would end, but I had to see it for myself.
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Musings:
McGilchrist makes a distinction between fantasy and imagination. He writes:
“The deadening effect of the familiar- the inauthentic, in phenomenological terms – is the trap of the left hemisphere. Breaking out of it requires the work of the imagination- not fantasy, which makes things novel, but imagination that actually makes them new, alive once more. “
And:
“This is the distinction between fantasy, which presents something novel in the place of the too-familiar things, and imagination, which clears away everything between us and the not familiar thing enough so that we see it itself, new as it is. “
p. 374 of “the Master and his Emissary.”
McGilchrist is a big advocate of the right brain over the left. I say it’s a marriage. They are equal partners; as long as they remain as such, all is good. Let them duke it out. It is when one gets killed off by the other that there are problems.
Mike both enjoyed my intelligence and was critical of the way it worked. I was too right brain for him, too scattered. He helped me develop my focus, and I helped him expand his point of view. We duked it out to the benefit of both of us.
McGilchrist calls the ability to see a familiar thing with new eyes imagination. I disagree. Imagination brings something to the perspective, preconditions it. I think it is more like looking at something as if you’ve never seen it before. That makes everything a source of endless fascination. There is always something new to discover about the familiar. There is always a new wrinkle.
I first heard this idea articulated in T.S. Elliot’s play, “The Cocktail Party.” He said always greet your loved ones as strangers every day (Sorry, I can’t find the exact quote.). If you view them as strangers, you see them differently. I remember catching a glimpse of someone in a storefront window as I passed and then realized it was me. That caused a change in perspective. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember being surprised that I didn’t even recognize myself.
Some say never make assumptions. There’s a problem with that. If we have to greet every moment of our lives without assumptions, we would be exhausted within a few minutes of arising. I assume the ground will be steady beneath my feet. When Mike was alive, I assumed he would come home at some point. I am slowly, very slowly letting go of that assumption. It was the bedrock of my life for 45 years. It’s like moving from one ice flow to the next. I do it with great caution.
Dealing with the death of the familiar for me, and hopefully, for most of you out there, is not like moving from one ice flow to the next. I think of all the war refugees, or the folks in Australia who have lost everything, even the ground they walked on. They were given no chance to move to the next ice flow. They were all dumped in the freezing cold water and focused on the most basic form of survival. I am so lucky. I have the luxury of a gradual shift. While Mike’s gone, and that’s tough, the rest of my life is in place and expanding. I am facing new opportunities, new adventures. I am not in the freezing cold water after slipping off one ice flow to get to the next.
