tamarjacobson

Quote of the day:

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life. Seneca

Being ill has been an interesting experience for me. About 25 years ago I had viral hepatitis. I had caught it from one of the children in my classroom. For two months I was yellow all over my body, fingers, whites of eyes, and general skin-tone. Most of the time I was weak, tired and nauseous. It was an awful, debilitating illness that never seemed to go away. Finally, at the very end I was hospitalized for a few days for some tests and then it was all over. Now, twenty five years later, I found myself in a similar situation only this time it felt so much more serious. It came at me from out of the blue and sucked me out of my life. I felt like I had been thrown into prison and would never be set free again. Indeed, I found myself making my hospital room comfortable for the long haul, as if accepting my fate and moving on with it the best I could. Some of the lessons learned occurred to me this morning when I enjoyed a cup of coffee, something I have not been able to do for the past ten days or so.

• Even though the body is ailing with fever or pain, tremors or weakness and fatigue, the mind can pull me out of despairing. I can wash my face, take a deep breath – or a number of deep breaths, tell myself I am not just an illness, I am also me! Looking in the mirror for a long moment helps me come back to the me within. I look into my eyes and see that I am so much more than just fever and pain. I don’t have to become the illness.
• Just because everyone around me is behaving in a certain institutional way, I don’t have to. For example, as the nurses rush through with their medicine packages and throw the lids or papers on the floor by my bed in their haste, I can pick those papers up and keep my room clean. I don’t need to lie in that mess feeling worthless or just like someone who is being handled. By the same token, if they have not time to ask me who I am or find out how I am feeling, I can still ask them who they are and find out how they are feeling. Each time I do that, they stay a short while and share their day with me.
• Renewing respect for my body. My mind and brain resides in this body of mine. I deserve to take care of it. It seems to me that if I stuff unhealthy foods into it, that will not be kind or helpful to the body’s functioning. If I don’t move and bend it, the body won’t be flexible or strong enough to face the dysfunctional times. My body needs rest, warm baths and compassion for the number of years it has been functioning successfully so far.
• Self reflection reconfirmed. Understanding why I do what I do, how I think and feel the way I do, is one of the ways I have some control of my life. It gives me choices and helps me make decisions for myself even if it is simply in my attitude or the way I feel. Self reflection is my friend and when I am in any type of situation I find comfort in writing out or thinking it through. Getting to know how my mind works is one of the best things I can do for myself: body and mind.
• Contact with others is important. Visits, telephone calls, e-mail messages, cards, gifts and flowers make a difference. Feeling ill and working to keep afloat emotionally is challenging and can feel pretty lonely. Each time someone makes contact with me in any way is helpful and gives me hope that this illness state is temporary and the end is near. Plus, it just makes me feel worthwhile and loved. Attention does that! Puts me in the forefront for a moment while I struggle with feeling like I’m disappearing from view.
• Relationships is what it is all about. And I keep returning to this lesson. Over and over again. In the end, it is my various relationships with different people that makes life worthwhile. Not the books I have written or will write, meetings I have attended or awards received. It has only to do with the one to one interactions with family members, friends, colleagues, or, even, strangers passing by my bedside, sharing a smile, a tear, a touch, a few words. My resolve has been strengthened and heart opened wider to spend the rest of my life enhancing the quality of all my relationships.

Thank you so much to all the people who wished me well or held me in their thoughts this past week or so. I raise this wonderful cup of coffee, which I am enjoying so much for the first time in 10 days, to all of you, whoever and wherever you may be, in a toast to human contact and relationships whether virtual or real!

So far I have been in the hospital for four days. I guess the way I seem to be holding onto this fever, I probably am looking at a few more. Early this morning I found myself talking to my body. Perhaps, it’s the long hours alone staring at the blank walls and ceilings with only the sounds of I.V. pump machines and other hospital bells and whistles out in the hallways. I realized that my body has always been there for me. Sure, now and then it has been weaker than it could be and these past eight years since I turned 50 it has ached in areas I did not know I had. But it seemed it was a constant. One of those few I could always depend on. “Hey body,” I said, “What’s happened? I’m not used to this.”

Yesterday, I raged. Anger seeped through my veins, splashing and swirling alongside the anti-biotic dripping relentlessly for hours, whipping up the fever, burning through my eyes, and constricting my throat. This morning I awoke out of a dream where the ocean rose up and washed over the roads, splashing people’s faces as they stood on the promenade looking out to sea. My rage did not feel as large any longer and then suddenly I knew that it had all been about my poor sick and feverish body: fallen down, weak, hurting.

I went into the bathroom, quickly grabbing a chance to brush my hair, and wash my face while my hand was miraculously free from dragging around the I.V. until the next dose would be upon me. After opening the blind and looking out at the rising morning for some moments, I climbed back into my hospital bed and pulled my computer towards me. Turning it on and hearing the familiar sounds of start-up seemed to soothe and comfort me. No Internet access? Never mind, I am still able to write. I might even be able to post it to my blog when I get home. And, this morning … how strange … I realize excitedly that yes I will get home…

Body, even though it might not be today or tomorrow, I assure you, we will be going home, you and me. On the way, you will get patched and fixed, prodded and jabbed, flushed through with gruesome healing medications, and propped up to keep on keeping on. We will have to stay awhile in an institution that believes in healing through medication. Even though there does not seem to be awareness about the healing powers of aesthetics, human communication, or quality of food. We will stay awhile and heal in spite of institutional ignorance. People are dedicated and working extremely hard to make us well. I start up some music on my computer, filling the room with sounds that give my spirit joy and comfort, and am grateful for the flowers Tom brought me last night. They are sitting in a corner of the night table bringing a touch of color and beauty into this emotionally and physically neutral territory. Yes, body. I will help us get well by not allowing us to sink into institutional brain set, and retaining the inner most soulful me.

And, most of all, I will learn to accept and support you with compassion and understanding when you stumble and fall.

Update:

I am home, armed with loads of medications and future procedures. On the mend and hopeful for positive end results in two weeks time.

A true Rosh Hashanah gift! Happy New Year to those who celebrate.

The party is over. Time for me to get serious now and buckle down to work. Preparing classes and finishing the book. Deadlines are hot on my tail … tale …

And yet …

It has been such a damn good summer. And I simply do not want to work as hard as I always have. I have started to enjoy enjoying. I love taking my time and doing what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it. Time seems short for me as I charge on towards my sixties … just a little less than two more years to go.

The semester ahead is shaping up to be busy and intense. Many classes to teach (too many?), book due before winter vacation, conference presentations to present, Board work, editorial consulting to engage in, students to supervise, work-outs, yoga, weights and dieting to work on, and the list mounts.

And yet …

I want to continue noticing a purple violet flower suddenly bursting into bloom on the plant stand, stare out at the bird feeder and the large oak tree, or walk the Wissahickon. I want to spontaneously jump on a train to the City, take in a movie on my own, or meet new people out of the blue. I want to blog when I want and I most certainly want to play on Facebook. Yes indeed, I want to have fun!

This sounds like a great way to retire. Work intensely at things I love to do: teach, supervise, write, present, consult, volunteer, advocate.

And yet …

And at the same time, as I become serious and buckle down, just refuse to take it all too seriously.

For as Life comes, so, too it will go …

So perhaps, this semester, I will practice the balance, prepare for retirement within, retiring from the old, ancient way of looking at how I do my living, and learn a whole new way of being.

I might even go so far as to consider this a New Year’s resolution. For it comes at the time of the year when a chill in the air greets the dawn, and one or two leaves start to turn. It comes at the beginning of the end of summer.

Update:

And then along comes this to support my learning a new way of being:

09/03/2007

Idleness is Okay

This quote by Evelyn Waugh comes from the new book by Tom Hodgkinson, How to Be Idle (New York: HarperCollins, 2005). Hodgkinson makes the case in 24 essays that time spent not working is time well spent. Along the way he lampoons the many things that get in the way of us enjoying our leisure: employment, consumerism, middle-class propriety, status anxiety, deeply ingrained workaholism, and lack of imagination.

According to Hodgkinson, idleness is a whole philosophy based on the notion that much of life’s magic presents itself in those spontaneous, lazy moments when we are not intent on producing something. He observes…

“Planned schemes of merriment rarely turn into the best evenings, which are usually the unplanned ones, when you have abandoned yourself to fate and chance and chaos.”

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Have I said it all? & Inspired

… at Mining Nuggets: Past and present

In the dream I was trying to find my way back home. A recurring dream I have over the years, only each time structured just a bit differently I am supposed to know my way back home. It is easy. Just turn down road such-and-such and walk straight there. However, I am never able to find that road such-and-such, and proceed only to become lost down small, dark streets and lanes between ancient buildings with undesirable characters passing me by, looking me over. Inevitably I land up at a dead end, usually at a wild ocean sometimes even with a huge rising, dangerous wave forcing me to run as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

Early this morning the dream was similar. Only this time people kept disappearing over a ledge towards the sea startling me, as I thought they were jumping off a cliff. A shadow of a man, supposedly someone I knew, came to my aid and redirected me up a road towards the correct turn homeward, disappearing as soon as I tried to ask him a question. I soon found myself locked behind a gate, high up in a tight, narrow corner with a dangerous descent, impossible for me with my fear of heights. I started calling out, "Help!" in a tiny, scraping voice trying to make it louder. I seemed to have pulled a lever as I called out, panic rising in my chest, and somehow the step I was on started to descend gradually on its own. There were muffled voices of people down below and I awoke shaking with fear, not knowing where I was. I ran through the apartment looking for T. He had woken earlier and was sitting in the living room with his computer. He looked up calmly as I passed, watching me as if I was a mouse running through the house. "I had such a nightmare," I explained as I rushed by.

It occurs to me that I have had that feeling often throughout my life, since I was a very young child. Calling out for help high up and away as I am trying to find my way home, when there should be an easy route and I become lost in the shadows of some ancient land. And, always, there is no one out there. The sea is sure to engulf me at any time.

Remarrying does not make single parenting any less single. For I worry alone, celebrate alone, feel pride alone, call out for help alone. I think I have always been alone. Just getting on with it as best I could. Mostly not knowing what to do. Desperately watching those around me for hints and cues about how to do whatever it was I needed to do. Grasping at role models, strangers passing by. Trying to be a student, parent, wife, lover, teacher, friend, author, woman, sister, daughter. Always without a road map, it seems. Wandering through unknown avenues and down ominous paths. Never really finding my way back home.

Recently, when my son left, after a week’s stay with me, and for reasons I will not go into here, I cried as if my heart would break. I cried so hard and so much, that out of the congestion, the whole next day I could not hear in one ear and was completely hoarse. As I drove from the airport, tears poured down my cheeks like a thunderstorm.

I wonder, "Will I die alone too?" As Charlie did after we had all kissed him and told him that we loved him, alone in his hospice room that night? Or will someone be there to hold my hand and stroke my forehead with great love, or hold me in their arms as I did with Mar-Mar as she rose up to take her very last breath?

It occurs to me that for the past six years the leader of our country makes me feel even more alone than I have ever felt. Doing what he wants, thumbing his nose at everyone, lying, deceiving, joking and offending. I am terrorized by his abuse of power. Rendered help-less and alone time and again. Ashamed of his actions, statements, ideologies. Outraged, that as our elected leader he speaks for me and uses my hard earned monies in ghastly, abhorrent ways. Constantly, insidiously. His leadership permeates everything we do, accompanies us as we go about our daily lives. Every time I see his hideous, insincere smile or hear his cackling over some lie or other, it permeates my tender soul just a bit more. Come to think of it, have I ever lived under a political leader who I truly admired and felt proud to be a part of?

"Help!" I cry. It is squeaky and rasping, shrill and piercing. Perhaps, in my next recurring dream, I will fill my lungs with air, breathe in deeply and call out from the pit of my stomach with a loud, roaring voice, deep, strong and solid: "HELP!" – in such a way, that people will run from their homes, arms outstretched to greet me in a loving, compassionate embrace. And then, together, we will find my way home, arm in arm singing Kum Ba Yah as we go.

QuickCam, quick capture moments:

Ada Mae and me

The jazz pianist and me while Skype-ing with Sister Sue

Sister Sue skype-ing with us

Update:

To: Madame L: in reply:

And … then … I … dedicate … this … to you, Madame Levy … as … Madame Tamarika … Part I …

Part II …

Part III …

It occurred to me, as I was traveling on the New Jersey Transit on my way to New York City, that there are two sides to feeling as if I do not belong. One is excruciatingly painful because I feel so victimized, marginalized, and excluded, that I become enraged and helpless at the injustice of being left out.

With the other side, however, I become an outsider looking in. I feel detached and peaceful, free of the burden of responsibility and relieved not to be a part of anything. It is the side where I seem to have control over my life. I am able to observe and choose whether or how much to become involved, or I move on untouched. It is the side that enables me to decide whether I owe anything to anyone or not. And the owing is in whether I will share my feelings or not, as much as it is whether I am responsible for anyone or not.

I have struggled with the former side of exclusion all of my life, starting within my family of origin and then transferring those painful feelings to everyone and everything I subsequently became involved with: marriages, lovers, organizations, work, friendships, family relationships …

Part of letting go and bidding farewell to the burdens of my past has been to transfer to the other side of not belonging. I am becoming more and more an outsider looking in. I realized this yesterday on the train. I looked out the window at the scenery rushing by and thought to myself, "Has life just become more lonely?" After all, when I am busy feeling painfully excluded and hurt by all those wrongs against me, I am deluded into feeling as if I am, in fact, involved with people, and not alone. As an outsider looking in, I am at once stripped of illusions and faced with being alone. Just me. Looking in. Observing. Detached. De-personalized. Un-involved. And, yes, it does seem a tad lonely. Even a bit scary. But then, I think that is how it is. Being an adult, I mean. Becoming mature. Being able to choose how I feel. And not being dependent on other people’s actions for or against me.

I started to talk about it and then stopped myself abruptly. It just felt too personal, private, deep … at that moment. I laughed to myself as I said out loud, "I think I’ll write about it on my blog …"

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Blogging about books

Well, I should be writing. And I should be preparing all the syllabi for my classes. I should be shopping, doing the laundry, feeding the birds, playing with Ada.

But I would just rather write in my blog.

I should be on the treadmill, lifting weights, stretching and breathing into the yoga routine.

But I would just rather write in my blog.

My eyes sag and droop, burn and tear up with all the should’s racing around my brain. It is like a thousand voices yelling within and without. Should, should, should …

I should have been a better mother. I should lose weight. I should pay for my transgressions … pay, pay, pay.

I would just rather sit here in this darkened, gray morning, listening to the calls and cries, pips, squeaks and twitters of blue jays, cardinals, nut hatches, chickadees, sparrows, warblers, wrens, titmice, chipmunks as they exclaim and announce that food is in the feeder. I would rather sit here and write in my blog, gather peace from it and let the words flow from my fingers and onto the screen.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, when I was done being alone and "shoulding" my way through the day, I went to see Becoming Jane … alone. I couldn’t help but marvel how she wrote whenever and wherever she could scratching the words on paper by candlelight with ink all over her fingers. Her "should’s" were ever so much more formidable than mine. She was so much more courageous in her time, than I am in mine …

I should be more of an activist. I should make more of a stand, contribution …

But I would just rather write in my blog …

Promise yourself: no self-criticism today. If a negative thought crops up, tell your inner nag, "Not now." Life can be hard enough without your adding more stress. Oprah

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: I can’t wait …

Expressed out.

There is, of course, always more to say.

And yet.

I could probably sum it up as: be kind

And then again more will come to me.

Just not today.

Or is it that I have too much to say?

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Welcome