Lessons From A Vampire

I have spoken before about feeling somewhat akin to a vampire with these braces. It's an oddly empowering sensation of late. I can run my tongue along my fangs and the thickness that I feel on my teeth makes me believe that this is evidence of some sort of preternatural power--and when I smile, the look I often get from the mere mortals is a mixture of awe, fear or surprise. I have started telling myself that this reaction is due to this preternatural power, this other-worldliness. And lately, I kinda like it.

I find that more and more I simply want to sink my teeth into something. Perhaps not a neck (yet!) but a sandwich, a burger, something that will make me feel my front teeth as useful and significant once again. Perhaps this need is arising now because the unhappiness I have felt for the last nine months is beginning to abate. Or perhaps it's because I am sinking the rest of me into running. I ran a full half mile on Saturday and walked six and half more. If I can't sink my teeth into something substantive, then I sure as hell want to sink my body into something constructive. I'm compensating, I realize, but I'll take it. For so long, I had thought that bringing things light and airy and sweet (like pie) would make me feel airy and sweet, but it has just made me softer and distracted. Now I want to be focused, strong, and create goals for myself. This is a new desire for me--I've always been contented to simply learn whatever lessons circumstance has created for me. (Case in point: jacked-up teeth.) But now, that desire, has shifted, along with my molars, and I am finding something incredibly appealing about feeling powerful, brave and quite frankly, fierce. I want to be like a vampire, who is singular in purpose, and irresistibly alluring in the realization of that purpose. Perhaps I won't be sucking blood, but sucking the marrow of life sounds like a pretty good goal right about now.

Ready, Set...

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” - Marie Curie

There is so much going on around me that I don't understand. Bombs in Times Square. Oil bleeding into the Gulf of Mexico. More corporate restructuring at work. The situation in Greece. It all seems so unreal, amorphous, so large and important that it cannot be properly seen with one pair of naked eyes. It keeps me awake at night, worried, uneasy, pained.

In a previous post, The Purpose Driven Thought, I mentioned that I ached to take up running, and though I haven't quite turned myself into Jackie Joyner-Kersee, I have started a form of training. Six and a half miles last week. Seven this week! (Ok, ok, it's more walking than running, but still. Baby steps!) It seems that only when I am moving do I feel attached to the world in a way that is authentic and meaningful. Maybe it's because my mind and the body are in tune with each other at the same pace, and that pace is in accordance with New York City's earth, wind and fire.

I am thinking about training for a half marathon. I've been a bit skittish about making lofty goals in the past, but instead of being afraid of a seemingly impossible goal, I'm truly excited by it. Perhaps it's the braces that have taught me the hard won lesson that things really do ameliorate when given careful and consistent nurturing and attention. I have been subconsciously viewing time as an enemy. If a goal looked like it was going to take too long, then my NYC impatience has always derailed me and defeated me before I even began. But now, I realize that though things may take a long time, they don't take forever, and whatever you want, simply because the desire has arisen, is worth the process.

I might not run this half marathon any time soon, but I'm not afraid that I can't. Understanding that I can only took 37 years. Better late than never!

Nine Months

Today marks nine months with the braces.

Nine. Months.

My orthodontist is still a source of great comfort and his happiness with my progress is so gratifying. Today he stretched an elastic chain across half my top teeth and half my bottom teeth as well. This, I can assure you, is painful. I sucked in my breath when he first put them on, surprised that the sensation was so visceral and immediate. In nine months, I have not felt anything like this. I've had individual teeth hurt before, but I've never had a chord of teeth hurt before--a dissonant, sharp chord, that's for sure. But I think since I've identified the pattern of pain in the past, it will ebb in about three days. It's a small consolation, but a consolation all the same.

There is a yearly event that I plan at work, and I saw some folks that I haven't seen since last May. One woman came up to me to say hello and the first words out of her mouth after "hello" were "Oh my god, when did you get those?" After I told her she said, "how much longer to you have to wear them? Are they utterly horrible?" I think she meant to be kind, and offer empathy, though in the retelling of this, I see how really unfortunate this conversation was.

But I think it shows how long I've come that these comments honestly didn't bother me that much. I think I'd rather have someone be up front with me and ask about the braces point blank, than the strange, subconscious hands that seem to wander up to the lips of people I've just met. This has happened so often, that people inadvertently cover their mouths when they look at my teeth. It hurts my feelings more than someone saying, "Dear God, another year and three months? I'm so sorry!" possibly could.

Shashi Deshpande said, "self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real you never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces." It's amazing to me that I have a different face to each person who newly meets me, and each of his or her reactions is its own biosphere, taking on a life of it's own and setting off an equal and opposite reaction in me. I know I am not the person I was nine months ago when I got the braces, and I know I'm not even the person I was a month ago, making my slow peace with it. I am painting my own picture of idealistic self-revelation, and though as Shashi says, the process might be cruel, the revelation is anything but. This is akin to what many parents say--that the process of being a parent is the hardest thing they've ever done, but they wouldn't trade it for a world.

Maybe there's a reason that this experience happened at the nine month mark after all...

Indra's Net

Purpose has been on my mind now for the last few weeks. I was reading an article by Stephen Cope, director of Kripalu's Institute for Extraordinary Living, as well as an author on many books about yoga. In the article, he explains the concept of Indra's Net, which at its very basic interpretation asserts that all things, all people are interconnected. It is our soul's duty to find our singular purpose, and manifest that purpose, our gift to the world. In doing so, we hold together our part of Indra's Net, and as Cope puts it, "the whole universe holds together as one great interlocking field. But it only hangs together if each of us plays our particular role."

He also says, "the gift is often paired with a wound. Strangely, our greatest strength (and greatest possibility) seems to be routinely paired with our greatest limitation--even our greatest wound. They were born together like twins. This means that many of us must discover our gift in the very heart of our suffering, our difficulty, our struggle. The Eastern contemplative traditions have a poetic way of saying this: our gift is like the lotus that is born out of the mud."

And yet, I wonder, does it have to be that heavy? Must there be a wound? Must there be such a hefty price to pay for one's calling? I'm reading My Life In France by Julia Child and in it she writes, "Those early years in France were among the best of my life. They marked a crucial period of transformation in which I found my true calling, experienced an awakening of the senses, and had such fun that I hardly stopped moving long enough to catch my breath."

Indeed! Shouldn't finding one's calling be as lovely and luscious as eating boeuf bourguignon and charlotte aux pommes? Or whipping them up amid the romance and perfume of Paris?

Maybe it's because Julia was so lighthearted that her calling came to her in such a lighthearted way. I love how she describes herself: "I was a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian." (Has anyone ever known a serious Californian? And really, when you're a six-foot-two-inch woman, I imagine that a good sense of humor comes in handy.)

I truly believe that everything boomerangs: what you give out is what you get back. If you're giving out good humor and sunshine it comes sparkling back at you. If your mindset is one of anxiety and lack, then that's all you'll see around you is anxiety and lack.

I've been troubled by friends who seem to speak in a language of complaints when in reality, they've gotten everything they've ever wanted. Perhaps its because they are so unsatisfied with their circumstances, their jobs, their children, their homes, their health, that ironically it is their indignation that actually forces them to take the action necessary to make their dreams come true. (There is the wound that goes hand in hand with one's calling, I suppose.) But if given the choice to be unhappy and complaining all the time--and have everything I've ever wanted--or to be contented and generous with where I am in this moment--and still seeking--I am choosing the later. You all know I've spent enough time complaining on this blog, and quite frankly, the gloominess is boring. (Though I have tried to make it entertaining!) Look, we don't read novels and memoirs about folks who tediously grumbled their way to achieving their hearts desires. We root for large, almost oafish six-foot-two women with strange falsetto voices, who despite all odds, find their most authentic expression in all that is delicate, delicious, et tres charmant.

Nope, not boring at all.

Toothy Reviews

I really do believe that the universe is listening, even to small requests.

I ran out of my toothpaste--Desert Essence, fennel flavored, and found myself not wanting to spend another dime on my teeth. Between the Waterpik, the Sonicare, the big tooth brushes, the little tooth brushes, the three kinds of dental floss, and the dental kit I take with me everywhere I go, I'm telling you, I had no idea how expensive braces were going to be AFTER I signed the contract with my orthodontist. I am tapped out. My energy and my $$ want to be elsewhere.

So I think the universe heard my plea for money mercy when I got not one, but two toothpaste samples in the mail, Colgate Maxfresh and Tom's of Maine's Wicked Fresh toothpaste. (That one got itself points for the name alone.) The Maxfresh has these tiny little dissolvable breath freshening squares which deliver a powerful, cooling punch, and I definitely like the taste, but the squares don't really dissolve so well, so I found myself trying to pick these little white things out of my teeth--another tooth task I did not need. I have enough stuff to pick out of my teeth!

The Tom's of Maine Wicked Fresh was a really different experience--I swear, it started out minty, got herby, got sweet and then had a muted mint aftertaste. I've never had the flavor of a toothpaste change so much while in use. It was kind of a neat little sensory tickle. I have to admit that I didn't find anything particularly "wicked" about it--so it was a little misleading. (Maybe I wanted some slap with that tickle?)

Fellow braces wearers, I will tell you hands down the best thing I've bought for my teeth in the last eight and a half months--and it didn't cost me much at all. (I wish I had known about this earlier!) Get yourself a So Fresh flossing toothbrush--in a CHILDREN'S size. This hands down gets out more gunk out and away from braces and caught between teeth. I am never going back to a regular toothbrush. Ever!

The Purpose Driven Thought

I've been thinking a lot about purpose lately. While at Kripalu, I read an article by life coach Tama Kieves who encourages her clients to ask themselves three questions with regard to one's path in life:

1. What do you ache to do in this moment?

2. Why would you be encoded with a desire that you didn't have the means and calling to fulfill?

3. What would you do, right now, if you trusted love more than fear?

Now that the fraught nature of this tooth process is really starting to fade into the background, I find that I'm starting to look forward and outward and think more substantively about purpose. What do I ache to do in this moment--both large and small?

I want to go to Bali and Japan (Welcome back TJ!)

I want to go to New Orleans, and back to Rocky Mountain National Park

I want to be blissfully married

I want to finish my novel and have it be a truly pleasurable writing experience

I want to win a Pulitzer Prize

I want to explore City Island

I want pancakes from Clinton Street Baking Company

I want to take up jogging

I want to learn French

I want to read the pile of books on my windowsill

Though the first two questions on Tama's list are very practical, it's the third that seems so woo-woo. And yet, it's the one that's sort of making me get defensive. It's not that I'm afraid, I'm just lazy, I'm just a procrastinator, I'm tired and want time to be still. But what for? Laziness and procrastination are really just forms of self-punishment. So what would happen if I did trust love more than fear? I just might find myself in Bali with my Pulitzer Prize.

Holy crap, what a thought.

Holy crap, what a thought!

CodeOrgan

There's this new website called CodeOrgan, which will turn any website into a piece of music. I gave them this blog and this is what they came up with. Whaddya think?