Ok, so maybe it’s not the bones, per se, that are connected.

There’s a weird, kind of painful, popping sensation that I have rarely experienced in my jaw. I never associated this with TMJ problems, which I thought of as more chronic. But it might be related.

Since Rolfing Session 1, I’ve noticed there is a connection between a sensation in my hip and this popping in my jaw.

This sounds a bit mad, so I went looking around. Seems that Traditional Chinese Medicine connects the hip and jaw on the gall bladder meridian.

Then I found this article:

Michael J. Fischer, Kathrin Riedlinger, Christoph Gutenbrunner, Michael Bernateck. (2009) Influence of the Temporomandibular Joint on Range of Motion of the Hip Joint in Patients With Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. v. 32, no. 5, pp. 364-371.

Objective. This study evaluated if patients with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) would have an increase in range of motion (ROM) after myofascial release and a similar ROM decrease after jaw clenching, whereas in healthy subjects these effects would be minimal or nonexistent.

Methods. Documentation of patients with CRPS (n = 20) was established using the research diagnostic criteria for CRPS, questionnaires, average pain intensity for the past 4 weeks, and the temporomandibular index (TMI). Healthy subjects (n = 20, controls) also underwent the same testing. Hip ROM (α angle) was measured at 3 time points as follows: baseline (t1), after myofascial release of the temporomandibular joint (t2), and after jaw clenching for 90 seconds (t3). Comparison of the CRPS and control groups was made using t tests.

Results. Mean TMI total score and mean pain reported for the last 4 weeks were significantly different between the 2 groups (P < .0005). Hip ROM at t1 was always slightly higher compared to t3, but t2 was always lower in value compared to t1 or t3 for both groups. The differences of all hip ROM values between the groups were significant (P < .0005). Moreover, the difference between t1 or t3 and t2 was significantly different within the CRPS group (t1 = 48.7°; t2 = 35.8°; P < .0005).

Conclusions. The results suggest that temporomandibular joint dysfunction plays an important role in the restriction of hip motion experienced by patients with CRPS, which indicated a connectedness between these 2 regions of the body.

And another study found some relationship between jaw and foot:

Antonino Marco Cuccia. (2011) Interrelationships between dental occlusion and plantar arch. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. v. 15, no. 2, pp. 242-250

Interesting. I’m not just making this stuff up… Anyway.

Also, and mostly unrelated: today I also remembered that designing, conducting, reading, and interpreting research is a specialized skill that not everyone has, but I do. Becoming ABD got me that, and it is not a small thing.

Lately, I have had intermittent access to the use of a sauna.

Last night I was melting in the sauna, mentally pleading with my lower back/sacral area to flatten into the hot cedar beneath me. “Why,” I desperately thought, “will my body just not relax??”

I noticed a feeling and a knowing arising, intertwined. I noticed the impulse to ignore this braided vine. I knew better, so I took a long deep breath and looked straight at it with soft question eyes.

My body unleashed this silent torrent:

I can’t relax because I can’t trust you.

You let other people hit me. You did stupid things that got me hurt. I could forgive that.

But you hurt me, too. You crammed me with food and made me throw it up. You cut me, on purpose, until I bled. You bruised me with our fists. You punched things until skin came off our hands on purpose. You decided not to eat lunch, not to eat dinner, over and over again. You said we didn’t need food. You made me sit in a chair in front of a screen, clicking and typing for hours with no other movement. You didn’t get up and drink water when I said I was thirsty. You didn’t listen when I said I had to pee—how many times did you get us infected doing that??

You dissociated and left me all alone. You pretended I didn’t exist—that I was invisible—to make yourself feel safe. You largely forgot the back half of me existed.

I’ve been carrying all the things you turned away from, and all you can do is complain about me being tense.

How could I trust you?

And you still do some of these things.

And when I saw and felt the feelings twisted up in this, I saw this strand was another twisted braid of grief, shame, and anger.

The major strand—the one I felt wash through me—was grief. Deep, deep sadness upon acknowledging that every unspoken word my body said was true. Seeing with excruciating clarity how much I have taken my own unacceptable feelings out on my physical body, how much I have abused it. And how I still do, most often in subtle, neglectful ways. Seeing the ways my definition of self-care has some sections scrawled over with black Magnum marker.

The grief makes space for the shame and anger to be seen, to nestle in, to be woven into understanding. Seeing the historical rage that I turned on myself because I did not know where else to put it. Seeing one part of me identifying my body as “me,” deciding that we would not be suffering so if that “me” were sufficient or good, and demanding punishment. The self-blame because it was intolerable to admit that those who should be caring and loving were not able to provide those things.

Seeing the shame I feel over how I have treated myself, because these are the marks of “crazy.” Sometimes literally so. Feeling like I should be farther away from this sort of treatment of myself. Anger with and judgment of self for not being farther away. Fearing the fact that I am not is “proof” of something scary, and so feeling the need to hide.

The sickening inversion of the realization that the only person I have to protect myself from in day-to-day life is… myself.

Knowing that my body is, in actuality, quite a bit pissed off at me.

And sitting with it all, taking it all in with soft eyes and heart. I expected at any moment to find myself sobbing, but I did not. Instead, I rode my breath through waves of constriction and nausea and felt my heart cracking. Grief sees, it enfolds, it enlarges.

There is no mourning without celebration, so where is the celebration in this?

I have the ability to change this. Through listening closely to my body and exquisitely caring for it, I can begin to win back its trust.

I scheduled a Rolfing Ten-Series, went to the first one, and several days later my body is telling me this. The process of gaining its trust has begun.

Just the phrase “winning back my body’s trust” brings up that sharp sadness again. Shoulds against myself. “I shouldn’t have to do this.”

But I can, and I am, and there is the celebration.

All I have to do is let the soft animal of my body love what it loves.¹

My body loves melting in the sauna.

1. 
   

   Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

   You do not have to be good.
   You do not have to walk on your knees
   For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
   You only have to let the soft animal of your body
   love what it loves.
   Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
   Meanwhile the world goes on.
   Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
   are moving across the landscapes,
   over the prairies and the deep trees,
   the mountains and the rivers.
   Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
   are heading home again.
   Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
   the world offers itself to your imagination,
   calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
   over and over announcing your place
   in the family of things.

   [↩]

First, about choosing my Rolfer. I chose to make my appointments with Bethany Ward for two reasons. First, she is listed on her own site as a faculty member of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration, and in the Rolf Institute directory as President of the Ida P. Rolf Research Foundation, and actively writing/presenting research. Second, her bio on her website. Reading between the lines, I sensed some pattern of life trajectory similar to my own. She writes about her own experience with the emotional component of Rolfing, so I felt like she would understand my desire to work with the physical/emotional connection.

After my first session, I would say without any reservation that I chose the right Rolfer for me at this time. My intuition about some shared life patterns was right on. She totally gets the trauma/body connection. I appreciate her being able to tell me about the latest research as she is working with my body. In general, I felt a very good rapport quite quickly.

Session observables. First we talked about my history, current issues, and reasons for wanting to get Rolfed. Then I stripped down to bra and underwear for the rest of the session. She assessed my standing posture and alignments, and asked me some questions out sensations of being in my body: Is there more weight on the left or right leg? On the front or heel of the feet? On the insides or outsides of the feet? Any parts of the body coming to the forefront of your attention? Where does the air easily go inside you when you breathe? Etc.

Then, I laid on the nice heated table, which pleased my inner cat greatly, and the hands-on work began. Here is the description of the first session from Bethany’s site:

This session focuses on freeing the lungs to allow fuller breath, and beginning to free the shoulder and pelvic girdles from the ribcage. This is accomplished by working superficial tissue around the ribcage, shoulders, arms, and hips. Neck and back work is included at the end of almost every session to balance and integrate the work into the body.

The very last thing was a sacral lift. Then, I sat up and focused on rooting, on letting gravity really have its way with me. The more we sink, the more we rise. Then, I walked around a bit and noted the changes I felt.

Rolfing has a reputation for being painful. Nothing during this session even approached the sensation of “pain” for me. There were some intense and interesting sensations, but nothing painful. That may not be saying a lot, because I tend to like deep tissue massage and other work that a lot of people find painful. That said, I’ve read that the process of Rolfing has become more refined and gentle over the years. We’ll see how future sessions go, as we go really in depth.

Kyle was asking me last night how Rolfing is different from a massage. The official answer is here. Three experiential differences: (1) There is no lotion/oil used in Rolfing. (2) Since the Rolfer is working to integrate the entire body’s structure, it is preferable that she be able to see the entire body as she does the work. Thus, I wasn’t covered up by a blanket during the session. (3) Usually my massage therapists don’t ask me to do anything but turn over. Bethany asked me to experiment with my breath, gradually lengthen my arms, to relax into certain manipulations, to stretch out my hands, and so on.

Sensations and images. So, what changes did I feel? The final sacral lift was the most divine sensation ever. I felt like my back straightened out for the first time in my life and became a foot longer. When I stood up and walked around, I felt taller and my arms felt longer and more dangly—they seemed to hang more freely from my shoulders. Also, there seemed to be some different sensation—maybe activation, maybe strength, maybe simple noticing/aliveness—in my Vastus lateralis.

by Buck Lewis

While Bethany was working on my ribs and asking me to play with my breathing, I got an image of something like a bellows or accordion opening up. I learned I don’t have to over-breathe to get air into the bottom or back of my lungs; I just have to direct the inhalation where it needs to go. Also, an effortless way to open up the next inhalation is to exhale just a tad more than I normally would.

When Bethany finished working on my right shoulder, I had the image of leopard shoulders. Watch a leopard walk and you will see what I mean. There is a freedom, ease, power, and grace in how their shoulders move. I have been feeling quite leopard shouldery since.

I don’t remember if this was an image I got during the session, or something I dreamed last night. The trunk of the body a cage. Wild animals inside. The cage bars loosen. Creatures begin to escape. The wildness seeps out. When the cage is emptied, a flame is placed inside. It becomes a lantern. It becomes a warm shelter.

I got all the way from Bethany’s into Target and started carrying a small heater to the register before my low back/sacrum tension/ache came back. I was surprised at how uncomfortable it is. When it is always present, it just fades into the background. But, damn, it really is uncomfortable. I’ve been playing with imagining my tailbone lengthening and hanging down heavy like an actual tail, pulling my low back and sacrum down without any effort on my part. This seems to ease the tension/ache and restore a bit of the long feeling.

I played with this quite a bit at ecstatic dance today where I also was noticing how much there is a back side to my body. Apparently I am very oriented to my front, forgetting the back exists. Also, I don’t have to keep bracing myself and leaning slightly forward. I literally have my own back, effortlessly, if I just relax a bit.

In general, I feel some loosening and relaxation in my body since the session. I feel some different layers in my shoulders, which normally feel like one solid mass of hard matter.

I’m also conscious of my weight feeling slightly more evenly distributed on my feet.

Right now, I’m also conscious of suddenly feeling very tired, so I am going to be. The beautiful thing about blog posts is they can always be edited and added-to later.

This afternoon I go for my first Rolfing session here.

The recommended initial experience with Rolfing is the Ten Series, a series of ten sessions providing “a systematic approach to aligning your structure; each session builds upon the last and prepares the body for the next.”¹

As the experience of getting Rolfed is, for many, very intense on several levels, I plan to document what it is like for me.

But first, why have I decided to get Rolfed, and why now?

I first learned about Rolfing in my senior year of undergrad (1995), when I took an elective class called Holistic Nursing. One of the major things I took away from that class was a new appreciation for how the body is interconnected. It was my first exposure to theories of health from China and India, as well as to the existence of fascia and myofascial trigger points. Learning about trigger points gave me a way to explain and ease some of the seemingly strange referred pain patterns I had at that time.

Unfortunately, trigger points arise from underlying structural problems or tensions in muscles and fascia. While I’ve learned to treat the symptoms (the trigger points), the underlying issues remain. Over the years, I’ve periodically thought about whether Rolfing would help the underlying issues, but the time was never right. Either the cost was prohibitive, or I just didn’t feel strongly pulled to look into it further.

I believe the time was not right because I was not ready. The way I see this is paradoxical. On one hand, my emotional and mental anxiety, rage, and hypervigilance were directly experienced and held in my physical body. On the other hand, I had such walls built between the physical, mental, and emotional that I could not recognize my own emotions or how they manifested in my body. I was so dissociated from my emotions that I would tell you that I had no feelings, but that my body hurt. I was so dissociated from my body that I often did not realize that it was hurting until the pain was intense. Body and emotions were so separated from each other that body work never caused an emotional ripple. The tales of people experiencing emotional release from a massage baffled me.

In 2009, I recognized that a wide array of my physical, emotional, and mental issues fit into a known pattern: complex post-traumatic stress disorder. I began intensive work on these issues in therapy, via EMDR.

My walls and barriers began cracking and tumbling, in so many ways.

An important part of the work has been reconnecting the layers of myself to each other and breaking the habit of dissociation. I am more than ever feeling into being in my body, observing what my emotions feel like, and holding space for all of the pleasure and discomfort of embodiment.

I did a lot of psycho-spiritual work over the weekend of New Years (2011 to 2012), much of it centered in the 12 hour Dance Lodge I attended. I came out of that weekend feeling immensely more clear, true, and strong mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. On those levels, I felt things had to some extent disintegrated and begun to restructure. Physically, I felt like a lot of dust from this disintegration was danced off and cleared out, but a significant amount of it was freed and drifting around in my body.

I felt like I needed the gunk physically squeezed out of my body. I felt like I needed to be taken apart and put back together. To be restructured physically.

And then I remembered about Rolfing. About how it is called “structural integration.” About how it is a means of reorganizing the body’s patterns. And I knew it was time. I made my appointment the following week.

A couple of nights after returning home from New Years, I asked my boyfriend to gently run his hands over my body to reassure it that it was safe. When his hand rested over my heart on my back between my shoulder blades, I burst into tears.

It seems the wall between physical and emotional really is gone. Again, I knew it was time.

What do I expect to get out of this Rolfing experience? I’m always afraid to expect too much, and the skeptical part of my brain is still alive and well.

That said, my biggest hope is that it will help my body learn to stop chronically holding tension. This comes from a deep learned self-protection pattern of defense that served me well for a long time, but that I don’t need any more. I feel like I consciously know this, but my body is not yet convinced OR it simply doesn’t know how to release the patterns it has held for so long.

I think that my other hopes—less pain, fewer headaches, etc—will follow on from that.

I’ve read some claims that Rolfing can help correct hyperlordosis, which would also be fabulous.

As always, we’ll see.

Now, off to play in the woods for a bit before my appointment.

1. http://rolfusa.com/tenseries.html [↩]

I gave up New Year’s resolutions years ago. In 2008, I began choosing an annual theme.

As a year closes, I think about a pattern or theme that has been holding me back in some way. The theme for the following year is the flip-side of the pattern I’ve been experiencing as an impediment.

When my dear friend Maria reminded me that I will invoke the Shadow of any theme that I adopt for a year, I realized the beauty of this theme-identification technique: I’m already living with the Shadow. I want to bring in the flip side. Actually, if you look at my themes, some of them are more shadowed than light:

2008 – Year of Danger – Having faced that I was breaking down from stress and unresolved trauma, I had begun trauma therapy in 2007. I was seeing many ways in which I tried to remain safe and protect myself. 2008 was a year to do things that felt threatening because they pushed my edges. It was a year of embodying and internalizing this advice from the James song, Sound: “Do everything you fear. In this there’s power. Fear is not to be afraid of.”

2009 – Year of Imperfection – Invoking and embracing imperfection in order to break patterns of perfectionism.

2010 – Year of Presence – Facing the fact that I was not going to be finishing my PhD and moving away to get an academic job somewhere else. For the first time in my life, facing what it is to live in a place without one foot out the door. I had been living like a potted plant here for 6.5 years. In 2010, I broke the pot and let my roots begin to enter the ground. I practiced being present in this place, as well as to many other aspects of my life.

2011 – Year of Ecstasy – Ecstasy is a transcendent altered state of consciousness. I associate it most strongly with expansion of sense of self to the point where self-consciousness is erased and a merging with something larger than self is achieved. Call it Spirit, Universe, Divine, God, whatever. This sounds dramatic, but can be as simple as the unselfconscious rapture in being absorbed by the beauty of a sunset or flower. I wanted more of this in my life and invoked it. In February, regular Ecstatic Dance events began in my town. I also explored a number of other techniques including drumming (and making my own drum) and Holotropic Breathwork. I observed the transition from 2011 to 2012 at a 12-hour Dance Lodge at which I invoked…

2012 – Year of Possibility – In 2011, I noticed a pattern: when I am unable to see all of the steps between here and a future goal or desire, I am likely to begin to tell myself that the goal or desire is not possible. I realize that I do not know all of what is possible, and I see how it is often more comfortable for me to only shoot for and hope for that which I can already see in my grasp. I also know that my larger goal is not my own comfort, so these were the first words I spoke in 2012, to call in my intent:

There are possibilities of which I could not dare to dream.
I am not here to judge and decide what is possible.
I am here to receive and discover it.

As always, we’ll see.

So, it has been a while.

I had a bit of a stalker situation back in April. The day I woke up to find a large photograph of David Lynch taped to my front door, I also discovered I’d been receiving emails (often discussing David Lynch) from the person every time I posted here or on Twitter.

I’m sure you see how this sort of thing could make one wary of public online expression for a while.

Let me clearly say this now: my resumption in posting here is IN NO WAY an act of reaching out to this person and IS NOT an invitation to any future contact. The restraining order is still in effect and will be renewed if necessary.

This is simply a reclaiming of space and voice that I won’t give up forever due to one person’s delusion.

A message I have gotten from multiple sources over the past 8 months has been: use your voice. This is one way to do that.

Expect more. Irregularly, as always.

Three cops at my house in the last three days.

I will say that I have been very impressed with the responsiveness and professionalism of the local police department.

Tonight I read something about how we all make a difference to someone and live on through them, regardless of whether we know it or not.

I’ve said this before, but tonight it stopped me and made me consider whether it was just a platitude. I tried to think of some examples I would give to a dying person terrified they had made no mark on the world and would be forgotten.

By Paul Marks.

Once I was sitting at a coffee shop and a woman came in and sat near me. I’m bad at judging age, but I would have guessed she was at least 70. She looked aged, but not old. She was not trying to look young, but she was beautiful. She looked elegant and alive. She sat drinking her coffee, actively reading through some papers and marking them. We never made eye contact or spoke. I never noticed her looking in my direction, but she became an inspiration to me for how I want to grow older and I will not forget her.

Once I was walking across campus and this exuberant little boy came tearing across a quad, making a bee line for me. He ran right up, stopped directly in front of me, flapped his arms, and exclaimed, “I’m a butterfly!” I said, “I see that! I love your wings.” The little boy will never remember doing that, but I will always remember him and the importance of feeling and expressing innocent joy and abandon.

Sometimes I see elderly couples out together who look like they are in love. They hold hands and look at each other with soft bright eyes. He pulls out a seat for her. She arranges the table before they eat. They actually speak to one another. I never speak to them, but I file them in mind to remember when I feel despair that I have missed out on my chance to love and be loved.

These exact memories of these specific people will die with me, but maybe I will be able to age gracefully into a beautiful, alive, sparkling old woman in part because of my memory of that woman. Maybe some 30-something woman will see me then and remember me, and in a way, that woman. Maybe I will be challenged and inspired by the memory of that little boy to be unselfconsciously joyful, and in those moments inspire someone else. Maybe by avoiding cynicism and bitterness about the possibility of lasting love, I will one day model it for people I don’t even know are watching.

So I have satisfactorily convinced myself that we are never really forgotten. The egos we are identified with are forgotten, but we’re better off forgetting those ourselves before they are snatched away from us roughly. That which shines through us goes on and on and on.

It’s also important to remember that it is not only our positive presence in the world that ripples out and trickles down. For me this is yet another strong motivation to compost my own shit and not project it out all over the place.

Grief is not a feeling. Grief is a skill. And the twin of grief as a skill of life is the skill of being able to praise or love life, which means wherever you find one authentically done, the other is close at hand. Grief and the praise of life: side by side. — Stephen Jenkinson, Griefwalker

Roger Woolger made a chilling statement in his lecture about how much unresolved grief there is in our culture, how long it has been building, and what it will take to process it. I wish I’d written it down, but in a way I’m kind of glad I didn’t. It was daunting.

I get more tired of practicing the skill of grief than I ever did of practicing anything else. Wave after wave after wave. It’ll surprise you in the staff lounge. It’ll take over what you intended to be a perfectly pleasant evening. In Soviet Russia, grief practices you. And no one is ever going to applaud you at your grief recital or exhibit. You will not win a blue ribbon in a grief-back riding show. You will not earn an A+, a degree, or money for your griefwork.

Refusing to deny or disown your grief is one of the more courageous things you can do in this culture. This does not mean moping around all the time. It means rejecting numbness, practiced apathy, enforced cheer, and compulsive distraction from the ache in your chest—the ache that dwells in the same chamber as the soaring love of all that is beautiful and well, the ache that must be opened to allow the soaring sound to swell.

Orphans are not people who have no parents: they are people who don’t know their parents, who cannot go to them. Ours is a culture built upon the ruthless foundation of mass migration, but it is more so now a culture of people unable to say who their people are. In that way we are, relentlessly, orphans. Being an orphan culture does not mean that we have no wisdom. But wisdom is being confused in our time with information. Wisdom is an achievement, hard earned and faithfully paid for; it’s not a possession. — Stephen Jenkinson

In a culture like ours, so unsure of itself, so without a shared understanding of life for its people, there are subtle, enduring consequences that look like personal inadequacy, failure of will, inability or unwillingness to live deeply. But what I’ve seen over twenty five years of working with people convinces me that these problems or struggles are not bad psychology, worse parenting or lousy personality development.

What we suffer from most is culture failure, amnesia of ancestry and deep family story, phantom or sham rites of passage, no instruction on how to live with each other or with the world around us or with our dead or with our history.

Any counsel worthy of the name should have culture at its core. Any counsel worthy of the name should begin to make a place in personal life for the rumoured, scattered story of who you come from where, and why. Counsel well done and honest makes a home for the orphan wisdom of personal life in the life of the world. It tries to ask the questions that the Sufi poet Rumi asked of himself eight centuries ago, and it tries to answer them:

All day long I think about it, and at night I say it:
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
Who hears with my ear, and speaks with my tongue?
And what is the soul?
–Stephen Jenkinson again

Aside: I want to make a drum. I think I may want Stephen Jenkinson to teach me how.

And so the question looming largest in my mind of late: (be patient… it builds) I am lucky to have a career that I enjoy and that I am good at. I support myself doing important work I feel good about that does not suck my soul. I believe I have contributions to make to the field of librarianship, or at the very least, to the library employing me.

However, over the past few years, I have been forced to recognize and own a deep calling to do work that witnesses others and supports them in feeding and healing their hearts and souls. According to Michael Winkelman’s cross-cultural studies of magico-religious practitioners, this sort of work has not historically been full time work at which people made their livings. Thus, I don’t see myself facing an either/or choice.

For a while, I thought that not making an either/or choice was a cop out for security and comfort, but recently things keep coming up all over the place reminding me that people who do the kind of work I’m being drawn to have always straddled worlds. That’s the core of the work, actually.

My question is: how do you move into doing this sort of work without deciding you will be a psychotherapist, a chaplain, a bodyworker, a facilitator, a personal coach, or whatever on a full time basis? Perhaps you just call yourself Death Bear and call it an art project… Death Bear does have a day job.

I am sure the answer will unfold itself at the appropriate time(s). That is how my life tends to go when I’m paying attention. I just write this to remind myself to keep paying attention, and to clarify my intent.

I’m just beginning, as always, but it’s hard not to squint and try to make out the entire route before reaching the next turn.

And now, the severe thunderstorm comes rolling in. That’s a literal statement and not a metaphor.

I’ve been quiet, though life has gotten a little louder. Great deep shifts that will not be written about on the open Web. At least not any time soon.

I have been being reminded over and over that a key part of what I have to do is reconcile the part of me that loves systematizing, researching, logically analyzing, and explaining with the part of me that experiences unexplainable things and is comfortable shifting in and out of altered (integrative?) states of consciousness.

I would have to look it up in Angeles Arrien’s book on tarot again, but I’m pretty sure my life card is the Chariot…

The chariot is one of the most complex cards to define. On its most basic level, it’s about getting what you want. It implies war, a struggle, and an eventual, hard-won victory over enemies, obstacles, nature, the uncertainties inside you. But there is a great deal more to it. The charioteer wears emblems of the sun, yet the sign behind this card is Cancer, the moon. The chariot is all about motion, and yet it is often shown as stationary.

What does this all mean? It means a union of opposites, like the black and white steeds. They pull in different directions, but must be (and can be!) made to go together in one direction. That is perhaps the most important message of the Chariot. Separate the driver form the chariot, the chariot from the horses, the horses from each other and from the driver, and nothing gets done. They all do their own thing. Put them all together, with the same goal in mind, and there will be no stopping them.

–source

And so the Great Work continues.

Soul enlarging things of late:

• Ecstatic dance, practiced somewhere other than my house
• Finding myself invited to join a community garden, and spending hours with my hands in the dirt
• I’m getting used to riding my bike and sometimes it is actually fun instead of torture
• Making important decisions about my time and effort and where it should be directed
• Returning to LJ, a relief from Facebook’s vapid-fire updating. 

And so it goes.

Please stop acting like sexist jerks.

Now, before you protest that telling women to smile isn’t sexist, stop and think back to the last time you saw a man you’d never met and said any of the following to him:

• Why so down? Smile!
• Life’s too short! Smile while you can!
• You need to smile more.¹
• You’d be hotter if you were smiling.
• A handsome guy like you shouldn’t look so sad.

In the rest of this little note, I will (probably fairly) assume that you actually never say these things to men you’ve never met. If you say it to other men, though, many of the following points are still pretty valid. Sexist or not, you are acting like a rude jerk. If you are sexist about it, it’s that much more odious.²

Now, before you protest that you are not being rude—that you are being friendly, that you are having a positive outlook, that you are trying to increase joy in the world, that you are trying to help because you’ll never see the good things if you are dwelling on the bad things, and after all, science has proven that smiling makes you feel better even if you don’t feel like smiling—consider this:

A real smile is a spontaneous physical expression of an emotion. Granted, there are some people who try to avoid expressing even the “good” emotions, but most people are pretty comfortable with spontaneous displays of happiness, joy, gratitude, and so on. Further, studies have also shown that inflicting “positive thinking”

When you tell someone who is not smiling that they should be smiling, you are essentially saying one (or more) of the following:

• You should be having different emotions than you are having
• You should feign an emotion you are not having
• You should do something with your body because I think you should
• My desire to see you smiling is more important than whatever you might be feeling or thinking

Are any of those statements very kind or helpful when they stated plainly? No. If you wouldn’t say those to a random woman you see on the sidewalk, you shouldn’t tell her to smile.

You do not know what has happened in the life of a random woman you see on the sidewalk, in the grocery, in her car with the window rolled down, at the gym, or anywhere. What if it would actually be kind of psychotic for her to smile, given what she is experiencing?

Further questions for you:

• Why is it so important that women smile when you look at them?
• Do you harbor an unexamined (or examined) belief that women are on the sidewalk for your visual or emotional gratification?
• Is your desire to see a pretty woman look prettier, or to not have your high spirits brought down by someone who doesn’t look happy really more important than whatever is going on with that random woman?
• Do these desires entitle you to tell other people what they should feel (or look like they are feeling)?
• Are your own emotions so out of your control that you need the people around you to all look happy so you don’t feel sad?
• Is your self esteem so low that you need random women to smile at you on command so you can feel good about your self?

Clearly, whatever it is, it’s important enough to all of you that you feel the need to interrupt a total stranger’s thoughts, conversation, or zone. For some of you, however, the stakes seem extra high.

It was important enough to the guys in the car beside me today that, when I rolled up my window instead of smiling at them, they called me a cunt and made dog and ape noises out their windows. Really guys? It’s worth all that? My anger with you is tinged with compassion because… that’s sad.

This is also sad: it’s shocking if whatever random man (often men) commanding me to change my facial expression for him does NOT insult me when I do not do his bidding. I’m a cunt, a bitch, a whore if I don’t smile for you.

I’m sorry you feel that way. I will point out, however, that I’m only a whore if you give me money for moving my mouth and feigning pleasure for you. You never offer, though. I guess that would draw the outlines of this whole little picture a bit too starkly, wouldn’t it? Make it a little explicit?

Let me trace this shape one more time for good measure. Did you know that smiling at dominant people is a submissive gesture? What, really are you wanting a non-smiling woman to do for you?

Guys, I’m sure you have some positive qualities, but you really aren’t putting them on display this way. I know it sucks to be expected to act confident and strong all the time, especially in the face of a gorgeous woman who very likely may not want to give you her contact info, dance with you, go out for coffee with you, sleep with you, or stand in the same vicinity as you after you propose any of these things. One of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done was ask a girl to watch a movie with me when she was so beautiful that I found it hard to speak in her presence. You do not get the credit you deserve for usually being the ones to put yourself out there for rejection. You are expected to repeatedly step up for another round of embarrassment, awkwardness, disappointment, and rejection. I really do get that it can piss you off after a while, and the mythic images of Sirens, Gorgons, succubi, vagina dentata and so on start to make a whole lot of sense. And then women get to complain about how men have all the power.

I really do see why you’d be pissed off. There are many different kinds of power. But you’d really be doing yourself a favor by expressing your anger in some other way. Calling women nasty names because they didn’t smile at you just makes you look like you have no self esteem, no self control, and no good sense.

If I thought this was more about flirting than it was about you asserting dominance and demanding gratification, I’d advise you to find the ways in which you get women to smile at you without telling them to. Because if you have to tell her to smile at you, it’s going nowhere.

Instead, I’ll advise you to take a moment to consider the following:

• What kind of man you are
• What kind of man you aspire to be
• How your actions serve that aspiration
• What you know, and what you don’t know

Am I (or any other woman) really a bitch, a cunt, a slut, or even just baseline stuck-up if:

• My doctor just called me and said I need to come in to discuss the results and I don’t smile at you when you tell me to?
• Someone just broke up with me and I don’t smile at you when you request it?
• You tell me to smile but I don’t while I’m commuting to work, and the check engine light in my car just came on, and I don’t have enough money to buy groceries, let alone car repairs?
• I’m trying to get home before the brunt of the migraine sets in, and I’m hoping I don’t vomit on the sidewalk, but I don’t find your request that I smile charming enough to smile?
• I feel god-damned lucky to have gotten this far without being raped, molested, or otherwise sexually assaulted because most of the women I know have been, and you are a clump of men I do not know, commanding me to exhibit a sign of submission?
• I’m trying to breathe through a rising panic attack because my PTSD is triggered by a helicopter hovering above the town, and you yelling at me that life is short does not particularly make me feel like smiling.
• My emotional damage largely stems from my mother and/or father punishing me/criticizing me/taunting me/etc. for displaying signs of and expressing emotions they did not think I should have, while failing to seem to have the emotions they thought I should have, and my response to your statement that I should feign happiness—shockingly—does not produce a smile?
• OR… My dog died. My child is sick. My parent had a stroke. Parts of my uterus are ripping themselves away from the rest of my body and it effing hurts. I really have to pee. My boss just announced there will be layoffs. I am clinically depressed. I am on my way to grief counseling. I am exhausted. My eye condition isn’t healing and I’m afraid I might go blind. I’m afraid I’m pregnant and I don’t want to be. I had a miscarriage two weeks ago and I just walked past a mother with a new baby. I’m silently running through the serious talk I’m giving when I reach my destination. Some random guy just called me a fucking stuck up cunt because I didn’t smile at him or respond when he asked what my fucking problem was. Or a million bajillion other totally valid reasons for not having a smile on my face when I happen to randomly be in your vicinity?

Good luck finding it within yourselves to act in a manner that you can respect when you reach one of those points at which you can’t distract yourself from facing yourself any more.

1. How long have you been monitoring my facial expressions? Can I see the data on how much time I spend making each facial expression? [↩]
2. And yes, this post is heterosexist, but never has a woman I don’t know insulted me because I didn’t make the facial expression she would like me to. [↩]

If it were not for them, I would not have learned that: Sleeping next to pets could be harmful, study says. (“Sleeping alongside your pets can make you sick. It’s rare, but it happens. That’s why good hygiene means keeping Fluffy and Spot next to the bed, not on it, two experts in animal-human disease transmission say in a forthcoming paper.”)

Hopefully this is a series…

Tuesday: Going outside could be dangerous, scientists warn. (“Outside is full of potential danger. You could get struck by lightning. A tree could fall on you. You might get stung by a bee and go into anaphlactic shock. If you look up, a bird could poop in your eye and who knows what kind of weird flu you will get from that. Of course, if you are inside, you may be in a sick building. Or it might just catch on fire or fall on you. Also, tornadoes don’t really have separate concepts of ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’”)

Wednesday: You have probably already given your child herpes, studies suggest. (One study* tested trigeminal nerve (facial nerve) tissue from 147 people and found HSV-1 DNA evidence in 89% of the sample. Neither gender nor age was associated with prevalence of virus presence. You can transmit HSV-1 by sharing straws or silverware, or by just closed mouth kissing. While usually an outbreak means cold sores, the virus may instead travel to the eye—a serious condition and one of the most frequent causes of blindness in the US. Rarely, herpes spreads to the brain—no one is quite certain how. This herpes encephalitis at best results in brain damage but is usually fatal. So use a dental dam when you smooch your kids!)

* Hill et al. 2008 “The High Prevalence of Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 DNA in Human Trigeminal Ganglia Is Not a Function of Age or Gender.” Journal of Virology, August 2008, p. 8230-8234, Vol. 82, No. 16

Thursday: Motor vehicle use may be risky, experts caution. (“You might never have noticed this, but when you are in a car you are in an incredibly heavy hunk of metal, usually surrounded by other heavy hunks of metal, often traveling at high speeds. And people are texting instead of looking where they are going. And even if you are paying attention, you are one unfortunate mechanical failure away from disaster.”)

Friday: OMG we are all going to die eventually, researchers shriek!!!

Ah, and another reason to wake up before 11 tomorrow: I received my Luster Leaf 1875 Rapitest Suncalc Sunlight Calculator. This is part of my plan to plant things that have a chance of producing something. It collects data for 12 hours, so I must get it outside early to get a good reading for the day.

When the leaves are back on the trees, it will be significantly more shady in most areas—the bane of gardening in my neighborhood. However, I need to get a better idea of sun exposure before then. I feel kind of silly buying a gadget to tell me how much sun a spot gets, but that’s one of those things that seems so subjective and squishy to me. Every time I’ve tried to plant here, I thought I got a good idea of the light, but I really am crap at estimating time. And light, too, apparently.

As for the Jung Society events I was looking forward to tonight and tomorrow… they are next weekend. I even looked at the site this afternoon to make sure of the time, and totally missed the date. Well, at least I left work at a decent time and had a nice—if quick—dinner of several grain/veggie/fruit salads before heading to the location only to find square dancers and a conspicuous lack of Jungians.

So. OMG. An unexpected expanse of alone time. I’m actually quite relieved. I am exhausted. And this means I don’t have to wait until Sunday to install the new bird bath. I also have made it a vague goal to make it to the farmers’ market tomorrow morning to get ingredients for making kimchi. I see reports that there are cabbages, bok choy, carrots, and garlic at the the market.

… setting up the new heated bird bath on Sunday.
… trying to propagate some mushrooms in the shade and in the woods.
… arugula sprouts.
… bread.
… planning and plotting a container garden that might actually work and feed me a bit rather than just being a money sink.
… Jung Society events tomorrow and Saturday.
… receiving Woody Plants of the Southeastern United States: A Winter Guide
… signing up for The 10% Campaign
… falling asleep in a little bit.

enjoying…
… Christian Doil — Eis.
… Winter Weed Finder: A Guide to Dry Plants in Winter
… mushroom espresso immune support powder
… home made whole milk yogurt with local honey