To Here

"Solitude is not chosen, any more than destiny is chosen. Solitude comes to us if we have within us the magic stone that attracts destiny." Herman Hesse

The blue skies and warmer temperatures of spring come and go, but I still practice sunning my face—closing my eyes and raising my head towards the sun to feel its warm rays while walking on the sidewalk. My welcoming gesture of the new season, which I do with a quick reopening of my eyes to gauge my surroundings, is practiced by young and older Mainers alike who are now tired of the cold, grey winter and are ready for a new season to take hold, so we walk the streets of Portland with  excitement as if being released from dark cellars.

I confess to feeling the lengthiness of this winter even though it is my favorite season. Still, it tested my grit and those of others:  a friend broke his tibia trying to jump over a snow pile; another friend cracked his ribs slipping on soft snow; and I almost fell into oncoming traffic after losing my balance on black ice.  Still, winter with its curdled-milk-looking skies, blizzards, below freezing temperatures, and logistical daily challenges was more of a test of the hardiness of my interior world. 

I now understand how it feels for a ray of spring sunlight to radiate its perfectly calibrated warmth on my face while gusts of cold winds buffet my body because spring must wrestle with the leftover temperatures of winter before it takes complete hold of the place.  Then there will be warmer temperatures, clear blue skies, soft rain, blooming flowers and trees, haunting fog, and fiery red sunsets like those in Africa.

When I arrived in Maine six years ago, I had no appreciation for the subtleties of the seasons--how they changed or how they changed me; all seasons were one big happening that buffeted me with their constant events. My reaction to changing seasons along with all of life’s events had been to move away from its moment because my understanding of moments were based on past experiences and therefore they were scary (my violent childhood was scary), lacking (my narcissistic parents made me feel inferior, and I believed them), boring (I was secretly addicted to the drama of my past)….  Without realizing it, my past influenced the retracted response to my present--my moment felt inferior and so did I.  My motto was, “To there and over there, as long as it’s not here,” so I bounced of the world’s walls and always felt as if I was living a block away from my life.

Such life buffeting became more evident after I moved from Miami to Portland, a place that seemed too quiet, small, and calm for my taste. I especially resented the contemplative walk of its Mainers who had more of a look of woods and wonder in their eyes than ambitious city folk who came to vacation in the spring and summer, always with a plan as if they intended to conquer the place. Coming from a hectic life of being a single, working mother of two, I thought more friends, action, and noise the antidote for my stress and exhaustion.  At first, I thought Maine the first tier of hell closet to the earth and could not yet see it had a clear shot to heaven as I witnessed from the seagulls that soared every day no matter the weather.

My first winter in Maine I hiked every day during the winter--even during snowstorms--because I could not sit still. A painful ear infection that blocked my hearing canal leveled me to the couch for six months, giving me my first taste of stillness.  In my pursuit of constant, blinding action, though, I tried desperately to make new friends and ended up with two gay male friends I met for occasional coffee or drinks: Peter and I helped each other deal with our narcissistic mothers, and Leo and I talked ad nauseum about the end of our relationships (we were both married to men for over 16 years).

Still, Maine’s calm persisted, encroached, and overwhelmed me: it’s darkness pulled me into mine--that of control and expectation, which I mastered in childhood: my mother expected I fight her battles, mostly against my father and sister, and cajole, comfort, and listen to her fears, confusions, desires. Control of places, people, and things was my goal so that all would be right with her world and mine.

Expectation followed from my need for control, but it went further because I sought love, comfort, approval, from even passing strangers I smiled to on the street.  Furthermore, my father’s constant berating of my looks and efforts in childhood left me with a horrifying fear of rejection, even in innocuous conversations.  Desperation made me accept unacceptable behaviors from others, mostly from my ex-husband and his lack of respect for my boundaries in our post-divorce years (sex for monthly child support payments and stopping by my house at all hours of the day).  

For the last six years, I’ve dug myself out of myself--and still I dig.  The root of childhood difficulties influenced my other behaviors in insidious ways.  For instance, my fear of being mediocre, like my father said I was, stopped my learning new things, like French, which I quit after the chapter on conjugating verbs. My epiphany that not only had my deceased father reflected onto me his fears of mediocrity for not becoming the poet he wanted to be but that I was self-fulfilling his prophecy by not overcoming challenges inherent in mastering new projects was liberating. Also, body issues didn't allow me to look anyone in the face.  These same issues gave me psychic hunch, not even noticeable to me. Really, I feared being too noticeable rather than not being noticed at all, as I originally thought--another ground-breaking epiphany.  Seeing how I sabotaged myself was not easy and required constant vigilance and truth-telling about  attitudes to my relationships, money, sex, body, work…

I started meditating, hiking, and doing reiki treatments in town. Then I sought out my masculine nature to heal my feminine one finding heroes in Rap artists, like NWA, Ice Cube, Xzibit, Eminem, who I listened to while spinning at the gym, and who in their poetry about the urban gut sought the truth about social and political injustices. President Obama’s smile and hopeful tweets became inspiration. Singing and dancing to Bob Marley songs were part of my morning routine. Watching the graceful and charming Muhammad Ali take on and love the world, both in and out of the ring, was a must-see and read for me in documentaries and books about his life. And learning how to imitate the Wall Street broker's powerful walk—always with a confident gaze, straight spine, and smooth gait--men I ran into when I traveled to NYC every three weeks to visit my ailing mother in Manhattan, was another must-do. 

I feel better now. I’ve also made new friends: French Chloe, Russian Lana, Swedish Abela, and Farmer John, who all I met at the gym where I exercise every morning. French Chloe is 86 and exercises on the machines for 45 minutes every day. She tells me she once fell in love with a brilliant American CIA operative she met in Saigon during the Vietnam War who called her breast mosquito bites. When he left her for a Vietnamese woman five years into their marriage, she followed him out West and lived in Portland, Oregon, alongside his new family, until he died.  All her family lives in Paris and, still, she remains in the States, as a testament to her once great love for an American man.

Russian Lana is a cook for the wealthy on Proust Neck during the summer months. When she comes to visit me at my studio apartment, she brings homemade almond cake and blueberry crisps. I supply the wine.  She calls everything either low class, high class, primitive or basic, and she can’t decide which class I am because I live a minimalist life with only a couch and lamp. She's refused to "sell herself" to the Russian agenda and can't stand it when her sister who still lives in Moscow tells her that what she is saying is not appropriate for telephone conversation. 

Farmer John also shares his food with me. He’s a trainer to the older people at the gym, but he prefers to work the lands on his farm or make dark gourmet chocolate with dried cherry, crispy grapes, or jams of onions and garlic. Swedish Abela, who also works at the gym, shows me pictures of her idyllic life with her Viking husband in her tiny house on the outskirts of Portland, an area she says is now being overwhelmed by the pesky, demanding Boston rich who insist the city pave their country roads and who hold important seats in the council even though just moved to the area. 

Most of the time, though, I am alone in my apartment but now enjoy the minutiae of my day, taking time to read through every discussion post made by students in my online classes. I feel the sharpness of my sudsy glove when I scrub my body during hot baths, the 100% cotton of my towel made in India when I dry my body, and the straight bristles of by toothbrush and minty taste of my paste when I brush my teeth.  I inhale deeply the garlic and onion I fry and put my hand over my plate to thank my food.  

I bow to everything in my apartment—the plumbing, electricity, appliances, wood floors… because I am filled with a gratitude I’ve never known before. I don’t mind the rain anymore or dimming the lamplight at twilight, neither am I afraid of the dark. My new mantra is “heaven on earth,” and I constantly repeat my mantra to remind myself to make it so every moment of my day. And when I forget to live my mantra and experience a mini anxiety attack about where my life has been or where it is going, I meditate, listen to YouTube talks by Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, and I read books by Jack Kornfield and Suzuki.

Recently, I was in New York City to visit my mother and all the talk of making or losing millions that I overheard on the streets by Wall Street Brokers on 5th Avenue, Lexington, Park, and Madison made me realize that my greatest ambition was to get back to my 250 square foot apartment in Maine and drink a cup of green tea while listening to Native American flute music.