Re-Forming

During the last day at the Brooklyn apartment, a neighbor came by and slid a gently written note under my door. She wrote this wish for me: "Much happiness and success in the new life". Jane and I shared a history. And now Jane recedes into history...to be recalled later.

I thought of this gentle New York moment and countless others stepping off the plane at Sea-Tac airport into Seattle. What felt new was a sense of loss for a place. New York was home and now the soul searches for another.

As I walked down the gentle slope of the terminal, words formed in my mind: "One step, one feeling, one moment." This was all I want to manage. This was all I could manage.

At Baggage Claim, I sat waiting for my sister to pick me up. I sit here now in her home way past midnight waiting for some kind of peace. Things feel familiar and bizarre. The words return: One step, one feeling, one breath. I must go to bed. Tomorrow is a new day.



photo by craft_uas at http://flickr.com/photos/craft_uas/1693597432/ creative commons license

Rise

I came upon a poem once by Hồ Xuân Hương (a Vietnamese poet in the 19th century) who wrote about a Vietnamese dessert. To make this dough-y sweet, one had to boil it. In the process of boiling, the dough would rise and fall in the water. The white dough contained a sweet bean paste on the inside. The poem had haiku lines and one stuck: “Seven risings and three sinkings.”

The poet was not so much describing the process of making a sweet as she was talking about women in her time: Their alabaster skin, their virtues beneath their skin, their rise, and their fall. Their fate is not unlike the fate of many.

I think of this often: Sink three times. Rise seven. Have I failed in New York? Does not having a job mean failure? I don’t believe so. In the grand scheme of things, you sink sometimes. Then you rise.

I have written down a plan involving three cities: New York City, Seattle, DC. There will be a time when a decision has to be made to remain in this city or to leave. So these days are filled with a kind of specialness. I am calm and clear-headed. I can’t tell the future. But I hope and I rise.

photo by ultrapop design under creative commons license http://flickr.com/photos/ultrapop/2318791107/

Fullness

I am today without a full-time job. I have been working temporarily at a department store and learning a new industry and new skills for the last two months. I have great hope the company finds an opportunity for a full-time position for me. And I continue to look at other places too.

As I sit here at home this morning trying to calmly and confidently look into the future, a thought arose that though I am without a job, I’m not without a life. In fact, the life I’ve had has been good—and is good. I have been free to travel and live overseas. I have received a great education on east and west coasts. I have great health. I have an army of wonderful people to share life and who return my phone calls.

A calm came over me and another thought surfaced that perhaps something has brought me to this point in time. If life is a journey, then is this where I’m supposed to be? If I accept this (and I do), then I felt I had to make something good happen out of today. Something good must come out of the life, the resources, the experiences, the breath given to me. So then, a decision materialized that I have a responsibility to myself to engage with life (in all its variation) and to bring my best self into it.

I re-read a vision I wrote sometime ago about what I want in life that I had worked on with a life coach. I recollected a phrase from a book I had read about being an “inventurer”—a person whose inward life matches that of his outward life. This is someone whose personal values finds congruence with values in his professional life and family life—and I took great relief. This is the kind of person I want to be.

In the incredible times we are living in, I hope you find the resources you need and desire.

Resources:
The Inventurers: Excursions in Life and Career Renewal. J. Hagberg & R. Leider
Someone who will guide you as you write a vision of what you want out of life

Photo by Julie 70 under Creative Commons license http://flickr.com/photos/32323502@N00/1472421624/

Tasty and Not Overpriced

Greenwich Village, NY - Jake and I ate at a Pan-Asian restaurant on Sunday evening. The name of the restaurant is forgettable. I’ve been there twice and still can’t recall it. It’s on E. 8th and University. The food, however, is disproportionately good for the price we each paid — $11 for a “tasty sampler” of 3 items. It was perfectly light and satisfying fare for Sunday evening.

The restaurant proved one axiom wrong especially considering our location: That things New York are Tasty and Overpriced. Someone said this about another restaurant and I think it’s good enough to be generalized about living the life New York. After dinner, we dashed across E. 8th to Australian, an ice cream store, and shared one scoop of ice cream for $3.50.

Maybe the ice cream was overpriced. Still, Tasty and Overpriced as an axiom holds true. It represents the internal conversations about compromises or trade-offs New Yorkers make in their purchase habits living in this financially vulnerable time. We are all “squeezed.” Take me as example: I am searching for the job of my vision. Or take Jake: He owns a co-op on 5th Avenue and has been trying to sell his place for months with no buyer in sight. Yet Jake and I went to a movie, ate out, and shared ice cream. Make choices we must. Survive and thrive we must.

And I just remembered: The restaurant is Cafetasia.

Photo by Sean Dreilinger under Creative Commons License
http://flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/

Men on Mission

New York, NY - Over the weekend, I saw Frank Sinatra in one of his serious films. In “Von Ryan’s Express” he plays an American colonel whose plane was downed over Italy in the days of World War II. The Italians cooperating with the occupying force, the Germans, captured him. As the highest ranking officer in the prisoner-of-war camp, Sinatra’s character, Von Ryan, led the prisoners to escape by hijacking the very train that was meant to deliver them to their next captivity. It was a moving film.

This same weekend, I saw Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. I was not so moved by Ford’s character, Jones, or his plight. There are so many things that make a modern viewer jaded in this latest installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. Not least of which is Hollywood’s interpretation of what makes a hero. In today’s movies, slapstick and lightness are all.

What struck me about both films were the reasons why both characters got into the fight. Von Ryan volunteered to fight for an idea of a liberated Europe free of Nazism and fascism. Jones was forced to fight to rescue loved ones---he conveniently manages to solve one of archeology’s biggest mysteries while doing so. For the reasons above, both men would risk their lives. Should their mission fail, does death make their efforts nobler?

I think of the leadership and charisma of men and the victories and defeats that comes in their wake. Men with personal power carried by an equally powerful sense of mission are riveting. It is their hold on the mind and hearts of others that lead others into the trenches with them. The mission imperative is tricky one. I wonder how many fights and wars have started because one man felt it was his mission to right a wrong. What if this man were to rally others into his cause? What if he had power to persuade a nation? There have been misguided leaders along with noble ones.

In real life, men and women die because they trusted their leaders to the end. I hope that all leaders find missions that are greater than themselves---that they take into account the liberation of not only themselves, but of the many others who laid their trusts in them.

Life, Death, Life

Brooklyn, NY - At the deli waiting for a bagel this weekend, I was reading the local news about a young actress who battled cancer to successfully come back to the stage. A woman in line behind me saw me read the article and said I could probably take the newspaper for free since it was being recycled. She herself had cancer that took her right breast. I have a family member who is a cancer survivor. When asked earlier this year to attend a funeral of a close friend’s aunt who passed away, I did. I wanted to confront my fear of death.

I hesitate to write the word. There is vitality and force in my fingers and in my body. The euphemisms of death are many. They don’t seem to capture the full fear and power of death. The more I fear it, the more it holds its power.

I’m not trying to be morbid. I’m trying to wrestle with the “finitude” of life. An author by the name of Carl Scovel wrote about this in a collection of essays. Because it is finite, life is precious. As I get older, there is no way to avert the awareness.

Aspects of death—and of life—is everywhere. In the walk yesterday to raise awareness and funding for AIDS prevention and treatment, I saw a few walking in memory of someone else, walking with a picture of the loved one that the disease took. Those walking were joyous. Walking was a proactive step to prevent disease, prolong life, to celebrate the life of many.

Certain Native American people believe that death is an arc in the circle of life. Theirs is a belief system that is stoic and somehow hope-inspiring: Life and death are both passages. Both are celebrated. I would like to be this resilient.