Pleasure Notes

I had a dental emergency yesterday; one of my last three remaining baby teeth got yanked out of my head. Yes, I still have baby teeth – it’s a genetic thing. Yes, I now have a hole in my mouth – luckily, it’s in the back and not particularly noticeable. And yes, I’ve only been consuming liquids for the past 24 hours – anyone who does this by choice is an idiot. I’ve also been THINKING! Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the nature of FEAR.

But first, I have a bone to pick with the Tooth Fairy.

by AlterEgoTrip Svenska/flickr

I don’t think it’s fair that TF only works with kids. I want to put in a claim to the Council That Be; I believe I was short-shrifted. Should I really be punished, and have financial benefits withheld, simply because my baby teeth stay around longer than others’ and nothing’s moving in to kick them out?

Instead of receiving a quarter under my pillow this morning, to compensate for my pain and suffering, I received a dental bill for $368. Even with the recession and layoffs, this seems a bit wonky.

Otherwise, however, I’m not nearly as traumatized by my semi-toothless state as I thought I’d be. As a result, I’m beginning to suspect that FEAR is just fluff backed by stellar marketing.

I’ve known my tooth needed to be jettisoned for years. It had gotten infected numerous times. The roots had disintegrated. It was so much smaller than the surrounding teeth, it did little more than serve as a convenient tray upon which food remnants would sit until I noticed them. Nonetheless, I balked at saying goodbye. Vanity was shouting that I might as well move to the Ozarks. Inner Child was awash in abandonment issues.

But then, something odd happened. I stopped listening. It wasn’t that the pain this week was any worse than it’s been in the past, or that I’d suddenly won the lottery, killed my Inner Child or decided to move in with a hot mountain man. Instead, I decided to move past the fear and face whatever came after.

So simple.

***

As I was heading to my dentist yesterday, Abby Sunderland was feared lost in the middle of the ocean. Today, I’m missing a tooth and she’s missing a mast on her sailboat. And we’re both alive. I know it’s odd to compare my tooth extraction to her sailing near-catastrophe, but both circumstances involve fear. This morning, when I learned she’d been found and wasn’t injured, my first thought was: I wonder how she’ll remember the past 24 hours?

Abby must have been terrified when she lost contact with the world, in the midst of a potentially deadly storm.

***

I remember being woken up one night by a car bomb going off in front of my apartment, blowing out the windows of the building, shooting flames along my balcony. I was living in Athens, Greece, at the time and the Gulf War had just started. I remember looking at the clock. It read 4 a.m. On most nights, I would be just walking into my building at about this time, coming home from clubbing. I didn’t know if my American roommate and I were the intended target, or if perhaps a diplomat also lived in our building, or if the street in front of my home had simply provided the only parking space available. What I did know was FEAR.

At least, that’s what my diary tells me.

If I look at the pages I wrote that night, I see frantic chicken scratch and I read panic. Now, however, the sensations I feel most when thinking back on the incident are NOSTALGIA and EXHILARATION.

NOT FEAR.

***

When the dentist pulled my tooth out, I felt no pain. When I got up from the chair, however, I was shaking.

by gaab22/flickr

I wish I’d been able to save my tooth, not to keep but to dispose of it in a more ritualized manner. Everything in me is shifting at the moment, even though it looks like nothing is happening. I’m dreaming with my eyes open. I’m slowing releasing the fears I’ve tethered to me since childhood. How symbolic, then, that I am no longer anchored by that little baby tooth. Nothing has taken its place yet, but it will.

***

Of course, one trip to the dentist is not going to eradicate fear from my life. But the desire to burst through it, like a battered boat through the raging waves of a rabid storm, is increasingly greater than the fear. Seth wrote a nice bit of inspiration on this topic today, as well. As always, the need to swim through fear is applicable to all aspects of life.

It’s reassuring to think that, no matter how crippling the fear, memory blurs the edges of it. With that knowledge held firmly against my heart, it’s much easier to dive into the unknown.

What are you doing to swim through your fear?

Thought I’d take you on a little journey through my brain because, really, haven’t you secretly always wanted to go there? (Humor me by saying YES!) Here’s what’s taking up space at the moment…

• Is this cough tickling my lungs just my imagination, a chest cold, or pneumonia?
• How many dolphins will die as a result of the BP oil spill? Will the rest of the marine population hate us forever and plot a suitable revenge?
• Why does this country still pretend the aggressor is the victim in the Gaza flotilla tragedy and greater Israeli-Palestinian issue, and refuse to call a spade a spade?
• Will I ever get back in shape?
• When will I move past my frustrations with my mother?
• If I never sweep the floor, will the dust bunnies continue to multiply or reach an equilibrium, like goldfish in a tank?
• Will I ever enjoy a work of fiction as much as I enjoyed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society?
• Do I believe my financial situation can radically change?
• Will I regret it if I delete my Facebook account? What if I delete my LinkedIn account?
• Why won’t people stop telling me about great blogs I’ve missed?
• Why aren’t the FedEx and UPS guys who service my area ever cute?
• Should I rent The Cove tonight, for a good cry of frustration, horror and impotence?
• What should the next piece of jewelry I design for Noted Design look like?
• Why does my cat eat my hair while I sleep?
• Now that I know more about the connection between counterfeit products and human trafficking, thanks to Deluxe, will I stick to my principles and forego the next beautiful Chloe purse knock-off?
• Why does laundry never fucking end?
• Why am I letting my cough/chest cold/pneumonia keep me from grabbing coffee with a friend and heading to a BBQ?
• Why don’t more people refuse to go to war?

It’s a wonder I ever sleep, isn’t it? I think it all justifies my love of romantic comedies, however. Anything to shut off my brain…

Hope you didn’t stub your toe on anything, or get lost in the mayhem.

What would a tour through your head currently look like?

“I wish I loved anything enough to stay put,” writes Birdykins in yesterday’s beautiful post. I freeze in recognition. I understand the need to be mobile and free.

To fly.

To run.

To flee.

From them. From you. From me.

Of course, I read “anything” as… ANYONE.

But the statement doesn’t tell the whole story, or at least not mine. It leaves out the decision.

What I truly wish is that I could LET myself love anything anyone enough to stay put. But I can’t, or at least that’s how I interpret my track record of nonexistent relationships.

I am so terrified of love that I leave in the midst of it. I don’t save myself the broken heart. I simply deny that it’s real.

I say I don’t want to feel trapped. I’m the one who has built the cage.

I say I don’t want to change my ways. I’ve spent countless hours on therapists’ couches to do just that.

I say there is no one out there with whom I click. I don’t even try. And if YOU try? God help you. I’m gone before your smile reaches your eyes. Not that I would know that for sure, since I’ll never look you in the eye.

I’ve learned the hard way that the only way to conquer fear is to walk through it. You’d think I could apply that lesson in this arena. But I’ve become so COMFORTABLE living with the fear. I’m like the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water, lulled into feeling safe. I don’t recognize my story when someone else is in it.

So how do I write the next chapter of my life with a new theme, one that involves staying put for something, for SOMEONE? Actually, I have no fucking clue.

But I think it may start with stillness and a smile.

What do you love enough to keep you in place? Or are you still taking flight?

I was so moved and inspired by Jeanne’s post yesterday at The Barefoot Heart that I decided to write about my own knots. I am full of them, mostly on strings pulled too tight.

The emotional knots have manifested into physical ones, creating pinched nerves in my back and hand, making it painful to even breathe or touch. Then there are the intangible knots, in my chest and gut, that grow larger and more entangled with rising panic, fear, loneliness and self-pity. These are the ones upon which I constantly break proverbial nails attempting to untie. They are bound fast, the seams of the strings on which to pull no longer even visible.

I wish I could just cut them out, all these knots, but then I’d be left with threads too short and hanging loose, aimlessly. I’m sure there’s some brilliant remedy in the folklore of community wisdom for how best to untangle knots, emotional as well as physical, but common advice hasn’t yet done the trick. I meditate, I breathe deeply through the pain, I take action to address the real challenges with which I’m faced. Hell, I even got a massage. The knots just grow bigger and more obstinate, it seems.

Which is why I have been talking a lot lately about the weather, and pretty things, and walks around the lake. I don’t know how to– no, I simply don’t WANT to give voice to the mundane aches and terrors that have me constantly, and fairly unsuccessfully, holding back tears. It’s a record I’m so very tired of playing, and the needle has already etched such deep grooves in the tracks that the story jumps and skips, losing any melody that might once have been there.

my favorite knot

So I focus on the one external knot that gives me hope. The knot on my favorite tree. It might seem trite, that this malformation would lighten my heart, but it does. I look at it and think of all that it has withstood. I admire the beauty of its form. And I see that the tree still stands.

It rained last week, which I took as an excuse to barricade myself in my house. For days an entire day. I finally unchained my door to admit a friend who came bearing food and dvds. I got so crazy as to open up a can of soup that had been in the cupboard since 2002 instead of venturing out into the weather, finally understanding the true benefit of canned goods. I can only imagine the extremes to which people on the other coast have resorted to avoid the elements.

By Friday, my body was screaming to my mind, DO SOMETHING! MOVE!

I looked out the window, debating my choices.

by Agnes the Red/flickr

The forecast had predicted it would rain again. The sky was dark and cloudy. I was sleep deprived; the roar of downpours had kept me up half the night. I figured I had every reason not to twitch off the couch, much less stick my neck out into the world at large.

My body’s screaming got LOUDER!

I decided to risk the dangers inherent in venturing onto local roads during inclement moments; Los Angeles drivers transform into veritable drama queens when water darkens our asphalt.

I headed to the lake.

On the way to my habitual meditative retreat from urban chaos, a large raindrop shattered onto the surface of my windshield. It immediately became a civilization of droplets. I was struck by the pattern. Then I thought, I should turn back… But it’s only a drop… Another drop fell, a smaller one.

When was the last time you were soaked by the rain?

I realized I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened to me. My heart started beating a bit faster, in anticipation. Why not embrace the possibility of an experience I usually take pains to avoid?

I decided that if the skies should open up and drench me in harmless water acid rain, I would welcome it as an adventure.

The skies held their tears.

Instead, I shed some of my own. In awe.

The LIGHT took my breath away.

It was spectacular – crisp and flat. It transformed the glories of a three-dimensional world into a fanciful pop-up book of layers – the dew-dropped grasses sharply carved out and laid flat in front of the water, in front of the trees, in front of the tower, in front of the mountain, in front of the clouds.

Everything appeared new and special.

by chrislagarto/flickr

Then the crickets exploded into symphony, clearly rejoicing in the dampened earth and the scent of life that a hard rain brings to this town. I understood. And I was suddenly reminded of something I’d forgotten while slouched on my couch, obsessed with my navel…

Nature is my god. It never fails to restore me to my purest self.

When I make that connection, all other connections are possible. And I am happy.

What do you discover when you leave the house?