A sad love story in three poems

Links in a Chain
May 2008
This you will not understand
How your face pressed itself
Into a loop, in my mind
Coming between me and my new lover
Not because of what you said
But what you did not say
Because of what you did not hear
Not what you heard
Because your eyes were always closed
You dance to the beat of your own drummer
Like a rat in a maze, always running
Around the same loop
In your own mind
'This you will not understand'
And I don't understand it either

The Gift of Doubt
June 2008
Sometimes the pale sun shimmers behind the morning fog
and I doubt it will ever burn through.
Maybe the order of days has been revoked?

I revisit the question: who am I?
As important as a fly
in the everlasting evolution of the universe.

And who are you? You turn my no into a yes
you turn my yes into a no and squash me
leaving the crazy footprints of my dance upon the sand

leaving me to doubt and know
I will build another castle in the sand
The sun will shine another day, and we'll both burn

in the endless cycle
dust unto dust unto dust

The Missing Peace

April 2009

The space inside my head is quiet

Now I have the missing piece

You gave me, that

you didn't have to give

You thought that the pieces

were interchangeable,

that women were.

No wonder your puzzle

didn't fit together!

You thought what flies with one

flies with another, flies

because it flies

Your world is very broken. You witheld

your whole self, and gave me

just one piece

and shattered mine

Look in the mirror

Look at yourself

You are neither

all good nor all bad.

When you are whole

you can give yourself

over and over

If you give piecemeal

part to me, part to her, part to her

you fall apart, dissembling

what you think you save.

Pick up the pieces!

I thank you for the missing peace,

the quiet space inside my head

Wide open, so much that it hurts

Is this how the sky feels

when the clouds are swept away?

Navel-gazing from dissertation

This is my second doctoral dissertation. When I was writing the first, my brother died of leukemia. He died of pneumonia following a complication of his bone marrow transplant, and I sat by his side as he panicked, distressed and unable to breathe. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Eventually we said a brief goodbye and he was intubated. I sat by his side, holding his hand and not knowing what to do, while the ventilator pumped air into his lungs until his heart stopped beating.

In the early stages of working toward my second doctorate, I had a chance to remediate that experience by being at my grandmother’s deathbed. She was always a difficult woman, but she had lost the ability to speak, and in many ways this made things easier for her caregivers. We knew it was serious and came when we heard she had punched the orderly in the face who was trying to feed her. I took turns with my mother, sitting by her bedside, as my grandmother, like my brother, was dying of pneumonia. This time, thankfully, there was no talk of adding a ventilator or heroic measures to keep her alive. After two weeks, it was a Sunday when she was evidently about to pass away. The nurse had ordered morphine, but in the UK a doctor had to be called from another hospital to sign for it (see http://painpersonalitypsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2009/03/worst-of-evils.html for a discussion of the power of doctors over the dispensation of opiates). My grandmother was evidently in a lot of pain, although she was unable to use her voice to communicate it, doubly silenced if Scarry is right about the difficulty of putting pain into language (http://painpersonalitypsychotherapy.blogspot.com/2009/03/body-in-pain.html). Finally, the doctor arrived, and I went to her, holding her hand and making eye-contact to comfort her, and said, “The doctor is here, he can give you something to help with the pain.” I tucked her blanket and went to close the door, so she would not overhear the doctor and my mother talking in the corridor outside. By the time I got back to the bed, my grandmother had lost consciousness and never regained it. The doctor examined her and the morphine was added to her drip while my mother and I continued to sit with her, prayer book ready. But it was the gentleness of that last caring communication with my grandmother which I felt transcended my ordinary experiences, in a way that informs my work with patients in pain.

nebulous anxiety

I am worried that reading about someone with chronic sore-throats and flu has made me feel the same way. Quite possibly swimming in the bay for 20 min when I already had a scratchy throat was not a good idea. But I organized the swim, and two people drove up from the South Bay, so I didn't feel as though I had a choice. And it was glorious, at least swimming out toward the Golden Gate and feeling it get closer was, but then the beach seemed so far away and persisted in remaining so for far too long on the way back in. The water was decidedly crisp, and even with a wetsuit I felt significantly dizzy when I pulled myself out. Hell, I didn't even want to teach my yoga class this morning. I tried to call in sick, but there was no reply.

Now all I want to do is curl up in bed with a book, and it's only 8.30pm. Instead of writing, I've been planning my trip to the East Coast to look at colleges with my son. Somehow I feel that at 16 he should be planning this himself, but since it hasn't happened and we're flying next weekend I just had to step in. At his age, I was planning trips to Israel and all across Europe, without even the benefit of the internet. My ability to cope with travel must have peaked early, it seems to be such hard work now, and I feel anxious about getting maps, getting lost, missing appointments, or spending too much on car rentals and hotels. I should just relax, and consider it a pleasure trip.

I must remember to bring my camera, so that I am not always grabbing other people's pictures from online. Ah well, I can't find one. A picture in words: the dark gray bridge peeping under the dark gray clouds, more real and closeup once you are in the dark gray waves. Dark gray birds bob up and down on the water, in front of dark gray sails. The buildings of San Francisco in many shades of gray rain-stained and unmoving in the distance. I imagine myself splashing dolphin-like through the water in my dark gray wetsuit.

Spring in El Cerrito

Only the children seem to notice the water
bubbling from the brook, through the mulch
put there to stamp out the weeds.

They run across the bikepath
oblivious, their hands full of daffodils.

You walk your dog, head bent
on listening to your I-pod.
How could you hear
the birds in the bushes?

"I could eat those dandelions
but I won't," you say
gesturing on Bluetooth to the flowers
we used to call soursuckles
for which Californians have no name.

Mindful of loneliness

This evening I feel lonely. Why is it that my feelings vacillate so much? This morning I was feeling happy, hoping to reconnect with a friend tonight, and I know that is going to happen one of these days but not this evening and I feel lonely.

Maybe this is why I always make up a 'you' in my head to talk to, because the world of other people is inconstant and flickering. I am reminded of a poem by Sylvia Plath called Mirror, which I had to recite once for a drama exam. It had the lines: "Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall./It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long /I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers./ Faces and darkness separate us over and over." I wish that other people wouldn't flicker so much in my consciousness.

My loneliness could also be related to the fact I am writing about the pain of torture and war. By the way, if you're interested, I am posting chapters from my Clinical Research Project (literature review) here: http://painpersonalitypsychotherapy.blogspot.com/

My lonely feelings are perfectly reflected in Matt Haimovitz's rendition of the cello suites, which take up 3 cds in his version, whereas this morning I was listening to Yoyo Ma, on 2 cds. Perhaps this too plays a role in my changing mood, but there are only so many times I can listen to Yoyo Ma in succession. And the torture of moodishly elongated notes alternating with dancelike exhuberance sits well with writing about the irrational project of war.

I am also fond of this particular poem by Rilke about loneliness, which reminds us that finding a so-called life partner might not be the answer:
http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~pjk42/rilke_files/einsamkeit.html

Thoughts on male and female jealousy

After a conversation I had with someone the other evening, we came up with the following hypothesis. Jealousy is different in males and females, and seems to follow opposite (and hence equally irrational) order considerations. Men seem to be more jealous when their partner (either monogamous, polyamorous, or whatever) is seeing or in love with somebody that they consider inferior, a jerk, 'don't know what she sees in him.' On the other hand, women are more jealous when their partner (or former partner) is with a younger, more attractive, or accomplished woman, whereas they are less sensitive to him seeing a woman they consider inferior. For either sex, their view of the ordering seems the only rational one but clearly neither way is rational.

I wonder what you think of this hypothesis. Please feel free to add examples and counter-examples in your comments. In particular, I would be interested in finding out whether a man would feel more jealous if his former partner were with a jerk. It makes no sense to me that he would, but then the whole male perspective on jealousy makes no sense to me, and seems to hark back to primate ancestors giving in to the alpha male, never mind droit de seigneur. And how does it work for gays, lesbians, and others?

Blueberries

The words I am looking for
explode on the tongue like blueberries
in the middle of a kiss,
showering us both with laughter.
Juicy, just right, not too sweet.

I wish I could envelop you
with the warm haze I feel
my heart touching your heart
like friendly embers kindling
in the afterglow.